Toad was written at the moment just before Dunn and Sally Gunnar’s paths irreconcilably diverged. After finishing her manuscript, Dunn left Sally in her hermit’s house, like a stillborn in a jar, and then swaggered out to write her masterpiece. Katherine Dunn died in 2016. In this book, Sally gets her resurrection.

I

The goldfish, the pink chaise, the fly

I’ve been out in the kitchen watching the goldfish. They live in an old gallon pickle jug on the red breakfast table. There is a shaded lamp beside them that throws a soft yellow light over their movement. They dance. The light streams on their metallic bodies. I tap the glass sometimes to see them swerve and scutter into the weeds. They are stupid, of course, but still I imagine that they have built an intricate religion to account for me, for the unpredictability of the net that hauls them gasping into a dull saucepan and leaves them flicking nervously till they are poured back into the pickle jug, now miraculously free of slime. There may be an incantation to solicit food, a ritual to greet the lamp in the morning and the sudden darkness when I turn it off on my way to bed. It seems appropriate that I should be a godhead to goldfish. They have nothing to do but conjure reasons, and since the reasons are all outside of the jug what form could they take but religion? I am sure they are monotheistic. This may be my vanity, but the space between their eyes seems too narrow to accommodate more than one image. Inside the jug they are quite free. They turn and rise and sink to suit themselves. But when I feel like cleaning the bowl, out they come.

So I was sitting out there at the table watching the goldfish, waiting for my bread to rise, smoking, rubbing the furrows in my forehead with an index finger, when I remembered my old frying pan theory.