Back Seat with Fish

by Henry Hughes

  I asked Reverend Wilterdink what it meant to be a Christian. He told me that God’s love, forgiveness, and mercy had come to him through Jesus of Nazareth. “Christ is my savior,” he said. But I could see that he truly embraced people of other faiths and walks—the Native American students observing a sacred sweat, the Muslim students fasting for Ramadan, and wayfarers, like me, steering by the promises and deceits of Whitman’s American Transcendentalism and the scripture of Melville’s Moby-Dick. No other book had ever spoken to me like Moby-Dick—fishing, friendship, fanaticism, and all the big questions I’d been asking about God, man, and the universe rolled before me in words that felt warm and deep. I told Reverend Wilterdink that I must be an agnostic, and he reminded me that Thomas Henry Huxley, the popularizer of the term, declared that even he was “too much of a skeptic to deny the possibility of anything.” That jibed with my journey, and I told the good reverend that I worshipped fish and sex. He closed his eyes and slapped a hand to his forehead, but I felt he really respected and liked me even though I was not a Christian.

  Reverend Wilterdink taught a philosophy class called “Drugs, Alcohol and Altered States of Consciousness” that explored getting high through various cultural, literary, religious, and philosophical contexts. Were acid, mushrooms, marijuana, and alcohol possible means toward spiritual enlightenment? “Yes, of course,” I answered, and the other students smiled—some in approval, some in condescension. Several of us argued that acid and mushrooms were in a different corral than marijuana and alcohol. “Weed and wine are easier to ride,” one cowboy put it perfectly. In the end, the reverend helped me to see that drugs were at best a shortcut to what must properly be a long journey of meditation, prayer, practice, and study toward higher consciousness. “You can’t just fish with dynamite,” I concluded. “You’ll ruin everything.”

  But the reverend and I also agreed that alcohol was a wonderful social lubricant and that peaceful sociability was at the heart of a happier universe. To assist in my pursuit of a happier universe, my old New York friend, Eugene, had set me up with fake ID, and I had no trouble buying beer and liquor and getting into South Dakota bars. There was also plenty of chowder available. “Iowa’s fourth leading cash crop,” a student-farmer told me, handing me a little bag outside the grain co-op where he worked.

  With the harvest came South Dakota’s hunting season. My father let me bring my 12-gauge shotgun from home. I kept it in my dorm room closet behind my only sport jacket. The campus was bristling with rifles and shotguns, but I knew of only one incident—discharged in the ceramic studio, where a shelf of wonky, unfired final exams were blasted to pieces, and the shaken teacher gave everyone an A.

  “I had nothing to do with that,” Birch Hilton chuckled, wiping down his old Winchester and putting it back in his closet. “Hey, you wanna do a little pheasant huntin’ on Saturday?” he asked.

  Birch was tall, muscular, and handsome with jet black hair, dark Persian eyes, and the five o’clock shadow of a rugged movie star. A linebacker and psychology major from White Lake, South Dakota, a very small town west of Mitchell, Birch carried the humble and generous plainsmen’s spirit. After another Saturday home game trouncing, we eased our bruised bodies into his little Opel, a taped flashlight replacing one of the headlights where he’d hit a cow, and drove the 35 miles on Highway 90 to his house, a tired wooden three-story in need of a paint job. His sweet mother prepared a big dinner of roast chicken, peas, and mashed potatoes. There was fresh milk and government cheese, small provisions for rural communities devastated by the farm crisis. Birch’s father, Clark, was also tall with a full head of salt-and-pepper hair and a finely chiseled face. Clark once owned a lumberyard but now worked part-time as a feed salesman. He dished out potatoes and asked me questions about my family and New York, while Birch’s brothers and sister listened and giggled over my accent. There was no wine or beer on the table. We said grace and dug in. After dinner, his sister played piano.

  In the morning we drove the family pickup out to a rundown farm where Clark had arranged for us to jump some ducks. A man in torn, stained coveralls came out and muttered about a tractor he “couldn’t sell for shit.”

  “Bert’s losing the place,” Clark confided as we walked up to the first berm.

  “All right,” Birch coached. “We’re gonna get low and come over that rise. If you see ducks, blast ’em.”

  Birch and I crouched and crept to the crest, peeking over at a half dozen puddle ducks and a couple coot swimming nervously away. We stood up, their wings opened, and we fired, dropping four birds. I ran down to the water’s edge, tested the bottom with a stick, and then walked into the shallows and retrieved the ducks: two hen mallards and a pair of pintail, the drake’s beautiful rusty head cradled by a crescent moon.

  The same tactic on a larger pond dropped two birds that fell far from shore. I hated losing game and went waist deep into the cold water to get one duck, a small bufflehead Birch called a butterball, asking me if a mouthful of duck was worth a wet ass. The other bird drifted toward the middle of the pond. We walked back to the barn, and Clark found Bert and asked him if he had a dog. “Dead,” Bert said. But he went into a shed and came back with a spinning outfit, the dented reel half loaded with heavy blue line tied to a melted rubber crayfish. “You know how to use one of these?” he asked me. “Yes, sir,” I reached for the rod. Back at the pond, my first cast came up short. Clark had an old bolt in his pocket, and I tied it on, but I still came up short. Birch gave it a try and hooked a fish. Clark and I laughed, and Birch took his time playing gracefully, without any drag, a solid two-pound largemouth bass. He flipped the fish onto the dry grass, took another cast, and hooked the duck. We gave the bass and ducks to Bert, who showed not the least bit of surprise; he just nodded, took them into the back kitchen, and came out with a bottle of homemade wine, handing it to Clark. “Don’t let your mother see that wine,” Clark said, passing the bottle to Birch.

  Church had let out, and we could see people hurrying home to change into their hunting clothes. We stopped for coffee and then drove on to meet a large party of hunters at the edge of a cornfield. There were introductions and curious exclamations that I’d come all the way from New York to hunt White Lake’s fine pheasants. Marching across the field against four men stationed as blockers, Clark yelled, “Don’t shoot the blockers.” I laughed. “I’m serious,” he repeated. “Happens every year.” Wet pants chaffed my thighs, but I was happy to be walking the corn, the rustle of pheasants running ahead of us, suddenly flushing in wild bursts of cackling color. I was overeager and blasted one rooster just a few feet ahead of me. “Easy, New Yorker,” someone said.

  So I took it easy, waited for the pheasants to fly up and out, and dropped a couple long-tailed cocks that would make good eating. I thought of those British driven shoots where tweed-jacketed gentlemen and ladies swung Purdey shotguns, retiring to brandy-warmed talk on leather chairs in mahogany-paneled clubs. The White Lake hunt included the poorest of men in ripped coveralls, women of all ages, high school kids in Mötley Cruüe sweatshirts, the town doctor, and a very old man in a forties-style orange cap and vest who bagged his limit of three male pheasants, drove the birds home, and came back for a second round. Limits were not strictly observed. Everything got eaten.

  Birch and I were feeling achy from Saturday’s game, so we crashed out in the pickup. I woke cold and prickly. Birch called over his father and drove us home. I needed some dry pants, but the only ones that fit my thick thighs belonged to his mother. While my jeans tumbled in the drier, I toured White Lake wearing Mrs. Hilton’s turquoise stretch pants and Clark’s mucking boots. After lunch, Birch said we should drive the back roads to Mitchell and do a little road hunting. We uncorked Bert’s wine and, with our loaded shotguns resting between our seats, rolled slowly down gravel roads, watching for pheasants. Birch was great company, and we listened to Dylan and Hendrix and talked about the football season and Coach Bob Bozaid—how he had us pray after every practice
and before every game, preaching that “God wanted us to win, that God would lead us to victory.” Bozaid was a decent man, but he was a losing coach. Not that he could have done much with my body and soul, but the team had potential, and he could have tried harder to draw from realms outside the supernatural. “It takes more than God to win football games,” Birch said. I agreed and handed him the wine. A coyote crossed the road and disappeared into the willows beside a slough.

  Winters were long, cold, and snow-filled in South Dakota, and by April I was eager to fish. Without the demands of spring football, I could concentrate on studying and partying. One Friday playing eight ball at the Corner Pocket, a beer and pool joint downtown on Eighth Street, I met Woody. With a father in the CIA, Woody had lived in Abu Dhabi, Cairo, and Rome; he knew languages and cuisines. He spent four years in the Marines and thought he might try some college. When Woody discovered new things he got excited. One icy night he blew into my room with a bottle of whisky, reciting Yeats’ “Song of the Wandering Aengus.” “They don’t teach this shit in the Marines,” he exclaimed, and I applauded.

  Woody and I heard that northern pike and walleye were being caught on spoons in Firesteel Creek, so we stopped by the biology lab to talk with our professor, Bob Tatina, who confirmed the report. Tatina was setting up a lab, but he went to the board and drew a section of the creek down from the Lake Mitchell spillway, chalking in the bends and some downed trees, indicating spots where he caught fish. “Cast upriver and reel quickly enough to keep that spoon moving. Flutter and drop,” Tatina said. “And be careful. Water’s still cold and fast.”

  Woody and I jumped in his old car and swung by the courthouse to get fishing licenses, but they were closed. “Screw it,” I said. We drove out to the Firesteel, parked along a barbed wire fence where some cows grazed, and walked through a stand of elm around heaps of crumbling bricks to the creek. The water was a little high and cloudy, but we were excited, hurrying down the trail to the spot Tatina recommended, casting red and white Dardevles and hoping. My well-worn green Penn spinning reel had a reliable drag, but the springs wore out periodically and the bail wouldn’t snap over. This was happening today, and as I fumbled with the reel, my spoon found a snag. “Goddamn it!” I said, reeling up tight and jerking the rod. There is nothing worse than a snag to disrupt and frustrate the joy of fishing, and learning to physically and psychologically cope with snags in fishing and in life is necessary for long-term survival. Cursing really helps.

  Down at the water’s edge, trying to get a reverse angle on the hook, the mud greased my boots, and I slid into the cold creek. “Shit,” I yelled and walrused up the bank. Woody laughed and scolded me for scaring the fish. I got my footing, tried to jerk loose my spoon, slipped again, and snarled my line in a spiky bush. I took a deep breath, untangled my line from the bush, tightened down my drag, and broke off from the snag. Then I recognized the distinctive tan uniform and badge of the game warden coming down the trail.

  “How you fellows doing?”

  Woody looked at me and squeezed his eyes shut.

  “No fish, sir. But I just took a bath,” I said.

  “Creek’s a little high,” the warden replied. “Can I see your licenses, please?”

  “I’m sorry, sir,” I said. “We stopped by the courthouse, but they were closed. It’s the first time out this year. We always get licenses.”

  “You can’t fish without a license, son.”

  The game warden was cool and polite, but he confiscated our equipment and wrote us tickets for fishing without a license, one hundred dollars. We’d get our gear back when we paid the fine, but we’d lose our fishing privileges for a full year.

  I didn’t have an extra hundred dollars in my checking account, so I called Aunt Lil, and she gave me a hard time but wired the money. The warden visited the dorm and returned my spinning rod and tackle bag. I thanked him and asked if he wanted a drink. It was four o’clock on a Friday afternoon and the improvised bar in our Graham Hall room was in full swing. The warden laughed, “I thought this was a dry campus.”

  “How could a fisherman survive on a dry campus?” I said. He smiled and declined my offer. We parted on friendly terms.

  The college officially prohibited alcohol, a ban that was not enforced in Graham Hall, an old granite building with large rooms reserved as a co-ed honors dorm. On most Fridays and Saturdays, not to mention many other nights of the week, the men and women of Graham partook in the honorable customs of drinking, smoking, and even bowling, using the third floor hallway as an alley with real balls and pins snatched from Village Bowl during the chaos of a power outage.

  Woody did not pay his fine, and when he was absent from class on Monday, I explained to our beloved American literature professor, Joseph Ditta, that Woody had checked into prison. Professor Ditta questioned whether Woody, like Thoreau, who also loved to fish, was making a political statement against the government’s infringement of inalienable rights, such as the right to catch a fish. “No,” I said and smiled. “He just wants to save a hundred bucks.” Woody’s girlfriend, Xanti, a zaftig strawberry blonde partial to cigarettes and Led Zeppelin, shook her head in disgust. Another guy added, “Render unto Caesar.” There was talk going every direction. “Okay, let’s move on,” Ditta raised his hands, calmed the class, and continued discussing Walden. Woody’s time in the clean single cell with room service allowed him to study and read without interruption. He cleared his fine, retrieved his gear, and earned three A’s that spring semester.

  State law suspended my fishing privileges for the rest of the year, but with Thoreau in mind, I continued to angle without a license. I believed in fishing licenses and regulations. My fine was just. But that fine had been paid, and the extended suspension of fishing privileges seemed unfair. I felt morally entitled to fish and so became a renegade angler, taking long fish-walks, assembling my rod and screwing on my reel in the wooded backwaters, pulling essential gear from a pocket, and letting go everything I caught. Releasing fair-sized, edible game fish was good for me, and I began to appreciate catch-and-release, especially when I caught the same twenty-inch pike with an obvious nick out of his tail two days in a row. This sharply distinguished fishing from hunting, where the endgame is death. There was no releasing those pheasants we blasted. Legendary angler Lee Wulff said it well, “Game fish are too valuable to be caught only once.”

  Releasing fish keeps the game in play. And play it was, though still at the expense of the struggling fish. It was no longer emotionally necessary for me to bring home an actual fish and receive praise from my father and aunt or my brother’s admiration—though I did show off a photo now and then. A photo of a big fish documented the specimen and helped quell the doubters. But more than ever I loved to fish for the sake of fishing. So was this a sport? Canadian outdoorsman, writer, and courtroom judge Roderick Haig-Brown explained that recreational angling started with “the first man who sneaked away to the creek when the tribe did not really need fish.”

  When Birch and our friend Ben Whitehorse started talking about the Missouri River and big walleye, I wanted to go. Birch was seeing a woman in Chamberlain, and he’d meet us on the water. Ben would drive me and Abe, a Methodist scholarship student from Zimbabwe, to the river, and I’d buy the beer. Ben was a heavyset Sioux Indian with neatly trimmed short hair and large glasses that always seemed smudged with something. He played football but had a gentle demeanor and spoke softly in a Lakota accent that reminded me, strangely enough, of the Yiddish-flavored voices of New York. Ben drove a dented, rough-running Plymouth Volaré with a good stereo and an overstuffed trunk tied down with baling twine.

  We rode west, cranking the Scorpions and passing a flask of cheap whisky. Thinking a famous walleye spot on the Missouri might occasion a game warden, I decided to get a fishing license under a slightly different name with a new address—easily accomplished in the days before the Internet. Outside town, licenses were sold in mini-marts with fishing and hunting supplies. You could pull
into M & H Mini-Mart and get a burrito, beer, whisky, a few boxes of shotgun shells, sinkers, hooks, and a fishing license. Reissued as Hal Hughes of White Lake, I bought us a case of beer and took the back seat for the long drive to Ben’s brother’s place.

  “You’re on the rez now, so watch your step, wasi’chu,” Ben joked. I had fallen asleep and woke to rolling green hills and a wide horizon of bright water. I looked at Abe, a very black African with a shaved head and a beaded necklace. “What’s who?” Abe squinted at me. “Wa-shee-chu,” Ben sounded out the word. “You’re a black wasi’chu,” he pointed at Abe and laughed. Wasi’chu, roughly equivalent to honky, haole, gringo, or gaijin, refers, often contemptuously, to nonnatives, but Ben’s teasing use of the term lightened up the whole issue of race when we were together.

  We drove over cracked streets spouting grass, and what looked to be a squashed rattlesnake, into town where we were further instructed to keep the beer down and watch the blue dog. “I’ll get him on his chain,” Ben said as we pulled into the drive and a gray-blue heeler jumped on the hood, barking furiously. “Oh my god,” yelled Abe, spilling beer on his pants.

  Ben’s brother lived in a trailer home reroofed in tin sheeting weighed down with tires. He and his girlfriend hardly looked up at us when we walked in. The place was overflowing with ashtrays, dishes, wrinkled magazines, and cassette tapes piled over a coffee table. Ben came out of a bedroom with two heavy spinning rods and a tin tackle box. He asked his brother if he wanted a beer. “You can leave some,” the brother said and brought out a bong, setting it on the coffee table. Abe and I kneeled on the dirty rug and the others sat on the saggy couch, and we all had a good smoke. Abe loved to get high, and when I asked him if he smoked in Zimbabwe, he burst out in laughter and said, “Of course, Use.” Abe always dropped the “H” off my name. The woman, Sandy, was quiet until she smoked, and then she kept talking and asking me questions about what I thought of “backward-ass South Dakota.”