Something Rich and Strange: Selected Stories (21 page)

Vehicles sometimes paused on the bridge to ask for updates, because the lower half of Harley Wease’s broken rod had become an object of great wonder since being mounted on Cedric’s back wall. Men and boys frequently took it down to grip the hard plastic handle. They invariably pointed the jagged fiberglass in the direction of the bridge, held it out as if a divining rod that might yet give some measure or resonance of what creature now made the pool its lair.

Rudisell spotted the fish first. A week had passed with daily rains clouding the river, but two days of sun settled the silt, the shallow tailrace clear all the way to the bottom. This was where Rudisell aimed his spyglass, setting it on the rail to steady his aim. He made a slow sweep of the sandy floor every fifteen minutes. Many things came into focus as he adjusted the scope: a flurry of nymphs rising to become mayflies, glints of fool’s gold, schools of minnows shifting like migrating birds, crayfish with pincers raised as if surrendering to the behemoth sharing the pool with them.

It wasn’t there, not for hours, but then suddenly it was. At first Rudisell saw just a shadow over the white sand, slowly gaining depth and definition, and then the slow wave of the gills and pectoral fins, the shudder of the tail as the fish held its place in the current.

“I see it,” Rudisell whispered, “in the tailrace.”

Campbell took off his glasses and grabbed the spyglass, placed it against his best eye as Creech got up slowly, leaned over the rail.

“It’s long as my leg,” Creech said.

“I never thought to see such a thing,” Campbell uttered.

The fish held its position a few more moments before slowly moving into deeper water.

“I never seen the like of a fish like that,” Creech announced.

“It ain’t a trout,” Campbell said.

“Nor carp or bass,” Rudisell added.

“Maybe it is a gator,” Campbell said. “One of them snowbirds from Florida could of put it in there.”

“No,” Rudisell said. “I seen gators during my army training in Louisiana. A gator’s like us, it’s got to breathe air. This thing don’t need air. Beside, it had a tail fin.”

“Maybe it’s a mermaid,” Creech mused.

By late afternoon the bridge looked like an overloaded barge. Pickups, cars, and two tractors clotted both sides of the road and the store’s parking lot. Men and boys squirmed and shifted to get a place against the railing. Harley Wease recounted his epic battle, but it was the ancients who were most deferred to as they made pronouncements about size and weight. Of species they could only speak by negation.

“My brother works down at that nuclear power plant near Walhalla,” Marcus Price said. “Billy swears there’s catfish below the dam near five foot long. Claims that radiation makes them bigger.”

“This ain’t no catfish,” Rudisell said. “It didn’t have no big jug-head. More lean than that.”

Bascombe Greene ventured the shape called to mind the pike-fish caught in weedy lakes up north. Stokes Hamilton thought it could be a hellbender salamander, for though he’d never seen one more than twelve inches long he’d heard tell they got to six feet in Japan. Leonard Coffey told a long, convoluted story about a goldfish set free in a pond. After two decades of being fed cornbread and fried okra, the fish had been caught and it weighed fifty-seven pounds.

“It ain’t no pike nor spring lizard nor goldfish,” Rudisell said emphatically.

“Well, there’s but one way to know,” Bascombe Greene said, “and that’s to try and catch the damn thing.” Bascombe nodded at Harley. “What bait was you fishing with?”

Harley looked sheepish.

“I’d lost my last spinner when I snagged a limb. All I had left in my tackle box was a rubber worm I use for bass, so I put it on.”

“What size and color?” Bascombe asked. “We got to be scientific about this.”

“Seven inch,” Harley said. “It was purple with white dots.”

“You got any more of them?” Leonard Coffey asked.

“No, but you can buy them at Sylva Hardware.”

“Won’t do you no good,” Rudisell said.

“Why not?” Leonard asked.

“For a fish to live long enough to get that big it’s got to be smart. It’ll not forget that a rubber worm tricked it.”

“It might not be near smart as you reckon,” Bascombe said. “I don’t mean no disrespect, but old folks tend to be forgetful. Maybe that old fish is the same way.”

“I reckon we’ll know the truth of that soon enough,” Rudisell concluded, because fishermen already cast from the bridge and banks. Soon several lines had gotten tangled, and a fistfight broke out over who had claim to a choice spot near the pool’s tailrace. More people arrived as the afternoon wore on, became early evening. Cedric, never one to miss a potential business opportunity, put a plastic fireman’s hat on his head and a whistle in his mouth. He parked cars while his son Bobby crossed and recrossed the bridge selling cokes from a battered shopping cart.

Among the later arrivals was Charles Meekins, the county’s game warden. He was thirty-eight years old and had grown up in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The general consensus was the warden was arrogant and a smart-ass, especially among the old men. Meekins stopped often at the store, and he invariably addressed them as Winken, Blinken, and Nod. He listened with undisguised condescension as the old men, Harley, and finally the two boys told of what they’d seen.

“It’s a trout or carp,” Meekins said, “carp” sounding like “cop.” Despite four years in Jackson County, Meekins still spoke as if his vocal cords had been pulled from his throat and reinstalled in his sinus cavity. “There’s no fish larger in these waters.”

Harley handed his reel to the game warden.

“That fish stripped the gears on it.”

Meekins inspected the reel as he might an obviously fraudulent fishing license.

“You probably didn’t have the drag set right.”

“It was bigger than any trout or carp,” Campbell insisted.

“When you’re looking into water you can’t really judge the size of something,” Meekins said. He looked at some of the younger men and winked, “especially if your vision isn’t all that good to begin with.”

A palmful of Red Mule chewing tobacco bulged the right side of Rudisell’s jaw like a tumor, but his apoplexy was such that he swallowed a portion of his cud and began hacking violently. Campbell slapped him on the back and Rudisell spewed dark bits of tobacco onto the bridge’s wooden flooring. Meekins had gotten back in his green fish and wildlife truck before Rudisell recovered enough to speak.

“If I hadn’t near choked to death I’d have told that shitbritches youngun to bend over and we’d see if my sight was good enough to ram this spyglass up his ass.”

In the next few days so many fishermen came to try their luck that Rudisell finally bought a wirebound notebook from Cedric and had anglers sign up for fifteen-minute slots. They cast almost every offering imaginable into the pool. A good half of the anglers succumbed to the theory that what had worked before could work again, so rubber worms were the single most popular choice. The rubber-worm devotees used an array of different sizes, hues, and even smells. Some went with seven-inch rubber worms while others favored five- or ten-inch. Some tried worms purple with white dots while others tried white with purple dots and still others tried pure white and pure black and every variation between including chartreuse, pink, turquoise, and fuchsia. Some used rubber worms with auger tails and others used flat tails. Some worms smelled like motor oil and some worms smelled like strawberries and some worms had no smell at all.

The others were divided by their devotion to live bait or artificial lures. Almost all the bait fisherman used nightcrawlers and redworms in the belief that if the fish had been fooled by an imitation, the actual live worm would work even better, but they also cast spring lizards, minnows, crickets, grubs, wasp larvae, crawfish, frogs, newts, toads, and even a live field mouse. The lure contingent favored spinners of the Panther Martin and Roostertail variety though they were not averse to Rapalas, Jitterbugs, Hula Poppers, Johnson Silver Minnows, Devilhorses and a dozen other hook-laden pieces of wood or plastic. Some lures sank and bounced along the bottom and some lures floated and still others gurgled and rattled and some made no sound at all and one lure even changed colors depending on depth and water temperature. Jarvis Hampton cast a Rapala F 14 he’d once caught a tarpon with in Florida. A subgroup of fly fishermen cast Muddler Minnows, Wooly Boogers, Wooly Worms, Royal Coachmen, streamers and wet flies, nymphs, and dry flies, and some hurled nymphs and dry flies together that swung overhead like miniature bolas.

During the first two days five brown trout, one speckled trout, one ball cap, two smallmouth bass, ten knottyheads, a bluegill, and one old boot were caught. A gray squirrel was snagged by an errant cast into a tree. Neither the squirrel nor the various fish outweighed the boot, which weighed one pound and eight ounces after the water was poured out. On the third day Wesley McIntire’s rod doubled and the drag whirred. A rainbow trout leaped in the pool’s center, Wesley’s ¼ ounce Panther Martin spinner imbedded in its upper jaw. He fought the trout for five minutes before his brother Robbie could net it. The rainbow was twenty-two inches long and weighed five and a half pounds, big enough that Wesley took it straight to the taxidermist to be mounted.

Charles Meekins came by an hour later. He didn’t get out of the truck, just rolled down his window and nodded. His radio played loudly, and the atonal guitars and screeching voices made Rudisell glad he was mostly deaf because hearing only part of the racket made him feel like stinging wasps swarmed inside his head. Meekins didn’t bother to turn the radio down, just shouted over the music.

“I told you it was a trout.”

“That wasn’t it,” Rudisell shouted. “The fish I seen could of eaten that rainbow for breakfast.”

Meekins smiled, showing a set of bright-white teeth that, unlike Rudisell’s, did not have to be deposited in a glass jar every night.

“Then why didn’t it? That rainbow has probably been in that pool for years.” Meekins shook his head. “I wish you old boys would learn to admit when you’re wrong about something.”

Meekins rolled up his window as Rudisell pursed his lips and fired a stream of tobacco juice directly at Meekins’ left eye. The tobacco hit the glass and dribbled a dark, phlegmy rivulet down the window.

“A fellow such as that ought not be allowed a guvment uniform,” Creech said.

“Not unless it’s got black and white stripes all up and down it,” Campbell added.

After ten days no other fish of consequence had been caught and anglers began giving up. The notebook was discarded because appointments were no longer necessary. Meekins’ belief gained credence, especially since in ten days none of the hundred or so men and boys who’d gathered there had seen the giant fish.

“I’d be hunkered down on the stream bottom too if such commotion was going on around me,” Creech argued, but few remained to nod in agreement. Even Harley Wease began to have doubts.

“Maybe that rainbow was what I had on,” he said heretically.

By the first week in May only the old men remained on the bridge. They kept their vigil but the occupants of cars and trucks and tractors no longer paused to ask about sightings. When the fish reappeared in the tailrace, the passing drivers ignored the old men’s frantic waves to come see. They drove across the bridge with eyes fixed straight ahead, embarrassed by their elders’ dementia.

“That’s the best look we’ve gotten yet,” Campbell said when the fish moved out of the shallows and into deeper water. “It’s six feet long if it’s a inch.”

Rudisell set his spyglass on the bridge railing and turned to Creech, the one among them who still had a car and driver’s license.

“You got to drive me over to Jarvis Hampton’s house,” Rudisell said.

“What for?” Creech asked.

“Because we’re going to rent out that rod and reel he uses for them tarpon. Then we got to go by the library, because I want to know what this thing is when we catch it.”

Creech kept the speedometer at a steady thirty-five as they followed the river south to Jarvis Hampton’s farm. They found Jarvis in his tobacco field and quickly negotiated a ten-dollar-a-week rental for the rod and reel, four 2/0 vanadium-steel fish hooks, and four sinkers. Jarvis offered a net as well but Rudisell claimed it wasn’t big enough for what they were after. “But I’ll take a hay hook and a whetstone if you got it,” Rudisell added, “and some bailing twine and a feed sack.”

They packed the fishing equipment in the trunk and drove to the county library where they used Campbell’s library card to check out an immense tome called
Freshwater Fish of North America
. The book was so heavy that only Creech had the strength to carry it, holding it before him with both hands as if the book were made of stone. He dropped it in the back seat and, still breathing heavily, got behind the wheel and cranked the engine.

“We got one more stop,” Rudisell said, “that old mill pond on Spillcorn Creek.”

“You wanting to practice with that rod and reel?” Campbell asked.

“No, to get our bait,” Rudisell replied. “I been thinking about something. After that fish hit Harley’s rubber worm they was throwing nightcrawlers right and left into the pool figuring that fish thought Harley’s lure was a worm. But what if it thought that rubber worm was something else, something we ain’t seen one time since we been watching the pool though it used to be thick with them?”

Campbell understood first.

“I get what you’re saying, but this is one bait I’d rather not be gathering myself, or putting on a hook for that matter.”

“Well, if you’ll just hold the sack I’ll do the rest.”

“What about baiting the hook?”

“I’ll do that too.”

Since the day was warm and sunny, a number of reptiles had gathered on the stone slabs that had once been a dam. Most were blue-tailed skinks and fence lizards, but several mud-colored serpents coiled sullenly on the largest stones. Creech, who was deathly afraid of snakes, remained in the car. Campbell carried the burlap feed sack, reluctantly trailing Rudisell through broom sedge to the old dam.