Big Fish by Daniel Wallace Page A

he smiles.
    â€œCome in, William,” he says.
    â€œWell, you seem to be feeling better,” I say, sitting down in the chair beside his bed, the chair I’ve been sitting in every day for the last few weeks. In my father’s journey to the end of his life, this chair is the place I watch from.
    â€œI am feeling better,” he says, nodding, taking a deep breath as if to prove it. “I think I am.”
    But only today, for this moment on this day. There is no turning back now for my father. To get better now would take more than a miracle; it would take a written excuse from Zeus himself, signed in triplicate and sent to every other deity who might lay claim to my father’s withered body and soul.
    He is already a little bit dead, I think, if such a thing were possible; the metamorphosis that has occurred would be too much to believe if I hadn’t seen it myself. At first, small lesions appeared on his arms and legs. They were treated, but to no real effect. Then they appeared to heal on their own eventually—not, however, in a way we might have hoped for or expected. Instead of his soft, white skin with the long black hairs growing out of it like corn silk, his skin has become hard and shiny—indeed, almost scaly, like a second skin. Looking at him isn’t hard until you leave the room and see the photo sitting on the fireplace mantel. It was taken six or seven years ago on a beach in California, and when you look at it you can see—a man. He’s not a man in the same way now. He’s something else altogether.
    â€œNot good, really,” he says, revising himself. “I would n’t say good. But better.”
    â€œI just wondered what bothered Dr. Bennett,” I say. “He seemed really concerned when he came out of here.”
    My father nods.
    â€œHonestly,” he says, in a confidential tone, “I think it was my jokes.”
    â€œYour jokes?”
    â€œMy doctor jokes. I think he’d heard one too many,” and my father begins to recite his litany of tired old jokes:
    Doctor, doctor! I’ve only got 59 seconds to live. Hang on, I’ll be with you in a minute.
    Doctor, doctor! I keep thinking I’m a pair of curtains. Come on, pull yourself together.
    Doctor, doctor! My sister thinks she’s in a lift. Tell her to come in. I can’t. She doesn’t stop at this floor.
    Doctor, doctor! I feel like a goat. Stop acting like a little kid.
    Doctor, doctor! I think I’m shrinking. You’ll just have to be a little patient.
    â€œI know a million of ’em,” he says proudly.
    â€œI bet you do.”
    â€œI give him a couple every time he comes in here. But . . . I guess he heard one too many. I don’t think he has a very good sense of humor anyway,” he says. “Most doctors don’t.”
    â€œOr maybe he just wanted you to be straight with him,” I say.
    â€œStraight?”
    â€œStraightforward,” I say. “Just be your normal average guy and tell him what is bothering you, where it hurts.”
    â€œAh,” my father says. “As in, ‘Doctor, doctor! I’m dying, please cure me.’ Like that?”
    â€œLike that,” I say. “Sort of, but—”
    â€œBut we both know there is no cure for what I’ve got,” he says, the smile diminishing, his body falling deeper into the bed, the old fragility returning. “Reminds me of the Great Plague of ’33. No one knew what it was, or where it came from. One day everything seemed fine and the next—the strongest man in Ashland: dead. Died while eating his breakfast. Rigor mortis set in so quick his body froze right there at the kitchen table, spoon lifted halfway to his mouth. After him, a dozen died in an hour. Somehow, I was immune. I watched my neighbors fall to the ground as though their bodies had become suddenly and irrevocably vacant, as if—”
    â€œDad,” I say a couple