Aunt Nancy, whose pale skin, giant hair, and rouge-forward make-up was a lot, merrily hopped up and down the aisle of the bus as Antonia’s kindergarten class rode out towards the Spillway. 

“Pithole’s grandest tourist attraction,” Bob the Janitor had told them from the bus’s driver’s seat. Bob was a multi-hyphenate.

 “The place where ducks walk on the backs of fish, like Jesus on the Dead Sea,” Antonia’s mother had said that morning.

“The Sea of Galilee, Janice,” Antonia’s father had corrected.

“Can’t they just cook up all the Spillway fish and feed all of the hungry people?” Antonia had asked, but neither parent had answered. Most adults in Pithole agreed that the best way to deal with the town’s unhoused population was pretend it didn’t have one.

When Aunt Nancy reached Antonia, she’d stooped down so that her big, jittery head was even with Antonia’s and asked about Antonia’s new baby brother.

“Your mummy just had a big, sweet baby?” Aunt Nancy asked Antonia, her smile huge. When she smiled, it made all the freckles in the middle of her face squish into the lines around her mouth, which, in turn, made it look like her bright red mouth stretched all the way from the center of her face and out to her ears.  

“Yes, Ms. Apple,” Antonia said, then stared at her saddle shoes so that she wouldn’t have to look at Aunt Nancy’s giant mouth.

“I told you, Antonia, you must call me Aunt Nancy.”

Antonia nodded slowly.

“And he’s such a chubby baby, isn’t he?” Aunt Nancy asked and, even though it was probably a normal baby question, the way Aunt Nancy asked made the hairs on Antonia’s arms stand up.

 “9 pounds when he was born,” Antonia whispered.

Antonia cautioned a look up at Aunt Nancy just as the teacher unfurled her tongue and wetly licked her lips.

Antonia could have sworn that Aunt Nancy’s tongue reached all the way to her ears.

“Does mummy need a babysitter?” Aunt Nancy asked. “You’ll be sure to tell mummy that teachers make the best babysitters, won’t you?”

Antonia couldn’t think of anything worse than having her teacher come home with her. Would she have to ask Mrs. Apple – sorry, Aunt Nancy – if she could go to the bathroom, even if Antonia was in her own house?

“I don’t think yet, she still has to feed him with her boobs,” Antonia said.

Aunt Nancy laughed, and the sound was weak and strangely raspy for someone with such a full voice, with such a strong presence.

“Breast milk is the elixir of life,” Aunt Nancy said.

“Ew,” Antonia said.

“You let mummy know that Aunt Nancy can help whenever she needs to leave you and that baby all alone in your big empty house,” Aunt Nancy said, and Antonia thought that was a weird thing to say. “Or you could just call me yourself, and I’ll come right over. With candy! Do you like candy?”

Antonia dug her toes into the bottom of her shoes. Talking to the teacher one-on-one made her feeling like she was frying like one of the ants Aunt Nancy had made them burn with magnifying glasses for Science Time.

Bob the Janitor (who smelled like Antonia’s father - a scent her mother described as “stinking drunk”) stopped the bus suddenly, sending them sliding across the mud for a few moments before the bus came to a stop with a clanking, hissing shudder.

Aunt Nancy was thrown sideways when the bus stopped, and as she plunged into the aisle her long legs flew up into the air. Antonia knew it had to be a trick of the light, but for a moment it her teacher had more than two legs flop into the air.

Aunt Nancy pulled herself up, shot a glare at Bob the Janitor, and then led the class out into the muddy Spillway parking lot.

Antonia could hear the fish flopping before she could see them. A constant bubbling, splashing, squirting sound. Like a pond full of farts. When she was finally close enough to peer over the railing - which she could just do if she stood on her tippy toes - she gagged. 

The black water was almost indistinguishable from the shiny backs of the carp, so to Antonia it looked as if this wasn’t a pond full of fish and instead one giant, disgusting, wet organism, a beast crowned with bent fins, swollen eyes, and countless scales.

“Jesus Christ,” Antonia said, and the barf that churned up into her throat burnt like a prayer.

Despite the flat-out grossness of the scenario, Antonia couldn’t look away. Some of the other kids had already gotten bread from the gift shop. So much bread. How did they have so much bread here? Everyone seemed to have an endless supply. They were tossing it to the brave ducks, who struggled to hop-swim-kick their way over to the little bread pieces. 

But Antonia could only stare.

She was mesmerized by the churning mass of fish. The round empty mouths, hundreds of small black pits, were like pupils meeting her own.

The fish were the most concentrated at the middle of the pool, and Antonia’s eyes were slowly drawn there until her gaze was fixed upon the very center, the focus of the circular pool. She sensed Aunt Nancy to her right, and she knew, somehow, that the teacher was staring at her, not at the fish.

Another student threw a large hunk of bread across the pool, and a haggard looking duck decided to risk it and hopped into action, heading across the center of the pool towards the bread. As it swam through her field of vision Antonia got a good look at the duck, the browns, oranges, whites, and yellows of it. She was thinking that it looked like a Halloween duck, like a piece of candy corn, like a late autumn day in Pithole. She was thinking of how gently it moved, even with those disgusting fish swirling and sucking beneath it. She was thinking about what it might feel like to be the duck, to float upon the top of the water. To float above the fish, to stop in the center of the pool and see what they felt like on her skin. What they felt like brushing her arms, what they felt like kissing her face, sucking at her fingers, nibbling on her toes.

Then the fish were leaving the center. The teeming horde of them diffused throughout the pool, leaving a black circle of placid water it the center. Antonia felt the pull of it in her chest. It looked so inviting. As she stared, she swore she could see a dim light in the pool, a dim light with the warm, enticing feel of a campfire. 

It was there, she could see it, there at the bottom of the pool. Something warm. Something wonderful. She had to get to it.

It was only when she heard a raspy gasp next to her that Antonia realized she had climbed on top of the railing.

She shook her head, unsure of how she’d gotten there, and then lost her balance and fell forward. She gripped the railing tightly and swung down, her bony knees skimming the water. But she held on, hanging just above the sucking, slurping fish pit.

Through the bars of the railing, Antonia saw Aunt Nancy, who’d turned towards Rat Dam, a cement monstrosity that cast a shadow over the Spillway. Then she saw why Aunt Nancy had gasped that raspy gasp.

Jesus Christ was standing there. 

12 whole feet of him. He was a giant, and he was shaking his head at Aunt Nancy. He looked disappointed, and Antonia could see that Jesus was very good at expressing his disappointment.

As Antonia hung there, Jesus turned to the Spillway water. He regarded the fish and the empty center and even Antonia. He smiled a gracious smile her way and it lit her from within, its warmth ten times that of the underwater campfire that had been calling to her. 

Then Jesus turned back to the water and just stared at it.

Aunt Nancy began shrieking, “No, no, no!” and Bob the Janitor was speeding off in the bus and all the other kids were gaping at Jesus.

Antonia was getting tired, and she felt her hands slipping on the slick metal rail. Still, she twisted around to see what Jesus was staring at. 

Was he mesmerized by the ducks walking on fishes’ backs? 

Maybe it really was a grand tourist destination, if Jesus Christ himself was so taken by it.

Then the fish started multiplying.

The Spillway carp were splitting at the middle, each single fish becoming two. Then those two fishes would stretch and grow until they reached a certain size and split themselves. Within seconds, the water was frothing with movement. And after a few more seconds the center of the pool had refilled with sucking carp. And then more.

Antonia felt the fish rise beneath her feet She felt them catch her rather than suck at her. She thought distantly that she should be frightened, but she felt delightfully calm. She fell onto the rising floor of carp beneath her, and she felt so light. She felt like she was on the crest of a wave. It was like she was soaring on the eagle’s wings. 

Slimy, sucky eagle wings.

The fish kept splitting, growing, rising, and rising until Antonia floated up and back over the railing. She rolled down a gentle slope of carp and hit the ground once more. She looked up and saw her fellow students, some of whom were collapsing under piles of rapidly multiplying bread.

She looked up at Jesus.

He was smiling at her, even as, next to him, the fish spilled out over the railing and onto Aunt Nancy. They stuck to her like bees on honey, and Jesus’s smile only grew as Aunt Nancy was eaten alive by carp. 

“Thank you, Jesus,” Antonia said, and then went to give him a high five. Jesus looked perplexed as she held her flat palm up to him, then his smile grew into a silly grin, a very happy grin, and he raised his kickboard-sized palm up so that she could slap hers against his.

Jesus wasn’t solid, but there was something there. It felt like moving your hand through the steam floating up from a boiling pot of stew. He smelled like that, too. Jesus smelled warm and inviting and a little bit meaty, like home cooking.

Then Jesus turned and walked towards the road, holding his thumb out. Antonia wondered if he was hitching a ride to downtown Pithole, or straight back to heaven? She felt like she should tell him to skip Pithole and head straight for Niagara Falls, which had a lot more to offer.

The fish continued to split and grow, split and grow, split and grow, like vines of fish meat in a stinky vineyard. If it continued at this rate, all of Pithole would be submerged in carp within a few hours.

Antonia smiled.

Because now, surely, no one in Pithole would ever go hungry, not ever again.

The End 

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