Work Text:
Once upon a time, in a town hours away from anywhere important, there was a koi pond nobody asked for. The mayor, who farmed nine months a year, had half-heartedly applied for a rural rejuvenation grant from the state in hopes they'd get the money to demolish the crumbling downtown buildings.
Instead, they'd been sent a developer from Florida.
Her name was Marcie, and she showed too many perfect white teeth when she smiled, which she did too often. And so one Sunday morning in April, on the crook of the Y-shaped downtown street, she scheduled an unveiling. If she'd bothered to ask anyone, she'd have known better than to plan a town function at 11:00 on a Sunday morning, when the only people available were the handful of Catholics, the dozen local heathens, and a smattering of in-betweeners.
But, she didn't ask.
So there she stood, clutching a bright floral sundress to her body against the whipping southbound wind that smelled like snow, and there she waited. Hank unlocked his drugstore at 11:05, waved to her, and made a mental note to check on her before noon. Rodger hopped out of his truck, followed Hank's lead and waved to her, then kicked the mud off his boots and went in the drugstore. He made a beeline for the corner where Hank stocked loose cigs, moonshine, and an open disregard for the ATF.
By the time he came out, a small crowd had gathered. The first five spectators only stopped to ask Marcie if she needed a ride somewhere. The next five stopped to chit-chat with the others about whose fields were flooded and whose weren't. Families trickled in, intrigued by the sight of a gathering. Work trucks, minivans, and a four-wheeler made their way downtown, parking in a neat angled row on the unmarked street.
At 11:35, Marcie cleared her throat, addressed the crowd, and pulled a ratty blue tarp off of a massive cement block. She proceeded to explain the koi pond to a crowd that could and did improvise live wells out of horse troughs. A can of wintergreen Skoal from someone's overalls was passed through the crowd until it made its way back to its owner with several dollar bills in place of pouches of chew. Marcie used policy wonk terms the crowd pretended to not know, because that was the language of USDA contracts and IRS audits. It was easier to play dumb.
She said something about tourism and made a tasteful nod to a local historical figure only people from cities cared about.
"Are there any questions?" she asked.
Kaleb looked up at his dad, but his dad was examining the scorch marks on the sidewalk from when the old gazebo had burned down. Everybody blamed teenagers, but the whole town knew damn well knew it was Roger. Nobody cared. It had been an eyesore.
Kaleb wasn't close enough to see the koi fish, but he could see the reflection of their golden scales on the fresh cement behind the little pond. It wasn't a real pond. It was just a big fish tank that looked like a grave vault.
The wind whipped through the crowd, and the woman grabbed her skirt with both hands. The air still smelled like snow.
"What happens to the fish in winter?" Kaleb asked.
The tank wasn't as deep as his dad's ice fishing auger was long. But the lady with the shiny white shoes, and shiny white teeth, and deep tan when the snow was coming probably didn't know how thick the ice could get here. Kaleb, however, had ice skated on a frozen quarry with fish trapped in the ice.
Marcie's smile faltered. "They'll be just fine." Several of the men exchanged glances. Someone muttered something about an engine block heater and a garbage bag. "Don't worry."
Kaleb immediately put it on his list of things to worry about, because when adults said something would be fine and not to worry about it, it actually meant they didn't know, didn't care, or both. His dad tipped his cap forward and scratched his head. They made their way to the tank (it would never be called a "pond" again). Marcie was gone before she could hear anyone call them the world's fanciest carp.
"Not even good eatin'," someone said, and someone else agreed.
--
Kaleb waited for six months. And in October, when the wind downtown smelled of incoming snow again, he filled his bathtub with cold water and stole his dad's biggest fishing net. Nobody questioned a ten year-old boy blazing through town on his bike with a fish in a garbage bag slung over his shoulder. Nobody got suspicious about the fishing net left next to the koi tank downtown. Nobody saw anything amiss with the slowly disappearing fish.
Kaleb's koi fish swiftly got transferred to his big sister's old lizard tank, because his mother refused to shower with a fish between her feet. Several koi got let loose in an abandoned limestone quarry. One of them supposedly celebrated Christmas eating algae out of an 1,100 gallon poly tank in the Jacobsen's cattle barn. One spent its winter months carousing with tilapia at a failed hydroponics venture. The last one, a wimpy little guy who was mostly white, save for an orangey-gold calico tail, found a home between jars of moonshine and got named Koi George.
--
In April, the original inhabitants returned. At first, furtively. And then, as everyone began to admit that they'd all stolen live animals from a public installation, they were reintroduced with no small amount of fanfare. Koi George yielded his title of Best-Named Fish to one Koi Polloi.
The escapees in the quarry didn't see fit to surface for the event, merely flashing their scales in deference from leagues below, and so replacements were sought. The first was a small brown perch, who immediately jumped out of the tank and had to be thrown back in. The second was a bluegill. Everyone agreed that the bluegill was the looker.
The net stayed next to the tank, just in case.
--
In July, during one of the longest heat waves in the town's history, the mayor's assistant, his wife, put a hand in the water and declared it was far too hot, and damned if she was going to clean up hundreds of gallons of fish stew. A shade tree was planted next to the tank. It blocked the view of the tank from anyone coming into town on the main road. Everyone agreed it was better to shade the fish than show them off, anyway.
--
That fall, leaves blew in and covered the water. Bushes were planted to catch the blowing leaves. Everyone agreed that the fish approved.
--
Years later, on another April Sunday morning, three dozen people crowded into the little grove created by a single shade tree and a ring of shrubs, and welcomed their koi back to the tank. Along with them came new fish; another bluegill, a muddy catfish that put up a fight, and a red Solo cup's worth of wiggly little lake chub.
And wherever that Marcie woman was, they hoped she knew she'd failed miserably in bringing tourists to this backwater town, but she'd accidentally succeeded in making the habitat much nicer for the locals.