“Look—”, started Mehrzad, freeing a hand to point forward into the water.

“Yeah …”, Peter replied, keeping both hands on the net.

They saw flashes of blood-orange in the murky water before them.

Mehrzad stumbled in the muck of the ditch bottom as they hastily pressed toward the opposite net. They dragged one net between them through the water to the other net, which they propped up between the two posts they’d borrowed for the task. When they came to the standing net, they held the nets together and hoped to have trapped a fish. When they came together this time, they had nothing, so they climbed up the bank, walked back along the ditch, and tried again. They made three more sweeps before they trapped something.

Peter saw the fish thrashing and dove straightaway into the nets to tackle the fish between them. “Get the bag!”, he gasped from the surface as he wrestled the fish. Mehrzad pulled off the pack, and pulled out a trash sack. He unfolded it and dropped to his knees to cover the bulge in the net with the bag. With no small effort, they finally managed to get the net away from the fish, and remove it from the bag. They carried the bag, bulging with irrigation water, up the bank together. The fish whipped around in the bag like a giant goldfish.

When they got to Peter’s house, they rushed through the side gate in single file, and lowered the bag into the pond to allow the fish to adjust to the pond’s temperature. Each standing in the pond, they held the mouth of the bag open, and looked down at their prize. They exchanged triumphant grins, then gazed back down into the bag.