We picked up six minnows for 15 cents each at Petco and gently poured them from the plastic bag into the black tub. Noah pulled a metal chair across the concrete patio and sat hunched over the water garden, silvery scales glinting as the fish darted beneath the water hyacinth.
Ten minutes later all six were dead, floating glassy-eyed and white-bellied like sardines on the surface.
Noah carried them in a garden trowel to the bird bath tucked up against the oat grass in the back yard. “Why waste good food for the birds?” he reasoned. Later he reported they were all gone but one, who was missing its head.
The next day Brad and Noah came home from Petco with two more fish – this time an orange goldfish and a black googly-eyed creature with a feathery tail. He named them Gills and Arrow.
That night he and Brad emptied a third of the water from the tub and hauled it into the sunroom. The temperature was expected to dip into the 40s, and Noah was worried about his pets.
{Let it be known, I had a plastic tub filled with outdoor water plants and fish in the middle of my sun room. Not exactly the House Beautiful aesthetic I aspire to.}
About noon the following day I stepped away from the computer and peered into the tub. Gills the goldfish skirted into a shaft of sunlight. Google-eyed Arrow was nowhere to be seen. I grabbed a flashlight and shined it into the murky depths. Arrow had sunk to the bottom, where he lay on his side next to the brick. He wasn’t moving.
I jiggled the tub with my knee. Water sloshed onto the doormat, and Gills panicked, flitting from side to side, but still, Arrow didn’t move. Not willing to slide my hand into the dank water to touch the slimy black scales with the tip of my finger, I reached for a badminton racket and lowered the handle slowly to the bottom of the tub. I gently poked the immobile fish. He didn’t move. I poked him twice more.
I dreaded telling Noah when he got home from school. The kid had lost two grandparents, Big Blue (his snail) and six fish in the last 18 months, and now another loss, on top of all that? What if this was the breaking point, I fretted. What if this one sent him reeling into depression? My anxiety and dread intensified as the clock clicked toward 3:30. I wrung my hands and forgot to pray because I always forget to pray at times like these.
At first he didn’t believe me. “Maybe he’s just resting,” Noah suggested, brown eyes round, brow knit. I put my arm around his thin shoulders as we walked toward the mini-van. “No, I don’t think so, honey. He didn’t move at all.”
Noah held out hope for Arrow until he saw the state of the fish for himself. And then he fetched the trowel from the garage, gently plucked the tiny, limp body from the water and buried him in the backyard between the bee balm and the day lily.
“I think I’ll just stick with Gills and see how that goes,” he mentioned at bedtime as I pulled his comforter up to his chin. “One fish seems like enough for now.”
I think I may have to add Gills the goldfish to my prayer list.