The Fisherman (30 page)

For what felt like much longer than I’m sure it was, I mountain-goated it down the ridge. Not until I was almost at its foot, and the trees were spreading out, allowing me a better view of the torrent of water below me, did I realize that roar I’d been listening to wasn’t the rain, but Dutchman’s Creek. Swollen with the past week’s downpour, the stream galloped over this stretch of rapids in a white rush. Something about the acoustics of the place—the closeness of the ridge on the other side of the creek—caught the water’s noise and amplified it. To the eye, the stream was maybe thirty feet across, not as large as many of the spots I’d fished much further into the Catskills. To the ear, however, Dutchman’s Creek was a river in flood.

At the base of the hill, earth gave way to bare rock, which shelved this side of the stream to left and right. A quick survey showed Dan off to the right, downstream. I sighed. I was straining to be patient with him. I had decided he must have had the name of the place from a woman, one with whom he’d had some measure of involvement. Their affair might have lasted no longer than a single night, but the loss of his family was recent enough for Dan to fear he’d betrayed them. Whatever comfort he’d sought, I didn’t begrudge him. His wounds cut down to the bone—through the bone, to the marrow—and any relief you can find from that kind of pain, however temporary, you take. The trick is, enduring the guilt that grabs you in its broken teeth the minute that comfort ebbs. What came across as a snit, I reminded myself, was symptom of an affliction more profound, one with which I was only too well-acquainted. So although I was tempted to turn left, upstream, in search of solitude to cast my line, I opted to go right.

Even without the addition of seven days’ worth of rain, the rapids I had emerged beside would have been serious business. For a good hundred yards, they descended in a series of drops so regular they might have been enormous steps. This entire portion of the stream was strewn with boulders, gray blocks whose edges the water appeared to have done little to soften. It was as if the side of a mountain had let go and come to rest here. There are fish that will brave such turbulent conditions, and under other, less extreme circumstances, I might have tried my luck for one. I caught a glimpse of a good-sized something sporting in the spray. My ambition, however, is tempered by my common sense, and while every fisherman understands that he’s going to sacrifice his fair share of tackle to his passion, there’s no point in throwing it away, which was what I’d be doing if I cast into this white roaring. Not to mention, between the rain and the spray, the shore was dangerously slick. I continued toward Dan.

When I caught up to him, he had his line in the water. He was standing at the opposite side of a wide pool into which the creek poured itself over a waterfall. Thirty yards across, the pool was a stone cup whose sides fell sharply into the water. Where the stream splashed into it, the pool churned and foamed, cloudy with sediment. Out towards the middle, the water cleared to the point of glass, and despite the raindrops puckering its surface, I picked out the shapes of several large-ish fish congregating there. Trout, I hoped, below whom the water darkened—the dirt and whatnot that had been flung over the waterfall billowing across the pool’s bottom. That I could tell, Dan hadn’t hooked anything, yet. He had positioned himself at the spot where the water exited the pool through a broad channel. His tacklebox was open on the rock next to him, its shelves up and extended, which I took as an indication he planned to stay here a little while. I wasn’t in a hurry to make conversation with him; as long as I could see him, that was fine with me. About halfway round the pool’s circumference, the edge dipped to a ledge that slanted into and under the water. I set down my gear at the top of the incline, bent to open my tacklebox, and in short order was raising my arm to cast.

God, but I love that first cast. You pinch the line to the rod, open the bail, lift the rod over your head, and snap your wrist, releasing the line as you do. The motion whips up the rod, taking the pink and green spinner-bait at the end of the line back and then out, out and out and out, trailing line like a jet speeding ahead of its contrail, climbing to the top of the parabola whose far end is going to put the lure right next to those fish. The reel feeds out more and more line, making a quick, whizzing sound as it spins; while the lure nears the apex of its flight and starts to slow, causing the line to bunch up right behind it. When the lure falls toward the water, it takes longer than it seems it should, so that for a moment, you wonder if it’s already hit the surface and somehow you missed it, and you’re almost to the point of searching for the spot where it went in when the spinner flashes and you look in time to see the water leap up with a plunk. You drop the bail to secure the line, counting, “One-Mississippi, two-Mississippi, three-Mississippi,” trying to let that little assembly of wood and metal you call your watermelon spinner sink to the level of those fish, watching the line that had fallen slack on the water straighten and submerge, and then it’s four-Mississippi and you start drawing in that line, and the day’s fishing is well and truly underway.

I’ve tried to find something to compare the sensation to, but the closest I’ve ever been able to come is the moment after you’ve swept your fingers down the guitar strings and sounded the opening note of your first song. Or the second after the baseball has slipped your fingertips and is turning in the air as it steaks toward the catcher’s open mitt. There’s a similar feeling of having started something whose outcome you can’t be one-hundred-percent sure of—sometimes, the percentage is significantly lower—but there isn’t the same openness that accompanies the lure’s trajectory. Sure, you think you know what’s waiting for you under the water, but believe you me, you can never be sure what’s going to take your hook.

Right away, the fish I had aimed at were interested in my lure, a couple of them breaking away from the group to dart after it. I wound the handle faster, trying to goad them into striking, but they held back until I had the lure in sight, the spinner winking as it sped through the water, when each of them shot off in a different direction. I didn’t worry about them; I had the lure in and was lifting my arm for a second attempt at the spot where I could make out a number of fish maintaining their position. This time, I let the lure descend through the water for an extra –Mississippi before drawing it in. A new fish peeled away from the school after it. I decided not to speed up my retrieve, but kept winding the handle one-two one-two one-two. Below the fish, which appeared larger than either of the first pair by a couple of inches, the murk that hung in the water churned. I wound the line in, one-two one-two. The fish was at the lure—

—and was gone, chased away by the thing that rose from the murk beneath it, took the bait in its mouth, and rolled into a dive. I had an impression of a body thick as the trunk of a small tree, covered with scales pale as the moon. Had I not left the drag loose, the fish would have snapped my line like thread. As it was, the rod bowed with the pressure the thing applied to it. The fish wasn’t swimming especially fast—the line spooled out of the reel at an almost leisurely pace—but it was going far. It sank deep into the murk, to what I estimated must be the bottom of the pool, before turning into a wide circle. I had no idea what had taken my lure. It certainly wasn’t a trout, or a bass, or any of the panfish. From its size and its strength, I guessed it might be a carp, which was not a fish I’d anticipated running into here. But there are times you pull something out of the water for which there’s no accounting, the only remnant of a story whose contours are a mystery. However it had come to inhabit this pool, a carp had the power to break my line with a toss of its head. If I wanted to land it, I was going to have to alter my usual strategy. I tested the handle, the rod dipping as the line tightened. “Easy,” I murmured, half to myself, half to the fish. I could feel him down there in the dark, feel his weight and his muscle. I gave the handle another turn, stopping when the fish began to draw more line, doubling back into a wider circle. I guessed he was testing this thing that had jabbed into him. I waited to see whether he would maintain his present course, or take off in a new direction. Once he appeared content to continue swimming in a broad circle, I started turning the handle slowly, gradually shifting his sweep closer to me.

At some point during this long process, Dan noticed that I had something on the end of my line and that it wasn’t behaving in the usual fashion. I can’t say exactly how long his curiosity as to what, exactly, I was doing required to overcome his annoyance with my questioning him, but by the time I had the fish in near enough that I could see the murk churning as he plowed through it, Dan was standing at my right side. He said, “What’ve you got?”

“Don’t know,” I said. “Carp, maybe.”

“Carp? Here?”

“Too big for a trout or bass.”

“Maybe it’s a pike.”

“Could be,” I said. “Doesn’t act like one.”

“Doesn’t act much like a carp, either,” Dan said.

“No argument there.”

Because Dan was next to me, when the fish swam up out of the murk into view, I had his reaction to gauge mine against, his “What the hell?” to reassure me that he’d witnessed what I had. How I didn’t drop the rod, or jerk it up and snap the line, I can’t say. For one thing, the fish was huge, easily four feet from nose to tail. Too big, I would have said, to have survived in a spot this size for very long—unless it went much, much deeper than it seemed. For another thing, what I glimpsed of its head was unlike anything I’d encountered in any of the places I’d cast my line. Rounded, its large, dark eyes set forward, its mouth jammed with teeth like steak knives, the front end of the thing resembled what you’d expect to run across in the depths of the ocean.

“Guess it isn’t a carp, after all,” I said.

“What…” Dan’s voice trailed off.

“I don’t know.” The fish was slowing, the tension on the line slacking. I turned the handle faster, tightening the line, ready for the fish to change course. If he didn’t, if he completed another circuit of the pool, his next pass would bring him close enough for me to attempt bringing him in. Although one part of my mind had picked up Dan’s “What the hell?” and was chanting it like a mantra, and another section of my mind was working at answering how an apparent denizen of the lower deep could have found its way into a small body of water in upstate New York, enough of my brain remained available to calculate the best trajectory for guiding the fish onto the spit of rock supporting me. The fish was swinging in my direction, rising in the water as he came. His dorsal fin, a fan of pale flesh stretched between spines the length of my forearm, broke into the air like the back of a dragon. I said, “Dan.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m going to see if I can’t steer this fellow right up onto this ledge in front of me. You see what I’m talking about?”

“Sure, but—”

“Once I get him on the rock, I’m going to hand the rod to you and do my best to manhandle him out of the water.”

“But—”

“Just be ready to take the rod from me.”

The more I said, the better I felt, the more confident. It was as if, by speaking my plan, I was setting it up to happen. The fish was slowing, the spines on his back listing as he swam nearer. I resisted the urge to wind the handle as fast as I could. He might be done, or he might be readying for a dive. He was close, now, so close I could see his face in all its hideous glory. Dan leaned in to me, his hands out for the rod. “Almost there,” I said, “almost there.” The front half of the fish slid over the rock shelf. There was barely enough line for me to reel in, but I drew him up the shelf, to where the water shallowed. Once his tail was over the rock, I passed the rod to Dan and took a step towards the fish. As I did, he raised his head and neck partway out of the pool, as if readying to fling himself off the rock. His eyes, I saw, were empty pits. While I was debating whether to grab the line or tackle him, the fish settled back under the water and was still.

I splashed into the pool and plunged my hands into it, well back of the fish’s weird head and its sharp teeth. His gills were barely moving. I gripped the forward gill on either side of him and backed up. Ready for a fight, I moved fast, hauling his bulk most of the way out of the water before releasing my hold and falling on my ass. I had been expecting the edges of his gills to be sharp, and was prepared to chance the injury to my hands to secure such a catch, but the flaps of skin were rubbery, almost soft. When it thumped onto the rock, tremors shivering its bulk, its entire body gave the impression that it was less solid than gelid. Strange, yes, but no more so than this creature being in this pool in the first place. I could feel the grin splitting my mouth. I was in a position the envy of everyone who’s ever spent any time working the rod and reel: I had my fantastic story, and I had the proof of it. Who knew what this would mean for me? My picture in the paper, an honored spot on Howard’s wall, at least. I turned to Dan, who had not relaxed his hold on the rod. “It’s okay,” I said, pushing myself to my feet, “we got him.” I held out my hand, and Dan returned the rod. “Thanks,” I said. “Couldn’t have done it without you, buddy.”

“Abe,” Dan said.

“Definitely not a carp,” I said. “Definitely, positively.” I was trying to figure out the best means for transporting my catch over the hills to my truck. Maybe if I took off my raincoat, we could fashion a sling out of it that we could hoist on a pair of branches. It would require some work, but—

“Abe,” Dan said.

“What?”

“I—that isn’t a fish.”