In the Wilderness - Kim Barnes [76]
Trees moved lightly in the breeze and I closed my eyes to listen to the murmur and shush of branches. The river’s low thrum, the trees brushing—all I could hear or want to hear that summer afternoon with a family both mine and not mine. When the fish hit, I startled as though from sleep. The heaviness drew my line taut, then the reel began unwinding, playing out too fast.
“Tighten the drag a little.” Terry was at my elbow. I did as he said, fearing that any more tension would cause the line to snap. The steady pull weakened and I regained a few yards, but then the fish turned, headed with the current downstream.
“Just let him go. He’ll tucker out.” I glanced at Terry, arms crossed, feet planted solid in the sandy soil. Luke and Brother Lang reeled in, and I registered their thoughtfulness, their desire to give me every advantage.
I steadied the butt of the rod against my hipbone and pulled the tip skyward before taking in the slack.
“What is it?” I asked, knowing I had never felt such weight in a rainbow or brookie. Terry shook his head.
“Sturgeon.” Luke stood close behind me.
Terry grunted. “Don’t think there’s sturgeon in this river. Channel cat, maybe. Big, whatever it is.”
The fish began another run. I was sure he’d take all my line, strip the spool clean. I worked the rod against my belly, arms already trembling with the fight. The force of his pull surprised me. Where was it he was pulling for? What place did he hope to gain? I imagined his passage deep in the river’s cleaving. The line he drew seemed dead straight, as though the boulders and snags were impermanent, themselves fluid. I knew some fish would sound—nose down against a rock—and I half-expected the sudden cessation of movement, the stubborn, impossible draw.
But the fish did not stop. It ran until exhausted, then allowed me to exhaust myself hauling its weight upriver a few feet at a time until, rested, it could again make the air above its world sing. I didn’t hear the men anymore, nor the women, whose quieter dialogue blended with the wind. I focused on the line, waiting for the fish to break surface, to give up some secret of itself, but in all my vision there was nothing save water and this invisible, incessant pulling.
Pointed shadows darkened the river. Nighthawks zigzagged the sky, their sharp calls distant, peripheral. No one moved to pack the food, fold the chairs. No one moved to take the rod from my hands. They stood with me, Sister Lang pulling her sweater across her shoulders, Sarah leaned against Terry. So patient and clear, our seeing of nothing, as though that which we watched for expected our welcome.
Shade became darkness and still my line kept the light, reflecting the moon in a silvery strand. I could no longer see the spool itself and had no sense of what was left, how many yards of filament played out downriver. When the fish pulled, I gave. When he rested, I reclaimed what distance I could, my motions perpetual, uncalculated. I ceased to consider options, strategies. Time sank with the line and disappeared without end.
Near shore the water shallowed. How long had the fish been settled there, working his slow respirations, rocking in silt? A log, I thought. A trick of light. I lowered the rod and saw the shape disappear, then resume its place. I stepped back, stumbled, felt the line tense. Only then did I know my own exhaustion, the pain in my groin and arms. I straightened and began walking backward, afraid to take my eyes from that spot, intending to drag the fish from the river. Luke caught my shoulders from behind.
“You’ll lose him. Use the rod. Use your arms.”
I leaned against his chest, aware that I was groaning with each attempt to pull the rod vertical. The fish would not give, so solid I believed I had dreamed him, that it was stone I imagined undulating at my