Away with the Fishes Read Online Free Page A

bicycle abandoned in the road. Had Randolph and Jarvis happened upon evidence of the second, bicycle-owning lonely heart? Trevor shook his head again and smiled wide and bright.
    “Ho ho,” he said. “This is it. This is really it.”
    Raoul didn’t answer, but under his breath he cursed the madding gnat that had sent him to find the baker.

5
    S ome little bit of madness is intrinsic to life on Oh. To life on
any
island—and I’ve visited many—but on Oh especially. For one thing, you can most easily and literally find yourself running in circles on an island. Worse, your circular jog will carry you endlessly past every monument to your troubles: past the ravine where you twisted your ankle, up the hill where you were butted by a goat, down the lane where your wife cheated on you with a man half your size. Of course the monuments to your success will always be there, too, the cricket pitch where you scored a half-century and the mango tree where you tasted true love. While it’s good, even wise, to illumine your course with the flashlight of the past, you may find its beam falls too easily on familiar pitfalls, too readily on roads best traveled. You might ignore an unexpected gulley and stumble, or overlook a lush but untried path.
    On Oh, this running in circles and in the subjective rays of your own history, maddening enough on its own, is exacerbated by the island’s capricious terrain. A wink from the moon, and clouds unleash terrific storms, turning ditches into rivers overnight. A sneeze from the sun, and the frangipani’s blooms triple, blockingyour view and choking you with their powerful perfume. A loud and angry wind will blow the leaves off of every last tree, and there won’t be a patch of shade for miles. The assaults to your sanity and your senses are quite thorough.
    Which is why, to cope, most of the islanders on Oh choose to see, hear, smell, taste, and feel things not as they are, but as they wish them to be. Flooded river banks? Just a generous Oh throwing its plentiful fish right up on the grassy shores. Vicious sunlight? Why, the better for the islanders’ deep mocha complexion. Believe you me, spend enough time on Oh, and you will convince yourself that the weeds are the sweetest of roses, and a traitor your very best friend. Here denial and delusion are as soothing as tea and fresh scones.

6
    A n abandoned and mangled bicycle was as newsworthy as it got, all the more so in light of the anonymous lonely heart who sought a bicycled mate. Trevor couldn’t possibly have known what complications the island was cooking up just then, nor could he guess that Bruce would be the finishing touch, the cherry on the waking island’s cake.
    Randolph and Jarvis had just finished their stormy tale when Trevor picked up the phone. First he called his brother-in-law, Ernest, who had a truck with a hitch on it and was happy to rescue Dodger’s bus. He called Patience to tell her he wouldn’t be home for a while. And he called Bruce, because Bruce was a newsman in search of news, and so a friend in need. Also, Bruce was the only one of them who owned a camera. Trevor thought they ought to shoot the scene, and Raoul, who had experience in such matters, agreed.
    “The scene of what?” Branson asked.
    “If we knew that we wouldn’t be here puzzling over a mashed-up bike in flour dust at midnight, would we?” Trevor told him.
    As a matter of fact, it was hardly eleven-thirty, but they were indeed standing in front of Trevor’s Bakery, gazing perplexed intothe back of the bakery truck at the bicycle the boys had carried home. Randolph wanted to get it out, but Raoul thought it best to photograph the bike as it was, just once-removed from the scene of the crime, not twice.
    “What crime?” Branson asked. “The boys said they looked for clues and there weren’t any.”
    “Since when does no clue mean no crime?” Raoul asked, though it was more an observation than a question.
    “Don’t the police