The Catfish Pond

Parish

Chapter 9: The Catfish Pond

The call is not the kind of call Clem usually receives. The call is from Beaumont — Claude Beaumont, who taught eighth-grade science at Ferriday Junior High for thirty-one years and who retired in 2019 and who, in the way that retired men in Concordia Parish find things to do with the hands that the career no longer occupies, began raising catfish. The catfish began as twelve fingerlings in a backyard tank. The twelve fingerlings became forty fingerlings in a larger tank. The forty became a hundred in a half-acre pond that Beaumont dug with a rented excavator on the three acres behind his house on the Ferriday side of the parish, the digging being the act that transformed the hobby into the enterprise, the enterprise being the thing that happens when a man's hobby grows beyond the backyard and into the field, the field being the three acres that Beaumont's father left him and that Beaumont had not known what to do with until the catfish told him, the catfish telling him the way animals tell humans things, which is by thriving, by multiplying, by responding to the care with the growth that is the care's evidence, the evidence that says: What you are doing is working, do more of it.

Beaumont did more of it. He dug a second pond. He stocked it. He built a feeding system from PVC pipe and a timer and the ingenuity that a thirty-one-year science teacher brings to a practical problem, the ingenuity being the science applied, the science that Beaumont taught from textbooks for thirty-one years now applied to the actual world, the world of the pond and the fish and the water and the feed, the world that the textbooks described and that Beaumont was now building, the building being the retirement's gift, the gift of the hands freed from the classroom and given to the pond.

He sells the catfish at the Vidalia farmers' market on Saturday mornings, the catfish in coolers, on ice, the fillets clean and white and smelling of the pond water that is the particular smell of Concordia Parish aquaculture, which is the smell of the alluvial soil and the Mississippi's mineral content and the feed and the fish, the smell that is not the ocean's smell but the river's smell, the freshwater smell, the Louisiana smell. He sells the catfish to the people of the parish who eat catfish the way the people of the parish eat everything, which is fried, the frying being the parish's culinary sacrament, the oil and the cornmeal and the heat producing the thing that the parish has produced for generations, the fried catfish that is served on Friday nights and at fish fries and at the VFW and at the tables of the parish where the eating of the catfish is the eating of the place, the place made edible, the place consumed.

The call. Beaumont calls Clem on a Wednesday morning. The voice on the phone is the voice of a man who is worried in the particular way that a man is worried when the worry is about a thing he does not fully understand, the worry of a man who knows fish in the way that a science teacher knows fish — theoretically, from the textbooks and the diagrams and the taxonomy — but who does not know fish in the way that a veterinarian knows animals, which is from the inside, from the body, from the symptoms and the signs and the diagnosis and the treatment.

"My fish are dying," Beaumont said. "Not all of them. Some of them. They're at the surface. They're — I don't know. They look wrong. They have spots. Red spots. I don't know what it is and I don't know who to call."

The sentence. The sentence that is the practice's anthem, the sentence that Clem has heard in a thousand variations from a thousand voices — the farmer's version, the horse owner's version, the dog owner's version, and now the catfish farmer's version, the version that is the same sentence in a different mouth, the sentence that says: I have an animal in trouble and I don't know what to do and you are the one who knows and the knowing is why I am calling.

Clem does not treat fish. This is the fact. This is the fact that Clem considers as he stands in his kitchen with the phone to his ear and the coffee in his hand and the morning outside the window, the morning that was going to be a morning of cattle calls, the morning's schedule written on the clipboard in the truck, the schedule being the practice's plan and the plan being the thing that the practice makes and that the parish disrupts, the disruption being the nature of the practice, the nature being: The phone rings and the plan changes and the changing is the work.

He does not treat fish. He treats cattle. He treats horses. He treats goats and sheep and dogs and cats and the occasional potbellied pig that someone in the parish keeps as a pet because the keeping of a potbellied pig is the kind of thing that someone in the parish does, the doing being the parish's eccentricity, the eccentricity being one of the parish's qualities, the quality that says: We keep what we keep, and the keeping is our business. But fish. Clem has not treated fish since the aquaculture rotation in his third year of vet school, the rotation being two weeks of lectures and one afternoon at an aquaculture facility in the Atchafalaya Basin, the afternoon being the sum total of Clem's aquatic veterinary experience, the sum total being: insufficient.

But the parish does not have an aquatic veterinarian. The parish does not have a specialist for every species. The parish has Clem. The parish has the one vet, the one set of hands, the one truck, the one box, and the one set of hands must treat what the parish produces, and the parish produces catfish, and the catfish are dying, and the dying is the call, and the call is the practice.

"I'll come look at them," Clem said.

He drives to Beaumont's place. The drive is twenty minutes from Vidalia, south on 65 toward Ferriday, then west on a parish road that has no name but that Clem knows by the landmarks — the church with the blue door, the burned-out tractor in the field, the house with the tin roof that has been repainted three times in three different colors, the colors layered like the geology of the parish's decisions, each color the choice of a different year, a different mood, a different gallon of paint on sale at the hardware store.

Beaumont's property. The house is a brick ranch, the style that was built in the 1970s across the parish, the ranch house being the parish's default domestic architecture, the single story with the carport and the chain-link fence and the backyard that, in Beaumont's case, extends into the three acres that hold the two ponds, the ponds being visible from the driveway as two rectangles of brown water, the rectangles cut into the flat green land like two mirrors laid face-up in the grass, the mirrors reflecting the sky and the clouds and the parish's particular quality of light, the light that is not bright but luminous, the light filtered through the humidity that is the air's permanent condition.

Beaumont meets him at the truck. Beaumont is sixty-four, Black, tall, thin in the way that retired men are thin when the retirement has not yet produced the weight that idle hands sometimes produce, the thinness being the residue of the active life, the life that included thirty-one years of standing in front of classrooms and walking the hallways and coaching the junior high track team, the coaching being the other thing Beaumont did, the other thing that kept the body lean and that the catfish ponds have continued, the ponds requiring the walking and the bending and the lifting that keep the body in the shape that the career produced.

He is wearing rubber boots. The rubber boots are the catfish farmer's uniform, the boots that say: I will be in the water, I will be in the mud, the water and the mud being the medium, the medium in which the work occurs, the work of the catfish being the work of the water, the water being the thing, the water being the pond, the pond being the enterprise.

"I appreciate you coming," Beaumont said. "I know you don't do fish."

"I do what the parish needs," Clem said.

The sentence that is not a boast and not a mission statement but a fact, the fact being the practice, the practice being the doing of what the parish needs, and the parish needs its catfish looked at, and Clem is here to look.

They walk to the first pond. The pond is half an acre, roughly rectangular, the water brown with the suspended sediment that is the pond's natural condition, the sediment being the alluvial soil that the water holds, the soil being the river's deposit, the river having left the soil when the river retreated and the soil being in everything — the ground, the water, the dust, the parish's color, the particular brown that is Concordia Parish's shade, the shade that stains the trucks and the boots and the fences and the water in the ponds where the catfish swim.

Clem can see the problem from the bank. There are fish at the surface. Catfish are bottom feeders — they live at the bottom, they feed at the bottom, they are the bottom's creatures, the creatures of the mud and the dark, the creatures whose world is the pond's floor, the floor being the catfish's domain. A catfish at the surface is a catfish in trouble. A catfish at the surface is a catfish that has left its domain because the domain has become untenable, the untanability being the symptom, the symptom being the signal, the signal being: Something is wrong in the water.

There are seven, maybe eight fish at the surface. They are moving slowly, the slow movement being another sign, the catfish's normal movement being the quick, the darting, the muscular propulsion that the catfish's body is built for, the body being the torpedo shape that the evolution produced for the bottom-feeding life, the shape designed for the darting and the hiding and the striking, and the shape at the surface is not darting, the shape is drifting, the drifting being the illness's gait, the gait that says: The body is not doing what the body should do, the body's systems are compromised, the compromise being the disease.

Clem looks closer. He can see the spots. Red lesions on the skin, the lesions visible even through the brown water, the red against the catfish's gray-blue skin, the red being the hemorrhage, the subcutaneous hemorrhage that is the sign of the infection, the infection that has entered the blood and that the blood has carried to the skin and that the skin displays the way a billboard displays a message, the message being: This fish is sick.

He knows what it is. Or he thinks he knows what it is, the thinking being the memory, the memory of the aquaculture rotation at LSU, the rotation that was two weeks of lectures and one afternoon at the facility, the two weeks containing the information that Clem stored in the place where the brain stores the things that the brain does not expect to use but that the brain keeps because the brain is a hoarder, the brain keeping everything, the information about catfish diseases filed in the back of the cabinet, behind the cattle and the horses and the dogs, behind the twenty-eight years of daily use, and now the information is needed, and Clem reaches for it the way he reaches into the cow, by feel, by the shapes that the memory retains, and the shape he finds is: Enteric Septicemia of Catfish. ESC. Edwardsiella ictaluri. The bacterial infection that is the catfish industry's most common disease, the disease that enters through the gut and spreads to the blood and produces the hemorrhagic lesions on the skin and the lethargy and the surfacing and the dying.

"I think it's ESC," Clem said. "Enteric Septicemia. Bacterial infection. Common in catfish, especially in warm water. How warm is the pond?"

Beaumont has a thermometer. Beaumont has every instrument that a retired science teacher would have, the instruments being the science teacher's tools, the tools that the teacher accumulated over thirty-one years of teaching science and that the teacher brought home when the teaching ended, the bringing-home being the teacher's version of the vet's veterinary box, the instruments being the practice's equipment, the equipment being the evidence of the vocation.

"Eighty-two degrees this morning," Beaumont said.

Eighty-two. The number that is the number. ESC thrives between 77 and 82 degrees Fahrenheit. The temperature is the condition. The condition is the disease's friend, the warmth being the bacteria's preference, the preference being the biology, the biology being the thing that Beaumont taught for thirty-one years and that is now happening in his pond, the thing that was in the textbook now in the water, the theory become the practice in the worst possible way.

Clem needs to see a fish. He needs to see the lesions up close. He needs to confirm the diagnosis. He stands on the bank and considers the situation, the situation being: He is a large-animal veterinarian standing beside a catfish pond in rubber boots that Beaumont has loaned him, the boots two sizes too large, the too-large being the comedy, the comedy of a man whose hands have been inside a thousand cows now contemplating how to examine a catfish, the examining being the practice's demand, the demand that says: You are the vet. The vet examines the animal. The animal is a catfish. Examine the catfish.

He wades in.

The water is warm. Eighty-two degrees, Beaumont said, and the eighty-two degrees is the warmth that Clem feels through the boots and through the jeans that the water soaks through immediately, the boots being irrelevant once the water reaches the thigh, the thigh being the depth at which the pond's bank drops to the level where the catfish are, the level being the water's middle, the middle where the sick fish hover, not at the bottom where the healthy fish are and not at the surface where the dying fish are but in the between, the between being the place where the sick-but-not-yet-dying fish exist, the existence being the limbo, the limbo being the state of the illness before the illness becomes the death.

The mud is soft. Clem's feet sink into the mud the way his boots sink into the mud at the cattle pens, the sinking being familiar, the body knowing the mud the way the body knows all the surfaces it has worked on, the body's balance adjusting to the instability, the instability being the constant, the constant of the Louisiana surface, the surface that is always soft, always yielding, always the alluvial deposit that the river left and that does not harden, that does not firm, that remains the mud, the mud being the parish's foundation, the parish built on the soft, the soft being the ground, the ground being the river's gift.

He catches a fish. This is not easy. Catching a catfish in a pond with your hands is not the same as catching a cow in a chute with a headgate. The catfish does not cooperate. The catfish is not channeled through a system of pens and alleys designed to move the animal from the wide space to the narrow space. The catfish is in the water and the water is the catfish's medium and the medium is the catfish's advantage, the advantage being: The catfish can move in three dimensions and Clem can move in two, the two dimensions being forward and sideways, the third dimension being down, and down is where the catfish goes when Clem reaches for it, down into the brown water that hides the fish the way the cow's body hides the calf, the hiding being the darkness, the darkness being the place where the thing is.

He reaches in. He reaches into the water the way he reaches into the cow, with the hand extended and the fingers spread and the hand feeling for the thing, the thing being the fish, the fish being somewhere in the brown water that his eyes cannot penetrate, the hand being the eye, the hand seeing with the fingers, Dr. Broussard's lesson applied to a medium that Dr. Broussard did not anticipate, the hand seeing the catfish the way the hand sees the uterus, by feel, by the shape, by the body's presence in the darkness.

His hand finds a fish. The fish is slow — this is the sick fish's betrayal, the sickness making the fish slow enough to catch, the catching being possible only because the disease has removed the speed, the speed being the health, the health being the thing that the disease is taking. His fingers close around the body. The catfish's body is slick, the skin producing the mucus that is the catfish's defense, the mucus that makes the fish difficult to hold, the holding being the challenge, the challenge being the comedy, the comedy of a large-animal veterinarian standing thigh-deep in a catfish pond trying to hold a three-pound fish with hands that were designed for a thousand-pound cow.

He holds the fish. He brings it to the surface. Beaumont is on the bank, watching, his face showing the expression that Clem has seen on a thousand farmers' faces, the expression that is the combination of worry and hope and the particular vulnerability of a person who has brought a professional to see the thing, the thing that the person has been worried about, the thing that the professional will now pronounce upon, the pronouncing being the moment, the moment of truth that the farmer dreads and desires in equal measure.

The fish is a channel catfish, maybe three pounds, its body showing the lesions that Clem saw from the bank — the red hemorrhagic spots on the skin, the spots concentrated on the belly and the fins, the spots being the blood beneath the skin, the blood that has escaped the vessels, the escaping being the disease's signature, the signature that says: Edwardsiella ictaluri, the bacteria that entered through the gut and spread through the blood and is now killing the fish one hemorrhage at a time.

Clem examines the fish the way he examines every animal, with the hands and the eyes and the nose, the nose detecting the smell that is not the pond's smell but the infection's smell, the slight sweetness that is the bacteria's byproduct, the byproduct being the metabolic waste of the organism that is consuming the fish from the inside, the consuming being the disease, the disease being the thing that Clem is here to name and to treat.

"ESC," Clem said. "The bacteria's in the water. The warm temperature is promoting it. You've got an outbreak."

Beaumont nods. The nod is the farmer's nod, the nod that says: I suspected, but I needed the man to say it, the saying being the confirmation, the confirmation being the thing that the farmer needs from the vet, the confirmation that the problem is real and the realness is named and the naming is the beginning of the treatment.

"What do we do," Beaumont said.

The we. The word that every farmer uses. Not: What do I do. What do we do. The we being the partnership, the partnership between the farmer and the vet, the partnership that says: This is my animal and your expertise and together the my and the your become the we, and the we is the practice.

Clem stands in the pond. He is wet to the waist. The catfish is in his hands. The catfish is breathing — the gills opening and closing, the gills doing what gills do, which is extract the oxygen from the water, the extraction being the breathing, the breathing being the life, the life that the disease is threatening and that the treatment will try to preserve.

"Medicated feed," Clem said. "Aquaflor. Florfenicol. It's an antibiotic approved for catfish. You mix it into the feed. You feed it for ten days. It kills the bacteria in the gut, which is where the bacteria enters. You also need to lower the stocking density if you can — too many fish in too warm water is the condition that lets the bacteria take hold. And you need to remove the dead fish. Every day. The dead fish are the source. The dead fish release the bacteria into the water and the water carries the bacteria to the living fish and the carrying is the infection."

He says this standing in the pond, the water at his thighs, the fish in his hands, the sun on his back, the scene being the scene that no one in the parish would expect and that Clem did not expect when he woke at 4:30 this morning and made the coffee and checked the box and started the truck, the scene of the large-animal veterinarian becoming the aquatic veterinarian because the parish required it, the requiring being the practice's shape, the shape being: Whatever the parish needs. Whatever the parish produces. Whatever the parish keeps.

He releases the fish. The fish slides from his hands and into the water and the water closes over the fish the way it closes over everything, the water being the medium that hides and reveals, that holds and releases, the water being the pond's version of the parish, the parish that holds its creatures in the medium of the place, the medium of the heat and the soil and the roads and the flat green land.

Clem wades out. His jeans are soaked. His boots — Beaumont's boots — are full of water. He stands on the bank and the water drains from him, the draining being the transition from the pond to the land, from the aquatic to the terrestrial, from the fish to the cattle, from the thing he does not usually do to the thing he does, the transition being the practice's flexibility, the flexibility that the parish requires and that the vet provides.

Beaumont is looking at him. Beaumont is looking at him with the expression that Clem knows, the expression that follows the diagnosis and the treatment plan, the expression that is the farmer's response to the knowing, the knowing that the vet has provided, the expression that is: gratitude. The gratitude of a man who had a problem he could not solve and who called the man who could solve it and the man came and the coming is the thing, the coming being the practice's essential act, the act of showing up, the act of being the man who comes when the call is made.

"I didn't know vets treated fish," Beaumont said.

"This vet treats what the parish produces," Clem said.

And the parish produces catfish. The parish produces catfish the way the parish produces cattle and soybeans and cotton and timber and pecans and sweet potatoes and the particular quality of human character that the parish's conditions produce, the conditions being the heat and the river and the flat land and the isolation and the community, the conditions producing the people who produce the things, and the things are the parish's offering, the offering that the parish makes to the world, the offering that says: This is what we grow. This is what we raise. This is what we are.

Beaumont walks Clem to the second pond. The second pond is smaller, a quarter acre, and the second pond does not show the signs — no fish at the surface, no lethargy visible, the water the same brown but the brown hiding healthy fish, the bottom-dwelling, darting, feeding fish that are the pond's success, the success being the evidence of the care, the care that Beaumont provides, the feed and the water quality and the monitoring, the monitoring being the teacher's skill applied to the pond, the skill of observation, the skill that thirty-one years of watching eighth-graders produced, the watching being the seeing, the seeing being the teacher's instrument the way the hand is the vet's instrument.

"This one's clean," Clem said. "Keep it isolated. Don't transfer water between the ponds. Don't transfer equipment. The bacteria is in the water and on the surfaces and on the nets and the buckets and anything that touches the infected pond. Treat each pond as a separate system."

Beaumont nods. He is writing in a notebook. The notebook is a composition book, the black-and-white marbled cover, the notebook that eighth-grade science students use, the notebook being the teacher's habit, the habit of recording, the recording being the teacher's version of the vet's invoice, the documentation of the work, the work documented because the documenting is the practice, the practice of the careful, the practice of the person who understands that the recording is the remembering and the remembering is the learning and the learning is the thing.

They walk back to the truck. Clem changes out of Beaumont's boots and into his own boots, the own boots being the return to the practice's normal uniform, the normal uniform being the boots that know the cattle pens and the barns and the pastures and that do not know the catfish ponds, the not-knowing being the morning's lesson, the lesson being: The practice's territory is wider than the practice's habit, the territory being the parish, the parish producing what the parish produces, and the vet treating what the parish produces.

Beaumont offers coffee. The offer is the parish's ritual, the ritual of the coffee after the work, the coffee being the transaction's seal, the seal that says: The work is done, the coffee is the payment beyond the payment, the coffee being the relationship's currency, the currency that is not money but time, the time spent standing with the cup and the conversation, the conversation being the thing that the coffee provides the occasion for, the occasion that allows the farmer to be not the farmer but the man, the man who has a life beyond the animals and the ponds and the work.

Clem accepts. He always accepts. The accepting is the practice.

They stand in Beaumont's kitchen, the kitchen that is the kitchen of a retired man living alone — Beaumont's wife, Nadine, died four years ago, the dying being another of the parish's losses, the losses that accumulate the way the sediment accumulates in the river, layer by layer, the layers being the years, the years being the losses — and the kitchen shows the man the way the property shows the man, the kitchen clean but sparse, the counters holding the coffee maker and the toaster and not much else, the not-much-else being the widower's kitchen, the kitchen reduced to the essential, the essential being the coffee and the toast and the sustenance that a man alone requires.

Beaumont talks about the catfish. He talks about them the way Earl talks about his cattle, with the affection that a man has for the things in his charge, the things he feeds and tends and watches and worries about, the affection being the bond, the bond between the keeper and the kept, the bond that is the same regardless of the species, regardless of whether the species is bovine or equine or caprine or piscine, the bond being the care, the care being the connection, the connection being the thing.

"Nadine thought I was crazy," Beaumont said. "Catfish. She said: Claude, you taught science for thirty-one years and now you want to practice it in the backyard. I said: Nadine, the backyard is the laboratory. The pond is the experiment. The fish are the data."

He smiles. The smile is the smile of a man talking about his dead wife, the smile that is not happy and not sad but the between, the between that is the widower's permanent state, the state of loving the memory and mourning the person, the memory being alive and the person being dead and the alive and the dead existing in the same smile.

"She'd come out and sit by the pond," Beaumont said. "She'd bring a book. She'd read while I fed the fish. She said it was the only time I was quiet, when I was feeding the fish. She said the fish did what thirty-one years of eighth-graders couldn't do, which was shut me up."

He laughs. The laugh is the widower's laugh, the laugh that carries the grief the way the river carries the sediment, the grief suspended in the joy, the joy being the memory, the memory being the wife by the pond with the book, the wife who is not by the pond now, the pond being Beaumont's alone, the alone being the condition, the condition that the catfish mitigate the way the cattle mitigate Earl's alone, the animals being the connection to the life that included the wife, the connection being the continuing, the continuing being the keeping of the thing that the wife was part of, the keeping being the love.

Clem drinks the coffee. The coffee is good. The coffee is the coffee of a man who learned to make coffee from a woman who made good coffee and who makes the coffee her way because the making of the coffee her way is the keeping of her, the keeping being the same keeping that Earl does with the percolator, the keeping that the parish's widowers do, the keeping of the dead through the small acts, the small acts being the coffee and the roses and the catfish and the ponds and the things that the living maintain because the maintaining is the love and the love does not end when the person ends, the love continuing the way the river continues, the flow being constant, the constant being the love.

He finishes the coffee. He writes the prescription for the Aquaflor on the pad from the clipboard. He writes the dosage and the duration and the instructions, the writing being the practice's documentation, the documentation applied to catfish the way it is applied to cattle, the documentation being the same because the practice is the same, the practice being the care, the care being the thing, the thing being: An animal is sick. The animal belongs to a man. The man needs help. The help is the vet. The vet comes. The vet diagnoses. The vet treats. The vet writes the prescription. The prescription is the plan. The plan is the hope.

Clem drives away from Beaumont's property. In the rearview mirror, Beaumont is standing by the pond, the composition notebook in one hand and the prescription in the other, the two documents being the two practices — the teacher's practice of recording and the vet's practice of treating — the two practices held in the two hands of a man who stands beside a pond in Concordia Parish in the morning light, the light on the water, the water holding the fish, the fish holding the disease, the disease holding the question, the question being: Will the treatment work? And the answer being: The treatment will work if the care continues, and the care will continue because Beaumont is Beaumont, and Beaumont is a man who cares for things, who cared for eighth-graders for thirty-one years and who now cares for catfish and who cares for the memory of a wife who sat by the pond with a book, and the caring is the thing, the caring is the treatment, the caring is the parish.

The truck turns east toward Vidalia. The veterinary box rides in the bed. The box that holds the cattle supplies and the horse supplies and the goat supplies and that does not hold the catfish supplies because the catfish supplies are not in the box, the catfish supplies being a thing that Clem will order and that Clem will add to the practice's inventory, the adding being the expansion, the expansion of the practice to include the thing it did not include, the thing that the parish required, the requiring being the growth, the growth being the practice's response to the parish's need.

The parish produces what the parish produces. The vet treats what the parish produces. The producing and the treating are the same thing, the same relationship, the same bond between the place and the person, the bond that says: You are here. The animals are here. The animals include the catfish. The catfish are in the pond. The pond is in the parish. The parish is the practice. The practice is the truck on the road with the wet jeans drying in the cab and the prescription written and the diagnosis made and the morning continuing, the morning carrying what all mornings carry, which is the work, the work that is the work, the work that today included catfish.

Clem drives. The parish unfolds. The soybeans are green. The river is behind the levee. The cattle are in the fields. The catfish are in the ponds. The parish produces. The vet treats. The morning continues.