God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater_ Or, Pearls Before Swine - Kurt Vonnegut [44]
"Can I guess, too?" said Caroline.
Bunny closed his eyes. "Of course," he whispered tiredly.
Amanita gave up at once, announcing proudly that she was dumb, that she despised tests. Caroline was about to make a chirping, bright-eyed, birdy guess, but Bunny didn't give her a chance.
"It's a cover for a spare roll of toilet paper!" said Bunny.
"That's what I was going to guess," said Caroline.
"Were you now?" said Bunny apathetically.
"She's a Phi Beta Kappa," said Amanita.
"Are you now?" said Bunny.
"Yes," said Caroline. "I don't talk about it much. I don't think about it much."
"Nor do I," said Bunny.
"You're a Phi Beta Kappa, too?"
"Do you mind?"
"No."
"As clubs go," said Bunny, "I've found it's a rather big one."
"Um."
"Do you like this thing, little genius?" Amanita asked Caroline, speaking of the toilet paper cover.
"Yes—it's—it's very pretty. It's sweet."
"Do you want it?"
"For seventeen dollars?" said Caroline. "It is darling." She became mournful about being poor. "Some day, maybe. Some day."
"Why not today?" asked Amanita.
"You know why not today." Caroline blushed.
"What if I were to buy it for you?"
"You mustn't! Seventeen dollars!"
"If you don't stop worrying about money so much, little bird, I'm going to have to find some other friend."
"What can I say?"
"Wrap it as a gift, please, Bunny."
"Oh, Amanita, thank you so much," said Caroline.
"It's no more than you deserve."
"Thank you."
"People get what they deserve," said Amanita. "Isn't that right, Bunny?"
"That's the First Law of Life," said Bunny Weeks.
The work boat called the Mary now reached the traps she served, came into view for the many drinkers and diners in the restaurant of Bunny Weeks.
"Drop your cocks and grab your socks," Harry Pena called to his snoozing sons.
He killed the engine. The momentum of the Mary carried her through the gate of a trap, into a ring of long poles festooned with net.
"Smell 'em?" he said. He was asking if his sons smelled all the big fish in the net.
The sons sniffed, said they did.
The big belly of the net, which might or might not hold fish, lay on the bottom. The rim of the net was in air, running from pole-tip to pole-tip in lank parabolas. The rim dipped under water at only one point. That point was the gate. It was also the mouth that would feed fish, if any, into the big belly of the net.
Now Harry himself was inside the trap. He untied a line from a cleat by the gate, hoisted away, lifted the mouth of the net into air, tied the line to the cleat again. There was no way out of the belly now—not for fish. For fish it was a bowl of doom.
The Mary rubbed herself gently against one side of the bowl. Harry and his sons, all in a row, reached into the sea with iron hands, pulled net into air, fed it back to the sea.
Hand-over-hand, the three were making smaller, ever smaller, the place where fish could be. And, as that place grew ever smaller, the Mary crept sideways across the surface of the bowl.
No one spoke. It was a magic time. Even the gulls fell silent as the three, purified of all thought, hauled net from the sea.
The only place where the fish could be became an oval pool. A seeming shower of dimes flashed in the depths, and that was all. The men kept working, hand-over-hand.
The only place where the fish could be now became a curving trough, a deep one, alongside the Mary. It now became a shallower trough as the three men continued to work, hand-over-hand. The father and the two sons paused. A goosefish, a prehistoric monstrosity, a ten-pound tadpole studded with chancres and warts, came to the surface, opened its needle -filled mouth, surrendered. And around the goosefish, the brainless, inedible horror of cartilage, the surface of the