You're Not Lost if You Can Still See the Truck

by Bill Heavey

  Only nobody else wanted to play. “He says the other kids tease him, ask him if he just beamed in from Jupiter. They call him Bubble Boy, ’cause he lives in his head so much.” She was trying to smile as she told the story, but then she turned to wipe her eyes.

  I took a pull on my beer as I tried to think of something helpful to say. What came out was “How ’bout I take him fishing?”

  “Oh,” she said, her face brightening, “he’d love that.”

  I’d always liked this kid, different as we were. And it wasn’t just because we were the exact same age thirty-six years apart. When he was just a few weeks old, I’d come over to visit, then fallen asleep on the couch. I woke to find that my friends had placed the sleeping boy on my chest, and that there was baby drool collecting in the hollow of my collarbone. I lay still, feeling his body rise and fall against mine. I couldn’t explain it if you made me listen to the complete works of John Tesh; all I know is by the time he woke up fifteen minutes later, we were blood kin. And it was my job to protect him.

  He worried about hurting the worms. “I don’t want them to suffer,” he fretted. We’d just dug a cupful from a compost pile near the farm where our two families were spending a weekend. We’d bagged a few of the jumpy, wiggly kind we call snake worms around here, a few skinny little ones, and from deeper down where the compost was heating up, half a dozen monster night crawlers.

  Matty looked hot and uncomfortable in the July sun. I sliced open the shrink-wrap on the Li’l Fisherman outfit and put the thing together, marveling at how little first-fishing-rod kits have changed in thirty years: a push-button reel, three tiny red-and-white bobbers, six hooks, and a bunch of split-shot sinkers you wouldn’t need fishing worms on a farm pond.

  Suddenly I remembered I’d been worried about the worms my first time, too. A camp counselor had pinched my cheek with his rough fingers. “That’s as bad as it hurts ’em,” he’d told me. Now I did the same for Matty.

  “That’s not so terrible,” he said.

  I showed him how to cast, baited one of the crawlers, and turned him loose. The bobber landed all of eight feet away. The worm was probably resting on the bottom. Hey, I was happy he’d hit the water. “Perfect,” I said. We waited. When the bobber went under, all Matty could say was “Gosh!” When the bluegill darted toward open water, he said, “Whoa, it’s really pulling hard!” When he landed the five-inch fish, the two of us began shouting and high-fiving each other.

  He dropped the rod on the grass, shouted, “Gotta show Mom!” over his shoulder, and left me holding the fish as he ran toward the house. It was the fastest and longest I’d ever seen him run. By the time the sun set, we’d pulled three more bluegills, a ten-inch largemouth, and a three-pound catfish out of that pond. His mother had shot two rolls of film of her son smiling brighter than any time in the past year. Bubble Boy had turned into Bobber Boy.

  “This boy is a one-man fishing machine,” I announced to the entire dinner table. “Tomorrow morning we’ll do it again,” I told Matty.

  “Yeah,” he said, knocking over his milk.

  I was awakened the next morning at five thirty by a seven-year-old thumb gently pushing up my right eyelid to see if there was anyone alive inside. It was Matty. He was holding the rod and a Styrofoam cup. “Uncle Bill,” he whispered urgently, “I already got the worms. You wanna go fishin’?” In that twilight moment between dreaming and waking, I found myself face-to-face with the boy I’d been three and a half decades back.

  “Yeah, buddy, let’s go get ’em.”

  A SPORTSMAN’S LIFE: DRUM ROLL

  Every so often, it’s worth remembering that life is a limited-time-only offer. Last December I found myself worrying about all the things I’d been putting off all deer season. There were the leaves on the lawn, now two inches thick and the consistency of Red Man Chewing Tobacco. Bills that had begun arriving in specially colored envelopes with notices reading, “Your lack of response to our repeated inquiries in this matter has left us no choice but to . . .” I was just about to give in to my guilty conscience when the phone rang. It was Link, my sometime fishing partner, a self-employed carpenter who, unlike most of mankind, has never let the necessity of making a living interfere with the luxury of living itself.

  “Hey, man, less go down to Hatteras, see can we bang us a coupla red drum. Purtiest fish you ever seen, color like a hot penny with a black eyespot on the tail.”

  I explained why I couldn’t go and reminded him that in any case Cape Hatteras was four hundred miles away. “Why we gotta leave now,” he answered. “Have ya back by tomorrow night. Surf stick and chest waders. Pick you up in forty-five minutes.”

  Long story short, an hour later we had cleared town, heading south. Guilt was not along for the ride. There are few things in life that rival flying down the highway with a thermos of hot coffee toward the promise of big fish in the company of a friend you’ve known so long that neither of you feels compelled to muddy up the silence with conversation.

  Red drum are vampires, extremely wary of the sun and best pursued in darkness. You never know if or when they’ll show up, even during a so-called run. And they’re uncommonly finicky as saltwater creatures go. While a bluefish will tear into anything that doesn’t bite it first and flounder are so gullible they can be caught on bottom-fished hankies, red drum will delicately mouth only the freshest, juiciest baits.

  By dark we are on the beach in four-wheel-drive. All ruts lead to the Point, an ever-shifting spit of sand that narrows into the Atlantic. Link and I get out, struggle into waders, rig up six-ounce pyramid sinkers and heavily baited hooks. There must be sixty of us crammed shoulder to shoulder on the last bit of sand. You stagger a few yards forward into the surf, heave your bait up into the night, and return to take your place. Then you stand there for hours, shifting your feet so the surf doesn’t dig you into a hole.

  After a couple of hours the cry of “Fish on!” comes a few yards away. A man moves forward into the surf, rod bent as the fish takes line on its first run. Five minutes later he has brought the copper-colored animal onto the sand. Tiny flashlight in mouth, he kneels in a circle of light, one hand on the fish’s belly to keep it from injuring itself. Great fish out of water are fragile creatures, their organs suddenly vulnerable to gravity. He gently removes the hook and measures the fish. Then he lifts it carefully in his arms and moves into deeper water, resembling a groom carrying his bride over some strange threshold.

  By 3 a.m. I’m out of bait. Link and I have agreed to meet back at the hotel if we get separated. As I’m walking out, I hear a truck engine sputter to life. I knock on the window and ask, “You guys mind if I ride in back?” The passenger looks up from a beer. “Hell, no. We can use the ballast.” I roll over the side and wedge myself in tight, spread-eagle on my back, staring up into the night sky while the truck bucks over the sand. Suddenly I’m smiling, completely alive in this moment and more than a little amused that I could ever have been worried by leaves on my lawn or the silly pieces of paper in my mailbox.

  SPRING CANOE TRICKS

  Every year, in celebration of the return of spring and fishing, I try to have at least one colossally stupid experience involving a canoe. Some people might call it a jinx, but I prefer to think of it as an involuntary tradition. All it takes to have a near-death experience in a small boat is to put aside common sense for a few moments. After that, everything takes care of itself.

  There was the year I took my then girlfriend straight into a Class III standing rapid, a white mare’s tail shaking in the blue air at the bottom of nearly half a mile of small rapids. We had negotiated these with a skill and dexterity we did not, strictly speaking, possess and were feeling pretty good about ourselves.

  Meanwhile, high spring water levels had turned the normally negotiable standing rapid into a monster, a fact I realized about the time we entered it. One second we were above the water
and canoeing; the next we were four feet under and wondering why it was so hard to breathe, paddles bonking us on our heads, tackle disappearing into the depths. I lost three rods, two hundred dollars’ worth of lures, and my knife. I came up sputtering in a PowerBait oil slick with a small gash in my forehead that bled colorfully. We were towed ashore by kayakers who made no effort to conceal their delight at our stupidity.

  Another spring, river, and girlfriend. This time I decided to drag the anchor down a brisk stretch of water, so I could fish while the young lady read her paperback. A length of chain tied to the stern works well for this, and a couple of old window-sash weights are an acceptable alternative. What you do not want is a four-fluked folding grapnel anchor, even a smallish one. The first ninety seconds were vernal bliss. I even coaxed two acrobatic little smallmouths into the boat on a three-inch white grub. Then the anchor caught.

  Since I’d tied it to the middle thwart (for easy access), the boat immediately swung broadside into the current. “What’s happening?” the young lady asked, alarmed. The boat had begun to lean upstream, and the gunwale was now barely an inch from the rushing current. Once we started to take on water, the boat would go under in a flash. “You might want to lean downstream, uh, real hard,” I said, trying to keep the panic from my voice as I searched for a blade to cut us free. Then I remembered that my knife was at the bottom of the first river. I finally sawed us loose with the tiny blade on my fishing-line clippers. Years later, I can no longer recall that girl’s name. But I still miss that sweet little anchor.

  My wife Jane has too much sense to get in a canoe with me, but I still manage to keep the tradition alive. This year I was out with a buddy on an unusually warm April day when storm clouds moved in from the north, at which time the crankbait bite picked up considerably. “Heck, I don’t hear any thunder,” I said. “I don’t mind getting wet.” My friend responded that in an aluminum Grumman packed with graphite rods, I’d better hope we didn’t hear any thunder. He began paddling for shore immediately.

  The sky turned black, and the first strike hit not a quarter mile away as we touched shore. The temperature dropped 20 degrees, the lightning turned to heavy artillery, and it began to hail. We abandoned the canoe and hunkered down in the woods, soaked, freezing, and listening to the occasional tree fall around us.

  Eventually, the storm moved downriver, and we began to bail out the canoe. Then the storm decided to turn around, come back, and throw more lightning and hail at us. Half an hour later, the two of us shivering so hard that we could barely speak, my buddy turned to me. “You’re a damn ji-jinx,” he said. “You know th-that?”

  I thought it over. “M-m-maybe,” I said.

  THE KID IN THE PHOTO

  If you are holding this magazine, there was a moment in your life when you caught the fish. You remember the one. It was not necessarily your first fish, just the pivotal one, the one that rearranged the molecules in your brain and created a fishing fiend. If you are lucky, there also exists, somewhere, the photo. Usually but not always taken by a parent, the photo shows the fish (usually between three and seven inches) and you with a look of accomplishment on your face not unlike the one David had after bouncing a rock off Goliath’s noggin.

  If you still have the photo, keep it in a safe place. There will be times in your life when you’ll need it to remember that somewhere hidden inside you there still lives a young boy capable of seeing the world in all its glory and wonder.

  I got lucky the other day when my version of this priceless souvenir resurfaced after nearly four decades, and the memories came circling back around my head like a school of minnows. I was nine years old, immortal, with a full head of hair and the world as my tackle box. My parents, sister, dog, and I were on a two-week vacation to Canada that seemed to last a thousand years. Our chariot for the voyage was a new, white Oldsmobile station wagon the size of a river barge with windows that went up and down at the touch of a magic button and a rear seat that faced backward.

  I had my very own wizard’s wand, a spincasting rod made of that miracle material, fiberglass. It had three ferrules with a tasteful wrapping of red thread around each, a silver trigger to rest your forefinger on while casting, and a black Zebco 202 push-button reel on the cork handle. I thought it had descended from heaven by way of Sears, Roebuck. I remember only that my desire to fish was so overpowering that I burst into tears every time we passed a body of water without stopping. It made no difference whether the water was fresh or salt, six inches or a thousand feet deep, clear or muddy. Fish lived in water, and water was where I would fish for them.

  Somewhere on a nameless lake in Canada, it happened. I slung my only lure, a red-and-white Dardevle Imp spoon, off the end of the dock. Something seized it and began pulling back. Hard. I turned the crank, but this merely produced a hoarse buzzing sound from the Zebco. Having no idea how to play a fish, I simply pointed the rod tip at the water and began trying to walk backward, discovering why so few experts recommend the tug-of-war as an effective method to bring a fish to hand.

  Then a boy about my age ran down from the parking lot and began jabbering at me in French. I figured that witnessing my great battle had robbed him of normal speech and that he was speaking in tongues. But then he had a stroke of genius and began to pantomime the action of pumping and reeling the rod. Within minutes I had a huge, green, predatory-looking fish flopping on the grass. I laid it alongside the ruler on my tackle box and found that it was so big it wouldn’t fit at one whack, being just over seventeen inches long. I immediately ran to my parents, who snapped the picture that now sits on their mantel, along with photos of my infancy and wedding.

  The fish is a northern pike, less than an inch shy of legal length. Alexander the Great never had a prouder moment.

  The photo was lost for many years. It turned up after my parents’ house, the one I grew up in, burned down early one morning. They are alive because a passing newspaper carrier banged on their window to wake them up. Going through the rubble later, they discovered a forgotten box of snapshots, including one of a boy with a fish.

  Nearly losing your parents gives you new appreciation for them. It taught me to hug my father when saying goodbye instead of merely shaking his hand. It felt funny the first time I did it, brushing his hand away awkwardly in the kitchen and snaking my arm around his shoulder and neck. But as I stood there for a moment with my father feeling strangely small in my arms, I saw the photograph on the mantel over the rebuilt fireplace. And for just a moment, it wasn’t the fish that boy looked proud of: It was me.

  NONE DARE CALL IT HAPPINESS

  A fishing catalog from one of the major retailers just landed on my doorstep, and I’m lucky not to have been standing in the way. Weighing in at nearly one and a half pounds, this is the kind of incoming artillery that can hurt you. I quickly sneaked the catalog down to the basement, set aside the day’s gainful employment, and abandoned myself to the pleasures of material acquisition. Or at least fantasizing about those pleasures.

  At last count, I owned just thirteen spinning and casting outfits—not counting fly rods and saltwater gear. They, along with my wife Jane, stepdaughter Molly, and daughter Emma, live in a house in sore need of a new asphalt shingle roof, interior and exterior paint, and rather extensive masonry work on the front steps (probably from the impact of all those catalogs). Inevitably, the question arises: Can I really justify the purchase of another fishing rod and reel?

  My answer is “yes” and, upon further consideration, “hell, yes.” Like any other American, I have an unshakable belief that material goods, acquired in sufficient quantities, bestow happiness. (This is why I own the rods. This is also why I need more.)

  The other day I heard some nonsense on the radio to the contrary. A so-called expert, a college professor who had done years of study, said he had arrived at a disturbing conclusion about the relationship of money to happiness. This know-it-all sai
d that the average American, whether he earns $30,000 or $300,000 a year, believes he would be significantly happier if he could make just 20 percent more.

  There are just two things wrong with this, he said. One is that as your income climbs, that 20 percent figure represents more and more money and is therefore harder to come by. The second is that you still won’t be happy. People who get a 20 percent raise experience a bump in happiness, but it’s only temporary. They acquire a bigger house or a 43-million-modulus graphite fishing rod with a Portuguese cork handle and titanium-plated Fuji SiC guides, but pretty soon they notice that they still don’t have as much as some folks. And so their happiness suddenly evaporates, although they could get it back if they just had a little more money. The college professor had even coined a cute little phrase for this dilemma. He called it the “hedonic treadmill.”

  This man is clearly a fool and a danger to our way of life who should be given a one-way ticket to the developing country of his choice and made to work in a McDonald’s there.

  Upon opening the catalog, however, I realized that the people who put it out had bought into the treadmill idea big-time. Only they were aiming for folks who can make it go around a good deal faster than I can. Flipping through the pages, I quickly fell for a sweet little spinning reel: floating shaft, thirteen ball bearings, titanium-lipped spool, a tad over eight ounces. It cost $500. A few pages over, I eyed a nice, light-action spinning rod from one of the better makers that would match the reel. It was $300.

  I shut the catalog and took a few deep breaths. If only I made nine times as much money as I do now, I could easily afford such equipment and the happiness they would bring. In the meantime, I ordered a Mitchell 300X, the latest version of the venerable 300: five ball bearings, oversize aluminum spool, durable as a tank, and just $39.99. I paired it with a five-foot, ten-inch Shakespeare Ugly Stik, a $27.99 rod that isn’t much good for anything except catching fish.