Back Seat with Fish

by Henry Hughes

  By April the Wabash heated up, and the waxy strands of dead shad were decomposing along the shore, shoveler ducks and teal appeared, and at dusk beavers crossed the Williamsburg Ponds dragging freshly cut willow branches. I fish-walked the wooded peninsula to the inlet of the North Pond and zipped out a bucktail spinner. On the third cast I had a hit, always encouraging; on the fourth retrieve there was the solid, living thrill of a fish. A steely, black-striped silver bass came through the brown water. The silver or white bass, as they are called in different regions, is a handsome fish, compressed and deep with a spiny dorsal and a tail forked perfectly for speed and stability. Three silver bass and one larger fish that had the broken striped pattern of the hybrid came in and out of my hands. I thought of Erin and Pamela, who became lovers. I thought of poetry and biology, flowers and fish, and the watercress and white bass I’d like to taste.

  “They are great eating,” claimed the guy at the bar.

  “From the Wabash?”

  “From the Tippecanoe,” he smiled and introduced himself as Sean McNerney. Sean was studying classics, didn’t much like going to class or finishing papers, but could read Latin and some Greek and speak intelligently on many subjects, including history, literature, cooking, and halieutics—fishing—he repeated the Latin and wrote the original Greek letters on a bar napkin.

  “Tippecanoe and Tyler, too,” I repeated as we drove my old station wagon along the gray Wabash up North River Road, past the Prophetstown State Park and along the Tippecanoe River, listening to Bon Jovi’s “Blaze of Glory” and discussing William Henry Harrison and the famous battle of 1811. Indiana has a lot of Native American history but, from what I could tell, few Native Americans. The new fields of corn and beans were coming up, flocks of waterfowl filled the sky, and the Tippecanoe River held a greenish clarity along its pebbly bank. Coming into the town of Monticello, one sensed the humble fruition of a working class dream. From small plots along and near the river sprang little bungalows, ticky-tack trailers, and prefabs in bright colors. There were trailered aluminum boats in driveways and canoes and dinghies tipped against fences. People worked their whole lives in noisy, windowless Indiana factories, dreaming of such riverside retreats.

  Sean directed us to Smitty’s Bait Shop. The place felt like a pet store, warm and humid with bubbling tanks of minnows and walls of tackle. Smitty, an inveterate angler, card player, and bourbon drinker, looked a little rough around the edges this morning in May. We smiled, put a couple lures on the counter to stimulate conversation, and he coughed out a report and pointed to recent photos of walleye and the hybrid striped bass he called wipers. Flash-lit photos of fat red-faced men holding huge ten-pound wipers—their eyes shining—urged me on. “All right, Sean. Let’s go.” But Smitty said we should have some bait. His dusty gray cat jumped up on the mesh screen covering one of the tanks. Smitty netted out a two-inch minnow the cat pawed, bit, and ate before us. “They certainly work on cats,” Sean said. We bought spinners, hooks, two Cokes, a minnow bucket, and two dozen fathead minnows, paid Smitty an extra dollar for parking, and drove down to the gravelly shore below the dam.

  The water looked good, but the banks were garbage-strewn, and a number of people sat in folding chairs casting weighted bait into the current. “Beautiful water all to ourselves,” Janet used to sing in South Dakota, but I had done a lot of urban fishing and the scene didn’t bother me much. The catching, however, was slow. We touched and released two tiny silvers in two hours, and a guy in a monster truck pulled onto the gravel, rolled down his windows, and cranked Metallica. “And it’s like their worst song,” Sean groaned. I could see people fishing from the dam rail a few hundred feet upriver. “If we’re gonna do this, we might as well go all the way,” I told Sean.

  We drove to where the road ends at The Oakdale Inn, boasting “The Best Dam Food Around” from its twenty-foot vertical marquis of a giant catfish holding a pitcher of beer. The earthen dam was walled in concrete and pouring water from the Tippecanoe River and Lake Freeman above. Worm containers, tackle packages, old line, cans, and bottles littered the packed dirt along spillway. “You really want to fish here?” Sean asked.

  We tied on number four hooks and bit lead split shot onto the line. I reached my hand into the bait bucket and cupped a fluttering minnow, grasping it and gently piercing the hook through its lips. In the seventeenth century, Izaak Walton advised that one hooks a frog for bait “as though you loved him.” And there are numerous accounts of anglers lovingly hooking live worms, insects, salamanders, mice, even cute little ducklings to lure a ferocious pike. I remembered flounder fishing as a boy and crucifying sandworms shortly before Good Friday. I had also just read David James Duncan’s essay, “First Native,” recalling a childhood trauma of using a live stonefly for trout bait and feeling “like this nine-year-old Roman asshole who’d just crucified a little winged Christian.” Duncan meditates on the suffering bait, but his pierced offering is resurrected in a brilliant wild trout that saves the day and his spirits. This is a cycle I willingly accept, even celebrate.

  Every fisherman should, at some time, contemplate the bait. Lures and artificial flies might be cleaner, more artistic, and even more sporting, but there’s nothing like live bait to put one in touch with the savage world of a fish. I gently cast the hooked prey into the white churning water and imagined its horrible plunge, unable to swim for cover, the surprised and delighted bass unfolding its mouth. The words are human, but the action was real as I immediately had a bite and lost my minnow.

  Most fish eat other fish, even their own young. And if we’re to look only to nature for moral guidance, it could get ugly. Fish can, however, help us accept a predator-prey world of delicious delights. Becalmed off Block Island, Benjamin Franklin, a practicing vegetarian, craved some of the fresh-caught codfish coming out of the frying pan in the ship’s galley. “I balanced some time between principle and inclination, till I recollected that, when the fish were opened, I saw smaller fish taken out of their stomachs. Then thought I, ‘If you eat one another, I don’t see why we mayn’t eat you.’ So I dined upon cod very heartily …” I’ve always admired Franklin’s Enlightenment thinking, though he admits the dangers of rationalizing, “So convenient a thing it is be a reasonable Creature, since it enables one to find or make a Reason for everything one has a mind to do.”

  Sean had a strike, set the hook, and reeled up a ten-inch silver. “That’ll fry up nicely,” I saluted him. He smiled, waving his fish toward the foam, “I bet there’s a whole school down there.” Fish school for safety, feeding, and breeding. Some species swim close and tight in schools of thousands, their eyes and lateral lines functioning better than Volvo cross-traffic monitors, their nerves and fins wired for high performance synchronous maneuvers. I thought of my own place in the big university, the support and safety of its name and numbers, my direction coursed by the motions of the class, program, and department. But there were risks, too. The odd fish out is the first to be eaten. The writing workshops tended to reward a well-behaved poem that everybody liked rather than something wild, edgy, or bizarre. But these workshops also taught me how to understand and get along with other writers and readers and how to consider, and even support, styles and philosophies unlike my own. We might be different people, but we shared many of the same passions, the same essential goals, and the same school. And so it is with anglers.

  We heard the Metallica-blaring monster truck pull into the Oakdale Inn parking lot. “Shit,” Sean said. A few minutes later the driver came down the trail with his fishing gear, said “Howdy,” and found a place at the rail. He was in his thirties, a big guy in work boots, worn jeans, and a flannel shirt. Under a black Ford cap his stubbly face looked like it had seen some trouble. In ten minutes he hooked a big fish.

  The fish flashed silver in the foamy water and the man’s drag sang. Sean and I reeled in and let him pass over us. He took the cigarette out of his mouth and threw it into the rocks. There was no way he could bring this fish st
raight up. Just as one would do on a party boat with a big salmon or bluefish, he worked his way down the rail and over people who were generally accommodating, following his fish downriver. When he scrambled over the boulders into the tail out, I grabbed our net and followed him. “I’ll give you a hand, if you want.”

  “Yeah, thanks.”

  This was a fine fish, more than two feet long and fighting fiercely. It swam through the rocks and into the flatter water, bolting for the opposite shore. It did not leap, but its broad flanks caught current and strained the line. We walked down river and the man looked at me, “I don’t know, guy. This might take a while.”

  “No problem,” I said.

  After fifteen minutes we had walked past a Latino family using hand lines, a white fly fisherman in L.L. Bean regalia, two black guys drinking Colt 45 who said, “That’s what we’re after,” a fat couple who told us they had one like that yesterday and it broke the line, and a jerk who kept casting right in front of us. We ended up almost to the spot where Sean and I started, disturbing the reclined and arousing tremendous interest from children. Smitty had come down to nab a guy for evading the one-dollar parking fee. The great silver fish slowly came into view and then tore out a couple more times. “He’s scared,” a boy said, staring at the action. The fish was fighting for its life, but we all wanted him. I walked into the water to the top of my boots, and the trembling man steered the bass headfirst into the long-handled net. A gorgeous thirty-inch wiper.

  “Great fish. Nicely done,” I said.

  “Thanks, man. I owe you,” he shook my hand, still dizzy with disbelief that he actually caught such a fish. “That’s the best thing to happen to me in while,” he looked at the fish and smiled. A few kids gathered around, and the same sensitive boy pointed to a rusted hook and broken leader trailing from the fish’s jaw. “He got away from somebody,” the boy said. I felt sympathy for the great, gasping fish but was also pleased to see it caught. Santiago’s words echoed once more: “Fish, I love you and respect you very much. But I will kill you …” Something twisted inside me, and the man cracked the fish’s head with a stone and it lay quiet. Smitty asked the happy angler to come up for a picture.

  I walked back to the dam and found Sean coming down the rocks, fighting another nice fish, and I netted it, too. A fifteen-inch wiper. “Damn,” I said. “This is all right.” Sean and I put a dozen good silvers and his wiper in our bucket and called it a day. At the Oakdale Inn we had two beers with two sidecars of celebratory bourbon, taking in the shiny mounted fish, vintage tackle, boat parts, and park signs screwed to the wood paneling. The bartender smiled and blinked her big lashes at us, her shirt printed with that beer swilling catfish snug between her round breasts.

  Back at Sean’s apartment in an old wooden house in West Lafayette, I filleted the bass, and Sean prepared them for dinner. “With fish, be gentle,” he spoke in scholarly tones. “They live without gravity. That’s why their muscle is flaky and breaks apart so easily.” His method of steaming the fillets with lemongrass for ten minutes seemed both sophisticated and profoundly simple, differing so much from the egg and breadcrumbs, milk and mayonnaise, the butter fried, and over-broiled fish that I grew up on. He pulled out a bottle of sake and filled a couple small ceramic cups. We toasted to the fishing and the food.

  Schooling was good for me. I took classes in literature and writing, composed poems and essays, and helped start Purdue’s first literary magazine, Sycamore Review. As the magazine’s editor, I enjoyed a lively correspondence with dozens of writers, some of them yet unknown, such as Ron Rash, who sent us a gripping poem about an Arkansas bass fisherman who, in trying to free a snagged lure, puts a hook through his eye. There were letters and submissions from John Updike, Diane Wakoski, Marge Piercy, Mary Oliver, James Dickey—who said he wished he fished more—and the beloved Charles Bukowski. Bukowski sent us several poems with a mustard-stained cover letter warning that any magazine called Sycamore was in danger of getting too many “Good doggie poems.” He drew a picture of a dog and a man drinking in bed. We exchanged several letters, and when I asked Mr. Bukowski about fishing, he said he used to go down to the pier in San Pedro, where people caught sharks, mackerel, and croakers. His poem “The Fisherman” tells of an old man who walks every day to the pier and fishes, only to return to a small apartment and an indifferent wife who throws his catch in the trash. Sadness, waste, but also a sense of endurance in the act of fishing. “Yup,” Bukowski said.

  Drinking a couple beers up in the Sycamore office, as we often did in the late 1980s, I fell into more and more conversations with Caitlin, our best intern and a star among the undergraduate English majors. One dark night with no one around, we just started kissing. The currents rose—her tongue in my mouth, my hand moving down her soft neck and over her sweet chest. I pulled back and just looked at her—Dutch blue eyes, fair eyebrows, and straight blonde hair that fell to her shoulders. Her muscular body tuned easily to running, hiking, swimming, and lovemaking. Notwithstanding her parents’ concerns, we moved in together in a little house on Dodge Street. Caitlin was affectionate yet demanding, insisting we eat more fresh vegetables, boycott certain products and stores, clean the apartment every Saturday, and meditate.

  In the spring of 1990, Caitlin and I attended a reading by the famous Caribbean poet Derek Walcott. At the tweedy evening reception, we nervously approached the poet to thank him and present a copy of Sycamore Review. Walcott gave Caitlin a long up and down look, rubbed a finger over his thick, graying mustache, and smiled. Then he looked at me and asked, “Do you have a car?” I nodded. “Let’s get out of here,” he said. We rumbled across town in my old station wagon, picked up beer and cigarettes, and headed toward his hotel. Walcott noticed the fishing rods in the back of the wagon.

  “You like fishing?” he asked.

  “Yes. I love it.”

  “That’s good,” he said.

  In the dimly lit hotel room, the three of us talked for hours. Walcott did not drink but smoked cigarette after cigarette. He told us about the islands and the local fishermen. He was interested that I grew up in a fishing town on Long Island. I praised his poem “Tarpon,” and he described the fish in detail, regretting that they were often just killed for sport. He talked about living in the States, relationships, and sex. He loved talking about women, and I watched his eyes move over Caitlin’s body. I steered him toward the topic of publishing and asked if he might give us something for Sycamore Review. He pointed through the smoky haze to a spiraled manuscript on the night table. “Take something from that—okay?” It was entitled Omeros, and at the time I didn’t know what the hell that meant. “Go make copies,” Caitlin urged. “I’ll be okay.” I gave her a questioning look, hesitated, and then ran to the all-night copy shop. When I got back, Caitlin and Mr. Walcott were sitting in the same places talking about ceviche. She smiled, and I knew everything was okay.

  Reading the manuscript for Omeros (the Greek pronunciation for Homer) in the days that followed, Caitlin and I found a vivid, musical, oceanic epic about the people of St. Lucia—many fishermen among them—and we published a section in our magazine. In 1992, Derek Walcott received the Nobel Prize for literature, and Omeros was deemed his masterpiece.

  Caitlin grew more and more curious about my love of fishing. Once or twice a week, Sean and I brought back bodies, photos, or stories of catfish, carp, sturgeon, gar, bowfin, paddlefish, and the usual assortment of bass and panfish. Two French women, graduate students in linguistics, rented the downstairs, and they talked with us as we cleaned fish in the backyard. “In France, seafood is considered very sexy,” one of the women said to Sean as he rinsed a bass with the garden hose. He blushed and gave them fillets, which they later told him were délicieux. Sitting with Caitlin on the backsteps one evening, the French women came home and asked when I was going to take them fishing. “Hold on,” Caitlin said. “I’m first.”

  I had been exploring Wildcat Creek, a beautiful stream with abundant smallmouth
bass, accessible 15 miles east of Lafayette near the town of Monitor. The clear run of the south fork had nice gravelly stretches, and on a warm afternoon, Caitlin and I waded in shorts and old sneakers, casting little jigs into brushy pockets and deep holes for willing bronze-backed bass. We saw heron, whitetail deer, and a black mink that slinked down the buttery bank. Caitlin enjoyed the river so much I thought a more expeditionary adventure would befit us.

  A couple weeks later when we showed up at Wildcat Canoe Rentals, the unshaven, sticky-haired owner greeted us glumly, explaining that we were the only ones paddling that day. “Perfect,” I whispered to Caitlin, imagining secluded stops for fishing and picnicking. I had two rods and a bag of gear; Caitlin packed a small lunch cooler; we had towels and a jug of Gallo red for the ten-mile paddle. While filling out the rental and release forms, the man told us the creek was running a little high, but he’d been down with a chainsaw the other day, and it was okay.

  “You done a lot of canoeing?” he asked.

  “A little,” I said.

  “Just around a lake,” Caitlin flashed a smile.

  “Well, you’ll wanna sit in the back,” he looked at me. “Try to steer clear of shit.”

  He shuttled us upstream in his pickup truck with a canoe in the back to a spot under a graffiti-covered bridge. Standing creekside and describing the landmarks for the takeout, he seemed to remember something in the truck and scuttled up the bank, stopping halfway and doubling over in a coughing fit. Caitlin and I looked at each other. The man’s face was red and confused. “I’ll see you around three.” He waved, walked to his truck, and drove away.