“Over there,” he yelled, motioning to a little clearing where the mountain dropped into the river. “That’s where we’re gonna’ catch your fish.”
I flashed him the best smile I could.
“You all right?”
“Yah.”
As we neared the steep, a breeze lifted and glided across our faces. The morning glow sunk into the bending water and then rose up and scattered across the breaking shoals. It splashed and shimmered against the rocks spraying white then clear into the sky, catching like diamonds.
“Where are we gonna’ put our stuff?” I inquired as I steadied myself against the steep grade.
“Here,” he said, grabbing and shifting my gear. “The water pulls harder than it looks. Let me go first and watch how I cross,” he added as he finished nestling my rod into the holding straps on my back pack.
After crossing, he waved me to the other side where the mountain relaxed and stretched into a tranquil flat. I held the rod and bag above my head and waded into the water which tugged steadily against my waist. I stumbled and lost my footing but regained balance and made it to the other side without losing anything.
“I almost lost it.”
“I told you to be careful. Come on. Let me tie your fly.”
I knew Mom put him up to asking me on this trip. We hadn’t fished together in over thirty years, since we were kids. Even then, he did most of the fishing. I was never patient enough.
“Here, hold this,” he commanded as he busied himself preparing the gear. While I watched him work, I started to half glance at the river and let the slack on the line go causing him to fumble the fly.
“Shit. My bad.”
“Damnit. Pay attention.”
I was glad he didn’t shy away from scolding me. The rest of the family had been acting spooked ever since I got home. While he returned his attention to tying the fly, I studied the long gray hairs mingled with the brown ones nestled beneath his hat. He was grayer than me, but not by much.
“Damn. Your hair is gray.”
He laughed and smiled. “So is yours.”
“It’s weird.”
“What?”
“Getting old.”
“Look, professor. I don’t go fishing to think about shit. I go fishing to not think about shit. Don’t get philosophical on me.”
We waded into the water silently. Between the two of us, I usually considered myself the more contemplative one, but in the water, beneath the quiet morning sun, my brother’s movements and concentration were devout, austere, nothing wasted, nothing added. He cast without pageantry. Under his narrow gaze, each movement connected to the next. As I watched him, he settled into a deep meditation, or a long poem, the likes of which I could never compose.
The water lightened and cleared as the sun moved overhead and above the ridgeline. I found a still, rippling pool and tried to cast to it, missing terribly each time. I kept it up as long as I could, feigning my pantomime of casting, reeling, and re-casting.
After an hour or so, all my romantic fantasies about nature began to collapse beneath my impatience. In truth, I had never been much closer to nature than reading Walden, never beyond my idealizations. That's the essential plight of quietism: stealing someone else’s experiences and insights for your own. In practice, nature terrified me. And for all my introversion, so did solitude.
Finally, I gave up and motioned to him that I was taking a break. I could see the disappointment in his shoulders, but he didn’t say anything. He just shrugged and pushed further upstream, closer to the faster water.
Back on the river bank, I contented myself for a while with snacks and a slim volume of poetry, lifting my head every few lines to think or not to think, closing my eyes here and again. A couple hours later, I heard the water sloshing with the sound of waders dragging towards the shore. I kept my eyes closed to give the impression of total contentment and relaxation. I didn’t want him to think I wasn’t enjoying myself, that I didn’t appreciate the gesture. When he got close enough, I looked up and shaded my eyes from the white glare behind him.
“You give up?” He asked.
“Naw. Just pacing myself.”
“Well, the better part of the fishing day is done now.”
“It’s okay.”
“Throw me one of those sandwiches.”
We ate silently. After a while, I told him I could see why he liked coming out here so much. He half-listened while his mind drifted to thoughts of the fish he hadn’t caught yet and how he might catch them still. We got full on sandwiches and lounged on the bank. I knew he would hate it, but I asked anyway. “Do you remember Mom and Dad? I mean, from before, the four of us?”
After a moment, and a little sigh, he replied, “Yah. I guess. Why?”
“I don’t know. I’ve tried to remember. I remember that old kitchen table where we used to eat dinner, and I can see the huge bay window that looked into the backyard, but I can’t remember if I sat in the chair facing it or away from it? I think Dad was to my left, but when I try to imagine him sitting there, I can’t picture Mom at the same table. It’s like my mind can’t place both of them in the same memory, let alone the four of us together.”
“I guess.”
“How come you never talk about things?”
“That was thirty years ago. Why would I keep dwelling on it? That’s all you do. You take things and just dwell on them. Who did that ever help? When did that ever make anything better? Dwelling. Thinking. Talking.” As he spoke, his eyes widened and he lifted his hands in inquisition.
“Things don’t just go away,” I replied with unusual conviction. “If I could just fish and be happy, I would. But fishing doesn’t change anything for me.”
“Then why did you come?”
“Why did you invite me?”
“I was trying to help you.”
“I know,” I replied.
We sat for a while longer. Each trying to ignore the other as the morning cool evaporated in the afternoon heat. Far off, the trees rustled. Overhead, the clouds broke open and spread to the horizon.
Finally, he spoke. “You know that time you got into a fight with the kid from the neighborhood behind the house?” Of all my hazy, fragmented memories, this one remained unusually vivid.
The fight happened because I smacked this boy’s younger brother on the head. Naturally, fighting seemed like the only way to resolve the incident. Before I squared off to fight the other kid’s older brother, my brother assured me he would help defend me if I needed it. “I got your back,” he assured me.
The other boy dropped me with a single punch and I ended up curled into a ball in the grass with a bloody nose, pleading through my tears for my brother to avenge me. Looking back, we were probably all in shock. Up to that point our neighborhood fights were always more wrestling than boxing. Rarely, if ever, did we hit one another, let alone hit each other in the face.
“I always felt bad about that.”
I wondered for a moment if he would continue. This was the first time he had ever spoken about anything from our past, from our childhood. It took me a while to say anything. The surprise of his confession drifted out and mixed with the late afternoon dim.
“That was the first fight I ever got in. My first real fight. I didn’t think you remembered that.”
“I remember,” he replied, gazing out at the river, eyes following it from where we stood to the place it curved and disappeared. “I should have helped you,” he added. With that, he slung his pouch across his chest, grabbed his rod and walked back into river, moving out of earshot.
I sat for a moment and then followed him out towards the shady cove. We staggered behind one another in a wide berth and he pointed to a place where the water doubled back and pooled into itself.
As I pulled out my line to cast, I tried to imitate his graceful rhythm. In a single motion, I swung the rod behind me, pulled the line out, and flicked my wrist towards the swirling water. Foot by foot, the line curled across the surface of the river, falling delicately in the very center where I had aimed. Just as it grazed the water, I felt a gentle tug. I reared back to set the hook. Once it set, the line ripped off the reel, hissing and spinning.
“Let it run. Let it run,” My brother shouted. After the line pulled for what seemed like forever, he yelled again, “Okay. Okay. Now reel.”
At once, I clasped the reel and began spinning it forward, winding furiously. I dug my feet into the river bottom, pulling my arms to my chest as I reeled, the rod bowing into a deep arch. My brother pushed his way towards me with the hand net. I saw a quick flash of silvery green and yellow flitting back and forth a few feet in front of me at the end of my line.
“Steady now,” he called.
After grabbing the fish from the net, I knelt down and held it just above the water with my arms thrust triumphantly forward like I had seen him do in all his pictures. Behind me the steep slant of the mountains smoldered dusky orange and glistened like an oil painting. Once we got the hook out, the fish darted back into the watery blue. Still beaming from my catch, I watched my brother trudging back to the shore.
“Wait, I’m just getting started,” I pleaded.
“Yah,” he said, smiling, “but the most important thing to know about fishing is when to quit.”
Jonathan completed his B.S. in English Education at Kennesaw State University. He currently teaches at Southwestern Academy in San Marino, California.
