Beneath the water, Tyson’s feet looked as white as a fish’s underside. Lake Michigan held no waves, but the wind rippled its teal surface. The sand glowed in the morning sun and held a panoply of treasure: yellowed dune grass, seagull feathers, driftwood, and tan stones constellating the shore. He would have been content to wade along it.

            But when he saw a man walking up the coast, Tyson decided to go fishing in South Lake. He buttoned ends of his nylon shirt together, covering his chest, and tightened the straps on his backpack. He cut east through the marram grass, the sand caking on his feet. Dragonflies and monarchs zipped low over the grasses. He climbed a hill and entered the forest. Recognizing a trail, he ventured north, the bur oaks occluding his view of Lake Michigan and the man. Tyson cut east off the trail and down a hill, navigating prickers and ferns until he caught the low path, which ran to Wishart Drive. He followed it north along a swampy bank, slapping the mosquitoes on the back of his neck and exposed feet.

            He needed to urinate. He looked up and down the trail. People never came from the Wishart side, and the trail leading to Middle Lake retained its morning vacancy. Still, he hid himself behind a sassafras trunk and unbuttoned and froze, because what if the man had climbed over the dune and was watching? But he knew that was ridiculous and shook his head and pissed over the tufted loosestrife and its flowers, swatting at another mosquito.

            The swamp’s humid breath wet his brow. He trudged toward South Lake, looking for a break in the trees, a place he could fish without a battalion of cattails blocking him. When he found a spot, he leaned his backpack against a cottonwood and produced his pole from the side pocket. He twisted it together, swatting at more mosquitoes. The line made a wiry cloud at the bottom of the mesh. It took him minutes to uncoil and thirty seconds to fasten on a hook. He was good at tying knots—better than he was at untangling them.

            He rolled a log to find white grubs, hooked one, and cast the line into the water. The mosquitoes were merciless. He brushed his neck with the back of his hand. He wished he’d brought his head net, but he’d thought he’d spend the morning on the shore. A twig snapped in the woods. He peered over his shoulder to ensure the man from the beach had not followed him.

            The line jerked; the pole bent. He reeled, digging his heels into the bank, fighting whatever was on the other end. It must be big. He pictured a barracuda, a swamp python, a leviathan, a monster. He yanked the pole. A midsize fish flopped onto the bank. His hook pierced its lip; the skin around its gills squeezed and released. It lay on its side, its head and tail curled skyward in a gasping concavity. It didn’t blink.

            He let it quiver, not wanting to club it. He waited until it looked dead and scooped it from the dirt. It was slimy. All of its muscles fired, the fish squirming out of his grip back onto the bank. He swore. He didn’t like anything slimy and wet and alive.

            It suffocated and died with its eye open. Tyson swatted at the mosquitoes on his face and grabbed the corpse up by the tailfin. He didn’t know it was a carp, a bottom feeder, a thing most fishermen would toss back into the swamp and never dream of eating. He only knew that to become a survivalist, he must be willing to open something. He slid his knife from his pocket and flicked out the blade. Blood crusted on it, from the last flesh into which he’d cut.

            He lay the fish on the ground and squatted, brushing mosquitoes from his neck. The library book had said to make an incision at the anus and cut toward the head in a line, veering to the gills at the last. He tapped the carp with the butt of the knife to ensure it was dead. Then he poked the point of the blade into the anus. The carp’s eye stared at him. He felt sick. He took a breath and made the incision. The anus tore, some organ sac filling the air with the smell of shit. Black flies flocked to the fish. Mosquitoes roosted on the back of his neck and his cheeks.

            He held the body, gripping its sides, dragging the knife in a proximal slice. A line of blood and fecal matter trailed from the cut. Its wide eye didn’t close. His vision blurred. He wiped his eyes in the crook of his elbow. He cut along the white belly, the smell strengthening, the viscera coiling in the dirt like some liquid serpent. He wanted to retrieve the fillet and put it in a plastic bag to grill later. But there were the flies and the cut white belly and the insides spilled on the ground and the blood and the shit and the torn anus and one wide eye still looking at him. His hands shook. He couldn’t hold the knife still. He dunked it in the water, folded closed the blade, and clipped it back in his pocket.

            “You’re a fish,” he said. “You’re a fish, goddammit.”

            But it was dead, and he was the reason its insides were outside of it. He backed away from the body. Without thinking, he swatted again at the mosquitoes. A wet sensation told him he’d left the fish’s blood and shit on the back of his neck. He felt disgusting. He wanted to head over the dunes, strip to his underwear, and wash himself clean of the sweat and shit and blood in the freshwater of Lake Michigan. But the man might be on the beach.