MARCH 1997
more Some Fly
During these morning hours
her mind could easily skip over how strongly she had protested, only days
before, having to go out into the yard to dig worms with her father after
a full day's watering. She could even forget that she didn't really like
fish much once they were caught or being out in the boat too long when her
parents made her go out with them. At this point she had only recently convinced
her parents that she was old enough to stay on shore alone in the car while
they spent the morning fishing. And she was both thrilled and terrified
at the prospect of this independence. She did make them promise, however,
that they wouldn't row out too far so that when the sun came up she could
run to the edge of the bank and find them, so she could wave. If she couldn't
find them right away her eight-year-old bravery would dissolve and she would
become frantic until she could finally pick them out from among the two
or three other rented row boats floating quietly on the stillness of the
lake. When they finally saw her jumping up and down and madly waving, they
would always wave back just like it was some great surprise for them to
see someone they knew on shore waving out to them.
In preparation for these
trips her father would count the worms and gather the fishing poles. And
he might spend hours re-dressing his rigs as he fondly referred to them.
These were his fishing poles and all the bright bobbles, bobbers and the
heavy weights and sinkers that went with them. But it was his reel that
he loved most and he always saved its preparation for last. He'd tinker
with it using pipe cleaners and some kind of oil to service its many crevices
and moving parts. When finally it was shiny and perfectly clean he would
attach it to his pole, looking at it intently for a moment or two. Then
taking a stance he would go through the motions of casting out and reeling
in his line. Bringing his arm and pole back as if they were one, he would
make one smooth gliding motion and then at just the right moment he would
snap his wrist and in his eyes you could see his imaginary line as it sailed
across the living room landing in exactly the right place. When this was
done he would place his hand gently on his fishing reel turning it one revolution
after the other rhythmically moving it through its paces and all the time
it would be making these smooth clicking noises in easy steady motions.
At the end of it all a slight smile would appear just at the corner of his
lips, one which she believed he thought no one else could see. It was an
inside, self-satisfied smile that relayed shades of a secret. The girl believed
that fishermen had secrets mined from the power of concentration and the
ability to sit long hours without moving, that had to do with luck, timing,
skill and just the right bait. With that look she knew he was planning to
catch a hundred of somethingcould be crappie, perch, bass or catfish.
Whatever it was destined to be, he would bring it up from the bottom of
the lake flipping and flapping big fat gray and shiny.
He gathered worms, jars of shammy skins and
pale pink fish eggs. This was the bait for bottom-fishing. And her familyevery
last one of them from aunts and uncles to grandparentswere bottom-fishermen.
They'd cast out their lines deep down onto the lake's floor where the fish
swam in the shadows while grazing off the underwater murky plains. Of the
fish they caught, catfish were her least favorite. They were ugly, thick-skinned
wide-mouth fish with whiskers and spiky sharp fins that you could barely
see. After being caught catfish hardly ever died right away. Most times
they would swim around in the bucket trying to fight with the other fish
or anyone who was foolish enough to plunge a hand in without paying attention.
But, whenever Bobby maligned the catfish, her grandfather, who would often
accompany them on these trips, would never fail to remind her that she'd
be ugly too, if she had to be down there swimming around on the bottom of
the lake all day. Raising an eyebrow he'd say wryly, "And Missy,
there ain't a damn thing wrong with being ugly. And besides, a catfish is
the only thing a Negro ain't never had to fight nobody for, so I'm obligated
to catch as many as I can."
Lakes were always their
destination, big deep green lakes, like Camel Lake, where they were going
this time. She remembered her grandfather saying that Camel Lake was so
deep that it didn't even have a bottom, it just went on and on. Story had
it, he'd say, "when anyone fell in, all that deep cold water just
held the bodies down so you'd never see 'em again. And, they wouldn't even
drag for 'em, there just wasn't no need."
Each time her grandfather
repeated this story, and invariably he did, she'd be filled with a mixture
of fascination and dread. And, it was this sense of mystery that followed
her out into the boat on the lake. Leaning carefully over the side she'd
stare as hard as she could down into the depths of the lake, down through
slated green aqueous sheets to see if she could figure out the nature of
this bottomlessness. She'd peer down into the water as if waiting for a
sign or until she felt like she was going to lose consciousness. Curiously
enough this was the same feeling she got whenever she thought about God
and forever, which was something she did fairly often, especially when she
found herself sitting quietly on her front porch alone. Fixing on a point
in her mind she'd move out slowly through her imaginings from the porch
to the sky, from the sky to the stars, from the stars to the galaxy, pausing
briefly at each point to carefully picture her next destination. Finally
she would arrive at this place that was like this nothingness, which seemed
to be wrapped in a dome of silence. And God and forever, she supposed, was
behind all of this. On these occasions she sensed that she was just this
side of understanding something crucial if only she could hold on and not
get lost in her thinking. It was like dancing, trying to keep step in time
and memory. These states of near revelation could leave her breathless which
was exactly how she felt whenever she was out in the boat pondering that
bottomless lake.
It was precisely at these
moments of mysterious impasse when she thought her family ought to seriously
consider giving up bottom-fishing and take up fly-fishing like her father
was always promising. Far as she could tell from his stories and the pictures
she saw in his sportsman's magazines it had all the advantages associated
with a fishing trip and none of the perils. She could recall evenings when
her father would sit for hours in front of the television silently tying
flies, like he was just practicing for some undetermined future fly-fishing
time. If he was in the mood, he would talk to her. And she loved nothing
better than to catch him in a place where he would allow her to cajole him,
to pull him out from that dark recess where he so often seemed to go. Best
of all, if the mood was just right and he was willing he would tell stories
for hours or let her quiz him on whatever curious topic she was caught on
at the time.
She would start in, "What
you doin' Daddy?" Or, "What are those?" He'd say,
"These is flies Bobby, use these for fly-fishin', don't need no
worms. One of these days," he'd say, "me and your mother
goin' to go fly-fishin'. Yes sir, we're goin' to get all geared up and go
down to one of them rivers and catch us some steelhead." She knew
he meant as soon as he could afford to get all geared up. He'd say, "This
rich people fishin' Bobby, and you got to have the right gear."
And sure enough she'd seen pictures in her father's sportsman magazines
of these tall fisherman casting out into clear running streams which ran
bubbling over rocks and the sun was always out. These were fishermen dressed
from head to toe in rubber suits sporting fancy hip boots. And while she
had personally never seen a steelhead this was proof enough for her that
someone had found a way around bottomless lakes.
In many ways she imagined
fly-fishing to be the flip side of bottom-fishing. In fly-fishing she imagined
fishermen without boats, who were never cold, catching fish without worms,
as they leaped and swam through light filled rivers and steams of crystal
clear waterand all with visible bottoms. These were fish that
lived by the light who swam up stream and only ate colorful flies. She imagined
that they didn't even have guts like the fish her family caught.
A few seconds later she'd
query, "Well if fly-fishing is rich people fishing, is what we do
poor people fishing?" He'd look at her with mock impatience. Shaking
his head he would lean forward to peer into the other room to see if her
mother was listening. When he was sure she was within earshot he would answer
with a long drawn out "Nooo. . .Bobby we fish like we do because
of your mother and all them other crazy Louisiana country people that goes
with us (meaning her grandparents Doc and Ethel Lee). It's cause I'm a Florida
boy (said flarida) that I got some sense, and that I got other ideas
about fishin'." Her mother, taking the bait, would call back from
the kitchen, "Your father don't know no more about a fly-fish than
he does about the Man in the Moon." With her mother's retort in
place the pace was set. And she could feel them slip down into that space
where they would go sometime if humor and life allowed and when it did,
it was life made into perfect theater.
She'd say to her father,
"So Doc and Ethel Lee the reason we have to go lake fishin' and
can't go fly-fishin?" "Well, Bobby as far as I can tell Doc loves
a catfish about as good as does Ethel Lee. And believe you meyou
ain't goin' to convince that Negro that fishin' is anything different from
catchin' a catfish. Anyway," he'd say, "you can't teach nobody
from Louisiana nothin'. Just look here, I been with your mother all these
years and I ain't taught her nothin' yet." At this point, he would
set his lips and shake his head as if he had happened upon some truth that
no one in the world could possibly deny. She could hear her mother laughing
from the kitchen saying, "Now, Wright (she always called him
by his surname) you ought to be ashamed of yourself talkin' about daddy
like that. I'm goin' tell him." To this her father shot back over
his shoulder, "Lula Mae, dear heart, I want you tell that old daddy
of yours exactly what I said, which is that he is a catfishin' son-of-a-bitchand
believe you me that old man ain't goin' to have no trouble with the truth."
Worrying out loud Bobby
took the next step. Narrowing her eyes down until her brows nearly touched
the top of her eyelashes, she said, "So daddy, don't you think mommy's
too short to fly fish?" Considering her mother's short round frame
she worried that her mother might be too small and low to the ground to
stand up firmly in any river. She had visions of her mother in a head to
toe rubber suit being up-ended by the river, and with it just floating off
with her like she was some little rubber bobber. For certainly, she had
never seen anyone in her father's magazines who seemed so likely as her
mother to have such a problem. When she said this to her father he let out
a low bemused chortle that gently shook his whole body. Because he could
see it too. He said, "Bobby you ain't wrong about thatbut
don't worry none about your mother. You know we'll just tie a rope around
her and attach it to tree. That way, she won't go too far and when we ready
to go we'll just pull her back in and throw her in the back of the truck
with the rest of the fish." With that resolved Bobby added, "Well
I think we better do it to Ethel Lee too cause she ain't no bigger than
mommy." Thinking about it for a second or two, he said, "You
right about that cause with the mood that old woman's gonna be in when we
put out in the middle of some river talkin' about some fly-fishin'well,
she's gonna be so mad she gonna need to be tied to somethin'."
With that said, they would
all hit the floor laughing long and hard, until they were overtaken by the
physical demands of laughter and the irony of their own predicament. Words
played out like dancing, and it was rapture to catch each other's dreams
filtered and transformed through the common lens this fishing place engendered.
This was good time and if times were good, they could go on like this for
hours weaving one tale into the other with each one more fantastic than
the last.
Fishing became a country,
a place to go in the head and heart, an instrument for dreaming together.
She knew this. And thus, she employed herself to listen, to watch, to catch
their rhythm and match it by interjecting or underscoring just the right
word and phrase to punctuate their play, to hold them in this country, as
long as she could, where their energy seemed weightless, and the stresses
of their daily lives evaporated.
When they were in that
place, there was always enough of everything; food, gas, heating oil, and
furniture payments. It was a place where together they knew exactly how
to prepare and what to plan for. And they were in charge of the mystery
and all its possible fruit. If only they could dwell there. It would be
like an endless preparation for the best trip, away from bottomless lakes
up toward a perfect state of light and breathlessness which she was certain
had to feel something like finding God and forever.
© The Raven Chronicles 1997