A guy went by playing a theremin in his motorboat while I was fishing on the riverbank, so I knew things were going to get strange. And they did. I caught a big perch, using canned corn for bait, and was about to smash it against a rock, since perch are too bony to fillet, when it began to plead for its life.
"Please don't kill me!" it said to me, clear as a bell.
"Why not?" I asked calmly.
"Oh, I can grant you three wishes if you spare my life!" it replied.
"No thanks. That three wishes gag never turns out good in stories, so it's a no sale" I replied as I lifted it up.
"Wait! Wait!" it screamed at me, its bulging eyes bulging even more. "I will get you anything you want. Anything! Just name it! I'm a powerful river perch, and I've got lots of connections."
"Oh yeah?" I said, laying it down on the ground. "Well, there's not much I really want or need. I have achieved a modest but peaceful equilibrium in my life already. You, pal, are just a disturbance in the happy flow of my existence." I like to wax philosophical at times.
"Surely there is something you desire, something you have dreamed about?" it said anxiously to me, rolling its dead-looking eyes. Little did it know I had already decided to throw it back in the water to let someone else have the pleasure of catching it and arguing with it. Beating a screaming fish against a rock is not my idea of a good time.
"Well . . . " I considered. "My brother Billy used to have a big green tackle box with accordion shelves. I loved going through that thing, looking at all the lures and jigs and stuff. How about you get me a big ol' tackle box with lots of surprises in it -- and we'll call it square."
"Done!" cried the perch triumphantly, and up from the water by my feet rose a large Paris green tackle box. I fished it out, hefted it carefully, and tossed the talking perch back into the river.
Then I took my new tackle box back home and placed it on the work table in the basement. I gingerly opened it up and began pulling out the accordion trays; they were hinged together, so when you pulled one out you pulled out the entire side. Boy, was it loaded!
There were latex worms in rainbow colors and a big dark green latex frog speckled all over in gray with a wicked hook sticking out of its belly. I could just imagine some old northern pike greedily sucking it in. I found an old hand-carved and hand-painted wooden minnow, segmented into three parts, with hooks dangling from its bottom like rows of deadly curved icicles on the eaves of a roof. An orange plastic box held dozens of lead weights -- some as small as b-b shot and others shaped like pyramids and big enough almost to use as a paperweight. A jar of orange salmon eggs. Jigs gussied up with feathers and streamers and tin foil and bright colored beads. There was a slim silver whistle, engraved with the words "Sid's Canadian Fish Call." I blew on it; it made a sound like bubbles in an aquarium.
And there was a Detroit phone book from 1942. The pages were brown and very brittle. It made for fascinating reading. I never saw so many strange names -- Wojcick, Kowalcyck, Svoboda, Nagy, Costaplente, Himmelfahrt. And there were ads for things like decoilers, crank discs, and wholesale rubber gaskets. I showed it to an old neighbor, who offered me ten dollars for it -- he grew up in Detroit.
The next day, after work, I went down into my basement and opened up my wonderful tackle box again. This time I gloated over the spoon lures and casting lures. They were in such grand metallic hues that I felt like a king in his counting house, counting all his money.
And there was a pimento loaf sandwich, on rye, wrapped in wax paper. I didn't hesitate a moment -- I ate it up to the last crumb with relish. Somehow, the wax paper gave it more flavor and panache than if it had been stuck in a mundane baggie.
My tackle box continued to amaze and please me for many more days. But one evening, with storm clouds rolling in and a sullen continuous thunder growling in the distance, I opened my tackle box to discover nothing but rust and cobwebs. As I was about to close it in dismay the perch I had saved at the river rose up out of the tackle box and hovered before me, with a fiendish look in its gelid eye.
"Hah!" it chortled at me. "You fool -- you have given me enough time to grow in my black magic arts -- and now I will summon my fish demons from their parallel realm to wreak havoc on your puny world! Soon I, and I alone, will rule this planet, and all will bow before me to lick my scales!"
I hate Indian givers -- especially when they smell like fish. So I grabbed the perch and beat its fishy brains out on my work table. I swept up the mess, buried it in the garden by the roses, and took the tackle box back to the river and threw it back in.
The guy in the motorboat playing the theremin turned into shore near me to ask how the fishing was.
"Nothing but talking perch" I told him.
"This river has gone to the dogs ever since they put in that new coffer dam" he said in disgust, then motored away downstream.
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