The boy sat down on the rock shelf and settled into tying a daredevil spinner and a couple of weights onto the line on his father’s Zebco rod. This was his favourite spot, old Willie had shown it to him, before he died. Old gumboot Willie, and his Indian motorcycle, drunk as often as not, but a good fisherman. So was his Dad, but he worked a lot and didn’t have much time for fishing just lately.
He cast just over by the beaver dam, reeling in right away so as not to get snagged, not using a baby floater. His Dad was a fly-fisher, and the boy envied him his easy way with that long rod. He’d tried, and ended up snagging the back of his head, with his Dad laughing at him from the front porch. "Better stick to cast-fishing, boy." Dad was his hero, big old cow-milking muscles on his arms, kind of scary-looking except when he was in uniform.
The boy eventually pulled a few perch from the water, and threw them back in, along with a stupid sucker that gave him no fun at all. He sat down, and after sneaking a floater on the line, with one of the good night-crawlers his Dad and him had shocked out of the ground after dark the night before with a car battery and steel spikes, he ate the sandwich his Mom had given him as he ran down the porch to fetch the creel and worms from the shed. She’d been holding little Peter James Jr., his baby brother, in her arms. Petey, a baby he’d probably die for, if he had to.
As he sat, and tried not to think of the show he’d seen on TV last night, all about nuclear weapons and the cold war, whatever that was, he saw the line twitch, ever so slightly. Hey, got a hungry one eatin’ my worm... Then the line twitched again, and again, this time bending the rod he was holding in his left hand practically double. Ah, crap, if this’s another sucker...
I forgot the damn net - holy cow, here he comes, and he’s fighting like a bastard. Whups, Mom’d take a switch to me if she heard me say that one. Holy cow, holy cow, he just jumped, he’s huge, God’s sake. Why the hell didn’t I bring the net, shit, shit, shit - laughing now, can’t help it, I’m swearing worse’n Dad - here that bastard comes again, rainbow, holy cow, I got him, holy shit, lookit him...
Later that night, his Dad measured the trout, and it was 15 inches, nose to tail, and 5 and a half inches back to belly. He traced it out on packing paper, and told his son he’d make a frame for the tracing and hang it on the kitchen wall, right over there by the old oil stove. His big sister Rose sniffed and said, "So long as you don’t put it near my copper-tooling." Maggie thought it was great, and little Kim Elise hugged the boy, then stepped back and said, "You stink, Paul."
"So do you, baby-pants."
Later that summer, he taught Kim and Maggie how to spit like a boy, sharp and not a drop on the lips. Rose got in trouble for driving around with a guy in his car, and his Dad got real drunk and got in a bad fight with his Mom. And the boy went fishing, a lot, and caught perch and eels and suckers and now and then a good sized trout. He shot a chickadee with his BB gun, and never took a shot at an animal again, his heart was so broken, not even when he went hunting with his Dad in the snow and the trees and the hush of late fall and early winter. He was a gentle boy, and he loved to walk in the woods, and loved to listen while his Dad took him up trails and pointed to trees and said, "Birch. Alder. Maple. Oak."
Boys grow up. This boy did, and in his late teens a thing happened to him. He dropped acid and saw his girlfriend’s face turn to a skull. And he lost himself, then and there. His soul ran away. God said, "We’ll have to leave this one alone for awhile, he has so much to learn."
And he never went fishing again.
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