God made the worms

I’ll be a dad one day.

One of the things I learned when I was a teacher was the sadness you inherit when it’s your turn to tell a child something they were not ready to hear.

I wrote this story a long time ago. 6 or 7 years. I was thinking a lot about a kid I met at the Boys and Girls Club in Syracuse. He asked a lot of questions I didn’t really have the answers to. Nothing about God or fishing or worms or where babies come from. At least I don’t think so. I never remember the things I really wish I could. Not the way I should, anyway.

G O D M A D E T H E W O R M S

The father had never taken the boy to the river to fish and the boy was nervous. This was to be expected. The mysticism that cloaks such a masculine religion is not to be overlooked.

The night before, the boy asked his older brother how to bait the hook. The line was tied and the knot was taught and the hook was covered with a worm. In the morning, the worm was still and brown and the boy was sad.

While they were making their way to the river in the darkness the boy was quiet. He spoke at sunrise.

What happened to the worm dad?
He died.
Is it my fault he died?

The father remembered the brother had asked the same question. Curious children. He was proud. He knew there would be much of this talk today, as there was when he took his first son to the river to fish. He gave the same response to his little boy now.


Maybe.


Trees dropped orange and red leaves onto the surface. Charon boats.

Father?
Yes.
What happens when you die?
I think you go to heaven.
You think?
I hope.

The boy watched the leaves for a minute.

Where is heaven?
With God.
Why do we go there?
Because God made us.
I thought you and ma made me?
We did. But God made you too.

The boy was very confused. He looked at the leaves making their way down down, following the current around the bend and out of sight.


That doesn’t make any sense.
It makes sense because God created everything. The sun and the moon and the sky and the water and trees and birds and rocks and other things.


The father pointed at some of them when he spoke. It made it easier for him to speak the thoughts he might not have believed in but he believed he had to say.


Oh.
Yup.
God made everything in the world?
Yes he did. ll the good things.
What about the worms?

The father had learned to be patient with his boys. He was a good fisherman. He sat down on a rock and slipped a pink worm over his hook. He wiped what remained of its flesh on the rock and his eyes found the boy, fixed on the worm curled around the steel and bleeding.

Yup. God made the worms, too.

They stood there in silence for a while, throwing their lines out and waiting. The father knew the boy had many questions. He was proud that the boy didn’t ask them right away. He was proud he was a thinker, the same as he and the same as the brother. Good men, they were, and would be.

The father caught a fish and as he reeled it in the boy put down his pole, sat in the clay and watched. The father stepped knee deep in to the river. He kept his pole upright and whirled with his other hand until the fish was in the shallows. He squatted and put his hands in the water and raised the fish to the sun. Its skin scaled from brown to white. The father moved slowly and the fish was not afraid.

The boy came in to the river too and the father brought the fish to his face.

Would you like to hold it?
Yeah.

The boy was nervous. This was to be expected.


Put your hands out. It’ll try to get away once I let go. Hold it tight. Behind the gills. Here.

The father showed the boy the gills and let go of the fish. The boy squeezed with two hands. He grit his teeth and rocked his knees.

The boy saw his face in the fish’s eyes. He noticed the hook stuck through its bottom lip. Its wet hips whacked against the boy’s arms. The fish twisted its spine and said: “I’m alive.”

Good. Good.
What do we do now, pa?
We leave him on the line and in the shallows. Here. So he does not spoil. He will make a good supper.
So we going to eat him?
Yes.
Then he will die?

The father did not answer. The boy looked toward the rock where the father had baited the hook. He looked at the water and at the red and orange leaves flowing downstream. The leaves looked brown to him, now.

Will the fish be with God after we eat him?

The brother did not ask that question. The father took the fish from the boy and walked him to an eddy by the shoreline.

Dad. Will the fish go to heaven?

The father’s chest beat hollow and heavy. He had never lied like this to either of his sons. He had been blessed in that way. They had yet to ask him a question for which he did not have an answer.

Maybe.

The father tied the line to a branch and placed the fish in the pool.

I don’t think I want to catch any.


This was not expected and for once the father was not so grateful for all this curiosity.


It is alright. Just set there. I won’t take long.


The father caught many more fish. The father and the brother ate them up and the boy prayed.