Two-Thousand-Pound Goldfish (11 page)

“W
ELL, I GUESS SHE’S
gone,” the chief of police would say as he watched the receding water. “Bubbles is on her own now.”

“It’s a big ocean, Chief. I reckon there’s room for all God’s creatures.”

“We’ll never be troubled by a two-thousand-pound goldfish again.”

“That’s for sure.”

And then the reporter would turn back to the boy. “Son, tell the folks how it feels to save the life of your very own two-thousand-pound goldfish.”

“It feels great! And I’d like to thank all the thousands of people who helped. It was their flushing that really saved Bubbles.”

“That’s right. Bubbles owes her life to the fine men and women of this city. And, I might add, to the fine plumbing.

“Well, folks, that’s all for now. This is Rick Watson for WMTV, saying, so long, folks, and thanks for flushing.”

The camera would travel back into the sewer to get a final shot of the excited crowd, framed in the archway of the entrance. The water would be rising again in the sewer, and, outside, the sounds of the shouts and glad cries would grow fainter as the music swelled—an entire orchestra of strings. And then, at that moment, rolling up onto the screen in huge, orange, oriental-looking letters, would come—

THE END

Warren sighed with total satisfaction. He glanced at his sister. What a wonderful movie to end on, he thought. He wished now he had told it to Weezie. He had not known it was going to be such a masterpiece.

He stumbled slightly and reached out for Weezie’s arm to keep from falling.

“You all right?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said quickly.

The reason he had stumbled was because in the depth of the sewer—hidden from the reporter and the chief of police, and the people—clinging to the long green slime of the sewer wall, shining, glistening, was one huge, perfect, golden egg.

Warren himself had only seen it for a second. The camera had flashed by so quickly, and then, of course, the water was rising, bubbling over it.

Still, he knew what he had seen. Before Bubbles had been flushed out to sea, she had laid an egg. And the egg was as big as a Volkswagen, so the goldfish inside was not going to be one of your twenty-nine-cent-Woolworth’s varieties.

He glanced guiltily at his sister. He didn’t want her to suspect he had already started
Goldfish II
! And right after swearing off daydreams.

He shook his head to clear it of unwanted sights and sounds. It was hard to shake off a way of life, though. He realized that. It was going to be hard to get that single shimmering, glistening egg out of his mind.

At least he now thought he saw the big pitfall of daydreams. You dreamed, say, that your mom would come home for your grandmother’s funeral. And then came the hard, cold reality—the real funeral—and your mom didn’t come, and you ended up without a grandmother that you were only beginning to realize you missed.

He made a solemn vow that if he did break down and create a new movie, he was not going to waste the lives of people he knew in them. I will not waste family and friends, he said to himself—they are hard to come by.

He turned back to Weezie. “You know, I don’t feel as bad as I did before. I’m glad I got to at least hear Mom’s voice.”

“Sure, well, it’s always better to have unhappy communication, I guess, than no communication at all.”

“Only, Weezie, next time, you’ve got to let me talk. You wouldn’t have even let me say, ‘Hello,’ if I hadn’t forced you to.”

“I don’t know what came over me. It was just like I was—”

“Crazy,” he supplied.

“I guess. But all I have of Mom is three minutes a month. And that’s when I’m lucky, when she calls. Three lousy minutes, and it is the hardest thing in the world to share it.”

“I know.”

“We’re just going to have to get used to the fact that you and I are probably going to have the worst fights ever staged in that phone booth.”

He watched her for a moment, and then he said, “Weezie?”

“What?”

“Do you ever daydream?”

“Sure.”

“What about?”

“Well, I do not daydream about two-thousand-pound goldfish.” She grinned down at him.

“I really want to know.”

“Well, when I was your age I used to dream about becoming a lawyer, and Mom would be on trial for something, and I would get her off.”

“What do you dream about now?”

“Just that I will become a lawyer.”

“Weezie, you’re going to be a lawyer?”

“Yes.”

“You never told me that.”

“I never told you because you wouldn’t appreciate it.”

“No, no, I do.” He could see her in his mind at court, bigger than the judge, than the opposing lawyers, her head sticking up like a mountain poking up through the clouds. It was such a vivid picture that he stopped walking and stared at her. “Weezie, you’re going to be a lawyer!”

“I know. Now, will you come on? I promised Aunt Pepper I’d help her paint.”

“I’ll help too.” He kept staring at her. He had never thought of Weezie as a lawyer before, but now he saw that it was perfect.

“I get the roller because I can reach higher than you and Aunt Pepper,” she said.

“A lawyer!” he said as he followed her.

“Yes, a lawyer.”

“I get it. That’s why you study all the time.”

“That’s why.”

“Hey, maybe you
will
defend Mom some day. Maybe something will happen. She’ll—”

“That,” she said, pointing at him, “is my daydream. You make up your own.”

“I did, but I’m finished now.”

He paused on the curb while Weezie stepped into the street, watching for traffic. To fill the emptiness of not having a daydream, he allowed the actor to repeat “We’ll never be troubled by a two-thousand-pound goldfish again.”

He heard the other actor answer, “That’s for sure.”

Somehow it didn’t seem quite as satisfying as Weezie’s dream. He almost felt like an amateur. He watched his sister with sudden envy.

Anyway, nothing’s for sure, he said to himself, remembering that fleeting glimpse of the golden egg. He glanced down at the drain at his feet. He smiled slightly. Then, shaking his head, he followed his sister across the street. “Wait for me,” he called.

Betsy Byars (b. 1928) is an award-winning author of more than sixty books for children and young adults, including
The Summer of the Swans
(1970), which earned the prestigious Newbery Medal. Byars also received the National Book Award for
The Night Swimmers
(1980) and an Edgar Award for
Wanted . . . Mud Blossom
(1991), among many other accolades. Her books have been translated into nineteen languages and she has fans all over the world.

Byars was born Betsy Cromer in Charlotte, North Carolina. Her father, George, was a manager at a cotton mill and her mother, Nan, was a homemaker. As a child, Betsy showed no strong interest in writing but had a deep love of animals and sense of adventure. She and her friends ran a backyard zoo that starred “trained cicadas,” box turtles, leeches, and other animals they found in nearby woods. She also claims to have ridden the world’s first skateboard, after neighborhood kids took the wheels off a roller skate and nailed them to a plank of wood.

After high school, Byars began studying mathematics at Furman University, but she soon switched to English and transferred to Queens College in Charlotte, where she began writing. She also met Edward Ford Byars, an engineering graduate student from Clemson University, whom she would marry after she graduated in 1950.

Between 1951 and 1956 Byars had three daughters—Laurie, Betsy, and Nan. While raising her family, Byars began submitting stories to magazines, including the
Saturday Evening Post
and
Look
. Her success in publishing warm, funny stories in national magazines led her to consider writing a book. Her son, Guy, was born in 1959, the same year she finished her first manuscript. After several rejections,
Clementine
(1962), a children’s story about a dragon made out of a sock, was published.

Following
Clementine
, Byars released a string of popular children’s and young adult titles including
The Summer of the Swans
, which earned her the Newbery Medal. She continued to build on her early success through the following decades with award-winning titles such as
The Eighteenth Emergency
(1973),
The Night Swimmers
, the popular Bingo Brown series, and the Blossom Family series. Many of Byars’s stories describe children and young adults with quirky families who are trying to find their own way in the world. Others address problems young people have with school, bullies, romance, or the loss of close family members. Byars has also collaborated with daughters Betsy and Laurie on children’s titles such as
My Dog, My Hero
(2000).

Aside from writing, Byars continues to live adventurously. Her husband, Ed, has been a pilot since his student days, and Byars obtained her own pilot’s license in 1983. The couple lives on an airstrip in Seneca, South Carolina. Their home is built over a hangar and the two pilots can taxi out and take off almost from their front yard.

Byars (bottom left) at age five, with her mother and her older sister, Nancy.

A teenage Byars (left) and her sister, Nancy, on the dock of their father’s boat, which he named
NanaBet
for Betsy and Nancy.

Byars at age twenty, hanging out with friends at Queens College in 1948.

Byars and her new husband, Ed, coming up the aisle on their wedding day in June 1950.