The Fly Caster Who Tried To Make Peace With the World

by Randy Kadish

  Chapter 18

  I began this story by admitting I didn’t become the person or the writer I thought I’d be. Not surprisingly, therefore, I wonder if I’m like an angler who spends too much time fishing the same water instead of wading on. So bear with me as I summarize my next few years.

  Every morning I opened a newspaper, searching, hoping for a sign that an end to the war, to the slaughter, was in sight. I didn’t see one. Terrified Everett would get sucked into the blood-gulping storm, I tried to keep my mind off my terror by fishing as much as possible, usually with Everett, sometimes with friends.

  Then Ross went off to Cornell and wrote sports articles for the school newspaper. His clear writing style made me proud, but it didn’t relieve my pain when I heard, one by one, boys I had taught were killed. To discourage Everett from enlisting, I often told him how many Americans were killed that week.

  One day I asked, “Everett, have you thought about applying to colleges?”

  “I want to go to Columbia, like you, Dad.”

  “You can then fish the Harlem Meer, or take the train up and fish the Saw Mill River.”

  Everett mailed his application to Columbia. I interpreted this to mean instead of enlisting, he was leaving his fate in the hands of the draft lottery.

  Everett was accepted by Columbia. A month before he was to begin his freshman term, he turned eighteen. Sarah and I made him a small party. After he blew out the candles on his cake, I gave him a big, wrapped box.

  “Everett, I have a present for you.”

  Everett opened the box and took out a typewriter. Without smiling, he put it down.

  “Everett, what’s wrong?”

  “I’m not going to Columbia. I’m going to enlist.”

  “You’re not!”

  “I am! And you should be proud.” Everett ran up to his room.

  I shot up from my chair.

  Sarah grabbed my arm. “Later, Ian. Let him calm down. Ross, will you talk to him?”

  “There’s nothing I can say.” 

  I said, “But you told me you thought the war was stupid.”

  “That was then. Now I see this war differently. Hitler is the devil. Doesn’t the story you told about going with your mother to deliver food to Jewish immigrants mean something to you? If Hitler has his way he’ll kill every Jewish family. Is that what you want?”

  “Of course not, but I care about my family.”

  “We’re not the whole world. To tell you the truth, Dad, I’m beginning to feel like a coward.”

  “The Army wouldn’t take you if you tried.”

  “I did try.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  “Did you tell Everett?”

  “No. He never mentioned anything to me about wanting to enlist. If he had, do you think I would’ve suggested you buy him a typewriter?”

  I pounded the table. “Is this why I had a son: to lose him in war? Wars are like rivers: they flow into bigger ones.”

  “Dad, Everett’s enlisting is not about your way of seeing the world.”

  “Then what is it about?”

  “It’s like he said; it’s about doing what he thinks is right. Maybe by the time he gets through boot camp the war will be over. Some stories have happy endings, remember?”

  “Right now, I don’t.”

  After dinner, Ross went to see his friends. Sarah said, “Ian, you have to try to talk to Everett and tell him about the horrors of war.”

  “I already have. Besides, you’re the one who has seen them firsthand.”

  “He’s not going to listen to a woman’s point of view. I love Everett. Just the thought of him going and, and ...” Sarah cried. I hugged her. She said, “God damn this war! Why did Hitler have to be born? How could one man cause so much death and destruction?”

  “Even if Everett doesn’t enlist, he’ll probably get drafted.”

  “But being chosen by a random lottery will take time.”

  I walked up to Everett’s room, remembering Doc saying how in war, life or death, victory or defeat, often turned on a random event.

  Everett sat at his desk and tied a fly. “I want to leave you a whole bunch of Doc’s streamers.”

  I sat on Everett’s bed. He turned and looked at me.

  “Everett, I always wanted to be a great father. Looking back, maybe I fell a little short. You see, I’ve had so many—”

  “I heard this before. You’re here to talk me out of enlisting. You won’t.”

  “I know the evil the world is facing. But I also know one more American soldier is not going to change things.”

  “Not fighting for what’s right will change me.”

  “There’s no shame in waiting to be drafted. Can’t you at least do that for me and your mother?” 

  “Other parents are proud that their sons are enlisting.”

  “I’ve always been proud of you. Haven’t you seen that?”

  “I mean proud of me for more than my fishing. Mom once said that maybe God created disease so we can build up resistance and become stronger. Germany and Japan have become diseases. I don’t understand why, only that God gives us the will and the courage to fight and to be the cure. I don’t care what your idol, Einstein, says about relativity. When it comes to right and wrong there are only absolutes. Maybe if you believed in God, like Mom, you’d also believe that we’re more than flesh, blood and energy. Your beloved Hamlet wonders if we’re more than dust. I believe we are.”

  “How did you come to these ideas?”

  “From things Mom taught me, from things I read in books, from things I thought about when I fished.”

  He makes so much sense to me, I thought. How can I tell him what’s right? I was wrong when I didn’t stand up to the Hermit. To Brett Wilson. I was wrong when I convinced Billy not to enlist. And yet still I believe there is right in this world. Who am I to tell Everett not to become part of that right and enlist? And even if I could, he still wouldn’t listen.

  “Dad, sometimes I think back to that day you taught me how to cross the fast riffles at Cook’s Falls. Didn’t you do that for a reason?”

  “I didn’t want you to get hurt.”

  “You also wanted to teach me not to be scared. And I learned.”

  “Then maybe I made a mistake.”

  “Please don’t say that. Please don’t think that. You taught me for a reason, a reason that opened its beautiful, sun-glowing petals when Hitler invaded Poland.”

  “Everett, Mom and I love you so much. We’re scared of losing you. You can’t blame us for that. I am proud of you. I only wish I had your courage.” I cried.

  Everett sat next to me and put his arm around me. “I want you to know how lucky and blessed I feel to have you for a father, even if you’re not the greatest long-distance caster in the world.”

   

  Everett enlisted. The day before he left for training camp, we fished the Forks, or as many anglers now called it, Junction Pool. Looking back, it’s strange how I don’t remember if we caught any fish. I do remember, however, it rained lightly. A thick, gray fog blanketed the sky. I wondered how the fog, something so airy, something without its own shape, could erase the tops of time-proof mountains. Holding up the fog like poles holding up a circus tent, were bare trees.

  Had heaven, in the form of fog, crossed its boundary and become part of earth?

  Plumes of fog rose like smoke.

  Was heaven bombing mountains that wouldn’t surrender? Or maybe I had it all wrong. Maybe the fog was the mountain’s way of crossing its boundary and becoming part of heaven. After all, wouldn’t I rather be part of heaven than part of earth?

  I watched Everett false cast.

  Would it be for the last time?

  His body moved like flowing water. His F. E. Thomas rod, his tight, rolling loops seemed like a metronome for the Beaverkill and the world.

  I guess they now need one, I thought. What if a young assassin hadn’t killed Franz Ferdin
and and the Great War hadn’t happened? What if Hitler had been killed in the trenches of the war?

  What if? What if? Would I ask if there was a God? Would history seem so random? Doesn’t Einstein say God doesn’t play dice with the world? How I hope Einstein is right. Whether he is or not, I’ll hold on to some faith in humanity as I had during the Great War: I’ll turn to literature, and to the words of men and women where I’ll find rhythmical images of nature more beautiful than nature itself. I’ll find hope. Oh, how I wish men could all be poets instead of soldiers.

  “Dad, look.” Everett pointed at the sky. “Doc’s streamer.”

  I looked up and saw a rainbow. I thought, Maybe the rainbow is an omen or message from Doc, saying that he had fought in a war and had become a better man, and so will Everett.

   

  Everett wrote home frequently. Ten months later, his division sailed for England.

  May 1944

  Dad and Mom,

  There’s talk that we’re going to be part of the liberation of Europe. All of us are looking forward to it. All of us feel we’ll be taking part in something great, something that will forever be a big part of human history. I love being a part of a team, knowing there is something so much bigger than myself. For the first time in my life I have a family of friends. I’m grateful for it.

  Some of the guys from the South are serious bass fishermen. Because I too fish, they see me as a brother, even though I’m a Yankee. Our Civil War healed, so I’m hoping that out of the ashes of today’s bombed cities an everlasting peace will grow. Now that man has seen the horrors of two world wars, I don’t see how it won’t.

  We all have such faith in Eisenhower. Tell Grandpa I hear Ike is every bit as humble and good a general as Grant or Lee. ...

  Sarah and I dreaded news of an Allied invasion.

  Finally the news came. In a newspaper we read that after fierce fighting on the beaches of France, the Allies established a beach head and slowly advanced.

  Day after day we, like so many parents, feared a knock on the door, a telegram telling us our son was killed in action.

  June, 1944

  Well here I am in France, finally. I guess you can say my division was lucky. We were one of the last to land on Normandy. The fighting was over by the time we got there. Many of the guys are sad they missed the action, but we know there’s a lot of it ahead.

  Some of the villages have been almost completely destroyed. It’s hard to imagine that the piles of rubble once formed beautiful buildings and even churches. Last Sunday about fifty villagers went to an almost totally destroyed church and listened to a priest give a sermon in French. Though I didn’t understand his words, I understood his comforting tone, and I understood the hope and faith I saw on the faces of the worshipers.

  (I guess in spite of all the destruction, so many of us believe God will triumph in the end. I’m so grateful, so proud to be an American.)

  A lot of villagers walk through the ruins as if they’re oblivious to them, especially children. I watched some boys play soccer. They seemed so happy. Later one climbed onto a pile of rubble and the other boys tried to push him off. I guess the game was their version of King-Of-The-Hill. It’s strange how right in the middle of a real war, children play fake war. Other villages haven’t been touched by bombs and bullets. It’s almost as if they’re out of bounds. And that goes for a lot of the beautiful, rolling countryside and farmland.

  And I have to tell you, France has some beautiful streams. The other day I saw an old man fly fishing with an English rod. The angler couldn’t speak English. He let me make a few casts. I could see in his eyes he was impressed with my casting. Later, a captain told me the old man, under the guise of fishing, had spied for us before the invasion. Would you believe it?

  When the war is over we should both travel over here and fish some of these streams.

  ... The news we’re hearing is that the German army is disintegrating, and that Hitler is on the run. We’re hearing rumors, however, that Hitler is preparing for one last stand. War breeds so many rumors that it’s often impossible to know what to believe, so we just keep going.

  Dad, how’s the fishing? I miss you, Mom, Ross and all the anglers of the Beaverkill.

   

  October, 1944

  It rained really heavily here. The rain seemed to erase the roads and turn everything into mud. It’s funny how the Germans can’t stop us but the rain can.

  Finally the storm stopped. A few hours later, the nighttime sky didn’t have a hint of a cloud. The moon and the stars looked so close I felt I could reach them with one good, long fly cast, especially since, for a few seconds, the stars looked like floating fireflies.

  Though I know it’s true, I find it hard to believe the stars are light-years away.

  ... We heard that two Germans held a young girl at gunpoint and raped her and made her parents watch.

  A German officer came in and stopped the brutal act.

  Even though Hitler is a dictator, I don’t think he has the power to rob all goodness out of the German people. I remember, Dad, how you often told me your mother loved German composers. We have a Jewish soldier in our platoon who was born in Germany. He told me how, up until Hitler came to power, his parents loved Germany and felt at home there.

  I just can’t believe the rumors about Hitler exterminating Jews and Slavs in death camps. I’ll never believe that men can be that evil. 

  My guess is that the German people don’t know what they’re fighting for. After this war I’m sure the good German spirit will bloom and grow like a rose. ...

  Why hadn’t Everett described any firsthand fighting? Was his division still at the rear of our invasion force, as I hoped? Or did he want us not to worry?

  I read how the Allies slowly fought their way deeper into France, and how Hitler then unleashed a surprise counteroffensive. From the reports, I knew Everett’s division was involved.

  One night Sarah and I heard a sharp knock on the door. We stared at each other.

  Was the army delivering a telegram?

  Sarah covered her face with her pillow. Suddenly, I couldn’t breathe. Choking, I forced myself out of bed. My legs, my feet were numb. I couldn’t feel the floor, but somehow I made it to the door and opened it.

  “Dad!”

  “Ross, thank God.”

  “I hitched a ride with some of the guys at school. I left so fast I forgot my key. I just wanted to be with you and Mom so we could all pray for Everett together.”

  I hugged Ross and cried. “I’m so afraid of losing Everett.”

  “So am I.”

  “I wish I could stop this damn war.”

  “Dad, you can’t blame yourself.”

  “If only I could stop all the bad things in this world. If only—maybe then I could make peace with the world. Maybe then I won’t be so afraid of it. Tell me I’m not a coward, Ross. Tell me!”

  “I wish you could believe what I believe: You’re a wonderful man.”

  December, 1944

  My Division is in Belgium now.

  The Germans are making a stand. They broke through some of our lines. We countered the attack, reformed our lines and now are moving forward again. The cold, the snow, the icy roads, the rain, the thickest fog I have ever seen are slowing us more than the Germans, but we have now learned to use fog as an ally. I still think we are close to a great, noble victory. I’m so proud to be a part of it.

  ... Some of the guys read the Bible a lot. I just pray, not for myself, but for the world. Last night I went to Catholic services. I wasn’t the only Protestant there. At a time like this I think all churches are the same, and all moral roads lead to the same God.

  Mom, I think you’re right. After this war humanity will have built up a strong immunity to war. Hopefully this penicillin will never wear off.

  The funny thing is that even now, without any immunity, I think we’re free to feel love and God instead of hate. I’m sorry, Dad, if that sounds like a
cliché. You know, I’m sure, how much I admire English teachers and writers who avoid clichés. ...

  January 31: The Germans ran out of fuel and withdrew to the Siegfried Line. The Battle of the Bulge was over!

  April, 1945

  Because we’ve been in such heavy fighting, my division, like Doc’s after the Battle of Cold Harbor, was moved to the rear. We’ve just crossed the Rhine. It’s only a matter of time now. Good has triumphed, so I guess now I can admit that at times I doubted whether it would. ...

  May 9: Germany surrendered. Everett was coming home, finally!