After that first walk home by way of the ditch, Armen favored that route, having met no junior highwaymen along the way.
One afternoon, he encountered a boy he knew from school sitting on the bank of the ditch, with a fishing pole and a line in the water. The pole was propped up on two twigs, each cut just beyond their forks to form cradles for the pole.
“Hi Peter,” Armen opened.
“Hi Armen,” the boy replied. He seemed wary to Armen.
Armen stood in place for a moment, looking over his classmate, rummaged through his vocabulary, and then asked, “Do you apprehend many fish?”
Oniwakamaru, about to kill the giant carp
Peter began to reply, then hesitated.
“Uh catch—do you catch many?” Armen corrected.
“Sure.”
“Really? What?”
“Carp.”
“Do you consume carp?”
Peter paused thoughtfully, then replied “No. I’m not allowed to eat anything out of the canal.”
Armen stood and looked down into the water. He looked at the open can of sweet corn by Peter’s side.
“What use do you do make of the fish?”
Peter translated Armen’s question and answered, “I fertilize my garden with them.”
“You possess a garden? I’ve created a garden too.”
“Yeah?” Peter replied suspiciously.
“Yeah. I planted corn and cantaloupe and other crops.”
Armen looked at the pole and the makeshift stand, and asked, “Why don’t you just hold the pole with your hand?”
“Sometimes you have to wait a long time for carp to bite. … And you don’t want to disturb the bait.”
Armen paused. He watched. Once he realized that this encounter had interrupted his schedule, he spluttered out, “Ok. … Bye.” He could feel his bladder prodding him on.
“Bye.”
The following day, Armen approached Peter at recess.
“Did you catch anything?”
Peter replied with a slanted nod.
Armen continued, “I think I might need some fertilizer for my garden. Do you think I could fish on your canal?”
“It’s not my canal. … Sure.”
A couple of days later, Armen watched Peter reel in a big grey carp. Armen then asked Peter if he could watch what Peter did with the fish. The boys got up and walked to Peter’s house and walked around the side to the back yard. Peter then dropped the fish on a board, walked into the garage and returned with a hatchet, which he used to chop up the large fish. He then took the board over to a dark, steaming pile, and with hatchet for a spoon, mixed the fish in.
Armen noticed a pond in the garden, and wandered over to it. He spotted a large, red-orange and black fish in the pond. The colors of the fish intermingled in the partly shaded, sun-sprinkled pond to give the impression of underwater flames.
Armen asked across the yard, “what kind of fish is this?”
“It’s a koi. I think they call it ‘hi utsuri’ in Japanese.”
“You speak Japanese?”
“No. I’m Chinese. Well—I mean, I don’t really speak Chinese either.”
“Wow … Where’d you obtain it?”
Peter hesitated before confessing, “the canal.”
“The canal?”
Peter nodded, but he qualified the nod, adding, “I don’t know if there are any more in there.”