Kevin Tully
Special to The View
When I was about seven or eight my two buddies and I crawled over a seven-foot-tall stucco wall into the yard of a neighbor that lived down at the end of our street. We were able to get over by using trees on either side as ladders. The house took up two city lots, with the tall stucco wall all around the property. The wall had only a large oriental style entry door in front and on the left of that a great sliding door that opened into a magical courtyard with fruit trees and a fishpond. Peeking through a crack in the great sliding door we saw the pond with colorful fish, swimming back and forth.
We thought the older lady that lived in the mysterious house was out of town. We were going to try and catch one of the red and yellow and orange and black spotted fish. I had been fishing with my father numerous times. We snuck in with a fishing pole and a cup with worms we dug from under a rotting log.
I loaded a worm on the hook and was just about to throw it into the pond when we were startled by a woman’s voice coming towards us.
“What are you doing?“ the older lady asked. We evidently hadn’t reconnoitered our target sufficiently.
“You think that’s a good idea, do you?” she said.
I said, “It’s just a fish,” contemplating running for the tree next to the wall.
She said, “Oh no, it is much more than a fish, it is a friend.”
We expected that she would be very angry with us, but she wasn’t, she was exceptionally kind.
She sat us down at a table and gave us each a coke and an ice cream sandwich and told us about being a little girl in China. Her father was a missionary, and she was very lonely. So, he had a pond built and brought her a couple of small Koi. They grew and multiplied and became her friends. The fish in the pond were the relatives of those two original fish.
She asked us if we knew what Koi fish represented in China. Of course we didn’t “They represent perseverance, strength, and courage. It was not a proper thing for you boys to do, climbing over my wall, you could have asked to come in… but the Koi are most likely proud of you. It took perseverance, strength, and courage to climb over the wall. They certainly are a bit upset that you tried to catch them. I imagine they’ll get over it,” she said.
The lady gave us each a small paper bag and told us we could pick cherries from her trees to take home to our mothers and then sent us on our way with a smile.
The experience made a big impression on me, causing much thought and debate amongst myself and my buddies. We couldn’t come to a definitive conclusion. I was leaning towards friendship with all animals, but wasn’t sure.
A couple of weeks later I went fishing with my dad. We caught some perch and a couple of bass. When my dad went to the car to get a cigarette, I reached down in the water and untied the stringer from the dock, turning the fish free. I told him they somehow had gotten loose. I wanted bad to tell him how they were my friends now, but he was angry and I decided it was not a good idea. I eventually grew out of my “friendship” with fish, catching hundreds over the years. Now as an old man, they are my friends again. I’m not sure which way is better. I think there is not a right answer. I do know, now as an old man, it is best to have a friend….
Kevin Tully is an artist, gallerist, woodworker, and writer. He has been a golf columnist and an all-around agitator. Kevin has a figment of his imagination, Franklin Cincinnatus, who dictates short stories ostensibly representing larger bodies of work. Kevin writes them down. kevin@asmithgallery. com
