5. God doesn’t care who nets what or who fishes when, once GG has some toddy.
6. GG says Jesus was a fisherman who fished for men, like the devil.
7. GG says he showed his disciples how to do it, too. I think she says they used tongues.
8. GG says Jesus and the disciples are bait-fishermen with invisible hooks, and heaven and the Golden Mansions and nice music Up There are the bait.
9. GG isn’t sure whether the devil or Jesus catches more people, but she expects the devil does.
I concluded the God-notebook experiment by skimming the entire Bible, afterward summarizing its relevance to me thus:
The Bible is good in some places, dull as a seed catalogue in others, and bloody and horrible in others besides that. I liked the fishermen disciples, and Jonah (who H2O calls “the Human Fly”) and Jesus and Noah best. Balaam’s ass was neat too. I also like how four of the disciples were just plain old commercial fishermen till they started to follow Jesus around on dry land, and how they didn’t start to do that until he kept asking them to, and after he died they went right back out fishing again, and probably would have kept fishing if Resurrected Jesus hadn’t come for them, and when he came the first thing he did was show them where to catch the hundred and fifty and three fish they caught. And until all that happened those disciples were pretty much like me, except technique-wise. They just fished. And even after they quit fishing for fish they still fished, for men—whatever that means. That’s why I like them. They just minded their business, which was fishing, and only started praying and preaching when they were lured into it—and it took God’s son to lure them! And maybe God told Izaak Walton about Himself, how do I know? But He never told me nothing. And until He or some new son of His comes along and tells me straight out that they want me to be different than how I am, I’m going to be like the disciples, and how me and them are is we’re fishermen, plain and simple. I’m going to fish as long as I can as hard as I can, and wherever that takes me is where I’m going, be it Good Place or Bad. Because if God is everything the Bible and the Compleat Angler crack Him up to be, it’s Him that’s making me want to fish anyhow, and Him who will turn me into a fish or worm or fly or angel or star or saint or sun or frog or taco whenever He decides and what could I do about it? Nothing. Just keep fishing. That’s all.
And this was precisely what I proceeded to do.
7
Being “Educated” and “Gittin’ Brung Up”
The Common Dragonet… indulges in elaborate nuptial displays, yet afterwards abandons the eggs to float about in the sea, showing no concern for the fate of the offspring.
—J. R. Norman and P. H. Greenwood, A History of Fishes
When people are kids their parents teach them all sorts of stuff, some of it true and useful, some of it absurd hogwash (example of former: don’t crap your pants; example of latter: Columbus discovered America). This is why puberty happens. The purpose of puberty is to shoot an innocent and gullible child full of nasty glandular secretions that manifest in the mind as confusion, in the innards as horniness, upon the skin as pimples, and on the tongue as cocksure venomous disbelief in every piece of information, true or false, gleaned from one’s parents since infancy. The net result is a few years of familial hell culminating in the child’s exodus from the parental nest, sooner or later followed by a peace treaty and the emergence of the postpubescent as an autonomous, free-thinking human being who knows that Columbus only trespassed on an island inhabited by our lost and distant Indian relatives, but who also knows not to crap his pants.
H2O was of the opinion that a parent’s most sacred duty was the education of his children. Ma adhered to a more primitive philosophy, holding that a child will educate itself and that a parent’s job is to simply “git ’em brung up.” But “Education” as provided by H2O proved to consist of no end of fine words and no beginning of practical instruction (except in flyfishing), while “Gittin’ Brung Up” as overseen by Ma proved to consist of no fine words at all, yet nearly everything Bill Bob and I can do with our bodies and hands is a result of something Ma taught us. While H2O stole a few moments from his illustrious career to address us on such abstractions as Humanitarianism, Progress, Good Manners, The Scientific Method, Evolution, Liberality, and that finest virtue, Ambition, Ma just showed us how to walk, talk, read, write, and cuss, taught us basic carpentry, plumbing, gardening, marksmanship, auto repair, meat butchering and curing, canning, cooking, wrestling, boxing, how to fight dirty, and (in my case) bait fishing. When I first perceived this contradiction I got very angry at H2O. I managed to maintain my poker face; what I couldn’t maintain was control of my glands. Too much rain in a river makes a flood. Too many secretions in a teenager makes a vandal.
Vandalism, among American teens, is a flourishing low-brow art form: the sleepy teacher, late for school, hurries to his car—it’s full of wet shredded newspaper; the hemorrhoidal vice-principal rushes to the WC, squats, screams, and bursts from the stall trouserless as a race horse—there’s a live possum hissing in the toilet bowl; the truant officer home after a hard day—to an unordered truckload of manure in the middle of his driveway; the toilet-papered trees; the prank calls; the strategic placement of snake or slug in purse or pocket; and around the corner or behind the bush, the inevitable pimply faces, sniggering.…
As a fisherman, the popular permutations of vandalism bored me. But I too had glands and zits. Who knows that young Mozart didn’t loose an occasional rat in his tutor’s clavichord? As for me, I put fish in strange places. Live fish. Trash fish. The trunk of my car—a ’55 Buick Special—contained a metal tank. From this tank there poured a prodigious array of squawfish, suckers, chubs, carp, and other pariah species destined to flavor some of the most staid and respectable fountains, swimming pools, bathtubs, punchbowls, and other domesticated bodies of water in the greater Portland area. When I found myself wondering what a four-pound buck channel-cat might do to the residents of the Hawaiian-style aquarium owned by the debutante cheerleader who called me “Fishface” when I bumped into her in the hall, or how a colony of live crawdads might spice up that big, bland tossed salad at my uncle Zeke’s wedding reception, or what reaction a school of squawfish might get from a convocation of derelicts waking from a night of DT’s beside the Skidmore Fountain, I loaded my trunk, drove off into the night, and found out. I found out other things too:
One day as I was stuffing down a burger at the Dairy Queen near my high school a Chicano kid the jocks called “Barf-breath” came in. Barf-breath looked hungry. He also looked dirty, tired, sickly, and soaked with rain. He had fifteen cents. He ordered a lidded styrofoam cup of coffee, poured most of it in the trash, filled it with cream and sugar, and drank it. Then he loitered near the garnish counter till he thought nobody was watching, filled the cup with hotdog relish, onion, and ketchup, popped on the lid, and slipped outside. I trailed him down to the football field where he crawled back under the bleachers, and, with his dark, dirty, emaciated hands, devoured the contents of the cup.
I couldn’t get that kid out of my mind—the belly-flop pushups he did in PE, the naps he took at study hall, his breath and hands. I found out where he lived: the house looked like a shoebox, rotting in the rain. The yard was stomped to hard bare dirt by the bevy of kids who played in it, kids with two names—Spanish American names, and the names they went by at school. Names like Barf-breath. I noticed a huge mud puddle at the head of their driveway, so from time to time through the school-year they found catfish, perch, bluegill, and crappie swimming in that puddle; if they cleaned the fish, they found dimes in the gullets. It was stupid, I know. It couldn’t really help, I know. I’m not God. I’m just a fisherman.
Our high school was named Hoover, after Herbert, but we called it “J. Edgar” to capture the spirit of the place. Whoever designed the J. Edgar parking lot didn’t know much about Oregon: every fall the lot became a lake. One spring I stocked the lake with an eight-pound carp that lived in there for three wee
ks before someone spotted it feeding by a stalled-out Studebaker. Word got around; kids chased it and fished for it, but it was a strong, smart old fish; somebody called the Portland newspaper—they ran an AP photo of the lot and a write-up in the sports section by one of the senile but tenured editors that paper was renowned for. This editor calls his column “The Fishing Dutchman.” In the column he accounted for the carp’s presence by noting the existence of a three-season sewer ditch a quarter mile away; he theorized that the fish, one flooded night, half swam, half crawled its way overland to the J. Edgar parking lot. He then, for the tenth time in the history of his column, went on to say that to cook a carp you broil it on a cedar shingle till it turns golden brown, then throw away the carp and eat the shingle.
When the carp was finally caught, I stocked the lot with two more. “The Fishing Dutchman” responded with another column, citing the presence of this pair not only as proof of his overland migration theory, but as an example of
the unwarranted skepticism of our ecologists and oversensitive nature-worshippers concerning the ability of fish and game to survive.… There would be less hysteria and a healthier economy if some of these people would… get out and fish or hunt and see for themselves just how tough and smart all of these “poor threatened creatures” really are in the face of “pollution” and “encroachment” by man.…
—a strange conclusion, given the photo at the head of his column: both carp dead as dodo birds, skewered on the arrow of a happy teen bow-hunter. The Dutchman then went on to fume about the kind of matchbooks that have the sandpaper striker on the wrong side.
From then on the J. Edgar parking lot was known as the Karping Lot, and I thought I was pretty clever—till a couple of things happened: first, the publicity inspired the school board to repair the drainage, so the Karping Lot was destroyed; then three third-graders—two girls and a boy—were hospitalized with an almost-fatal fever contracted the night after fishing the worthless ditch mentioned in the Dutchman’s column. I felt awful. I could just see the little farts ogling the picture in the paper, then scampering down to the sewer all excited, no idea how to fish, their dads too busy at the office to teach them, so they sat all day by the inches-deep water waiting for some gold-plated buffalo-backed monster to come bulldozing up out of nowhere. And when no carp came they got bored and thirsty. And when they’d waited so long that they forgot the roughage reek of the water, they drank.… So one morning during their recovery they awoke to the news that a foot-long catfish had been found alive and well in the hospital’s indoor fountain. This catfish had been wearing a collar. Taped to the collar was a pill container. In the container was a note that said all the fishes hoped they’d get well soon. Sure, it was silly; sure it didn’t help at all. But when you grow up in those suburbs—when you’ve seen the streams, woods, farms, and ponds dying all around you but have been lucky enough to escape every weekend or vacation to a wild river full of beautiful game fish, only to return home to the sight of hopeful little kids with impossibly crappy poles plying poisoned creeks where even the crawdads have died—it does something: something way inside me would start to die. I’d want to load up every kid into H2O’s Winnebago and take them away to some Angler’s Valhalla forever. Or I’d want to shout at H2O and his purist pals to stop bitching and bribing and begging for Flyfishing Only streams, and start screaming for fish-filled drinkable waters for kids whose creeks had been murdered.…
But I didn’t take those kids anywhere. I didn’t tell H2O and his pals anything. I just moped, and fished, and stewed in my glands. So now and then I’d try and ease the pain by putting live fish, trash fish, in strange places.
H2O and I had both been in the room when nine-month-old Bill Bob uttered his first sentence. I happened to be writing in my Fishing Log; H2O was tying flies. Bill Bob had been a close-lipped little scrapper, rarely crying, never babbling, occasionally given to a terse “Cooo,” “Glooo,” or “Glarglar.” But on this particular evening, as he lay on his back fingering the toes of both feet with both hands, he suddenly uttered seven distinct syllables. Though the sentence was swift, I heard it closely and transcribed it in my journal, thus: “Law-wall-law-haw-ill-all-aw.”
H2O’s response was more dramatic. Hearing the strange syllables he leapt up and cried, “Augustine! Augustine, did you hear? Bill Bob is trying to say ‘Dada’!” He picked Bill Bob up and held him to his face. “Come come, little man! You can do it! Say Dada. Come on, Dada, Dada, Dada, Dada!”
Bill Bob hung in the air like a lump of wet Wonder Bread, his mouth as inexorably closed as a bank vault on weekends.
A month later Bill Bob and I were watching TV. H2O slouched in a nearby armchair, reading a letter from Arnold Gingrich. I happened to be eating potato chips, much to the interest of Bill Bob, who waited for a commercial then crawled in my lap, extended a hand, and said, “Paychup.” I said, “Yeah, Bill Bob. Potato chip. That’s good.” And I handed him one which he proceeded to gum till it turned to a yellow paste which he smeared across his eyes and forehead. At the next commercial he again reached out and said, “Paychup.” But this time H2O heard. He jumped out of his chair: “Did you catch that, G—Augustine? That’s closer, Bill Bob! Try again! It’s Dada. Dadadadadadadada.…” Bill Bob looked up just as a blob of spud-goo slithered down his chin. H2O watched it plop onto the carpet, glanced at the paste on Bill Bob’s face, said “Be sure and wipe that,” and retired to his study to watch the aquarium, whose residents washed themselves unendingly. Bill Bob stared at the door he’d gone through, turned to me, and said “Dadadadadadada!” Then he grinned, held out his hand, and added, “Paychup.” I gave him another.
A few days later Bill Bob crawled into H2O’s lap, looked him square in the eye, and said, “Mama.” H2O’s face caved in. Though Bill Bob’s vocabulary was already substantial, he didn’t know it; he believed “Mama” to be the first English word his son ever said. When I was small I was certain that H2O was the world’s greatest father—but I loved to flyfish, and my first word (according to him, anyway) was “Dada.” Bill Bob never fished; Bill Bob said “Mama”; even the name “Bill Bob” was a pain in H2O’s cerebral ass. So, sad and dumb as it sounds, he let Bill Bob grow up on an unwatched channel. When I saw this going on I began to question what sort of father my father really was to me. I wondered what he’d think of me if I didn’t flyfish. I wondered what would happen if I fell in his presence, as I often fell in his absence, into the Carper drawl and dialect. I wondered if, apart from his art and himself, he really loved anything or anyone. Then I wondered the same about myself. And all these wonders made me miserable. I tried to stop wondering. I tried just to fish.
I remember an adventure which shows a lot about the way Ma “got me brung up.” Bill Bob wasn’t born yet, but he had her stomach bulging. I was ten. It was December. And because Ma forced me to it I was engaged in the despicable business of selling Christmas cards door to door—her equivalent to teaching a coyote pup to forage for rodents.… I felt like a damned Witless. But if I sold 48 boxes I could get a little fiberglass canoe, so I dutifully beat the streets. I ended up selling twelve boxes, the last four of them to Ma. The reason Ma bought the last four was what happened on the last day of my sales career.
We lived in a posh Portland suburb, which was H2O’s doing; for him, flyfishing was a business, and like most businesses it depended upon a city for its health. But though he picked the home-place, Ma ruled it, and as long as Ma lives, there will be a tinge of juniper, sage, dust, and fresh blood in the air of the Orviston home. A few houses down and across the street from us was a space-age domicile, painted black, with lots of skylights and remote-control doors and gadgets, owned by a surgeon. The surgeon also owned a black speedboat, a black Oldsmobile, and a black Doberman pinscher. This Doberman was a notorious mauler of children. It lived in the surgeon’s backyard, which was surrounded by a cyclone fence, painted black. The creature was usually satisfied to roar and slaver at people passing on the street, but now and again i
t would get unusually excited by a solitary passing child, hop the five-foot fence as easily as a hurdler might a milkbox, perforate the unfortunate’s arms, legs, or face, hop back into its backyard, and wag its repulsive little circumcised tail at the surgeon when an irate parent came with a complaint and a medical bill. Of course these wounds were petty compared to the great slashes and slits the surgeon inflicted upon humanity daily, so he would calmly point to the five-foot fence, tell the parent how much it cost him and how unjumpable it was, refer to the great numbers of black Doberman pinschers roaming our suburbs, and send them home smiling and promising to come to him next time they needed a vital organ pruned or transplanted. Meanwhile the Doberman continued to ape its master with its own surgical methods, protected by the surgeon’s suavity, the worthless fence, the timidity of suburbanites, and the fact that it had done one thing right throughout its life: it had never crossed paths with Ma Orviston’s boy—until the day I sold my last box of Christmas cards.
I was pedaling home fast, trying to make it in time to watch a “Gadabout Gaddis Show” about steelheading in British Columbia, and it wasn’t until I was right in front of the surgeon’s black lair that I remembered why I’d never bicycled down that side of the street before.… I peeked toward the backyard: the Doberman hung high above the fence, its insane eyes riveted to my ten-year-old flesh. When its feet struck earth it let out a Baskerville howl that turned my brains to cottage cheese. Blind and sick with panic, I set my crummy bike pedals whirring like an egg beater, hoping like any terrified young coyote to make it home to the protection of my ferocious mother. I swerved into the street and wove between two cars, hoping they’d mash my pursuer, but at the sight of me they slammed on their brakes and the monster shot between them unscathed. I plowed straight into the curb, caving in my front rim, but clung somehow to the lurching bike, crossing our yard now and screaming “MAAA! MAAA!” Then the Doberman sprang, hit my shoulder, and sent me sprawling like a gunned jackrabbit. I curled instinctively into a ball, waiting for the beast to gut me, so drunk with horror I thought I only imagined the explosion in my ears. But when the attack never came I uncurled just enough to see what delayed it. The Doberman lay quivering and jerking on the lawn a few feet away, its eyes rolled back, its tongue lolling out and turning gray, a hole in its chest the size of a cantaloupe. I squinted toward the house. There stood Ma, twelve-gauge still smoking and the wildest green-eyed grin I’d ever seen on her face. She said,
The River Why Page 6
