Big Fish by Daniel Wallace Read Free Book Online Page B

hurting the eye as well.
    â€œGive it over!” the leader said. “You have no right! That eye belongs to us.”
    â€œDoes it?”
    It was then the barn door creaked feebly open, and all turned to watch as the old lady, her eye newly restored, came toward them. The six stared, uncomprehending.
    â€œWhat—” one said, turning to the others. “Who—”
    â€œThe eye,” my father said. “I told you it was here.”
    And as the old lady drew near they could see that it was here indeed, not in the box but back in the old lady’s head. And though they would have run they couldn’t. And though they would have turned away they couldn’t, and as she looked at each of them, each of them in turn stared deeply into the old lady’s eye, and it was said that within the eye each of them could see their future. And one screamed at what he saw there, and one cried, but one merely looked deeply into the eye uncomprehending, then looked up at my father and stared, as if he knew him now in a different way.
    Finally she was done, and all of them ran out the barn door and into the bright morning.
    Thus Edward’s short stay in Auburn began, and he was rarely ever bothered by anybody, for he was thought to be under the protection of the old lady and her all-seeing eye. He began attending classes and became an A student. He had a good memory. He remembered everything he read, everything he saw. And he remembered the face of the leader in the barn that day, just as the leader would remember Edward’s.
    It was the face of the man my mother almost married.

My Father’s Death: Take 2
    I t happens like this. Old Dr. Bennett, our family doctor, comes out of the guest room and gently shuts the door behind him. Older than old, he looks like the core of an apple left out in the sun. He was there when I was born, and he was old even then. My mother and I are sitting in the living room waiting for his word. Removing the stethoscope from his ears, he looks hopelessly at us.
    He says, “There’s nothing I can do. I’m sorry. If you have any peace to make with Edward, anything to say at all, now might be . . . ” and he trails off into a murmuring silence.
    This is something we’d been expecting, this final observation. My mother and I sigh. There’s both sadness and relief in the way the tension leaves our bodies, and we look at each other, sharing that look, that once-in-a-lifetime look. I’m a little surprised that the day has finally come, for even though Dr. Bennett had given him a year to live about a year ago, he has been dying so long that in a way I just expect him to keep on dying forever.
    â€œMaybe I should go in first,” she says. She looks battered, war-weary, her smile lifeless and somehow serene. “Unless you want to.”
    â€œNo,” I say. “You go and then—”
    â€œIf anything—”
    â€œFine,” I say. “Just let me know.”
    She takes a breath, stands, walks like a somnambulist into his room, leaving the door open behind her. Dr. Bennett, slightly hunched as though his bones have melted in his old age, stands at vacant attention in the middle of the living room, in dark amazement at the powers of life and death. After a few minutes my mother returns, wipes a tear from her cheek, and gives Dr. Bennett a hug. He has known her longer than I have, I think. She is old, too, but next to him she seems forever young. She seems a young woman about to become a widow.
    â€œWilliam,” she says.
    And so I go in. The room is dim, the grayness of an afternoon nap, though beyond the curtains you can see the outside light bursting to come in. This is the guest room. This is where some of my friends stayed when they used to spend the night, before high school was over and all that, and now it’s the room where my father is dying, nearly dead. When I come in he smiles. Dying, he has that look dying