Me, Johnny, and The Babe

by Mark Wirtshafter

the box slipping from my grasp. I saw the box moving towards Johnny as he pulled harder. Then the top of the box flew off, worms and dirt went flying through the air. Everything seemed to slow down as the worms hung in mid-air for what seemed to be a long time. Finally, everything landed at the same instant. They all fell onto the backseat of Uncle Eddie’s Packard.

  I knew that this was a very bad thing. I was certain our fishing trip was over and Uncle Eddie would be taking us right back to the city. Uncle Eddie rushed over to see what was happening and I was sure all hell was about to break loose. I closed my eyes and held my breath waiting for the inevitable screaming and yelling that was sure to come. I kept my eyes closed for another second or two, only opening them as I heard the first sound coming from Uncle Eddie. As I opened them, I saw Uncle Eddie bending his body backwards and going into a hearty belly laugh. I looked down to make sure that the worms had fallen in the car, and they were indeed all over the backseat.

  “Well I guess you boys’ better start picking up them worms,” Uncle Eddie said.

  As much as I wanted to help clean up the mess, I was having a hard time at the thought of actually touching the worms. Johnny got the first few that had squirmed onto the floor, and began putting them back in the box. I sucked in my stomach and held my breath as I began grabbing the worms from the backseat. I grabbed them two and three at a time, shoving them back into the box. There must have been twenty-five of them, but within a minute or so they were all safely back inside the box. Johnny used the side of his hand to brush the dirt off the seat and into the box. There was a little bit of a dirt stain left behind on the seat, but it was not very dark. If you did not know it was there you probably would not even have noticed it.

  Uncle Eddie inspected the backseat carefully and said, “Not too bad, I’ll clean it up a little better when we get back to Philly.”

  He took the worm box from Johnny and put it on the picnic table. He also put the black box on the table and laid the fishing rods next to it.

  “Who wants to cut the worms?” Uncle Eddie asked.

  I looked at Johnny hoping he was going to volunteer. He was always quick to jump in front of me whenever an excellent opportunity presented itself. This time he seemed hesitant. There was not the usual pushing me aside.

  “Don’t you want to cut the first one?” I asked Johnny.

  “No I don’t want to be too pushy,” he replied.

  “Well I guess I’ll cut the first couple myself and we’ll see how it goes,” Uncle Eddie said.

  Uncle Eddie took a small knife from the black box and pulled two worms out of the container. He held them between his thumb and middle finger, stretching them out to their full length. They must have been at least six inches long. With one swift cutting motion, he sliced both worms right in half. The worms went into convulsions; they were squirming all over the picnic table, blood squirting out from their open ends. I wasn’t exactly sure if that was what was supposed to happen or not. It must have been all right, as I watched Uncle Eddie reach down and grab the four pieces of worm. “Let’s go fishing,” he said.

  13

  We walked out onto a rocky ledge that jutted out over the lake. At the end, there was an enormous boulder, big enough for all three of us to stand. Uncle Eddie patiently showed us how to put the bait on the hook and how to cast our lines out into the water. First Johnny baited his hook and threw his line out, and then I did the same. I became more comfortable touching the worms, even when they were sliced in half, with blood squirting out. I found the cool slimy texture of the worm against my fingers to be strangely fascinating.

  Uncle Eddie left his rod standing up against a nearby tree and sat behind us as we fished.

  “Aren’t you gonna fish?” Johnny asked him.

  “Maybe later,” he said.

  “What fun is it doin’ nothin’?” Johnny asked.

  “I am doing something Johnny; I’m enjoying the beauty of nature. The lake, the trees, the birds soaring out over the water, and the quiet serenity of the peaceful surroundings,” Eddie replied as he gazed out over the lake. “There’s a lot to be said about enjoying the moments in life when it seems that nothing at all is happening, but in reality these can be the best of times.”

  A smile filled with satisfaction spread across Uncle Eddie’s face as he answered Johnny’s question. Listening to him talk made me take a new look at everything around us. I slowly scanned my eyes across the landscape, trying to take a picture of each scene, as I tried to permanently paint it into my memory. I hoped that I could remember it all in the future, when I would once again be immersed in the harsh realities of Kensington.

  I saw the early spring flowers growing wild on the banks of the lake. I noticed colorful butterflies flying up and diving back down as their wings fluttered. Behind, there were low trees moving back and forth in the wind. As I looked a little closer, I saw a small baby deer standing about twenty yards behind us.

  “Look!” I called out.

  Uncle Eddie turned to see why I was yelling. He immediately spotted the deer and put his fingers up to his lips. “Shhhh!” he said, “You’re gonna scare the fawn.”

  The little deer could not have been more than three feet tall and looked as though he was still having trouble walking. I had no experience with deer, but I knew that this one was very young. As the deer lifted his head, he noticed that we were all starring directly at him. He seemed to lock onto our eyes and stood motionless for an instant. I looked around expecting to see a larger deer that would be watching out for him to be close by, but I did not see any. There were no other deer anywhere in sight.

  “Why isn’t he running away?” Johnny asked. “What if we were hunters, he would be an easy target. If he was smart he would get away from people as fast as he could.”

  “Well, he’s very young and I guess he hasn’t learned all the ways of the world yet,” Uncle Eddie replied. “There’ll be a day when he is older and wiser, where his instincts will be much sharper and he will sense the danger.”

  “Yea, it’s kinda of like the streets in Kensington at night, we know where we can go and where we can’t,” Johnny responded. “I guess we already have pretty good instincts about living in the city.”

  “You boys lived there your whole life and know exactly what you need to do to survive,” Uncle Eddie continued. “That deer is just the same; as he gets older he’ll learn all the tricks of surviving out here in the woods. His parents will take care of him until the day he can take care of himself.”

  Uncle Eddie rose to get a better look at the deer, but his motion seemed to spook the animal. It took off running, or at least what seemed to be running as its legs did not seem to be working together all that well.

  We turned our attention back to fishing. We got little nibbles at our bait from time to time, but we didn’t catch a thing. Sometimes the fish would rip pieces of our bait off the line, but they were very sly and got away without biting on our hooks.

  “Uncle Eddie, the fish keep eating the bait and getting away,” Johnny said. “Are we doing something wrong?”

  “No, you’re not doing anything wrong, reel your line in and I’ll cut you some more bait.”

  We kept reeling up the hooks and Uncle Eddie would cut more bait. He seemed to be having more fun just sitting there than Johnny and I were having fishing.

  An hour or so went by until I felt my line tugging and I was sure that I had finally hooked a fish. I watched as the line slid under the water and then rose back up on its own. The fish was running away with the bait, but this time my hook was in its mouth. Uncle Eddie quickly stood up and reached around from behind me, helping to hold the rod steady. I felt his hands, guiding me to reel the fish in, without actually doing it for me.

  “Hold the line steady and try not to jerk the rod,” Uncle Eddie yelled. “Try to reel it in with a steady hand.”

  “I’m trying to keep it as steady as I can,” I said.

  “You’re doing just fine, just keep it coming slowly
.”

  Uncle Eddie and I brought the fish in very slowly until finally he was out of the water and hanging in mid-air on the end of my line. It was the biggest fish I ever saw.

  “Wow that must be over a foot long,” I yelled with excitement. “I can’t wait to take it home and show it to my mom. It’ll make a great dinner and she’ll know exactly how to cook it up.”

  “Boy that’s great!” I heard Uncle Eddie say. “Let’s have a look at that one,” as he inspected my catch. “That’s great but we’re going to have to throw this one back, he is way too small to keep,” Uncle Eddie said.

  I could not comprehend what he was saying. Is it possible he said my big fish was too small to keep? What was he, a lunatic? This fish was going to be dinner for three!

  “You see, you can’t keep the baby fish because they need to grow up to become big fish. There’s not enough fish here to feed even one person a small snack,” Uncle Eddie said.

  He reached down into the black box and brought out a wooden ruler. He held it up against the fish that was still dangling on my line, and measured it.

  “You see it’s only three inches long and that is not nearly big enough to keep,” Uncle Eddie said with a touch of sympathy in his voice. “This is more like a pet you keep swimming around a fishbowl than something you can eat for dinner.”

  Uncle Eddie held the line firmly and pulled the hook out of