Rock Island Line

by David Rhodes

  “Only one thing to do with a snag,” said Moss, punching triangles into the top of a new can, lefthandedly enjoying the sound. “Bust it off right away. It’s never worth the effort of trying to save a couple of stinking five-cent hooks—and can ruin a whole day.”

  Wilson kept heaving backward every once in a while.

  “Must be on the rocks,” said Jim.

  “Give me a cigarette,” said Moss.

  “No. Remember what you said—”

  “Forget that. Give me a cigarette.”

  “Nope. You said no matter—”

  “Come on, give me a cigarette. What kind of a guy are you, anyhow?”

  “One who’d be scared to death to come over to your place for the next month after Cathy found out.”

  “Look. He sat down.” Pointing.

  “Probably worn out.”

  “Pole’s still bent over. You’d think he’d let up on it.”

  “Maybe the sun’s got to him. Must be awfully hot out there. Least he could do’d be move his boat around a little.”

  “I think it has moved, at least from where it was,” said Moss.

  “Probably straightened up a little toward where he’s fastened. He’s moving a little bit now. Must be pulling himself over above the snag.”

  “It’s not worth it. As soon as you get hung up, snap it off,” said Moss, yanking back in a gesture that snapped an imaginary line. They were watching Wilson more closely now, noticing without comment the slow progression of his boat past the end of the point, out into the darker water.

  “He’s not reeling in,” said Jim.

  “No. It doesn’t seem so.”

  Wilson moved silently out farther into the lake, his pole bent nearly over into the water directly in front of his boat. He trolled in this manner for a distance of several boat lengths, then stopped; here, out in the middle of the lake, he remained motionless for some time, his pole still violently arched over. Then he began moving again, this time clear over to the other side of the lake, where he stopped again.

  “Get the glasses,” said Moss, and Jim ran over to their car, returning with the binoculars, focusing them as he came.

  “His pole’s still bent.”

  “Let me see.”

  “He’s not moving now at all, just sitting there.”

  “Let me see.” Moss snatched the glasses and put them up to his eyes, just at the time when Wilson and his boat began to move again.

  “He’s off again,” said Moss.

  By noon Wilson had progressed halfway back around the lake and was headed toward them, stopping every once in a while for undetermined periods of time. A car pulled up alongside their picnic table. “Stay in the car,” the driver barked through his opened door as he got out. The faces of six young girls pressed against the glass. A back door flew open. “Stay in, I said,” he shouted, and the door reclosed. He came over to Jim and Moss Terry, approaching them with a caution known only to family men. “That fellow out there,” he said, “I saw him across the lake. Is that a fish hauling him around?”

  “We don’t know,” said Jim.

  “I thought maybe you knew him. He’s not from our resort. No one over there knows him.” Car doors were opening silently and girls ran in all directions to the lake front.

  “Get back in—Oh hell,” he grumbled, and began to shuffle back to the car. Moss opened the cooler and held out a cold can of beer to him. He hesitated. “Take it,” Moss said. The man looked back to his car and the tired eyes of his wife, sitting alone in the front seat, waiting for him to begin yelling at the children. “Bring her over,” said Moss. “Hell, women like beer too.” Jim was looking down at the grass. The family man took in one deep breath, wishing in it the drowning death of his whole family, blew it out and called, “Ann, these men here have kindly invited us to have a drink with them.” Ann came out of the car and over to the table. “Bring the cheese,” he said, and she returned again with a tinfoil-wrapped piece of yellow cheese. He took it from her, put it directly in the middle of the table, unwrapped it and laid an opened pocket knife beside it. Only then did he accept the can of beer, and clearly intended that they would share, he and Ann, instead of each having one. Because of the heat, though, and his overwhelming desire to drink long, satisfying, cold and even slightly manly draughts, they soon accepted another, even though the cheese stayed untouched. The scene was not nearly so terrible, Jim thought, as he had imagined when he had at first seen the girls getting out. They were within shouting distance, playing along the shore, but no problem. Wilson had stopped again during this.

  “Go tell them to stay away from the water,” Larry Cokeman said quietly to his wife. She got up from the bench and started toward the children. Wilson was moving again toward them, less than fifty yards away, staying in the deeper water away from the shore.

  “It beats me,” said Jim, looking through the glasses. “He sure doesn’t seem too excited.”

  “Very odd,” said Moss.

  “You fellows been catching any?” asked Cokeman.

  “Not really,” said Jim. “It’s been awfully slow.”

  “Same with me,” said Cokeman. “Not enough wind to catch fish. You got to have some wind to catch fish.”

  “Water’s too hot,” said Moss.

  Ann and the six girls were headed toward them.

  “If I was a kid,” said Jim quickly, “I’d be down there swimming in the water and get away from this heat.”

  “Wouldn’t that be illegal,” said Cokeman, “just jumping in any old place along here—without a lifeguard or anything? Somebody’d come along and arrest you.”

  “Why? It’s public property, these lakes. Kids is public too. There ain’t no signs anywhere.”

  Ann returned with the six girls.

  “Why don’t you girls go put on your suits and get in the water?”

  Jumping with excitement, they returned to the car with their mother, made a U turn on the road and headed back toward Wild Pines Resort.

  “Only five of them are mine,” said Cokeman. “The other one’s a neighbor’s. Jesus, he sure doesn’t seem much excited.”

  Wilson was coming past them, maybe twenty yards from the shore.

  “Hey, do you have a fish?” yelled Cokeman. “Is that a fish pulling you around?”

  “Yes,” said Wilson. “I got him over by the rock point and he’s pulled me clear around the lake.”

  Jim, Moss Terry and Larry Cokeman ran down to the water, following him along the shore, hollering out to him. Then the giant fish stopped again and lay still on the bottom until after the girls had returned and were splashing in the water near their mother, who lay on her rubber mattress and floated serenely out to the edge of the deep water, gazing up at the clouds, and telling by the voices nearer the shore that all was safe with the girls.

  “Drop the anchor, quick!” shouted Moss. “Drop the anchor! Dragging that around’ll slow ’em down.”

  “I’ll bust my line that way,” said Wilson. “Eight-pound test.”

  “How deep is he?”

  “About a hundred feet.”

  “A hundred feet!” exclaimed Cokeman. “A northern, huh?”

  Moss and Jim tried to look like they weren’t standing next to him.

  “Catfish,” said Wilson, and began moving off.

  “It can’t be a catfish,” whispered Moss. “Too far north. It’s got to be a muskie.”

  “A muskie!” exclaimed Cokeman.

  “No, a catfish,” called back Wilson. “A mud cat.”

  “How long?” called Cokeman. “What do you think it weighs?”

  “Hard to say,” said Wilson.

  The three men went back to their bench. Each was trying to picture how big—how it would look—this giant fish down on the bottom, moving when it wanted to, pulling a boat from an eight-pound test line. As they finished the beer, they discussed how it might not be possible to land him at all, given that he could just lie on the bottom and be like a hundred-pound piece
of rock. But the vision of what he must look like down on the bottom, the size, and how it might be to see him surface first, filled them with excitement, and they went off into town to buy more beer and get sandwiches for Wilson in case he came by again, and to spread the news. Two carloads of men returned with them from the bar. Other cars were on their way. By the time Wilson’s erratic, slow movements had taken him around the lake and back along the southwest shore, there were over twenty people in the water and forty-five along the bank. A plastic bag of sandwiches and two cans of beer, with an opener, were ferried out to him by a young girl on a big, patched inner tube. He answered questions from shore and continued on. Middle afternoon was hotter than noon had been.

  Before long, several boats full of fishermen came out to meet him and until 5:30 went around the lake with him, talking of how it might be possible to land the fish, telling fishing stories and taking turns holding on to the pole when the fish was moving, to feel the power. None of the men really wanted to ask to do this—almost an unwritten rule that whoever gets the big one (unless he’s a child) is the sole recipient of the fun of landing him. But Wilson could see how much they wanted to feel the power of the fish, and insisted that they all try it, so long as they were in the bow of the boat and did not pull on the line—just feel the strength as he swam. Moss Terry was the only one who refused to take a turn. “I’ve felt ’em before,” he said and wouldn’t go up to the bow. All of them tried to figure how the monster could be landed: perhaps they might feed a light chain and grappling hook down the line and try to snag him under the mouth, or they might get a net and, judging from where Wilson thought he was (according to the amount of line out), settle it down on him from another boat moving at the same speed. But by 5:30 the fun was gone for most of them, and they became as straight-faced about it as Wilson himself. One boat went back in. The other knot of fishermen waited forty-five minutes and followed, leaving Wilson a Thermos of coffee, a steak sandwich, apples and chocolate.

  Except for Wilson and one other, evening found the lake deserted, the water ruffled slightly by a ground breeze. The sun crossed a mystical line above the horizon and the air immediately began to cool. The smell of the pines became noticeable. The water became darker and looked wetter . . . loons on the surface and whippoorwills in the timber.

  Darkness fell. Wilson was coming around again toward the southwest shore. His fish had been stopping more often, and for longer intervals. But now he was running again. Alone, Moss Terry sat at the picnic table, a pale fire burning beside him to keep off the bugs, smoking cigars without inhaling them. No one else on or beside the lake. Then Wilson felt his pole go limp. He’s turned, he thought, and pulled and reeled. Nothing. The weightless line fed into the spool. He reeled until the hook came up out of the water and caught in the end eye. Putting the pole down, he took up the oars and rowed to shore, where Moss Terry helped him out of the boat. They wedged the anchor among the shore rocks and went up to the table. Wilson paced to loosen his stiff muscles.

  “Line bust?” asked Terry.

  “No. He just shook it loose.”

  “Must have been something to feel him hit. What was it like when you first knew you had ’im?”

  “It wasn’t like you might think. See, as soon as I knew it was a fish and not a rock or log, I knew I’d never be able to land him. He was just too big.”

  “But you have to try.”

  “But you have to try.”

  “I know,” said Moss. “I had one like that several years ago—just knew it was too big. . . . You don’t really think it was a catfish, do you?”

  “Couldn’t have been anything else.”

  “It could’ve been a muskie.”

  “I don’t know much about muskies,” said Wilson. “But I’d think it wouldn’t act like that.”

  “More of a fighting fish.”

  “Exactly. . . . You live around here?”

  “No. I live in Ottumwa.”

  “Oh, really? I’m from Iowa, too. Say, you know where we might find some bullheads?”

  “Not for sure, but they say there’s a bridge down a ways on the creek where they get ’em.”

  “The creek off this lake?”

  “ Yep.”

  “Do you feel like going down there?”

  “Sure. Want to take the car?”

  “I don’t care. But I shouldn’t leave the boat here on the rocks.”

  “OK, let’s take the boat.”

  Moss went to get his tackle and they set off across the lake, slicing through the cool air and water and night sounds, dangerously, without a front light, propelled by a three-and-a-half-horsepower motor.

  Unlike his parents, July was not a sound sleeper. He accepted it as nothing unnatural to be woken in the middle of the night by the smallest sliver of noise, or an internal twitch that would hurl him from unconsciousness and into his room. Whatever fear he might have felt at those times—at the very edge of awakening—was quickly dissolved merely by mentally locating his parents, who like silent fighters would come galloping into the room of his emotions, driving the Dark Powers back beyond the walls. He would lie there and listen, and sometimes fall back asleep. Frequently he would get up, go out into the hall, past his parents’ room and downstairs—sometimes to eat, and sometimes to sit in the living room, from where he could look outside at the illuminated crossroads, hoping to see an automobile with its red taillights come up, stop and disappear, wondering what mysterious purpose could be inside—what kind of face would belong to the driver—what sad, doomed circumstances awaited his arrival.

  Many of these times he shared with his grandmother, and in the summer they would carefully go out onto the porch and sit without talking, drinking glasses of milk or Kool-Aid, until he’d be told to return to bed. With great reluctance, he would leave her and go up and lie hardly breathing, wanting to hear when she came back inside. He didn’t talk of these times, not because they were in themselves particularly private, but because everything is private to a child.

  So he knew (without really knowing), long before either of his parents, of Della’s insomnia. Naturally, he didn’t think to himself, Grandma has insomnia; in fact, he probably didn’t think anything at all; he just came to take it for granted that whenever he might come downstairs at night she would be sitting in the living room and he would wonder what she was doing in there by herself.

  “Why doesn’t Grandma ever turn the lights on?” he asked his parents one night.

  John’s face turned ashen. “What do you mean?” he demanded, and July was afraid to answer, and guilt swept over him for saying something he shouldn’t have. He stammered, but didn’t have to answer because his father went outside, closing the door with a slam. Quickly, Sarah came over and sat beside him on the floor with his truck, and in her silent-fighter voice talked to him, and explained quite clearly and exactly how oldness, old age—that time at the end of a person’s long, happy life—that time just before they became dead—made them act in ways different from people who were not at the end of their lives—and that the whole thing, most importantly, the complete overall picture, was good and rejoiceful.

  So from this he learned two things: first, everything that he noticed about his grandmother, everything hard to understand, was good; and second, don’t talk about her.

  That first night when he was introduced to Wilson, he didn’t know what to say. He’d come downstairs and was sitting in the living room, waiting for red taillights. Della had come in from the porch, whispering and talking as though she were not alone. Noticing him, she had come over and said that Wilson was tired and couldn’t stay up much longer. July’s imagination ran wild, but still he could find nothing to fasten it to. For a moment he was frightened, because he didn’t know how to act with this dead person in the room. But he learned that the presence of Wilson was no threat to him; in fact, he was much like July’s own imaginary persons: he was not expected to talk, or have a mind worthy of attention, but sometimes it could be assumed
that he had opinions; yet mostly he was just there. The difference between Wilson and July’s imaginary friends was not to be completely overlooked, though, he felt. Imaginary friends had no true substance, even when they were having opinions. They simply weren’t there. Anyone would admit that. But Wilson, on the other hand, was of the natural order, and so couldn’t be said to be without substance. There were the living, and there were the dead, who might be gone, but who were nevertheless existent.

  Della closed the door to her room so that Wilson could sleep.

  “Where will you sleep?” he asked his grandmother.

  “I can sleep here on the couch,” she answered. “But, mercy me, with the house so full of people, we better make sure we’ve got a place, or all the beds will be taken up.”

  “We could always sleep on the floor, Grandma,” he said, wishing they would have to. It reminded him of stories of people fighting for their lives.

  “We may have to,” said Della.

  “Let’s do.”

  “Not until we have to.”

  The next time he had come down, there was no mention of Wilson—only the ever present reference to him in we did this, we thought that was funny, we were never so frightened.

  But there was also a sadness, a deep, impenetrable sadness which filled her that night—a loneliness that his own companionship could not relieve or even dent. He felt helpless, worthless and of no good at all. Della talked strangely of people and things that would blend into each other. “My whole life,” she said, “has been three Sharon Centers: the Sharon Center when we lived at the store, the Sharon Center when we lived in the country and the Sharon Center here. All three of them.”

  Once, standing out by the bird feeder, looking at the little town, she had said, “This town is me.” July had heard her. Whenever he could, he went with her about the house and yard. Some days her visitors would fill the house to its seams—people who to July looked like ancient, withered figures of wood, smelling of age and inching along imperceptibly, talking, talking, talking. He would never forget that. This town is me. Sometimes an old gent would come over, held together by the cracks in his face and his unflinching interest in the past, and three days later there’d be his funeral to go to. (July didn’t go to funerals, because his father said it wouldn’t be good for him and would even drive him home after church, if the funeral was afterward, and return without him—just so he would miss it.) “It’s not good to know much about death,” he heard him say to his mother, “before it makes sense.”