She climbed out of bed and turned on the shower to be sure the water would heat up before it was time to get in it. Running out to the kitchen to start the coffee, Megan found the dish towel on the living room floor with the fish completely exposed. “Stupid, stupid fish,” she muttered. Throwing the dish towel on the kitchen counter, she looked out the window to the stairs.

“Holy crap! There has to be two feet of snow out there!” Immediately Megan tried to push open the door in an attempt to dislodge some of the snow. She was able to reach her arm out and grab the shovel at least. Her shower would have to wait for now. Shoveling became today’s priority. She bundled up and cleared the steps before returning to her apartment.

Megan’s boots made the first tracks on the sidewalk in the snow. The post office was more of a postal counter in the back of the Last Minute Grocery. “Buy It Here In A Flash” was painted on a sign just above the door. In smaller print, an official sign below it announced, “U.S. Postal Service.”

There was not a lot to Megan’s job, so she had forced herself to master the art of looking busy: cleaning, polishing and organizing every paper, stamp, envelope, scale and pen. In the summers customers brought her fresh vegetables from their gardens. In the winters cookies frequently came her way.

The real advantage, however, of working in a small town post office was knowledge about everybody and everything. She was astute enough to recognize that it was best not to let people know what she knew. Unlike Ed, Megan figured that people were supposed to be competent enough to run their own lives without her input, so she seldom gave her opinion on anything besides the weather or the Minnesota Vikings, always safe subjects in this town at least. Adding Brett Favre as quarterback kept everyone talking for weeks.  Megan decided that asking leading questions about non-controversial subjects and nodding was part of the art and science of her job as long as she had one customer at a time.  Life was not to be hurried.

Devon Baxter, the twenty-two year old wild partying cashier of the the grocery store seemed to think it was her avocation to keep Megan from being bored.  Whenever customers were scarce, and stocking was caught up, Devon managed to find her way to the postal counter.

“So, Devon, what’s up?”  Megan queried while wondering if she really wanted to know.  It was too early in the day for another of Devon’s shocking revelatory exploits.

“Megan, you first.  How was the birthday party at your brother’s house?”

“Never happened.  Ian’s sick.”

“No presents?  No cake?  No party?”

“If you really want to know, Devon, my mom sent me a check, and we have plans to meet in Vegas.  My nephew, Ian, gave me a Great Fish, mounted, and I had pie at the diner with Rachel.”

“What kind of fish?”

“A striped bass.”

“Has it made it to the window seat yet?”

“Devon, I can’t do that.  Ian will know.  I already hung it up in the living room.”

“Well, if it needs a new home,” Devon winked, “you can always hang it in the store.  You know, share the love and all that.”

Megan thought this was a fitting comment since Devon was the most love-sharing individual she had ever encountered.  “Thanks, Devon.  I’ll let you know.”

Immediately the door’s buzzer sounded and Devon returned to her post at the cash register to wait on Tim Jeffries, a math teacher and baseball coach who seemed better suited to be a pastor, or so Megan thought, although she would not wish that profession on anyone she liked.  She didn’t really like Tim, however.  She tolerated him because he was dating Jenn.  Jenn thought he was the greatest thing that ever walked into the Faith Presbyterian Church.  Jenn was that way about men.

If they didn’t attend her church and think the way that she did about God, then she had nothing to do with them.  Tim did not deserve a woman like Jenn who was beautiful, fun and intelligent, but he was getting the opportunity because he attended the right church.  Tim was lucky, thought Megan, damn lucky that he was a Presbyterian.  He wasn’t that good looking or personable unless a person counted sincerity, twice as much as any other positive trait.  He was so sincere that he always irritated Megan; he did not even need to speak, just the sincere grin and glance were enough to make her find any excuse to avoid being with him.

As she thought about it, it wasn’t just his sincerity that bothered her so much, it was his sincere religiousness.  Whenever he brought up God, Megan winced.  “What a person does or does not believe about God is entirely private,” she had told him more than once.  Being around him made her about as comfortable as having someone over for dinner who searched your underwear drawer on the way to the bathroom.  It is not a crime, and yet it seem almost screamingly inappropriate.  Private and Personal and Theology were all synonyms to Megan.  Tim either could not or would not accept that fact.

Thankfully Tim was in a hurry, so he did not come back to talk to Megan.  Relieved, Megan went about her own business:  polishing, organizing and cleaning.

(Chapter Two will be continued.)

“Megan, you forgot your box.  It is your box, ain’t it?”  She looked up to see Ed holding Ian’s present.

“Damn,” she muttered under her breath.  “There are no secrets in this town.”  A little louder she responded, “Thanks, Ed,”  snatched the box and ran upstairs before he could ask any more questions that she didn’t want to answer.

Megan grabbed her mail, unlocked the door and almost tripped over her cat.  She netted a phone bill, a credit card solicitation and a birthday card from her mom with a large check inside.  “Let’s meet in Vegas,” was scribbled by her mom’s name.

“Oh boy,” Megan deadpanned to the cat.  “We can go to Vegas.  I hate Vegas.”

After feeding Kitty, Megan turned her attention to Ian’s gift.  “I am not expecting anything, really, from a garage sale.”  Megan thought to herself, “Then why do I feel like a little kid, all excited, opening this gift?”  Megan’s emotions seized the moment, wanting to believe something wonderful was in the box, but somewhere an unspoken premonition, like an uninvited party guest from her childhood,  held her back.

After the lid was off, Megan pulled back the tissue paper to see a mounted fish, a striped bass.  Underneath the fish was a small engraved brass plaque:

THE GREAT FISH

February 23, 1980

On the back was scribbled a man’s name and Chicago, Illinois.

“My birth date, ” she mumbled.  “How odd.  That must be why Ian though it was so important for me to have it.”

Megan was used to strange and useless gifts from extended family members.  It seemed that making unidentifiable home crafts was part of her collective gene pool.  Usually, she wrote the expected thank you note, left ‘the gift’ out for a week to ease her conscience for lying, and then she stuffed it in the window seat until she could drop it off at the Thrift Store, but Ian would expect to see this.  He lived nearby.  “Crap,” she said to no one in particular.  Even the cat was asleep.

She found her hammer and nails and hung the plaque over the coffee bar.  “It could be worse,” she thought, but then nothing worse really came to mind.  “Well, then again, maybe not.”  She hated the feeling of being constrained and forced into any kind of mold.  This refusal to be constrained sometimes caused her to buck the system at just the wrong time.

“You would cut off your nose to spite your face,” her father always told her when she was a child.  He would dutifully send her to her room to think about this profundity, but she had no idea what it meant.  She was in her twenties before she understood it, and by then it was too late to change.  She hated being confined, restrained and defined.  Long ago she had decided that her apartment was her turf:  a place where she wrote the definition of her own life.  The craft work of her wacky relatives would never grace the walls.  Not that Ian was a wacky relative.  Her brother and his family were the only normal people in the family.

However, something about having the fish on the wall violated a principle with her.  She could not define it, but she could feel it.  The thought of it caused her to feel rage with an intensity that startled and energized her.  She decided to work it off by shoveling off the stairs.  It would have to be done again in the morning, but she needed to get out of the room right now.

After bundling up, she slipped her keys in her pocket; this would not be a good night to lock herself out of the house.  The biting cold wind met her at the door, and snow splashed her face, making her eyes close involuntarily.  She reached for the shovel, working with a vengeance.  While she worked on the last few risers, she took a breather and looked in the window below to see Jenn had fallen asleep with her book again.  As Megan tapped on the window, Jenn’s head jerked up.  She reached her hand back to massage her neck, then she grinned at Megan and held up her book.

Megan ran around to the front door, “Come and see my new fish, my birthday fish.”

“What kind of fish is it?”

“A striped bass.”

“Where is it?  In the tub?”

“No.  On the wall.  I hung it on the wall.”

“This has to be a gift from your relatives.  I cannot believe that you, Megan Peters, hung a fish from your relatives on the wall.”

“Not just any relative.  My nephew, Ian, gave it to me.”

“I see.  That means it came from a garage sale, and you’re kind of stuck with it.  That sucks.”  Jenn offered a sympathetic look.

“My mom wants me to meet her in Vegas.”

“I can see you’re excited about that as well.”

“So far it has been a great typical birthday,” Megan said pathetically.

“You’ll love my gift, absolutely love it.”

“Let me guess.  It’s…It’s a Penguin Classic.”

“”How did you know that?” Jenn inquired, surprised.

“I am a prophetic soul, a voice crying in the North Dakota wilderness.”

“And I am out of locusts at the moment.  Would you like some honey and tea?”

“That would be great,” Megan answered.  “Just great.”

“Let’s play Scrabble,” Jenn proposed as she got out the well-worn box.  “I sense victory in the wind.”

“False prophets get stoned, and send straight to Hell forever.”

“Forever is a seven letter word, Megan, and at this moment it is worth 13 points, double word score, plus 50 for using all seven.  76 points.”

“Hell,” replied Megan.

“There is certainly room for it , but I wouldn’t advise it for you, Megan.  ‘Repent’ uses all seven letters, will yield you 50 extra points, and put you in a better place…on the board.”

“I don’t have the right letters, Jenn.  All I can come up with is ‘fish,’ for some reason, or ‘odd fish.’  I’m going to go with ‘fish’ for 10, 20 with double word score.  That is an amazing coincidence.  Is this the Twilight Zone Edition of Scrabble?”

“Nope.  Same old box.  You are falling behind, as usual, tonight.  Let’s finish another time.”

“See ya.”  Megan put on her coat and walked up the steps that were already re-dusted with an inch of snow.  After unlocking her door, she flipped on the lights.

It seemed like she saw a small movement just as she looked up, but she couldn’t identify anything.  “Just that stupid fish hanging on the wall.  That’s all.”  She felt angry all over again.

“I have to leave it up, but I don’t have to look at it,” Megan commented to herself as she picked up her favorite blue and white striped dish towel and tucked it behind the plaque, concealing it from view before she went to bed.

The end of Chapter One.

Streeter, North Dakota – February 23, 2010

As Megan walked into the Main Street Cafe, she hung her hunting jacket on the hook beside her booth and sat down.

“Looks like more snow is coming our way this afternoon,” Evelyn volunteered as she filled a water glass for Megan.  Megan laid her mittens and  purse beside her on the read vinyl seat  She checked her phone for messages.  “The sky is awfully dark for just one in the afternoon.  Whatever kind of storm it is, it’s moving in fast,” Evelyn added.

Before Evelyn finished pouring Megan’s coffee, the front door opened again.  The door caught in the ferocious wind, and an Arctic blast blew into the room.

“Shut the door, Ed.  Were you born in a barn?” boomed out Evelyn.

“That’s no way to talk to one of your regulars, Evelyn.  I can take my business somewhere else, so I don’t have to take this.”

“That’s right, Ed, but exactly where are you going to go?  Especially on a day like today.  I’ve got some Dutch apple pie that you want, you know.”

“Alright, Evelyn, serve me up a piece of that pie and stop cranking at me.  I’ve got no place to go, but this place is not exactly busting at the seams with customers.”

Ed chose this moment to claim his stool at the bar, but he spun around to throw a glance at Megan who was still trying to check her messages while seated in the booth.  “Only one phone service worth having in this town, Megan, and that’s Sprint.  Have you got Sprint?”

Megan was irritated that this obnoxious man, Ed, wanted to interfere in her personal business.  She felt confined in Streeter, not by the geographical nothingness of farms dissected by interstates and county roads, but by individuals like Ed who acted more like a relative than the random, lonely, small town  inhabitant who hung out at the local cafe.  Exasperated, Megan wanted an entirely different homeland; one without self-app0inted uncles, and one where she did not know the name of the cat on the corner.  She longed to be so anonymous that if she needed last rites in the next ten minutes that they would be administered by a priest who did not know her name.

Ignoring Ed was the most socially acceptable thing that Megan could do for now without swearing.  “I’ll have a piece of cherry pie to go with this coffee, if you don’t mind, Evelyn.”

Megan continued ignoring Ed by engrossing herself in the local daily paper, The Jamestown Star.  She was trying to decide if she was more interested in the free tickets for the Neil Diamond impersonator coming to Bismarck or in the annual high school choir pops concert and taco feed on Monday night when suddenly someone poked her paper.  Irritated, she looked up, but then she smiled.  “Rachel, what are you doing here?” she nearly shouted.

“Joel sent me out on a sanity run.  I just wanted to see you on your birthday, and I needed to get away from the kids for a while.  I was hoping to find you here.   How’s the pie?”

“All the pie is great.  Sit down and talk to me.  Evelyn, can we get another piece of cherry pie and a coffee?”  Turning to Rachel, “Is cherry alright?”

“Cherry is great.  This is all I want to do, just sit and eat pie with you.  It has been a day with the kids sick.  I am exhausted.  I never really knew what the word meant until I had kids.  As an added bonus, you are an adult.  I get to talk to an adult.  I love it.”

Megan whispered, “You are rescuing me from Ed.  I am so sick of Ed.  I hate Ed.  You have never in your life hated anyone as much as I hate Ed at this moment.  I want to rip Ed’s face off of his body.”  Aloud, she continued, “Thanks, Rachel.  I enjoy being an adult as well.  You know, picking out my own socks and everything.”

“Megan, I am really sorry about ruining your birthday.  I mean, after being up all night with Ian barfing his guts out from the flu, I did not get your cake made, and we can’t have you over.  I mean, we could have you over, but…”

“No thanks, Rachel.  In our family, birthdays were never date-specific anyway.  We’ll get together when Ian isn’t sick.”

“We will,” Rachel assured her.  “And we’ll have my chocolate cake.”

“I love your cake.”

“Everyone loves my cake.”  Rachel glanced at the paper Megan laid on the table.

SAWYER SUMMER ROCK FESTIVAL

THREE DAY THUNDER MOUNTAIN ROCK FEST

70′s    80′s    MODERN ERA

“Hey, maybe my band can do this.’

“Go for it, Rachel.  You’ve got months to get ready.”

“Rachel kept reading, silently rehearsing the details in her mind as Megan observed her, feeling sad, but stuffing it.  Eating pie in a small town cafe with her sister-in-law was a sanity break for Rachel, a break from the constant demands of a family life.

Megan wished for a family life, and she felt like she was breaking under the constant demands of sanity.

Rachel looked up, embarrassed at allowing herself to be distracted.  “You’ll have to wait for your other gifts, but Ian wanted you  to have this today.  Don’t expect much.  He got it at a garage sale in August.  Waiting all this time to give it to you was almost too much for him.  Oh man!  Look at the time.  I’ve got to go.  Hug me, birthday girl.”

And with that she was gone.

Megan looked at the boot sized box wrapped in blue jet plane birthday paper and tied with yellow ribbons.  Ed chose this moment to spin around her way again on his stool.  She ditched the package on the seat, out of his view.  She put on her coat, hat, scarf and mittens, and slung her purse over her shoulder before walking out the door of the cafe.  The hollow sound of the bells on the door and the intense chill of the wind from the approaching storm combined to make her feel hollow deep inside.  Hidden in the recesses of her mind there lodged a series of thoughts which she recognized as her own and yet not her own.  She could hear the voice as if it were her own, but the logic of the thoughts, if she had taken the time to analyze them were like the voice of a jungle predator, enticing her to wander into dangerous places, not physically dangerous places, like the Good Times Bar and Grill next door to the cafe, but to places of worthlessness, aimlessness and depression in her soul.

Actually the bar would have been a much safer place for Megan because she would have had more friends there than she possessed in her own mind.  Even a random stranger would have stood up for her if an unruly patron had tried to pummel her with the same speed and intensity of her own thoughts.  At times, it felt like getting run over by a train.  The strange part was that she was always the one who was paralyzed, frozen to the tracks and yet, she seemed to be driving the self-destructive train as well.  It always happened so quickly that she never noticed what brought on the inescapable depression that would stay for days, weeks or months.

Actually, if she were honest with herself, she would acknowledge that she was always at least a little depressed, “Melancholy,” her mom used to say about her.  Grandma had called her,  “A sober child.”  Her father’s assessment, which she told herself no longer mattered because he was dead, was that she was “Born to be blue.”

Secretly, she wished she had been “Born to be wild,” or “Born to be a circus performer,” or just about anything else.  It was her own fault really because she fell into the trap of believing her father’s opinion or her life, and he was a miserable man who had lived to make others miserable.  “Well,” thought Megan, “at least he succeeded at something.  He made me miserable.”

(This is not the end of the chapter, but I am out of time for now.  I will have to finish it later.”

You are reading material copyrighted by the author which is being permitted to be posted on this site for your enjoyment.  Please do not plagiarize it, not that you would be likely to profit from any of it.

- Mindi Wilhelm, author of Megan And The Great Fish, and one of the slowest marathon runners in Boise, Idaho.