Worms and Fishes

Posted on Aug 15, 2011

Mr. Fish

By Mr. Fish

(Page 3)

“Where you fellas headed?” asked the state trooper who found us walking dog-tired along the interstate at half-past midnight. He had pulled up next to us and was shining a flashlight hard in our faces. We couldn’t tell what the heck he looked like.

“Home,” I said to the light.

“And where’s home?” asked the light.

“There aren’t no home like a raft, sir,” said my brother. “Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a raft don’t. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft.” The light didn’t respond.

“Broomall, Pennsylvania,” I finally said. “We’re headed to our grandparents’ house.”

“Do you have a guardian with you,” said the trooper, not buying a thing we were saying.

“Just God the Father,” said my brother, stepping forward to show the officer the front of his Camp Consecration Revival Retreat T-shirt.

Ten minutes later we were watching from our caged backseat as the great logged archway leading into Camp Consecration passed over our heads and the police car rolled slowly toward Head Pastor Sweat’s cabin and the insatiable appetite of the unforgiving. “What’s the use you learning to do right, when it’s troublesome to do right and ain’t no trouble to do wrong, and the wages is just the same?” asked my brother to nobody in particular, with nobody answering, while I sat remembering Dusty Woo and the lesson at the lake, pleading the whole time with the empty heavens above to be full of some very real mercy.

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