Tree Fishing

By John Biron

The tree is tall. It angles out over the river giving it a look like gramma’s arm like when we’re at church, and she says to me get up, get up, reaching feebly toward the sky, in praise or grief, it sagging like a thing suspended in the air by an unseen grace.

“Think I can get up there?” I say.
“Hell no.”
“You don’t never think good on me.”
“I don’t think good on a fish saying he wants to walk neither. You getting up there and a fish
upright walking: two things that got ‘no way in hell’ in common.”
“Screw you. I’m going up there.”

I step toward the tree. Get up, them legs shaking and all our bones like one bone scattering down the hall into dark, together, stronger cause of it. Leading up to a small platform built in the crook of a Y-shaped branch are small wooden blocks, unevenly spaced, none of them level. I test the first. It holds.

“Well then, get up there. What you waiting for?” Deles says.
“I’m going,” I say.
“Gather round folks to see the walking fish!” Nebel said.
“I’ll walk you,” I say.
“You try it.”
“Shuttup. Get up there,” Deles says.

Scars of nails and past climbers mar the tree’s bark. Thin streaks of clouds form and reform across a whiteblue sky. I heft myself up to the third step. I wouldn’t say I’m overweight any but maybe close, and each step sinks slightly in resistance to my footfall. That’s what it is then: resistance, but to what? Apathy, hopelessness. Get up, gramma says, rattling the back of the pew in front of her, weak and white armed and balanced on her toes. Get up, now, stand. I climb higher. At the seventh step, about half way to the platform at the top of the tree, my sister shrieks.

“That’s high enough! Get down, you!”
“Aw shuttup, Ag,” Deles says.
“He gone high enough,” she says, “get yourself down or I’ll tell.”
“You always spoiling. I’m halfway up. You wouldn’t tell nothing.”
“I will too tell. Half way up. What you wanna prove? Get-“
“Prove he isn’t fish,” Nebel says. “Go on, Goal. She’s not telling.”
“Like hell,” Ag says. “Why don’t you go up that tree then? Get down!”

Toward the next step. Looking down I guess I’m around something like twelve feet up. Lazy brown water lolls in wide swirls beneath me. It almost seems like encouraging me along with its softness, swirling and flowing like we always trust it will, going on and on into time. A breeze across my skin cools me as the sun, it standing high and breaking with ferocity what clouds drift under it, together with the climbing work to sweat me. They’re all shrinking like sinking into the muck of the river’s bank. I can hear Agnes shouting, hear Nebel and Deles taunting me along. Breathing hard, reaching up and up and-

All that he was was congealing within him, hardening like dried clay— all that sluggish, wet land coming up the tree, up through his bare feet to cake his heart in prideful earth— as he pulled himself up onto the platform. He could hear his friends and sister shouting louder now. His body shivered with triumph, that affirmation of the strength of his own will. Turning to them with his hands raised above his head, cheering himself, Goal heard a sharp crack underneath the yelling and the indifferent breeze and felt his weight shift backward.

If they had been able to see it beneath the surface of the warm river: a fish stood for an instant on its silver tail.

As the first mostly illiterate writer, John Biron is a profile in courage. Watch his inspiring story unfold @JohnBiron90196 on Twitter.