Lloyd's Art Info

Title: Ugly Fish David was a good guy. He was known as “the happy guy” at work, but times were bad and even though he was a very nice person and he got along with all the other employees, he’d been laid off. So he came home that day very dejected. It was early in the morning and his wife had already gone to work. He was thinking about this on his way home. When he arrived, no one was there. Well, he thought, “I could hang around the house and worry about what she’ll do and how angry she’ll be when she comes home.” Recently he’d had some arguments with her and some of them were quite verbal. She would always say that he was a lazy guy and that he always wanted to go fishing when there was work to be done around the house. So, there were some problems with the roof, with the plumbing, etc., etc. And each time he didn't fix these problems, his wife grew angrier. But now he’d have plenty of time to make repairs. But how could he face his wife? She’d be really angry. The only thing he could say would be, “Now I have plenty of time to repair the house.” But she’d probably scoff at him and say, “You? Repair this house? You'd probably repair somebody else's first.” He needed to relax. So how would he relax before she came home and prepare himself for the onslaught? Well, let's try his favorite – fishing. There was a path from his house to a little bridge over the Des Plaines river, and he loved to fish from the other side of the bridge at Riverside. But, Riverside forbade fishing on their side. That's why he liked to go (because there were no other fishermen). However, Riverside never really enforced it. The Des Plaines river had come back and now instead of three types of fish in the river there were 35 different ones. He thought to himself, “I don't even know 35 different species of fish. I wonder what they all are.” One of the fish he liked to catch was pike. A pike was long and thin and a predator – the number one predator of a lot of fishes (it had lots of teeth). But when you catch it, it really put up a fight. David liked to catch that fish but he always threw them back because he never wanted to kill them. As the day wore on, he was thinking about all his problems and all his life and all about what he was going to say to his wife about losing his job. He hadn't realized how quickly the time had gone and it was starting to get dark. So he thought, “One more cast.” And he cast out his line. All of a sudden he got really excited. He’d caught a fish! And he reeled it in and fought with it and reeled it in some more until he said, “Boy, this is a big pike.” And when he pulled out the fish, it wasn’t a pike. It was a saligralla – one of those fishes that are really ugly and have poisonous spines on them and a big mouth with lots of teeth. It’s a type of fish that was left over from when the river had been polluted. He wanted to throw the fish back and save his line. But, it had gotten tangled in it. How could he get it off? He fought with the fish to free it plus get the hook out of its mouth. In the process, one of the spines cut his hand and it started to swell up. Then he realized that his face had been scratched by one of the spines, and that he didn’t feel very well. Finally, he got the fish off his line and threw it back. He was in a terrible fix. “Enough is enough!” he said to himself. So he put all his tackle back in his fishing box, crossed over the swinging bridge and headed for home. On the way, he thought about his wife. “She’ll really give me hell now that I’m so late getting home,” he thought. Even after a full day's work, he was always on time coming home and now he’d been playing – fishing. She’d never forgive him. As he approached their house, he noticed it was dark. She’d never keep the lights off. He opened the door and called her name. She wasn’t there. Now, he was really puzzled. He looked all over and she was nowhere to be found. Now what was he supposed to do? He turned on all the lights so he wouldn’t feel alone and turned on the TV as well. All of a sudden there came a knock on the door! He thought, “She wouldn't knock.” Then, somebody was beating on the door!. Who could it be? When he opened the door there was a man standing there in a uniform with a badge. David said, “Yes? What can I do for you?” It was the local sheriff and he had a very odd expression on his face. He was looking at the wounds on David’s hand and face. “Is your wife’s name Sylvia?” the sheriff asked. David said, “Yes.” The sheriff said “This identification was on the body of a woman we found by the bridge.” “Oh, you mean the one where I fish?” David said. “Yes,” the sheriff replied, “Near the Des Plaines River. The woman was strangled. But she must have put up a heck of a fight.” David was amazed. He couldn't believe it! The sheriff looked at him suspiciously and said, “You need to come with me to the station and answer some questions.” Ury