Koi Pond

Koi Pond
By John M. McNamara


      I draped my suit coat on a fence post and retrieved a short-handled fish net and a five-gallon plastic bucket from the garage. Sitting on the capstones of the pond wall, I stared at the four koi languidly swimming. The fountain bubbled in the center of the pond, the water splashing back down like frenzied percussion.

      Our house sets across a tree-lined street from a public park dominated by a shaded lagoon, which freezes in winter, hosting hockey games and neighborhood skating; during the summer children and adults fish for bass and bream beneath its gentle willows. When we bought our two-story Victorian, we installed a modest pond in the tiny backyard and stocked it with three-inch-long butterfly koi. They are beautiful, graceful fish, their silky scales patterned in splotches of glittering orange, luminous ebony and creamy white, their fanlike tails swiftly propelling them with an elegance attainable only in water. Having grown plump on twice-daily feedings, they now measure nearly eighteen inches in length. My wife read that their life expectancies could exceed fifty, even seventy years.

         On the patio beside the pond, dark emerald moss thrived between the slabs of New York bluestone. Several times over the years, when I wearied of the persistent maintenance and care of the pond and the measures I undertook to protect the fish from marauding raccoons, I threatened to dump the koi into the lagoon in the park across the street, but my wife consistently forbade it. She named each of the fish, assuming I could never countenance watching a named fish hooked and snatched from the pond by some eager angler.

         I dipped the bucket into the pond, filling it with murky water. The smell was pungent and primal, evidence that I’ve been neglecting the pond. Many of the water hyacinths and lilies have browned and need pruning. Tracking Smudge, the fish with the brilliant orange blemish behind its head, I whisked it with a swooshing motion from the pond and released its squirming form into the bucket. My body leaned from the weight as I lurched down the driveway, straining to keep the water from sloshing over the edge of the bucket. The oak beside the house had shed its leaves and last night’s rain plastered them to the concrete like an autumnal quilt.

         At the lagoon’s edge I lowered the bucket into the shallow water, tipping it until Smudge slithered away in a flash of iridescence and disappeared into the deeper water. Three times I repeated this trip, turned off the fountain, and then returned the bucket and the net to the garage, pausing before closing the door to dry my hands on a golf towel.

        Back in the house, I removed my shoes and slumped onto one of the two matching leather armchairs in the living room and listened to the imperfect silence of an empty house.