Summary

The anonymous first-person narrator questioned Catfish about his summer cleaning up suicides in Grand Rapids. When one of the other inmates learned of Catfish’s janitorial stint, Catfish became the de facto mess-cleaner in the prison as well. When prompted, Catfish told the narrator he would rather clean up suicides than showers, adding “After three or four, it’s no worse than—I don’t know—cleaning a bunch of fish” (131). Even Catfish’s former boss “ate Cheetos while [he] worked” (133).

The narrator had read Catfish’s court transcripts and remembered most that “the public defender put him on the stand in his own defense” (130). Catfish was serving time on the charge of killing his wife on a boat and sinking her body in the water. When the prosecutor asked what he did after dumping the body, he...