Weeping Underwater Looks a Lot Like Laughter

by Michael J. White

  A few minutes later everyone accepted that I was officially healed. Mr. Schell asked me to get his girls back in time for the five-o’clock Mass. I told him not to worry, that I had lawn-mowing and garage-hosing duties later that afternoon. I couldn’t believe that after all that commotion Mrs. Schell hadn’t made an appearance. But then, as we were heading out the front door, her voice came streaming through the intercom speakers in the kitchen, living room, and front hall.

  “SUNSCREEN!” she shouted, as if it were her final deathbed directive.

  Nineteen

  Out at Saylorville we marched along a mushy trail swamped with mosquitoes and biting flies further roused by our footsteps and Katie’s crutches. We stomped over broken reeds and decayed logs, wooden planks thrown over mud pits. Katie was cursing from the start, aiming most of her frustrations at the Eagle Scout and his miniature wooden hut where we’d signed our agreement for the canoe rental. She couldn’t slap at the pests biting at her hardworking arms, which were still grassy and slender, not nearly as muscular as I would’ve imagined. We found our canoe next to the rack lying upside down in the mud.

  “Hurry up,” Katie said. “Flip it over. The big ones are waiting.”

  I tripped on an anchor half-buried in the muck and fell to my hands. “The boat,” Emily said. “She wants you to flip the boat.”

  On first sighting the canoe, I imagined Nicholas Parsons resting peacefully beneath it, sinking slowly into the mush that would leave a perfect imprint of his body. As soon as I stepped near it he’d leap at me with bloody eyes and a parasite-patrolled scalp, beads of sweat running down his cheeks like crude oil tears. I turned it over. A thousand crickets dashed in all directions.

  Emily took one look and decided to fish off the shore. It wasn’t a bad idea anyway. I gave her one of the rods and a small plastic case with a few jigs and surface lures. She wished us luck and set off on her own. I dragged the canoe to the edge of the lake, waiting for Katie to find her seat before shoving us into the water. She snapped into her life jacket and got her paddle wet for three or four strokes before I told her to relax and enjoy the ride. The trail had obviously worn her out, and I knew she would’ve kept paddling if I didn’t say anything.

  “You ever flip one of these things?” she asked, gripping the sides.

  “Only once. But Zach was standing on the bow practicing crane kicks like the Karate Kid.”

  “That Eagle Scout sure was something. Sitting in a hut with a fake chimney. What an idiot.” She put her sunglasses on and searched from one side of the lake to the other. There were a few groups at the beach on the far side, but only one other canoe on the lake. “Where’re all the other fishermen?”

  “It’s no motors for a month. They’re probably all out at Gray’s Lake.”

  “Perfect,” she said. “Crank it up, why don’t you?”

  I dug my paddle in, swiftly pulling us around the bend. We dropped anchor at a cove where a set of willow trees stretched over the water and shaded the surface. I handed Katie a rod equipped with a push-button reel I thought she’d find easier to cast than the spinning reels Emily and I were using. She still had difficulties, though, exacerbated by the stiffness in her arms that often resulted in the lure helicoptering and entangling itself around the tip of the pole. Other times she’d hurl it so hard and release it so late that the lure splashed wildly a few feet from the canoe. After six or seven tries she calmed down and managed a clean cast. With Zach’s new reel I found I could cast almost double the distance. I aimed parallel to the shoreline, knowing I was covering hot spots the entire way back.

  After ten minutes of quiet casting, Katie issued orders to move where the big fish were swimming deep. I paddled us out to the middle, thinking it was a good idea to do a little jigging where Katie could simply drop her lure and wait for a bite. I’d forgotten seat pads and a net and considered I’d be better prepared when I returned next weekend alone with Emily. We’d lay a camping pad across the bottom of the canoe and then sleep on the lake, floating wherever the wind directed us, kissing for hours. She wasn’t far away, plopped down on a long flat boulder, digging into the tackle box. From the few times we’d been fishing, I knew she liked to change lures often, which meant her line wasn’t in the water very much.

  “How many have you got so far?” she shouted, knowing Katie would’ve made a big ruckus if we’d landed one. Her voice carried lightly over the lake.

  “How many have you caught?” Katie shouted back. “And dead floaters don’t count!”

  Emily waved us off and went back to tying her lure. I looked around for the other fisherman, but he’d apparently disappeared into one of the coves. While Katie was pulling some weeds off her lure, I told her she was the only cartoonist I knew. She’d promised I could read her graphic novella a few months before, but then reneged, insisting it was still under construction.

  “A book at fourteen,” I said. “It’s a little ridiculous, even for you. You’re making the rest of us look like deadbeats.”

  “Anyone stuck in a wheelchair can draw enough pictures to fill a book. Eventually I want to write screenplays. If Emily’s going to make it big, she’s gonna need a good script, something written just for her.”

  Katie tried to cast but the reel jammed when the line was only halfway out. This meant that her jig couldn’t reach the bottom, the only depth at which it was probable to attract fish. But by this time Katie was more interested in conversation. Instead of annoying her with all the problems she wasn’t even aware of, I pressed her for movie plots.

  “I’ve got this one idea I think is pretty good, though I don’t know all the ins and outs of screenwriting. Not yet. But anyway, the pro tagonist is an orthodontist named Mr. Horner who has seven kids. There’s only one shower at home, so they all bathe in the neighborhood swimming pool. Mrs. Horner, who’s like real young and skinny and dumb, she’s afraid to tell Mr. Horner that she’s pregnant again, so she gorges on fried chicken and watermelon ice cream in order to fatten up, to disguise the pregnancy. She also dresses the kids for school the night before, to save time in the morning. Oh yeah, and instead of preparing lunch boxes, she puts all the ingredients in a big blender. Bread, bologna, chips, apples, all blended up and poured into thermal mugs. It’s mostly a drama about a marriage, but I want it to be really funny. That’s the most important thing.”

  I wondered to what extent the family in her script was based on the Hathaways. “However it works out,” I said, “I’ll be first in line.”

  Katie gave me a pleased little nod. She unbuckled the top of her life jacket and turned in my direction to stretch her legs out and roll her neck around. The Schell women had the most aristocratic necks and long summery legs, perhaps Katie more than any of them. She must have noticed me staring because she stretched even further, crossing her legs several different ways and even reaching down to massage her ankle and run a hand over her thigh on the way back up. I cast again, roughly squinting in order to suggest that I’d only turned her direction after being hit by a blinding glare off the water. But my attention hadn’t gone unnoticed.

  “Good to know these legs aren’t totally useless. Think they’re good enough for cameos? Or even a starring role in a shaving cream ad?”

  “They’re good enough,” I said.

  “You’re lying.”

  “The panty hose companies might pay more,” I said, then abruptly retreated to the previous topic. “So if Emily plays the mom, I guess she’d have to put on some pounds, huh?”

  “I guess so, but the Hollywood bigwigs would probably change that and make it so she ate all this ice cream but never gained any weight. I think it would be funnier if she got super fat and then there’d be this wild scene where Mr. Horner takes her to the hospital after she complained about a really bad stomachache. Then she comes out with a baby. Anyway, I’ve heard that screenwriters are like the dogs of the movie business, so I wouldn’t expect the bigwigs to keep everything the same.”

  “I get it,” I s
aid, realizing by the dozy sound of my voice that I’d stopped giving Katie my full attention. I always had at least one eye on Emily, who was marching up and down the shore, rising to her tiptoes each time she cast. After a while I pulled the anchor up again, thinking I ought to get Katie’s jig closer to the bottom if I expected her to actually catch something. I paddled in Emily’s direction, convincing myself that if I hooked a big muskie, she’d have sex with me later that night, or even before the five-o’clock Mass at the hospital.3 As our canoe drew closer, Emily’s voice sounded out, groggy and grim.

  “Have we caught enough yet for lunch?”

  “How’s about a worm sandwich?” Katie shouted. She’d only been casting every few minutes, convincing me that, like her older sister, she preferred the idea of fishing to the reality of the routine. The humidity bulged and I hadn’t gotten a single strike. About fifty yards off Emily set her pole down and pulled a small notebook from her pocket, occasionally looking up to read the trace clouds and the sky. Reminding myself that Katie had never caught a fish, I snapped out of my daydream, determined to get her one. I paddled closer to shore where spidery trees hung over the water, appearing to dip over for a drink. The wind had died down. Without bothering to drop the anchor, I exchanged Katie’s jig for a floating lure with leopard spots and an underside painted to resemble the pale belly of a frog. This lure was sure not to get caught in the shallow underbrush, and I liked the stealthy quality of its big blind eyes. For a moment I drifted off again, reliving the night I discovered Emily, the actress.

  It seemed we’d found a perfect spot, until Katie’s second or third cast, when the frog went sailing into the trees. She jerked her pole, which only dug the treble hooks in deeper. I thought for sure she’d snap the line. I sort of hoped she would, knowing it would be easier to let it go and tie on another jig, even if the frog lure happened to be one of my favorites.

  “You little crapper!” she yelled, yanking the pole every which way. “Get out of that tree or I’ll—”

  Emily started walking along the shore to untangle the frog. But there was no clear pathway and the climb up the side of the tree would probably prove too difficult. Either way, Katie was looking to curse the tree from its roots before Emily got there.

  “You little bugger! Shithead! Whatever your name is!”

  The line snapped. Katie’s first reaction was to laugh, even though a moment later she was flashing me an expression of grave guilt, like she’d ruined the whole day with one irreparable cast. I decided to jump into the lake. This decision also had something to do with my expectations of having sex with Emily. I took off my shirt and sandals and stepped onto the bench. I was careful not to rock the canoe as I jumped. The surface of the water was lukewarm. Near my feet it was cold enough to send a cool shot up to my head. I sidestroked to the shore.

  “You didn’t have to do that,” Katie said, setting the pole down.

  “It’s a five-dollar lure,” I said, kicking and gliding on my back.

  “And a million-dollar farmer’s tan. Dang. You’re scaring all the fish away.”

  I swam up to a set of boulders near the edge, grabbing one of the stronger-looking willow branches to pull myself onto shore. As I climbed along the trunk of the willow tree, I imagined I was walking a dinosaur’s prickly tail onto its arched spine. For as long as I could I ascended heel over toe with my arms out like an acrobat, then crouched down and shinnied. At some point I looked up to find Katie slightly crooking her neck to better gaze at me, forcing a sudden consciousness of my erect nipples and the red hairs curling over the waist of my shorts. When I could safely advance no farther I squeezed my legs around the trunk and gripped one of the limbs and leaned out as far as I could, scratching my chest and stomach as I stretched for the frog. Two of the barbs were embedded as deep as they could go. As I was stripping away a few offshoots to improve my reach, I looked up at the sound of a metallic thud echoing from the canoe. Katie had knocked one of her crutches against the middle bench. She stood up and pointed to the water just below me.

  “George! I see one. It’s a monster!”

  I saw it, too. At first I mistook it for a long dark rock, but then its tail fanned and it turned in place. I didn’t expect to find trout at Saylorville Lake, but there it was, a big lazy brown at least the length of my forearm.

  “Take the other pole,” I whispered.

  “We’ll put it on the wall!” Katie shouted, gripping the sides and stepping carefully over the middle bench. The canoe was steady but slowly rotating. She grabbed my pole and sat down, then searched the shallow water for her fish.

  “You’ve got to open that metal clip first. Open that gasket. Just like that.”

  I lost the trout for a moment, until it fanned its tail a second time. Its flank design was like black rain splattered over dusk, its eyes obsidian stones.

  “Hold the line with your left hand and when you cast, let go just like you’re throwing a baseball. Throw it soft.”

  I kept my sights on the fish and tried to judge its weight. Emily had disappeared in the reeds, but soon the reeds were parting and I saw her arms brushing them from side to side as she pushed through. I hoped by the time she showed up that Katie would be holding a big brown trout with both hands, doing everything she could to keep it from flopping out of her grip and back into the lake. Katie practiced her motion, carefully waving the pole back and forth while keeping a grip on the line. My lure was swinging around the rod tip, sure to get tangled. She sat tall and looked down into the water.

  “It’s gonna sink fast,” I said. “Try to aim in front of his mouth.”

  “I know. Shut up.”

  “Start reeling in right away and keep the tip up.”

  “I’m gonna eat it,” she said. “I’m going to eat it whole.”

  As soon as the lure hit the water Katie grabbed hold of the line and closed the gasket. I’d rigged a white jig with a red worm. It was only a foot deep when the trout went for it. He went for it all the way and I knew she had him because the white and red completely vanished. He took off, running along the shoreline, directly away from the canoe but curving against the drag. It curved out toward the middle. Katie’s pole was deeply bent.

  When Emily popped out of the reeds there were thin red cuts on her shins and hands. She licked the top of her right hand and after that didn’t pay it any attention. I felt the tree shake as she crashed into it and wrapped her arms around the trunk so she could lean out toward the water and cheer. Katie was reeling hard, cursing again, too. Every time she pulled the fish closer to the canoe, he’d dive under it. Then she’d stop reeling, not knowing what happened or why she couldn’t see him yet.

  “Flip it in the boat!” Emily shouted. “Flip it in the boat!”

  “He doesn’t want to flip! Dang! What’s this guy’s problem! The little bitch!”

  I could tell the trout was on the other side of the canoe now and dragging out more line. Katie’s rod started straightening out. I thought she might’ve lost him. “Keep reeling,” I said. “Tighten the slack! Keep the tip up!”

  “I’m gonna eat him alive!” she shouted, starting to reel again. The rod tip immediately bent down, which made me think her fish had swallowed the lure whole. I figured she’d land him even if she let the line go loose again. The wind picked up. The canoe started drifting farther toward the middle. I realized I should’ve dropped the anchor before swimming ashore.

  “Don’t stop reeling!” I yelled.

  “Can you see it?” Emily shouted.

  For the most part Katie kept reeling in, but occasionally she’d grab onto the bench to steady herself, allowing her trout to run off with more line. After a while she realized what was happening and got fed up. She took to her feet.

  “Sit down, Katie!”

  “Keep the tip up!”

  “He’s a whale,” Katie yelled. “A real mean bastard!”

  Desperate not to lose her fish, soon enough Katie figured out how to steady herself with one hand while
holding the fishing pole with the line squeezed against it with the other, thus enduring that the pole continued jerking down. The canoe swayed slightly side to side. Eventually her trout broke the surface, leaping half a foot out of the water, writhing to hurl the hook from his mouth. (It must’ve been a five-pounder, as big as the biggest I’d ever caught in the streams back in Davenport.) A second after it landed the line went taut. Katie sat down with her back turned to us and started reeling again. She steadied the pole between her knees and shined us a hungry grin. By Emily’s frantic cheers I swore she might raise the whole lake and turn it inside out until Katie’s trout came slapping down on the shore. I knew Katie was almost there. The pole was jerking straight down.

  “Bring it home, Katie!” Emily shouted. “Bring it home to Mama!”

  Katie leaned over the side, trying to pull her fish out by the line that I prayed wouldn’t snap. She’d already raised him to the lip of the canoe when it slipped out of her hand (or let it go; she might’ve thought she’d be bitten) and her trout flipped back into the water, the shock of which had her kicking backward, then forward again to catch her balance. The canoe dipped toward us and then away from us, tilting so severely that the only sight of Katie for a split second was her ponytail swinging to the side. The canoe stalled on this angle. At the sound of a second metallic thud the canoe dipped even further and tipped back and Katie wasn’t in it anymore. The slap of her body into the water was no louder than the trout’s splash landing a minute before.

  “Katie!” Emily shouted, her voice shaking with what I first interpreted as inordinate panic. But when Katie didn’t shout back and the splashing sounds turned to silence I knew this was no longer a mere matter of wet tennis shoes and a runaway trout. Without a thought Emily jumped into the lake and scrambled over the hardly submerged boulders. I fumbled down through the branches, soon finding myself underwater ten feet from the shore, my feet sinking into the spongy bottom. (In the benumbed seconds before reality reared its claws, I imagined that Katie had decided to jump in and swim her fish ashore, that she was now floating on her back, calmly clutching her pole as she kicked her way around the canoe. This was my first reaction, even though it didn’t make any sense.) We likely both broke state swimming records as we hurled ourselves out to the middle. I begged that Katie was either playing a trick on us or was simply too wet and scared to scream back. I didn’t care whether she was laughing or crying, only that we’d find her treading water on the other side of the canoe. But we didn’t. Instead we found two life jackets drifting in opposite directions. Emily was already breathing heavy when she made her first dive under. I did the same. Time was painful and hard to judge while diving under and swimming in circles and coming back up only to tread water and catch our breath and dive under again. Emily held her breath much longer than I did, terrifying me each time I surfaced before her.