The Dying Light – VI
Mom and I continued with the business. The drought years were soon replaced by some wet years. The streams ran full of water and trout, and the flocks of fishermen returned. My old man did not return.
I met a woman too. She came into the store one April day just before the beginning of trout season to buy some flies. With long flowing dirty-blonde hair, an easy manner, and a smile that lit up a room, I was smitten almost immediately. Gail had just moved back to the area to start up her own fly-fishing guide service. Like me, she had been disillusioned with a job and was looking to start fresh in what she liked to call “trout country.”
Up till this point, I had kept out of relationships. I guess I didn’t want to end up like my parents.
“Where have you been all my life?” I said.
We had just made love on a moonlit night along the banks of Miller’s Creek. By now, we were many months into the relationship, and I was seriously thinking of asking Gail to marry me.
“When someone says something as cliché as that, it must mean he’s ready to tie the knot.”
“Well … what do you think?” I said.
“Of what?”
She nudged me with her foot.
“You know what? Let’s just do it.”
“Well …”
“C’mon Mr. Impulsive,” she said, giving me a harder nudge with her foot. “We’ll just do it. A quickie elopement in Maryland. No fuss. No big ceremony.”
And so, we did.
The evening of the day of the elopement, I called first mom and later my old man to give them the news.
Mom couldn’t have been happier. From the time she met Gail, my mom liked her. She felt it was about time I met someone to spend the rest of my life with.
My old man was a different story.
Marriages, he said, are tricky deals.
“Hell. Look at your mother and me.”
“Dad. I know you have another family, another wife.”
Just like that, I’d blurted it out.
He didn’t respond. I heard muffled noises, like the crumpling of paper, in my phone.
“Look. Your mother was never easy to live with. And your grandmother … I mean hell Billy … the two of them.”
“What are you saying dad?”
“Nothing.”
“Look,” he said. “You could have invited me to the ceremony.”
“It was an elopement dad. We didn’t invite anyone.”
“What … a shotgun marriage?”
That caused us both to laugh.
“So, who is this woman?” he said.
“Just someone I met and now love and plan to stay with …”
“For the rest of your life?”
“That’s the plan.”
“Must be one hell of a girl.”
“She is.”
“I’d like to meet her.”
“Sure. We’ll go fishing.”
“Fishing?”
“Sure. She fishes. As a matter of fact, she’s one hell of an angler. Fishes rings around me.”
“That isn’t saying much son. You’re fishing skills always left a bit to be desired.”
I should have let it go, but I couldn’t. Anger had suddenly overcome me. Too often, I had allowed this man to do and say what he wanted. And he had given me such an opening. I couldn’t help myself.
“It might have helped if you were around half the time to teach me some of your fishing strategies, some of your secret tactics. Then again, I guess I did learn some of your secrets.”
“What can I say son … I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry? You’re sorry? That’s it?”
“What do you want me to say?”
“I don’t know dad. I don’t know.”
It would be a few years after that phone call with my old man before I would again see him. As usual, he turned up unexpectedly, this time not at my mom’s, but my house on a mid-May day.
In those years since my old man had bailed out on us at the store, my mom had tried without success to get a divorce from him. But for whatever reason, my old man didn’t want one.
But as the years went by and she failed to secure a divorce, she resigned herself to remaining, as she put it, “a happily married woman.”
“Happily married mom?” I said.
“Sure. Happily married as long as that bigamist is out of my life.”
He was old when he returned. The cocksure man with the salesman’s glib tongue was mostly a memory. It was kind of sad really. He walked slowly now and talked slowly. When he appeared at our front door, I hardly recognized the stooped figure. There he was, in an old floppy fishing hat, tattered vest, holding a fly rod, the stub of a cigar clenched between his teeth.
“Are we going to go fishing or what?” They were the first words out of his mouth.
“Fishing?”
“Sure. You and that little lady of yours. I hear she’s the real deal. A hell of an angler. I’d like to see that for myself.”
I wasn’t surprised that my old man would prove to be such a hit with my wife. Never mind that I had told her everything about him, warts and all. My old man, for all his faults, was a charmer, a hit with the ladies.
Still, she was reluctant to accompany us fishing on Miller’s Creek the next day.
“Just you two need to go. Not me. A father and son reunion.”
My dad wouldn’t hear of it.
“No sir little lady,” he said. “I heard you’re the real deal out there on the stream, and I want to see for myself.”
We ended up at our favorite hole early that evening, the spot where my old man and I had caught all the trout during the Green Drake hatch years earlier. It was here we’d built the campfire and eaten the big one I’d caught after my old man had broken into the cabin, the same night mom had informed us that Nana was dead.
“We should have come earlier,” I said. “The March Browns were on earlier in the day.”
“That’s right,” Gail said.
“Never mind the March Browns,” my old man said. He gazed up at the sky. “The dying light.”
“Best time to go fishing for trout,” I said.
Gail allowed herself a puzzled look.
I guess I expected a competition, for my old man to show us he was the best angler among us and the best damn fisherman Miller’s Creek had even seen. But age had seemed to bring concessions. He used a wading staff to creep into the shallow waters now, and there was an overall patience and deliberateness about him. And even after Gail had hooked three trout and I reeled in two, and he had yet to catch even one, he seemed unfazed, in no hurry at all to prove his angling expertise.
At one point, while preparing to cast his line, he stopped and gawked in admiration as Gail landed and brought to net a nice eighteen-inch brown trout.
“Yes sir. I guess you really are the real deal there Missy.”
“It’s Gail,” she said, managing a smile.
“Right you are. Right you are.”
The fishing began to slow down as the light faded. The buzz of cicadas filled the air, the pool before us, up till then alive with the occasional rises of trout, grew still.
My old man had not yet caught a trout.
“What do you think?” I asked of no one in particular.
“I think these fish have had enough of us,” Gail said.
“Bullshit,” my old man said. “This is when it gets good.” He had been sitting on a rock for the past ten minutes, spending much of that time pawing through a fly box and then fighting what appeared to be a losing battle to get a fly tied onto his leader in the fading light.
“Do you need a flashlight?”
He waved me off with a single swipe of his hand and started to rise, stumbling a bit as he got to his feet.
“I got the damn thing tied on.”
“What do you have on?”
“Green Drake. Number eight.”
“Green Drake?” I said.
“It’s too early for the Drakes,” Gail said. “They won’t be here for another week or more.”
“That shows what you know Missy.”
With his wading staff he steadied himself and made a few tentative steps into the shallow water. There was a rise of a fish on the far side of the pool, and a few moments later, another rise. My old man stared out at the dark waters of the creek. For what seemed like the longest time but was perhaps just moments, he waited.
He slowly raised his rod, then whipped it back and forth before shooting out line. I didn’t see his fly hit the water, nor follow its slow journey floating on the far side of the pool, but I heard the splash alright.
My old man yanked back his rod.
“Whoa,” Gail said. “That’s a big fish.”
“Goddamn right that’s a big fish,” he shouted, then emitting a shrill whistle.
“Don’t let him get away,” I shouted.
He didn’t.
After a ten-minute fight, my old man reeled in the biggest trout I had even seen caught from Miller’s Creek. It was a two-foot-long, deep-bellied brown trout with rounded dark speckles and a rich butter-colored underside.
“What a beautiful fish,” Gail said as we gathered around to get a close look at the fish.
“No Green Drakes huh?” my old man said. He gave Gail a wise-ass grin.
“What can I say?” she said.
He looked at me. “Let’s eat the son-of-a-bitch,” he said.
“Okay,” I said. “We’ll have trout for lunch tomorrow at our place.”
He shook his head. “I’m talking about now.” He pointed across the creek to the cabin.
Dad. That’s private property.
“Sure,” he said. “My private property.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I made a deal on the place. It’s mine.”
Gail and I looked at each other.
“At least it will be in another month.”
We just stared at my old man. “Well c’mon,” he said. “Let’s wade across the creek and build a fire. There’s nothing like freshly caught trout cooked over flames.”
From the short story, The Dying Light by Mike Reuther. Check out his author page at https://www.amazon.com/Books-Mike-Reuther/s?rh=n%3A283155%2Cp_27%3AMike+Reuther
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