issue-for surely old Sagamore would roll over in his grave to hear his former master espousing canine restraints of any kind; Sagamore had run free, to the end. But it was not the leash law Mr. Fish really cared about; it was Scrooge-a plum part, ruined (in Mr. Fish's view) by amateur ghosts.
'The ghosts are only the beginning of what's wrong,' Dan said. 'By the end of the play, the audience is going to be rooting for Tiny Tim to die-someone might even rush the stage and kill that brat with his crutch.' Dan was still disappointed that he could not entice Owen to play the plucky cripple, but the little Lord Jesus was unmoved by Dan's pleas.
'What wretched ghosts!' Mr. Fish whined. The first ghost, Marley's Ghost, was a terrible ham from the Gravesend Academy English Department; Mr. Early embraced every part that Dan gave him as if he were King Lear- madness and tragedy fueled his every action, a wild melancholy spilled from him in disgusting fits and seizures. ' 'I am here tonight to warn you,' ' Mr. Early tells Mr. Fish, ' 'that you have yet a chance and hope of escaping my fate . . .' ' all the while unwrapping the bandage that dead men wear to keep their lower jaws from dropping on their chests.
' 'You were always a good friend to me,' ' Mr. Fish tells Mr. Early, but Mr. Early has become entangled in his jaw bandage, the unwinding of which has caused him to forget his lines.
' 'You will be haunted by ... Four Spirits,' ' Mr. Early says; Mr. Fish shuts his eyes.
'Three, not Four!' Dan cries.
'But aren't I the fourth?' Mr. Early asks.
'You're the first!' Mr. Fish tells him.
'But there are three others,' Mr. Early says.
'Jesus Christ!' Dan says. But Marley's Ghost was not as bad as the Ghost of Christmas Past, an irritating young woman who was a member of the Town Library Board and who wore men's clothes and chain-smoked, aggressively; and she was not as bad as the Ghost of Christmas Present, Mr. Kenmore, a butcher at our local A&P, who (Mr. Fish said) smelled like raw chicken and shut his eyes whenever Mr. Fish spoke-Mr. Kenmore needed to concentrate with such fervor on his own role that he found Scrooge's presence a distraction. And none of them was as bad as the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come-Mr. Morrison, our mailman, who had looked so perfect for the part. He was a tall, thin, lugubrious presence; a sourness radiated from him-dogs not only refrained from biting him, they slunk away from him; they must have known that the taste of him was as toxic as a toad's. He had a gloomy, detached quality that Dan had imagined would be perfect for the grim, final phantom-but when Mr. Morrison discovered that he had no lines, that the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come never speaks, he became contemptuous of the part; he threatened to quit, but then remained in the role with a vengeance, sneering and scoffing at poor Scrooge's questions, and leering at the audience, attempting to seize their attention from Mr. Fish (as if to accuse Dan, and Dickens, of idiocy-for denying this most important spirit the power of speech). No one could remember Mr. Morrison ever speaking-as a mailman-and yet, as a harbinger of doom, the poor man clearly felt he had much to say. But the deepest failure was that none of these ghosts was frightening. 'How can I be Scrooge if I'm not frightened?' Mr. Fish asked Dan.
'You're an actor, you gotta fake it,' Dan said. To my thinking, which was silent, Mrs. Walker's legs were again wasted-in the part of Tiny Tim's mother. Poor Mr. Fish. I never knew what he did for a living. He was Sagamore's master, he was the good guy in Angel Street-at the end, he took my mother by the aim-he was the unfaithful husband in The Constant Wife, he was Scrooge. But what did he do never knew. I could have asked Dan; I still could. But Mr. Fish was the quintessential neighbor; he was all neighbors-all dog owners, all the friendly faces from familiar backyards, all the hands on your shoulders at your mother's funeral, I don't remember if he had a wife. I don't even remember what he looked like, but he manifested the fussy concentration of a man about to pick up a fallen leaf; he was all rakers of all lawns, all snow-shovelers of all sidewalks. And although he began the Christmas season as an unfrightened Scrooge, I saw Mr. Fish when he was frightened, too. I also saw him when he was young and carefree, which is how he appeared to me before the death of Sagamore. I remember a
brilliant September afternoon when the maples on Front Street were starting to turn yellow and red; above the crisp, white clapboards and the slate rooflines of the houses, the redder maples appeared to be drawing blood from the ground. Mr. Fish had no children but he enjoyed throwing and kicking a football, and on those blue-sky, fall afternoons, he cajoled Owen and me to play football with him; Owen and I didn't care for the sport-except for those times when we could include Sagamore in the game. Sagamore, like many a Labrador, was a mindless retriever of balls, and it was fun to watch him try to pick up the football in his mouth; he would straddle the ball with his fore-paws, pin it to the ground with his chest, but he never quite succeeded in fitting the ball in his mouth. He would coat the ball with slobber, making it exceedingly difficult to pass and catch, and ruining what Mr. Fish referred to as the aesthetics of the game. But the game had no aesthetics that were available to Owen Meany and me; I could not master the spiral pass, and Owen's hand was so small that he refused to throw the ball at all-he only kicked it. The ferocity with which Sagamore tried to contain the ball in his mouth and the efforts we made to keep the ball away from him were the most interesting aspects of the sport to Owen and me-but Mr. Fish took the perfection of passing and catching quite seriously.
'This will be more fun when you boys get a little older,' he used to say, as the ball rolled under the privet, or wobbled into my grandmother's rose beds, and Owen and I purposely fumbled in front of Sagamore-such was our pleasure in watching the dog lunge and drool, lunge and
