Billy Ray Johnson strapped on his flippers and adjusted his snorkel and mask. Evening was getting on. So far he had only filled two buckets with golf balls, but the water trap on the 16th hole was the deepest and he hoped to make up for his bad luck on the rest of the course here. If he could fill three more buckets, he’d still make enough money to take Sue Ellen out for a burger.

Sue Ellen sat on the green next to Billy’s cooler. She had her knees drawn up under her to watch him dive and every minute or so she would sip a little beer from a cold bottle held between her knees. She wondered how long Billy Ray would take before calling it a night. The mosquitoes were out and biting and she knew he wouldn’t make enough to get them dinner.

There was a time she had found Billy Ray cute and mysterious in his snorkel and flippers, diving under the water traps like some Navy Seal in the movies. Now she’d grown bored of it. She just wanted to go home. She knew she would just end up making them sandwiches, anyway.

Billy Ray and Sue Ellen had married against their parent’s wishes the year before. She was now eighteen and Billy Ray was nineteen. Billy had gotten her pregnant. He was between job—again—and Sue Ellen made just enough at the diner to pay their portion of the subsidized rent and to buy a few groceries now and then. Occasionally Billy Ray would get to feeling industrious and come down to the golf course to dive for balls. He got two dollars a bucket. On a good day he might make enough to take Sue Ellen out not only for dinner but to a movie show, too. Good days didn’t come along often, though.

Sue Ellen had miscarried their baby four months into it. Some of the baby had remained inside her, so the doctor scheduled a D and C. The doctor had told her not to worry because a miscarriage was just nature’s way of getting rid of deformities. The baby, he said, was not supposed to live. After it was done, Sue Ellen felt angry and wished she could have at least seen her baby. She asked a nurse what they had done with it and was told it had been incinerated along with other extraneous tissues and organs that collected in the hospital. Sue Ellen cried then. She didn’t quite understand everything the nurse had said, but she gathered her baby had been thrown out and burned with other people’s extra parts. She thought the whole process cruel.

“Why can’t they make little white coffins for them?” she asked Billy Ray once. They were in bed and she was still recovering from the procedure. She had a lot of cramping and occasionally would find purple blotches in her blood. She wondered if it was part of her baby the doctor had missed.

“I don’t know,” Billy Ray said. He was watching television. There was a NASCAR race on and Billy Ray watched the cars go round and round the track.

“They’re babies,” she insisted. “They could at least make little white coffins for them and bury them decent. I think it’s horrible our child was tossed in some furnace along with other people’s insides.”

“It’s not like it was really a baby,” Billy Ray said. The cars in the race hadn’t changed positions for over an hour.

“It was, too, a real baby,” she insisted, irritably. “It was our baby. They threw it in a furnace.”

“Well, it was dead. It didn’t feel anything,” he said. “It wasn’t even a real baby, anyway.”

The next month Sue Ellen got the job at Roy’s diner. Billy Ray had gone through three jobs by then.

“You going to that job interview tomorrow like you promised?” Sue Ellen called out to Billy Ray. He nodded and waved and then dove into the water trap on the 16th hole with an old gallon milk jug. Billy Ray had cut the top off, creating a makeshift scoop.

A minute later he came up with a pile of balls and tossed them onto the green. Billy Ray smiled around his snorkel and dove in again. She stood and began gathering up the balls, dropping them into a metal bucket one by one. She liked to hear the thwunk thwunk the balls made when they landed in the pail. She was dropping the last one in when he shot up again and tossed something dark and strange onto the green.

At first Sue Ellen thought he’d brought up a tree branch or something. It lay there, gray-black, glistening and wet. Then she saw it move. It whipped and snapped and jerked on the bank and Billy Ray called out, “Catfish! I caught us dinner!”

She understood what bucked so violently on the grass, now. She saw its mouth opening and closing, and she noticed the little whiskers that made it look like a Chinese man she had seen on television once.

“We’ll take it home and fry it up,” Billy Ray called out.

Immediately Sue Ellen rushed forward. “No, Billy Ray,” she cried. “We’re not going to eat it. I’m throwing it back.”

“But look at the size of that thing,” he complained. “It’s at least two feet.”

Sue Ellen squatted over the fish and watched it squirm. An idea struck her and she ran to the cooler. She dumped out the last few beers and ran back to the bank where Billy Ray stood knee deep in water.

“Hurry,” she said. “Fill the cooler up with water.” She handed it to him, and he did what she wanted. He came out of the water and set the cooler on the bank near her. Sue Ellen took the writhing catfish in both hands and struggled to hold on.

“What are you doing?” Billy Ray asked. She lifted it in her arms like it was a child and then let it slip into the cooler. The catfish thrashed violently. Its mouth worked open and closed until finally the gills began to move more evenly.

“I’m taking it home,” she announced. “I want to keep it. We’ll put it in the tank at home.” The tank had been a wedding present and could hold two hundred gallons of water. They had never bought any fish so it sat empty, except for the little blue and green rocks at the bottom and some old tools and spider webs that had collected there.

“You’re crazy,” Billy Ray said. “That’s a wild fish. He won’t last a day in a tank.”

“I’ll take care of it,” she insisted.

“What the hell are you going to feed it?”

“I don’t know. You and Donny use chicken livers to fish with. We’ll just get some chicken livers on the way home.”

When Billy Ray came out of the clubhouse with his six dollars for the golf balls, Sue Ellen was already sitting in the truck, the beer cooler on the floor between her feet. She was stroking the catfish with a finger and talking to it.

“It’s ok, Mr. Fish,” she was saying. “We’re going to take you home and give you a nice place to live. Billy’s going to get you some yummy chicken livers, too.”

“God,” Billy Ray muttered, starting up the truck, “I wonder about you sometimes.”

Billy Ray piled all the junk from the fish tank onto the kitchen table when they got home. Sue Ellen ran the outside water hose through a window.

They got the tank filled after a while, and Billy connected the unused water pumps and aerators. When he got them going, he placed her catfish in the tank. The fish appeared lethargic and sank quickly. It lay motionless at the bottom, except for the gasping mouth and moving gills.

Sue Ellen opened the chicken livers. She dropped in a fat, purple one, and the catfish jerked suddenly and seemed to inhale the liver before resuming it’s forced breathing.

“He ate it!” Sue Ellen cried. “He likes them. I told you he’d be all right.”

“I’m going to make some raman soup,” Billy Ray said with little enthusiasm. From the kitchen he could hear her talking to the fish again.

Sue Ellen was tapping the tank with her finger and cooing to it. “Nice fish. Ooo, you’re a good fish.” The fish seemed to respond by moving closer to the glass. It appeared to gaze at Sue Ellen with its black eye. She dropped another liver in the water. The catfish inhaled this one, too. It became more animated and churned its silver-gray tail back and forth in the water.

“It wants to play,” Sue Ellen called out.

“Right,” Billy Ray hollered from the kitchen. “You’re off your rocker.”

“What should we call him?” she asked.

“Call him?”

“A name. He has to have a name.”

“You’re going to name a fish? Now I know you’re off your rocker.”

“How about Mufasa? You know from the Lion King. He’s the king of the tank, now.”

Billy Ray came back from the kitchen after a while. He had finished making his soup and was eating from the pan. When he heard her saying, “Oooo, Mufasa. You’re the king, aren’t you? You’re the king,” he rolled his eyes and said: “Mufasa is a girl.”

“A girl?” she gasped. “How do you know?” Sue Ellen’s eyes were full of new excitement now. The idea her catfish might be a girl had never crossed her mind.

“She’s pregnant,” he said. “Look at her belly. See how it’s bulging?”

She looked at the fish more closely and saw the distended belly. A smile crept over her face. “Well, I’ll be. You are a girl. And you’re going to have babies to boot,” she exclaimed. “You’ll have to eat plenty of chicken livers, won’t you? I guess we can’t call you Mufasa. Let’s see. How about Molly? We’ll just call you Molly.”

“I’m going to bed,” Billy Ray announced. He waited for his wife to follow, but she stayed where she was, talking to the catfish through the glass. Billy shook his head and went to bed without her.

“So you’re going to be a momma?” she said after he was gone.

She dropped in another liver. This one drifted to the rocks, untouched.

Sue Ellen stayed up another hour watching the lithe movements the creature made in the tank. It churned and rolled in the water like a mysterious fetus in a glass womb. She watched through the glass with wonder and continued talking to it. After a while she kissed her fingers, pressed them to the glass and said, “goodnight, Molly. Sleep tight.”

In bed, she rolled over to rest her cheek on Billy Ray’s chest. He was watching monster trucks on television.

“Thank you, Billy Ray, for letting me bring Molly home tonight,” she said.

“Sure,” he answered.

“I think it’s cool she’s a she and she’s going to have babies.”

“Yep.”

“I’m going to help her along, bring her babies here healthy, you know,” she said.

“Ok,” he answered.

“You’re still going to that job interview tomorrow morning, aren’t you?” she asked after a minute.

“Yeah,” Billy Ray said. A monster truck had turned over on its side, and the driver was scrambling up out of the window.

“If you get this job, we’ll be a lot better off, you know. I’m not trying to pressure you or anything. It’s just if you got this job we could breath a little easier; maybe we could even try to have another baby sometime.”

“Sure,” he said again.

“That would be so wonderful, Billy Ray. I’m working two shifts tomorrow to cover for Julie, so I won’t be home till late. You’ll have to tell me all about the interview when I get home, though. O.K.? I’m really rooting for you!”

“Sure,” Billy Ray said. “O.K.”

Billy Ray woke the next morning and found Sue Ellen gone. He got up and put on his best button-down shirt, jeans and tennis shoes. In the kitchen he drank the coffee she had left for him. He had every intention of going to the job interview, but the phone rang just when he was going out the door. It was Donny Parks. Donny Parks had dropped out of school, too, and didn’t have a lot to do most days.

“Hey, wanna go fishin’?” Donny asked.

“I don’t know,” Billy Ray said. “I’m supposed to be at a job interview this morning.”

“Ah, come on,” Donny wheedled. “Job’s are a dime a dozen. You’ll get a job sometime, but the trout are jumping like crazy this morning. Doug Baker just came down from the lake and told me he caught his limit in two hours.”

Billy Ray hung up the phone and scratched his head. He thought about what he should do for a few seconds and then ran to get his fishing tackle and pole from the utility closet. He piled all this in his truck bed and then went to pick up Donny. They drove to the lake, and soon Billy Ray forgot all about the job interview.

It was nearly midnight when he got back. The fishing had been awful, but a few of Donny’s friends had brought up a keg and some pot around sunset.

When Billy Ray got home, all the lights in the house were off. He remembered Sue Ellen was working a double shift at the diner and probably would be closing, too. He turned on the front room lights and set his fishing gear by the couch. He hadn’t eaten all day, and the marijuana he’d smoked an hour ago had given him a ravenous appetite. He was tired and wanted to eat something and go to bed.

On his way into the kitchen Billy Ray noticed something floating in the fish tank. He looked closer and saw it was Molly. Sue Ellen’s catfish was belly up in the tank, and Billy Ray stared at it with wonder. He poked it with his finger a couple of times, forcing it down into the water, but it just floated back to the top each time.

Billy Ray grasped the fish around the belly and felt that it was still pliable. He gathered that it hadn’t died too long ago and might still be good. He checked the dark eye and saw that it was clear.

Hooking his index finger into one gill, Billy Ray lifted the fish and carried it, dripping, to the kitchen sink. He figured if he hurried, he could clean it and eat it before Sue Ellen got home. Billy Ray reasoned he could just tell her it had died and he’d thrown it out. If she pressed him and wanted to find it, he’d then tell her some cats must have dragged it off.

Billy Ray ran cold water over the catfish. He set out a skillet and turned on the stove. He got a little oil in the skillet and then went to get his fishing knife from his tackle box. In the kitchen, the oil began to heat and sizzle in the pan.

He held the fish with a finger hooked through a gill again; then he slipped the knife into the belly just above the anus. He jerked the knife up to the throat and then ran his thumb through the opened midsection to clear out some of the insides. The roe spilled from the open cavity and into the sink.

Sue Ellen came into the kitchen then. He hadn’t heard her come through the front door. She set her purse down on the counter and noticed him at the sink, bloody hands working the fish. She didn’t know what Billy Ray was doing at first, and then she went to look in the fish tank. Molly was gone.

She rushed back to the kitchen. Billy Ray was stuffing something bloody and wet into a garbage bag.

“What are you doing?” Sue Ellen demanded.

Billy Ray was flustered. He couldn’t think straight. He was still high, and everything was happening in slow motion.

“Is that my catfish you’ve cut up, Billy Ray?”

“It died,” Billy Ray blurted. “It was dead when I got home. I didn’t want it to go to waste.”

“You gutted Molly?” she screamed now. “You gutted my catfish?”

“It was already dead, Sue Ellen,” he pleaded.

She rushed him and turned over the bag. The catfish tumbled into the sink, its entrails hanging from the slit underbelly. She saw where the eggs had leaked into the body cavity and where Billy Ray’s knife had punctured the uterus. The eggs were mixed with blood in the sink. Sue Ellen felt she might be sick, then.

“You’re a bastard!” she cried on her way to the bathroom.

She returned a few minutes later carrying an empty white shoebox. Billy Ray was no longer in the kitchen. He’d left the half-cleaned fish in the sink and the skillet of oil burning on the stove.

Sue Ellen turned off the stove. With trembling hands she scooped up the catfish. She laid its parts in the shoebox. Gathering up as much of the bloody insides as she could, she attempted to force them back into the fish. She closed the lid and carried the white bundle to their little yard, where she found a shovel, even in the dark, and knelt down and began digging. She sat, hunched over the tiny grave for a while, and cried softly. After the burial she went back into the apartment and found Billy Ray in bed, watching television. Sue Ellen went into the bathroom without saying anything and washed the blood from her hands. She watched as little purple clots came from under her fingernails and swirled down the drain. She dried her hands and put on her nightgown and got into bed next to him. He was watching a fishing program.

After a minute she said with as much irony as she could muster: “Molly was pregnant, you jerk.”

He didn’t say anything, so she added: “You killed her babies.”

“It was already dead when I got home,” he insisted. “The eggs wouldn’t have survived, anyway.”

She rolled over to face the opposite wall. She pulled the covers over her shoulder and asked: “Did you go for that interview today?”

Billy Ray hesitated, then said: “Nah, I hung out with Donny today. I didn’t really want that job, anyway. It would suck. I’ll find something better. I’ll look tomorrow.”

Sue Ellen tugged the covers more closely around her and suddenly realized she didn’t feel so bad about her miscarriage anymore. She thought the doctor was probably right about it being nature’s way. She made a mental note to call him in the morning. It might not be a bad idea to get on some birth control, she thought, at least until she could figure out what else to do.

§ § §

Neal graduated college with a Bachelor’s of Science in English. He received first place in a Utah State University short story contest and was published in Catalyst, the U.S.U. literary magazine. Since then, he has been working as an educational and vocational counselor and has raised a family. Only recently has he found time to pursue writing and submitting again. You can reach Neal at sndoren@msn.com

This piece was first published in INK POT #3- 2004, a literary journal.