And then, just as the heat and the drone of the bugs began to wear on him, lull him into boredom and weariness, his line went taut and the tip of his rod bent so far it almost touched the water.
He was pulled off balance, but he quickly braced his legs and leaned back, reeling as fast as the mechanism allowed, bracing the butt of the rod in his belly, right at the top of his jeans.
Oh man, it was a big one.
The muscles in his back burned and the rod in his belly felt like it might push all the way through his gut. He bit his lip and reeled as hard as he could until finally he saw the trout on the end of his line. A sleek shadow that darted left and zagged right.
A monster. A big, giant monster.
Walter took three steps backward, and putting his entire body into it, he pulled that fish in, reeling and tugging as hard as he could until it landed, panting and flopping on the stone.
A footer for sure.
The hook had caught the fish right through the gills and Walter knew there could be no careful freeing of this fish. He stepped on its slithery body and yanked the hook out.
Blood sprayed across the stone and the fish’s flopping slowed. Walter watched until it stopped moving and reminded himself of what his science teacher told him—fish don’t feel it.
He grabbed the wicker creel his mom had made him last Christmas. She made one for him, Dad, and Chris, each of them different so they wouldn’t get confused. Walt’s was yellow cane with a big brown W on the lid.
Happy with every aspect of that fish—its beautiful coloring, its superior size and weight, the tremendous fight it gave him—he tucked it into his basket.
It was a very fine fish.
Walt tied on another June bug and recast, and then the real fun began.
It was the best day of fishing he’d ever had. He couldn’t miss. He never lost another lure and never had to wait more than a minute for a nibble. It was like the fish were just lining up waiting for him.
It was an epic day, not even his dad could have done so well.
Two hours later, muscles sore but with ten beautiful keepers tucked into the wicker creel slung over his shoulder, Walter kicked his cousin awake.
“Let’s go find Dad,” he said.
“You catch something?” Dan asked, pushing himself upright.
“Boy, did I,” Walter said with a grin. “I’ve got dinner and breakfast for the rest of the weekend.” He swung the box around to his waist and lifted the lid to show Dan his catch.
They were gorgeous. Green and black and rainbow colored along their lean bellies where the sunlight hit them. Each one of them as long as his forearm.
Dan smiled like the cousin Walter remembered. “Good, I’m starved!”
Walter led them back toward the spot where they’d split up and then he kept going south along the deer trail. He imagined his father would take Christopher toward the falls, so he ignored the mosquitoes, drunk and hungry on the smell of the blood that seeped from the basket down his pants leg, and pressed on.
He could hear Dan behind him, cursing.
“You can stop,” he said. “Head on back to the cabin.”
“And miss seeing your dad when you show him those fish! Forget it,” Dan said, his face red and wet with sweat.
Walter grinned, swallowing the delighted little chirp he felt in the back of his throat.
They broke out of the forest onto the edge of the river, just above the falls. The falls weren’t anything big, just a foot-tall drop. Christopher sat on the granite, his legs curled into his chest, scratching at his ankles like he wanted to touch bone.
“Chris! What’s wrong?” Walter asked. He looked for the long shadow cast by his father but he wasn’t around. “Where’s Dad?”
“He got mad and left,” Christopher muttered. He’d been crying, and crying hard from the looks of him.
And his lip was split. Dad’s ring could do that if he hit you just right.
“You okay?” Dan pulled out his canteen and handed it to Christopher, who opened the screw cap and took huge gulps of the water like he’d been dying in the desert.
The idiot was sitting next to a river; if he was thirsty he could have just dunked his face into the water.
Walter shook his head like Dad did when Christopher or Walter did something dumb.
“You’re such a whiney baby,” Walter said. “That’s why he hits you. You gotta learn to keep your mouth shut.”
He didn’t want to carry the fish any farther. They were heavy and the strap of the creel dug into his shoulder and hurt. Not to mention the black flies that followed him like a cloud.
“Which way did he go?”
Chris pointed south.
“To the big bend?” Walter asked, and Christopher nodded.
It was too far to walk. Walter shrugged out of the strap and set the fish in the cool shallow water closest to the bank. At least they’d stay fresh.
“We’ll wait here, then,” he said, splashing water onto his face. He felt like a grown-up saying such things. Saying such things with ten fish in his creel. He smiled at his distorted reflection in the water. “Did you catch anything?” Walter asked.
Christopher kicked over his empty wicker creel.
“Every time we go fishing he gets mad at me,” Christopher began to wail. “It’s not my fault I’m no good at it.”
“Of course not,” Dan said, and Walter wanted to tell Dan not to encourage Christopher. That it wouldn’t help him in the long run. Christopher just had to become a better fisherman, that’s all there was to it. He had to learn to ignore the bugs and the heat, or Dad would just get meaner.
“Give me your creel,” Walter said.
Christopher reached out his foot and kicked it closer to Walter. Walter scowled at him. “You’re acting like a baby. No wonder Dad left.”
Christopher scowled back and Walter headed over to his creel in the shallows.
He was going to just put a few of his fish into Christopher’s so it would look like he’d caught something, and then maybe Dad would leave him alone. But—that would diminish the day Walt’d had. Ten fish—each of them more beautiful than the last. Someone deserved to have the bragging rights to a day like this.
If Walt didn’t have any fish, Dad would turn on him, call him a waste. Or maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe, excited for Christopher, proud of the little kid whom everyone (except Dad) knew hated going to the river, he wouldn’t even notice what Walter did or didn’t catch.
Christopher was just a kid. Walter, as of today, was a guy who took care of his family. Caught them dinner when they were hungry.
“What are you doing, Walt?” Chris asked.
“Giving you my fish.”
“All the fish?” Dan asked and then hooted. “Your Dad won’t believe Chris caught all them himself.”
“Sure he will,” Walt said. He carefully lifted each slithery body out of his basket and into his brother’s. Drops of blood fell onto the stone and ran into the water, attracting little minnows along with water striders and other bugs. He swatted at a horsefly.
Maybe he would believe it. Or maybe not. Walter guessed he would. Dad believed the best in Christopher—saw things that just weren’t there—he’d given him that hat, after all.
“Walt?” Chris asked, beside him. He had mosquito bites on his legs that had swollen up like acorns. Poor guy, he really did hate this.
“Yeah, Chris.”
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Hey!” Dan cried, and both Walt and Chris turned to look at him. He stripped down to his drawers and tennis shoes. “Last one in is a rotten egg!” He streaked past them and charged into the river, sending spray into the air and scaring away every fish for miles.
Walter laughed, tore off his shirt and pants, and hurled himself into the river after Dan, the cool water hit his body and fixed him. It made the itch go away, the heat and the regret that his dad probably would never guess the day he’d had fishing.
&nbs
p; “Come on, Chris,” he said, turning back to his brother, so small and thin on the edge of the river. “The water’s great!”
He cupped his hand and smacked the surface sending a wave over the rock and into the sunshine, where for a brief second it turned to diamonds and then fell, just water again, back to the river.
7
Walter was sucked back out of that summer day with the force of a hurricane using a straw, and he landed, sick and spinning against the metal bars of the swing set.
He stumbled, righted himself, and stumbled again, the world a mad tilt-a-whirl.
Finally, he just lay down. The green grass poked him through his shirt.
“Holy hell,” he muttered up the blue sky that continued to spin. “I think I’m motion sick.”
“Nonsense, you’re not moving anywhere.”
Walter sought out Peter, found him peering down at him from the top of the slide.
“So?” Peter asked. “A day of fishing. Selfless heroics for your brother—care to relive it all? The taste of fried fish you’d caught yourself?” Peter waggled his eyebrows and held out a sheaf of papers.
“What’s that?”
“A contract.”
“There are contracts in heaven?”
“Nope.” Peter shook his head. “But we got plenty in limbo. So? What do you say? Care to relive that day?”
Walter shook his head and turned back to the sky. Blue and holding still. Thank God. “Not really.”
“Did your dad believe that Chris caught those fish?”
Walter closed his eyes, burped river water, and nodded.
“Sorry.”
Walter shrugged. It had been the beginning of something, that day, or the end of something, really. Nothing was ever the same after that with his dad. And Walter had spent a lot of years trying to change it back, but it was too late. And he was the only one trying. Dad didn’t seem to notice.
“What’s the next day on that list?” Walt asked.
Walter turned to Peter but the boy was no longer on the slide. Instead there was a big heavy purple door with a metal push bar standing in the middle of the lawn.
The muffled roar of a crowd, the flat electronic buzzer of a clock, and the unmistakable slap and squeak of rubber soles on a gym floor leaked out from under the door.
Walter slowly got to his feet.
“What is that?”
Peter ducked out from behind the door, something glad and devilish in his gaze. “I think it’s basketball.”
Basketball had been the game of Walter’s teenage years. He’d loved it, even though he was too short and too slow to really be good. But as Mr. Kerestes, his old basketball coach, used to say, he played like a bulldog when other guys played like poodles.
“Check the second date on the list.” Peter pointed to the list of dates that magically appeared in Walter’s hand.
“I’m sixty-six years old, Peter. I can’t remember these dates.”
“Well…” The boy put his hand on the push bar of the heavy dark door. “The second day on that list is on the other side of this door.”
Walter smiled and actually felt a bubble of laughter in his gullet. This might be kind of fun.
“Well, lead on, Peter Goldstein.”
And they walked through the door.
The smell of the old gymnasium was overpowering and nostalgic. Those old wooden and concrete gyms held sweat and heat like hotboxes. And the noise! Buzzers and screams and the cheerleaders in their heavy wool skirts and sweaters, and the crowd…
Walter turned to look up into the stands at the hundreds of Beaverton citizens who had come out to see their beloved Screaming Eagles win the state championship.
This day had been forgotten in the living of long years, in the press of far more serious things than a high school basketball games, but it wobbled to the surface of Walter’s memory attached to a feeling that had also been lost in the years. Excitement. Gut-clenching, heart-pounding excitement.
“Holy shit,” he breathed.
Walter blinked, wondering when the hell his vision would sort itself out. The color of the air…of the court…Walter couldn’t be sure but all the colors were faded and watery, like an early Kodachrome photograph. Like the photo of this team that had been taken after the game for the paper.
A boy rushed by, dribbling down court like a thing of beauty and grace. He took the two steps to the basket, made that light, airy leap, that twist and stretch, and the ball tipped off his fingers onto the backboard and into the basket.
Al Torreno. Man, Walter hadn’t thought about that kid in years. He’d gone on to play college ball but Walter didn’t know what happened to him after that. Probably killed in some rice paddy in Southeast Asia like most of the kids on that court.
Man oh man, look at these guys. Walter laughed. Gangly green boys who thought that whatever happened on that court, that night, would make or break them.
For Walter, that had been particularly true.
“This has to be the whitest basketball team ever,” Peter said.
Walter nodded.
Peter ran out from behind Walter, to the edge of the court. He waited, hopping on his toes. “This is my favorite!” Peter cried.
Lou Crimell approached with his distinctive lurching gait. Peter took one long, leaping step sideways as Lou whipped past and Peter seemed to get swept up in the current created by Lou’s body. Peter became a glittering phantom aura surrounding Lou.
Lou pivoted and took off the other way, and Peter was left weaving and smiling like a drunk at center court.
“You okay, kid?”
“So good.” Peter jogged over to where Walter stood in the shadows of the stands. “You guys always take the best things for granted.”
“Who?”
“You recently deceased.”
“What things do we take for granted?”
“Sweating. Being out of breath. Knee pain. Blisters. And running.” He sighed in ecstasy. “Running is the best.”
“You run.” Walter looked down at Peter’s feet, which he realized weren’t actually on the ground. Peter was sort of floating, his Chuck Taylors a few inches off the polished pine floor.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Walter murmured. “Why do you wear shoes?”
Peter blinked at him. “I don’t know. I like them, I guess.”
“Anybody ever tell you you’re an odd duck?”
“Anybody ever tell you you’re a grumpy old man?”
“No, actually.”
“Well, let me be the first.”
Lou bobbled a rebound and turned over the ball. The Whitewater player took it to the basket and, luckily, missed.
Peter gazed out at the court, his lips pursed. “So which one are you?”
Water laughed, a hard bark, and remembered what this was about. He was out there somewhere and he really wasn’t sure if he was ready to see the seventeen-year-old version of himself.
But curiosity got the best of him and he searched for himself on the court, among all the teenagers with the same shorts and long socks and buzz-cut hair. The Whitewater players in their blue uniforms made a fast break toward their own basket and there he was, bringing up the rear.
The shortest, slowest point guard maybe in the history of the game. His nose had already been bloodied; he could see sweaty dark splotches where he had wiped it on his number 10 jersey. He had been giving that Whitewater player a rough time and in the third quarter Walter got an elbow in the nose for his troubles. But oh, the fourth quarter. He looked up at the clock and saw that the third was winding down.
Like a ten-year-old he hopped around the corner of the stands and turned to get a front row seat for one of the greatest moments in his life. As he sat he had that strange sensation of falling into something or down something only to land in the memory of the fourth quarter of the 1962 Wisconsin State Finals.
March 11, 1962
Ten seconds left in the fourth quarter of the Wisconsin State Basketball Finals
* * *
Walt landed hard on his butt and tasted blood where he’d bitten his tongue.
“That’s a foul, ref!” he yelled, but the ref didn’t listen. Instead, he pointed a finger at Walt and shouted, “You are walking a thin line, Zawislak.”
Walt slowly made his way to his feet. Owens, the Whitewater player who’d just about broke Walt’s tailbone, grinned and winked at him.
“Screw you!” Walt shouted at the kid.
“Zawislak!” It was Kerestes at the bench. “Cool it.”
The rolls of fat over Kerestes’ bow tie turned purple; the guy sweated blood. And everybody in that gymnasium was going bonkers.
There were ten seconds left in the game and Beaverton was down by two. And Walt was all too aware that he was a senior. This was his last chance.
He looked up at the third row of the Beaverton Stands on the right side and quickly found his parents. His mother looked worried, like a distressed hen in a blue dress. His father of course, looked bigger than any person around him and like his top was going to blow right off.
Vicktor Zawislak jerked his thumb at the Whitewater basket. “Get off your ass and go after ‘em,” he yelled.
Walt wiped his runny, bleeding nose on his jersey and trotted toward the action under the Whitewater basket. Sometimes he wished his father wouldn’t even come to these things.
Al Torreno caught the rebound and fired the ball at Micky Stuts, who got midcourt before the giants of Whitewater were all over him. The defense had been on them like flies on shit all damn game. There was nothing the Beaverton guys could do to get to the basket without fouling one of the Whitewater players. Walt had four personal fouls already and if things didn’t ease up here real quick Walt was going to foul that Owens asshole all the way to the hospital.
Stuts pivoted twice, searching between the arms and grabbing hands of his Whitewater guard for someone, anyone who was open.
He felt his father’s dark eyes boring into his back, searing his skin and branding his bones.
A Day In the Death of Walter Zawislak Page 5