Stumblin' Around

I have fished alone for years. There are many pleasantries in fishing alone. For one, I can spend as much time as I like on the water. No one there to usher me along or to remind me of the hour or to pull my mind out of the drift and back into the more pressing concerns of reality. I can daydream of all the life that I hope to live and of all the ways things ought to be, knowing damn well that they still sit behind that veil of futurity waiting for me like a cheap jump-scare. Or like a madman, I can hurl curses at the top of my lungs to all of creation while I miss the big one or, due to my signature half-assed approach, send my cast towards the general vicinity of my target, only to snag into anything but a fish. Ultimately, I can be myself and relish in all of the oddities accompanying that as I wade along a rocky riverbed in an attempt to cast away all of my worries. However, I have not fished alone much lately. 

            Over the summer, my lady and I bought matching kayaks so that we could both get outside and enjoy the water together. Now I know what y’all are thinking, but this is not one of your run-of-the-mill tag along girlfriend situations. The girl can flat out fish. She always catches more than I do. And she’s deadly with a rooster tail. Some of you may turn your noses up at that, but you’ve never seen someone catch more channel cats on an eighth ounce spinner. She will paddle over atop an eddy and cast it back up through the ripples and the next thing you know, they’ve hit it like a sledgehammer. They can be tough in that current too. They’ll swim straight back down to the bottom with it and when she finally gets them to the surface, they start rolling for dear life. By the time I get over to her with a net, slime is coating her line all the way up through the rod tip. And damnit, I hate to try to tear a treble hook from the corner of a catfish’s mouth. Somehow, they have all three buried and twisted up in all of that fat. Big ugly things too, yellow and speckled and slick as a bar of soap. But she says that they’re cute and I can’t help but to smile and agree with her. While I’m working on getting the hook out, she tells me that it’s bigger than the fifteen inch smallie that I just got all worked up over and I can’t do anything but agree with her on that too. We land our vessels at the same gravel bar every trip for a picnic lunch to eat and drink and recount all of the morning excitement that we just had.  I can tell that she really has the bug now, and that makes me feel better about dragging her out of bed at an ungodly hour every Sunday morning.  

            Sometimes, as all good fishermen do, she lets her cast get away from her and she will hang it up a tree. There are never any fish up there. She did just that at one of our favorite runs, a tight section of fast stuff that empties out into a deep hole. In order to stroke my own hero complex, I paddled up underneath that tree-of-heaven to fetch her lucky rooster tail (dubbed the Two Eyed Tobie after our pit bull) and as I started shaking the branch overhead, these spiders-of-hell, big as spools of tippet, start to fall into my boat . I go to kicking and bucking like the rank mule that I am and sure enough, there goes my fly rod into the river. One second it was safe, lazily placed by my feet, but safe. A second later it was still right there with me, but now in the water by my kayak, looking up at me from just underneath the surface. Then another second passed and it wasn’t there at all. Just empty green river water still rippling andl flowing and unperturbed as if nothing had ever happened. As if it couldn’t see the horror in my face staring back into it. The run was too deep and too fast to offer resurrection. I gave the spiders a what for and afterwards, all I could do was float back down with my face in my hands as the loss ran through my entire body like hot venom. I hollered downstream to her, “I just lost my fuckin’ fly rod.”

            Now, it wasn’t much of a rod. Some of you own finer rods no doubt, but this one was mine and all I could think about was how am I going to replace this thing when all I have is eleven dollars of “spendin’ money” to last me to pay day. At this point, my head is telling me that I hardly deserve to have one in the first place and I sure as hell don’t deserve to lose one and I start laying on the thickest coats of self-loathing that I can conjure up. I’m good at that. We got out and walked the bank back up to where it all had happened and we couldn’t even begin to look for it. It was as if the rod had been swallowed up by a black hole and shot out into the ether to fish the depths of oblivion. She has known me for long enough, and as we got back into our kayaks, she could tell that something a lot heavier than a drowned fishing rod was bothering me. Sure, I was defeated but the combination of my financial state and my habit of reckless abandon had me disgusted with myself. She told me that she’s sorry and that she wanted to help me buy a new rod on account of her rooster tail being the catalyst to all of this, but I said “It ain’t the fly rod. I’m broke. You don’t even want to know what my checking account looks like right now.” and she said “But how are you going to fish?” and I said “I just won’t for a while. The last thing that I need to spend my next check on is a fishing rod” and she, “I know, but it won’t be like this forever. I’m broke too but we’re still figuring it out. Things will get better for us. And you know you’ll want to fish next weekend regardless of how much money you have.” and by now I’m doing all that I can to keep the tears that are welling behind my shades from streaking down my face. We’re just holding onto each other’s kayaks as we spin around and around down the river, listening to the bugs drone and watching a kingfisher dart about. I turned to her and looked into those deep blue eyes of hers and asked if she would still love me if I never ended up having any kind money, and she just rolled her eyes and laughed and said “Of course I would baby, everything is going to work out. We’ll make more money. And if we don’t, me, you, and Tobie will all be poor together.” When she told me that, it was as if heaven sent down an isolated shower of love that poured over my soul and washed away all of that self-hate that I so easily painted on. Hallelujah.

            So now I don’t fish alone very much. I may be broke and I may be down a pole but pay day came right around the corner, like I knew it would, and with that came a new fly rod and some of you might turn your noses up at that, but she didn’t. She was right there with me casting it in the yard after I brought it home. She’s ready to go fishing at 5 a.m. every Sunday and she is a hell of a lot better looking than any fishing buddy that I’ve ever had. And you’ve never seen someone catch more channel cats on a rooster tail but best of all, she loves me for who I am and I love her too. So we just keep hanging onto each other, floating as the world goes spinning around us