Round Rock - Michelle Huneven [58]
Lewis clustered rocks around the handles until the poles stood on their own.
Joe frowned. “Don’t you hold the poles in your hands?”
“Not these,” she said. “You’ll hold the spinning poles your Dad bought, but this is catfishing. Nothing labor-intensive about it. Just bait and wait. You need your hands free. I mean, what if you have to scratch an itch?” She baited and cast the next pole. “Hold this now, okay? Couple of weeks ago, I leaned a pole up against the chair and before I knew it, both the pole and the chair were in the lake. Lewis had to go in after them. Got a big old catfish.”
Red was wishing by now that he hadn’t gotten the spinning rods. They were too fussy and fragile, the three-pound test like spiderwebs in his fingers. He was grateful Libby was distracting Joe, lest the boy witness his ineptitude.
Once their gear was ready, Red and Joe had to walk a good distance away from Libby and Lewis, and then from each other, in order to cast. Too far apart to talk. So much for interaction; fishing, it seemed, was yet another exercise in solitude.
The night before, Joe had spent a long time practice-casting in the Round Rock roadway. He cast until he could send out a lure in a fine, long arc in any direction. He hit specific rocks and trees and other targets. Now he fished with ease, casting, reeling in, casting, reeling in, his face expressing the same focus and intensity as when he read or ran. After a fruitless half an hour, Red worried that the boy was bored, and tried to project confidence that there were fish that would bite. And sure enough, Red had a strike and pulled in a pan-sized bluegill. Libby jumped to her feet and ran up whooping. Joe stared long and hard at the fish, as if memorizing what he should aim for. “All right, Dad,” he said.
They resumed casting. The morning was warm and still. Water lapped at the shore in tiny waves. From the mechanical daze of repetitive motion, Red heard Joe quietly and pointedly say, “Dad.” Joe’s pole was curling in a tightening parabola. Libby was over in an instant. “Good!” she cried. “Now keep your pole up. Relax, don’t panic. Let him swim. Don’t haul him in too fast. Right, good. Pole up! Let him run a bit. Jesus, Joe, what do you have there?”
“I don’t know!” Joe was jubilant.
Lewis came over for a closer look. An old man fishing farther down the spit shaded his eyes to see what was going on, then put a rock in his chair and ambled up.
“Big, huh, Dad?” Joe said.
“I’ll say,” said Red.
The nylon line unzipped the water.
“You’re doing great,” said Libby.
“You sure are,” Red said.
Indeed, Joe grew calmer by the moment. He kept his pole up, maintaining a constant, steady tension, as if he’d been fishing all his life.
“So what do you think?” Libby asked.
“I think I’ll bring him on in now,” Joe said.
Red realized this was no pretty little panfish long before it broke the surface. He thought maybe sheepshead or sucker, though, and wasn’t prepared for the way it kept coming out of the water. At first Red thought it was a snake, but in the next instant, he realized it was an eel—worm, snake, and bottom fish combined. Mud-brown, yellow-eyed, its girth triangular, its skin dented and scarred. The five of them stood there as the eel writhed on the parched mud, two barbs of the brass treble hook imbedded in its jaw. The tiny eyes, spaced so far apart, seemed barely functional or necessary.
“Straight from the Pleistocene,” Lewis said.
“Some eat ’em,” said the old guy. “I never would.”
Joe looked around, his face white and his eyes wide with excitement and fear. “So what do I do?” he asked loudly.
“Oh, we’ll throw it back,” said Libby. “No big deal.”
Red reached to touch his son’s shoulder and caught sight of an entire family approaching: father and mother, boy and girl, all wearing brightly colored nylon windbreakers and carrying new-looking picnic gear and tackle boxes. They could have marched straight