An Extinction Event

The weirdest thing I’ve dreamed is that our son was born a catfish. Mine and Honey’s. With whiskers and slick rainbow skin. I told her about it once while we were sloshed on Manny’s porch—the stars out and music, and her teetering like a gate. 

“We have a kid?” she’d said—loud, so I could hear it. Her hair was painted pink and she was sipping on a beer. 

“In the dream,” I told her. “We were at the hospital.” 

She was looking past my shoulder at Manny through the doorway. She’s always been in love with him. Even when we were kids running barefoot on the street. Throwing spark plugs at old windows and sneaking her mother’s cigarettes. 

“It doesn’t mean anything,” I said. Her face was like a moon’s. I took a long drink, then another, and leaned like it was nothing. “You know I read once about dreams. That they’re as random as the weather.” 

It was the same night Jess Leeman got his fist stuck in a fence. When he’d walked around the yard with the wood around his wrist. He was going up to everyone and introducing himself, saying, “Hi, I’m Mr. Leeman,” then reaching out his board hand. We had all laughed our heads off. Tiny Ray and Shelley. Fern and Wheeler’s brother. This gangly kid from Ennis with a puffed right ear.

Now I know what you’re thinking—about the dream and about Honey. That’s a throw away dream. That’s a dream like old oil. But the problem is: I can’t. I’m still carrying it around. Imagine walking down the sidewalk and looking at the buildings, except the only thing you see is fish fins and a tail. You see gills like cut tomatoes. Little eyes. You see a croaked mouth and a tongue and these pinholes for the nostrils. It wasn’t just Honey. I would have liked her, sure. I still would. Some nights I just lie there, imagining her hips. In this house I’ve stripped down. The boards with no drywall. In the summers, when the air feels shot from a muffler, I’ll lie beside a fan and stare up at the ceiling. At the rafters showing through—like shadows in the wood. I’ll sink down into the mattress like I’m buried in sand, imagining the sweet smell inside of Honey’s thighs. 

But it’s more than her, I know. It’s more than Honey’s knees. And her wrinkled-up toes and skin like rivers. My father was even there—inside the dream. I saw him and his father and his father and his. Lined up in the waiting room with big dark cigars. Their mouths were like buckets when they saw me going past. I was running like a lunatic. I didn’t mention that. Our son was wrapped up in this blue dinosaur blanket, trying to get free and wiggling in my arms. He was dried and getting sticky. He was stuck to the fabric. I had held him minutes earlier while he flopped his fish tail, and then realized with the nurses that there wasn’t any water.

I ran and I ran—through doors and all the rooms. I ran into the parking lot and then onto the freeway, dodging cars and chrome motorcycles and a red wailing ambulance. Vans and big flatbeds and a truck with sharp teeth. I rabbit-hopped the rail, and there were rocks instead of grass. There was no lake anywhere. No creek and no trees. There was no curled ivy. No birds. I slid down the gravel and squeezed my son’s body. For miles it was gray—the chalk of old limestone. And hard, like an attic. Those cuts in the shale. There were cliffs with little bones rippled along the walls, and past them—where the sky was, and these metal-looking clouds—I could see where the world curved and knew there was nothing.