Feeding the Moonfish

Feeding the Moonfish Summary | Detailed Summary

Feeding the Moonfish is Barbara Wiechmann's one-act play about a boy and a girl drawn together by natural forces and the inevitability of destiny.

Late one night on a dock near a saltwater lake in Florida, a young man about twenty years old named Martin listens to the sound of female voices beckoning him closer to the water. The voices ask about his day, whether he is tired and what he is thinking about. Martin replies that he wants to see "him," but the voices insist that Martin first close his eyes and tell them that they're beautiful.

Martin insists that he wants to see "him," and the voices say that "he" will be here soon. Martin talks about his wish to fly and to fall into the clouds and tumble around effortlessly. Martin tells the voices that his real life is heavy and dark in contrast, and the voices tell him to put his hand in the water to cool off and then to reach farther and put his entire face in the water.

Martin knows that if he puts his face in the water, he will be able to see pieces of "him" floating around and getting stuck in the coral. The voices join Martin, and they describe walking to the end of the pier to watch the moonfish feed. Martin will also be able to see "him" better here in the dark.

Eden, a girl of sixteen, approaches Martin from the rear, asking what he is doing here. Martin is abrupt, thinking that Eden has observed his actions and his conversations with the voices. Eden works with Martin at a local restaurant and has stowed away in his car, hiding under a sleeping bag in order to see where Martin goes when he leaves work at night.

Eden would like to be friends, but Martin keeps to himself most of the time and does not appreciate the intrusion on his privacy tonight. Martin asks Eden to go home, but she contends that she could be murdered or raped trying to find her way home from such a remote area.

Eden does not share Martin's fascination with the decaying dock and the murky water, but then she notices the huge fish swirling around. Martin tells her that the fish are called moonfish, but Eden questions his veracity. Finally, Martin explains that the moonfish come to the surface of the water at night and suck on the dock under the light of the moon. Martin further explains that the moonfish instinctively know how to find the dock, even though it may be too dark to see it. The fish are pulled by the force of the moon and are single-minded in their quest for food once they are under the moon's spell.

Martin hopes that this explanation will satisfy Eden and that she will leave, but she wants to stay with Martin. His threats that Eden's mother will be worried do not faze the girl. Eden shares the fact that her mother is in Sing Sing prison and that her grandmother is kept under security at a nursing home for killing Eden's stepfather. Eden is living in Florida with her aunt because she has no other family up north.

Martin is incredulous about the story, but Eden reveals that her mother and grandmother killed her stepfather by beating him with a waffle iron and an iron skillet. This line of conversation makes Martin uncomfortable, and he suggests once more that Eden go home. Eden moves closer to Martin and wants to know if there are forces moving between them.

Eden tries to kiss Martin, and he pulls away, rejecting her and her ideas about powerful outside forces pulling them together. Martin claims that Eden is just lonely, and she replies that Martin is lonely as well. She starts to leave but Martin calls her back. The moonfish voices come again and beckon Martin to look into the water again, but Martin is too preoccupied with Eden's safety out in the darkness. The voices tell Martin that "nothing can happen you don't want to happen. If you make the pictures."

The voices come again and tell Martin to watch for "his" shadow at the end of the pier and to see the moonfish feed. Eden unexpectedly returns carrying a can of beer for both her and Martin, and he reprimands her for stealing from the restaurant. As they sit quietly on the dock, Eden shares her affinity for the night and its ability to make people open up more.

Martin turns the conversation to days gone by on the dock. He used to see things floating by all the time, including all types of dead fish. In the past, fishermen would come and hunt sharks and leave their carcasses to rot in the sun. For some reason, though, the moonfish are returning.

Eden abruptly changes the subject to the topic of how people pass their time in prison. Eden worries about her mother having enough to do because before she was locked up her mother was always very busy. At one time, Eden sent her mother yarn and knitting needles, but the needles were taken away because they were considered to be lethal weapons.

Eden shares more of her past with Martin and tells him that her stepfather used to beat her mother severely. One day, he was choking her, and she hit him with the waffle iron. Eden's grandmother dealt the final deathblow with an iron skillet. Eden admits that her stepfather never beat her because she was not his biological daughter.

Eden remembers the unreality of the day of the murder. She was called out of class over the P.A. system and instructed to report to the office, and everyone in the school assumed that Eden had been caught with drugs. The women in the office bluntly informed her that her stepfather had been killed by a waffle iron, and they provided a release so that she could go home. The next few weeks were a blur of police questioning and alienation at school, which culminated in her being sent to Florida to live with her Aunt Inez.

Eden begins to get hysterical, and Martin tries to calm her. She persists in her frantic mood, not understanding why Martin will not befriend her. After she thinks about it, Eden tells Martin that she does not blame him because there is no way to understand all the disgusting things she has witnessed in her life.

Martin assures Eden that she has no exclusive rights on seeing disgusting things in life, and then he changes the subject to Eden's inappropriate behavior with all the men at the restaurant. Eden challenges this statement with knowledge of Martin's own inappropriate behavior with one girl in particular. The two argue, and Eden finally reveals that she knows about the drunken girl who fell in the water and drowned while Martin stood by and watched. Martin raises his arm to strike Eden but stops himself in time.

Eden is not bothered that Martin does not think about her one way or the other because this is the same way her stepfather behaved toward her mother. Eden's stepfather would beat her mother and be unfaithful to her, but "in the long run it was her. She weren't just nothing to him. She was it. She was his living end."

Martin is incredulous about this due to the fact that the woman killed him, but Eden adamantly defends the love between her parents. The pull between the two of them was so strong that she would have killed him at some point just to possess him completely. There was nothing they could do to change the situation due to the natural forces and the emotional pain that accompanied them.

To further the point, Eden tells Martin that there is nothing he can do or has done to make her change how she feels about him. Martin begins to soften toward Eden and asks about how it is to live up north. Martin would like to travel someday, and Eden asks to go along. Martin feels paralyzed to stay in this place. The pictures in his mind when he comes to the dock reveal a place that is cool and clear where he can see through the crystal water all the way down to the white sand on the bottom.

Martin laments that the dock is not the same as it was when his father brought him here as a little child to see all the different kinds of fish. Martin used to be particularly fascinated with the moonfish that would swim around and around until "they became one silver river wrapped around the dock."

Martin declares that he can hear the moonfish talking to him, but Eden cannot hear a thing. She suggests that she and Martin sleep on the dock because it is getting late. Martin begins to tell Eden about a recurring dream about "him," Martin's father. In the dream, Martin's father picks him up as if he were a little boy and carries Martin to the end of the dock. Then, he points out a moonless sky and a sea with no tide.

Martin's father begins to call the moonfish, which come in spite of the moonless sky, and Martin is overwhelmed by their silver beauty. The voices join Martin in repeating his father's dream words of how the two of them will watch the moonfish kiss the dock in the moonlight.

In the dream, Martin's father cuts his own throat, and Martin pushes the lifeless body into the water, where the fish immediately gather to devour the dead flesh. Martin shares the fact that his father committed suicide when Martin's mother left him.

Eden is overcome with tenderness for Martin and asks him to brush her long hair, which he does while talking about the pent up rage that still boils inside him. Eden tells Martin once more that there is nothing he could do that would ever change the way she feels about him. Eden places Martin's hand on her breast, and he moves it to her throat, which he caresses tenderly while telling Eden how beautiful she is.