I have a goldfish that swims in right hand circles in a bowl that sits on a shelf in my room. There’s something wrong with its left eye. I think it’s probably blind in that eye. This goldfish is orange and white, with random black spots of different shapes and sizes on its body, more so on its right side than on its left. Its fins look too soft. Limp. They look tired and too weak to propel the rest of itself in these circles that it keeps swimming in. And that eye, that one eye. Always swollen and colored a cloudy bluish-white rather than black. Oh, and I can’t forget to tell you that my goldfish is full of blood and guts.
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A few years back, I saw a pair of young black Labrador retrievers running loose in the park near my house. The two dogs were playing. They were chasing one another. Play biting at each other as they rolled and wrestled in the grass. I didn’t watch them for long and I quickly forgot about them.
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This story is not about my goldfish nor even about these dogs. This is a story about my Golden Inca snail. My one friend has a dog. Another friend has a hamster. I have a goldfish and a snail. My friend’s dog, those black labs at the park and my other friend’s hamster and my goldfish too, are all the same. This story is about my snail.
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When you hear a car’s tires screeching on pavement it could mean anything. A hot rodder doing a burnout. Someone is taking a turn too fast. Maybe someone just realized that the light is red and their tires screech as the car just barely stops before the intersection. Could even be that a car did run the light and another driver has slammed on their brakes, just lucky enough to avoid a collision. Could also be that a tow truck has just hit a young black lab.
One dog sat guarding the other. The two dogs could have been brother and sister. Maybe the sister was guarding her brother. She wouldn’t let anyone near him, not that anyone had to get anywhere near him. You could see from far enough away that he was dead. The dog’s guts in the road told you that.
My father used to take me fishing with my uncle and at the end of the day I would watch them clean the trout that we had caught. The piles of guts they would drop at their feet looked just like what was there in the road, what had come from this dog.
My goldfish, that dead dog and his sister, my friend’s dog and as much as I can assume, even my other friend’s hamster are all the same. They are all full of blood and guts.
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This snail wasn’t my pet in the same sense that my friend’s dog is his pet. His dog has chew toys that are stained with the smell of bad dog breath. He has to take his dog for walks. On those walks he has to carry a plastic grocery bag in his back pocket so he can use the bag to pick up his dogs shit from his neighbors’ yards. He has to feed his dog.
My other friend keeps his hamster in a wire cage on his dresser. In the cage is a wheel that the hamster runs on. He too has to feed his pet and clean up after it or the mulch that is spread across the plastic tray floor will start to smell awful. Each night both of my friends say, “goodnight” to their pets. One wakes up to a dog sleeping at the foot of his bed, the other to his hamster in the cage, just three feet from his bed. Either way, every morning, from both of them it’s always, “good morning”, to their pets.
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My Golden Inca snail, my friend more than my pet, lived in my mothers garden. Not in my room. He had no toys. No wheel. I didn’t have to feed him or clean up after him. He didn’t sleep on my bed and there was no cage on my dresser. I would have to go outside to the garden to find my friend. Some days I couldn’t find him anywhere. Not as hard as I looked. On those days I would go back inside and worry. I would worry when I saw birds picking around in the garden. It would rain and from the window I would watch the garden turn to mud and then slowly flood. And I would worry.
I once asked my mother if I could keep my snail in my room. I thought in the fish bowl. I could get rid of that sick fish. I could build a miniature garden inside the glass bowl. Dirt, stones and some grass. He would feel comfortable. He would feel at home. I could put the bowl on my dresser. I wouldn’t worry anymore. But she said, “no.”
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Spending time with my snail, I would sit in the dirt of the garden and marvel at the rich shades of yellow painted on his shell. I would imagine what he had hiding in that shell. In my mind I saw beautiful things. In my heart I worried that the truth might not be so beautiful. Maybe what was hiding in that shell was the same blood and guts as what had come from inside of that dead dog. Maybe not exactly the same, yellow or green instead of red. I thought that once spilled out into the dirt, the guts that fill his shell might at least smell the same as what had spilled from that dog. Those thoughts infuriated me. I used to hate myself for thinking my snail hid anything less than the greatest of secrets. The most beautiful things. To think my friend was ordinary, blood and guts. Sometimes I wanted to smash his shell apart to see just what he was hiding. To prove those thoughts wrong.
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I went out to the garden one afternoon and quickly found my friend. His shell was shining its usual bright golden glow in a warm bath of sunlight. I picked him up to say hello. The shell was empty. I brought the shell to my face. Closing one eye tight, like you do looking into a telescope, I pressed his shell to my open eye. Inside, nothing. I looked harder. Nothing beautiful. I squinted. Nothing special. I looked for something. Anything. There was nothing.
I dropped the shell as if it were all of a sudden on fire. My eyes, already welling up, drew to my scorched fingers. Closing my eyes, I bit my bottom lip and began to pace the garden. The garden was dead silent but for the huff and puff of my heated breath. I was relieved that my friend wasn’t the same blood and guts as those dogs, hamsters or even goldfish. But my friend was gone and I was angry. With both hands I lifted the biggest rock I could find above my head. Staring down to the empty shell at my feet, I was so mad that he was gone and instead of there being something beautiful in that shell, there was nothing.
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I moved the fishbowl from the shelf to the top of my dresser. Closer to my bed. My half blind goldfish still swam in circles. The bottom of the bowl was lined with bright blue stone. Off to one side stood a small sprout of green plastic seaweed. Next to that sat a beautiful golden yellow shell.
Copyright © April 2008 Chris La Cour
