The Fish and the Not Fish Read Online Free Page A

had a fight with a tree and the tree was what won out.
    The next day Bird came to school wet from head to foot as if he got caught in the rain.
    It had not rained for three weeks, not a drop. The grass in our town had all turned to dirt.
    Sir gave Bird a rag that was used to wipe the black slate that Sir wrote on in chalk all of those things that boys like us did not need to know and then Sir told Bird who the past two days had been late for school to dry his head and his hands off. Bird took it, the rag, and held it in his hand. What we thought was rain dripped off of Bird’s head and back and pooled there at his bare feet.
    The sea, the sea, the sea, the sea.
    This was the word and the sound that Bird made with his mouth, more than just once, though he said it so low Sir could not hear it.
    Where, do tell, are your shoes? Sir said this to Bird when he saw what we saw too.
    This school, Sir said to Bird, it is not some barn. I’m not here to teach you how to milk cows.
    A few of us laughed when Sir said what he did. Those of us who did not laugh gave those who did looks.
    The sea, the sea, Bird said, to make it now six times that Bird had said these sea words, though once more Sir did not hear it.
    The rest of us in class did not know what to make of what or why Bird said what he did.
    What did Bird mean when he said what he said: The sea, the sea, the sea.
    What did boys like us know of that place called the sea? The sea was not the kind of a place that boys like us had been to see.
    The road out of town, we’d been told, by Sir and by men like Sir who were here to teach us those things that we did not need to know, if you took it as far as it will go, we got told, it ends up at the sea.
    That much we knew.
    We’d been told what got told.
    But we knew, too, that there was more for us to know of a place such as the sea than just this.
    The sea was a big place, this we knew, as big as the sky, a place too big for eyes like ours to see it with just one look.
    When we’d close our eyes to see it, what we’d see was a place like the sky, it was as blue as the sky, a blue for boys like us, in our eyes, to swim in.
    It took Bird all day for him to say to us, when he could, what it was that he had to say.
    The sea, Bird said, his skin gone white where the rain had been on it. It is time to go see the sea.
    Bird sang out, so loud this time so Sir too could hear it, It is time to go see the sea.
    When Sir heard Bird say that it was time to go see the sea, Sir turned to us and told us, In your dreams you will see the sea.
    Sir was right.
    That night, each one of us boys, we dreamed we were at the sea. We stood at the sea’s edge and looked out and looked up: at the sky, at the black. The moon in this sky was a fish.
    We fished.
    We caught fish that, when we touched them, when we took out the hooks, they all turned, in our hands, to stars.
    This fire did not burn us.
    But the stars in our hands left their mark.
    We took this as a sign.
    At school, the next day, we each of us held out our hands for each of us to see.
    We each of us said, Last night I had a dream.
    We were boys who did not talk of our dreams.
    We were not boys who made much of the dreams that we dreamed.
    Bird was the one boy of us who did, who dreamed.
    Bird’s dream was, we knew, to fly.
    And so he flew.
    Bird flew to see the sea.
    Bird dreamed this dream for us.
    Bird dreamed this dream with us.
    To the sea, we knew, Bird would take us.
    We just had to find out where he was. Bird was not at school that day. When we looked in all the trees that Bird liked to sit in, Bird was not perched up in the trees where we looked up to find him.
    When we found Bird, where we found Bird, Bird was on the ground with his legs crossed at the knees.
    Bird, we said. Bird.
    We said, We all dreamed the same dream.
    And then one by one we told him the dream.
    We held out our hands so that Bird could see what the stars had left in our hands.
    Bird looked up at