Becoming a Fisherman
“Stupid boy! You’re hurting me! God damn it, why can’t you just leave me alone?” I had never heard Dad curse before, and had rarely heard him speak in anger or fear, but he was terrified. He had awakened during the night, moaning and trembling, and would not be comforted. Yet this would all be forgotten in an hour.
He had been a Marine in the South Pacific during World War II, and he seemed to think he was back there. Now it was the dementia he was fighting, not enemy soldiers, but in some corner of his mind, in a memory or nightmare of the war he had survived, I had become his nameless tormentor, and that tormented me.
Dad had only called me “stupid” once before. When I was twelve years old, he took me for the first time to his favorite fishing spot on the south coast of Texas, a channel cut through a desolate stretch of Padre Island south of Corpus Christi, connecting the Intracoastal Waterway to the Gulf of Mexico. There was no motel, no store, no facilities at all, just a one room cabin with a generator, a stove and sink, some bunk beds, a card table, and an outhouse. Not the ideal vacation spot for most kids, but I had been dreaming of my first trip to “the Cut” for years. I had listened wide-eyed to Dad’s tales about the non-stop runs of speckled trout, giant redfish, flounder, black drum, and yellowtail pompano. I had seen the ice chests he and the other men brought back from the coast, filled with shining, glassy-eyed fish, like treasure. Now, finally, I was old enough to go with him on the annual trip, but along with the excitement and anticipation, some part of me worried that I wouldn’t measure up to Dad’s expectations. He was my hero, and I didn’t want to disappoint him.
Dad and his fishing buddies from Abilene Christian College where he was track & field coach would typically leave on a Sunday right after evening church service, driving all night to reach the coast and put in their boat at dawn. Then it was a 40 mile, butt-numbing ride across Baffin Bay to the little cabin and pier they had built in the aftermath of a hurricane in 1962. Our old Chevy station wagon was loaded and waiting, our little red and white boat was tuned up, ready to go, as pretty as a “popper” float. I had scrubbed it inside and out, secured all our fishing gear, and even helped Dad test the Mercury outboard at Lake Ft. Phantom. I had been “practice” fishing ever since school had let out for summer, casting across the dry, weedy expanse of our backyard. Dad said the fish at the Cut would strike fast, so I would have to stay alert and set the hook hard. I would have to rig my own line and bait the treble hook with a live shrimp, something I had never done before. I wouldn’t always be able to call on him to untangle a “bird’s nest” in my reel, or net a big fish. I would have to do things on my own most of the time while everyone else was busy fishing, but that is what I was looking forward to. I was going to have a whole week to show Dad I could be a real fisherman, not a just boy who needed help to get his line wet and catch anything.
As we set out into the warm summer night, I lay in the back of the station wagon trying to sleep, but I was too excited. As we passed through Coleman, Mason, Fredricksburg, then San Antonio, shadows cast by the highway lights rolled through the car in wave after wave like the endless sea, modulating the voices of the men as if they were speaking from some far distant shore. I sat up and leaned closer to listen. Dad was driving, and his face glowed eerily in the green light from the dashboard, like some strange campfire. The men were trading stories. I had never heard adults talk like this. Always before, when it got late and they began to talk over games of cards and dominoes, I had been sent to bed. But not tonight. I was included in the conversation, if only to listen. Dean Adams, Doc Belcher, and Professor Filbeck took turns telling about the biggest fish or the most fish they had caught at the Cut, then about their most memorable blunders, how hard the trip used to be and why they had decided to build the cabin to make it easier, and how hard that was. Eventually, I heard how they had met Dad before the war when he was a student, and how he had returned wanting to make up for lost time: how he had seemed too small for football but made the team anyway, then was named captain, then had met and married my mom, the prettiest girl on campus, a redheaded majorette from Tyler. They all said I looked just like him, or would when I got older. They could tell.
Even though they were several years older than Dad and were his teachers and mentors, these men seemed to admire him for his accomplishments. In the War he had been crew chief of a cargo plane that flew the wounded out of places like Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Iwo Jima, Eniwetok, and Peleliu, places a lot of men didn’t come back from. After graduating, he had helped coach the college’s only undefeated football team, its world record relay teams in track and field, and its first Olympic heroes. He had sometimes been a hot-headed young man in college before the war, and he had dated other women besides my mom. These all were somewhat surprising facts to me. I had seen pictures, but Dad never talked much about his past, and it had not seemed quite real until now. I fell asleep, dreaming about his other life.
Then I awoke, and we were in Robstown, just west of Corpus Christi. It was still pitch black outside as Dad hustled me out of the car. A mantle of heavy, salt air enveloped us, making it hard for me to even breathe, sticking in my throat like dark molasses. Inside the diner, the A/C was humming, even at 5:00 a.m. My glasses fogged up immediately.
“Better eat a big breakfast,” said Dad. “There won’t be anything else to eat for quite a while.”
I could smell bacon, biscuits, and gravy, and felt suddenly hungry. I looked at the curls of steam rising from the men’s cups of black coffee and held out my cup to be filled too. The waitress looked back at Dad.
He nodded. “Ok, if you’re going to be a real fisherman, I guess you’ll have to start drinking coffee like the rest of us.” But the coffee was black and bitter, like burnt cocoa. I added milk and sugar, and took another sip, but it was still awful. Dad laughed. “Well, maybe you’re not ready for coffee just yet.”
After breakfast we drove down to the marina and boat ramp, where Dad let me sit at the helm while he eased the boat off the trailer. As I floated away from him, Dad called out to me. “Ok, now throw me the bowline.”
I quickly threw him a rope coiled at my feet, but it wasn’t the bowline. It wasn’t attached to anything at all, so it just floated there on the dark water by the dock, tangled in its own loose ends, separate and useless.
“No, not that one. Throw me the rope tied to the bow.”
I looked around nervously for another rope, but could not see the one he meant among all the things I had stowed. The boat was quickly drifting away toward the open water, and Dad became exasperated.
“Stupid!” he muttered sharply. “Doesn’t even know where the bow is.”
Dean Adams was standing on the dock, head bowed under his floppy fishing hat, pretending to be busy with his gear.
“Never mind,” Dad said, wading out from the trailer to catch the boat. “I’ll get it myself. I should have held on to it in the first place.”
For a long few minutes afterward I was crestfallen and ashamed. Even the cawing seagulls overhead seemed to be mocking me. The men boarded the boat and handed me their tackle boxes. Dad climbed up on the dock and boarded last, wet now up to the waist. As he stepped into the boat, he reached out for my shoulder to steady himself, and leaned on me for just a moment. “It’s ok,” he said. “I always like to be the first one in for a swim anyway.” Then he smiled and tousled my hair. He was tough as nails, yet tender as a blade of grass.
And in that moment, I knew from his sheepish grin and that awkward gesture that he was apologizing for calling me “stupid.” But I also knew if I was going to be a grown-up, competent fisherman, I would have to know my gear, and know what I was doing.
As we motored out toward the flashing channel markers, the Gulf emerged with the dawn, like the far flung edge of the world. I sat up front with Dad, and he revved the engine. The boat took off, its nose planing down eagerly over the open water, like a hound setting off on the hunt. There was nothing between us and the sunrise except the glimmering blue-gray mystery of the sea, but I knew our cabin was out there somewhere, at the edge of a vast, unknown world. Maybe I wouldn’t get everything right, but it was going to be ok. I was with Dad, and it was going to be a good trip.
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