09-15-2021, 10:54 PM
Gasoline and brackish water sloshes in the bottom of the battered aluminum boat lodged in the sands. Metal grinds against rock and pebbles as I push out the prow and jump into its awkward angle. At night, the lake is more a sound than a visible place, the growling outboard cancels out the lapping of waves. I shine a flashlight on the bank for navigation, illuminating the rocky white shoreline and the sudden voids of the sloughs until we come to the one our trot line line is stretched across.
We find the bleach jug that marks the beginning of our line, it’s my job to grab it, then point the light as my father lifts the line out of the dark waters, dripping with slime from the lake bottom. At first he holds it like a telegraph wire as the boat drifts in a dark orbit, feeling for the deep tug that would signal a catch. Then the slow hand over hand revelation of the treble hooks nibbled clean and bright. For each, another blood red ball of stink bait is molded on and gently lowered back into the green depths as I follow the work of his hands with the light. A few more empty hooks and then a struggling catfish appears, to be taken into a net.
The sound of the hook being torn out of its mouth makes me wince, but I have to aim the light and be a witness. The catch is tossed the floor of the boat where it gasps and flops about in the shadows. At the end of the line, my father gently lets go and I fill a bucket and my father carefully grasps the fish around the neck like a snake. Catfish fins are poison needles. I bless the moment when the fish is returned to its element.
The outboard sputters back to its belching life to carry us away from the night to where our cinder block cabin sleeps. Tomorrow, before dawn, we will repeat our trip, then the day will be mine, to explore the crumbling cliffs, mountain laurel and cedar, to chart my dreams, so far and wide and away from this, my childhood’s coast.
We find the bleach jug that marks the beginning of our line, it’s my job to grab it, then point the light as my father lifts the line out of the dark waters, dripping with slime from the lake bottom. At first he holds it like a telegraph wire as the boat drifts in a dark orbit, feeling for the deep tug that would signal a catch. Then the slow hand over hand revelation of the treble hooks nibbled clean and bright. For each, another blood red ball of stink bait is molded on and gently lowered back into the green depths as I follow the work of his hands with the light. A few more empty hooks and then a struggling catfish appears, to be taken into a net.
The sound of the hook being torn out of its mouth makes me wince, but I have to aim the light and be a witness. The catch is tossed the floor of the boat where it gasps and flops about in the shadows. At the end of the line, my father gently lets go and I fill a bucket and my father carefully grasps the fish around the neck like a snake. Catfish fins are poison needles. I bless the moment when the fish is returned to its element.
The outboard sputters back to its belching life to carry us away from the night to where our cinder block cabin sleeps. Tomorrow, before dawn, we will repeat our trip, then the day will be mine, to explore the crumbling cliffs, mountain laurel and cedar, to chart my dreams, so far and wide and away from this, my childhood’s coast.