Growing Gills

by David Joy

  “I saw Ashley’s tits earlier,” Darryl proclaimed, his bird chest stuck out like a young robin’s, his southern drawl mixed with remnants of his parents’ New York accent. Ashley was a girl who lived down the road from us, one I teased viciously.

  “Bullshit. You’re such a liar.” I flicked the finished Winston into a pile of damp leaves to the right.

  “No, I swear. Her mom told me to go on up to her room, and when I walked in, there she was in the middle of changing.” His eyes squinted as the smirk spread across his cheeks. “They were nice.”

  “What’d they look like?”

  “You know, tits.”

  “Nice.” This was the standard conversation of pubescent boys and one we knew very well. I wanted a little more description, something like in the letters we’d read in his dad’s Penthouse collection, but didn’t get it.

  Darryl hopped over a small gulley, the remnant of a long-dried creek bed, and as his Voit high-tops hit soil yellowjackets swarmed up from the ground. Darryl took off and didn’t stop, his allergic body knowing all too well the swelling of stings. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, and all I saw was a blur of jean shorts, freckled skin, and the back of his coarse, black head as he continued flailing up the path. I walked around, keeping my distance from the angry wasps, and then sprinted to catch him. Jousting my rod through outreaching limbs, I caught up quickly, my long legs making up lost time. As he rounded the last curve and headed down the straightaway where the trail intersected with the barbed-wire fence encircling the cow pasture, he leaped over a thick branch lying across the path. Fifteen feet behind, I ran toward the branch, but at the last moment threw on the brakes and backpedaled to a stop as I noticed that what stretched across the trail was no limb.

  A broad-banded copperhead was lying straight and still across the blend of clay and dried pine needles. The snake was thick, at least three feet long, and probably a male by the size. The tan body was lined with dead-leaf-brown-colored hourglass bands and was not shiny like the harmless blacksnakes we encountered often. The copperhead was dull and smooth like suede, and its triangular head was as large as a small mulberry leaf.

  “Darryl! Look at this thing.”

  “Holy shit, dude, that snake is huge!”

  “Yeah, and you jumped right over him.”

  “I thought it was a stick.”

  “Me too.” I maneuvered around the danger, and as I got past, Darryl began prodding at the snake with the tip of his rod.

  The copperhead quickly curled, struck twice in an instant at the tip-top, and moved off the trail. The thick pit viper nearly disappeared among the leaves and sticks. The snake was perfectly blended into the terrain. Its camouflage sealed a remarkable deceit to any prey. I’ve read that juveniles of the species use a vibrant yellow tail to entice frogs and mice to come close. The prey follows the lie and believes that the tail is a worm or grub, then wham!

  Darryl was lucky that he hadn’t been bitten. As the copperhead struck at the rod, its white mouth and fangs gaped visibly. We left it alone and headed across the fence to Johnston Pond, but the next passerby—squirrel, rat, or bird—would not be so lucky.

  I felt I had witnessed two of the magical lies of the wild: the yellowjackets remaining hidden underground and the copperhead evaporating into the underbrush. Dangers were always out of sight but never out of our wary minds. Such a deception could kill young boys like us, and I thought Nature vicious to put on such a show; but looking back now, I no longer see it with such malice. The wild was no trickster. The wild was nothing more than exactly what it was. Everything was true. Really, there is no greater truth on earth than the reality of the natural world. Humans should dare to be so honest.

  *****

  Vladimir Nabokov, the famed Russian novelist known for works like Lolita and Pale Fire, once wrote, “Nature always deceives. From the simple deception of propagation to the prodigiously sophisticated illusion of protective colors in butterflies and birds, there is in Nature a marvelous system of spells and wiles.” Besides being a well-known novelist, Nabokov was a brilliant lepidopterist and his obsession with mimicry in butterflies often found its way into his other writings.

  Nabokov’s work with the Latin American blues (many of which are not actually blue in color, but rather orange) was particularly prolific. The South American Chilensis species is extremely toxic, eating plants known to sicken livestock, and many of Nabokov’s blues take on bright shades of orange to mimic this species and avoid being eaten by predators. Similarly, the North American viceroy mimics the highly toxic monarch in color and shape. Nabokov deemed these wonders, “magic masks of mimicry.”

  As much as I respect the work and wonder of Nabokov’s obsession with mimicry in butterflies, I shook my head at his seeing it as Nature’s “deception.” For me, the natural world is essentially truthful. Although the yellowjackets swarming around Darryl had seemed vicious, their hideout underground was no deception. The wasps were merely burrowing out of necessity, often needing to drag large prey to the colony when their wings lacked the strength to take to the air. These things were not done maliciously; rather, their assault was purely instinctual.

  The same is true of the broad-banded copperhead. The viper was invisible on the leafy ground, but there was no conscious deceit. The mimicry of earthy hues was a phenomenal adaptation in order to remain hidden from prey. The wild was driven purely by raw instinct, thousands of years of adaptation leaving no need for cognitive deception. Humans are the only species who deliberately deceive. I wanted to do as Annie Dillard wrote, to “learn something of mindlessness, something of the purity of living in the physical senses and the dignity of living without bias or motive.” I yearned to be wild.

  *****

  At twenty-three, I trudged through a late spring current in search of rising rainbows. Late afternoon cooled the Tuckasegee River, but there was little activity on the water from bugs or trout. The few fish that came up gulped the surface briefly and then melted back into the river. The only sign a trout had fed was that brief moment when its snout broke the surface and the reciprocating ripples that died quickly.

  Caddisfly hatches had been coming off every evening for the past few weeks and though a few scattered flies buzzed over the river, I saw no sign of the mass clouds I’d witnessed days before. I had no doubt that the horde would come, but casting was a waste of my time until the sun faded and the water dimmed. The sun was bright, the air was hot, and few insects were around to catch the eye of shifting trout. Under the shade of a hornbeam, I walked toward the shore and sat down on the tangled roots exposed along the riverbank.

  A web of roots stuck out of the mud bank and easily supported my weight. I laid the fly rod at the base of the tree and stared down into the shallow water as the disturbed sediment from my footsteps began to settle. Through the glittering mica, I could see a pile of leaves and sticks layering the bottom. The shallow was a perfect place for caddis larvae, so I bent down and grabbed a handful of mud and debris. Sifting through the sticks, I found exactly what I was hunting for. It looked like three sticks glued together, the middle piece being a bit rounder, softer, and hollow—a caddisfly casing. The grublike larva had constructed a small home between the two twigs. The case was nearly identical in texture, shape, and color to the two sticks, but I knew otherwise.

  Zac had shown me this variety of caddis larvae when we were fishing a small native stream. He called it stick bait and explained that he would occasionally use it when he was guiding to guarantee a client caught fish. I peeled the case in two, the consistency like heavy construction paper, and revealed the light green grub. Tiny legs extended from beneath the head, but the rest of the half-inch larva was all segmented body. I tossed the larva into the stream for the trout.

  Lifting a nearby rock in the shallow, I found two more varieties of caddis casings attached to the underside of the stone. Both were tubular, but other than that, very different in construction. One was a bit larger and looked like a straw with microsco
pic pebbles glued all over the outside. The pebbles were all different shades and colors, and inside I saw the tiny head of the larva. The other casing wasn’t round but had edges and was layered. It looked like a tiny watchtower, and the larva inside was smaller than either of the first two. I placed the rock carefully back into the river.

  I was amazed at how well these insect architects blended into the world around them. The casings were probably invisible to most predators, and the larvae only revealed themselves when they dared to poke their heads outside. Their homes were sand and sticks, quite literally, and were absolutely unnoticeable to anyone who wasn’t looking for them—a perfect adaptation.

  Tired of waiting, I stood up from the roots, grabbed my rod, and sloshed out into the river. The 81⁄2-foot rod brushed the overhanging leaves and limbs, and a swarm of caddis came down in front of me like blown ash. Some flew back into the foliage, some moved out over the water, and others drifted away downstream. I looked up and saw thousands of flies covering the branches. The gray caddis vanished if they didn’t move on the bark. The green caddisflies were only visible by silhouettes on the leaves. They were all unbelievably hidden. The flies were awaiting the coolness of evening when they would take to the air again in one giant cloud. I watched them, holding tight to the hornbeam, for a long time. They were insects that moved like ghosts through all stages of life. The larvae built sturdy casings with spun silk and blended into the streambed. The adults held tight to leaves and bark and became phantoms of the springtime flora.

  *****

  I thought again of Nabokov as I contemplated the marvelous camouflage of the caddisflies. The green caddis perfectly matched the color of summer leaves and the gray flies blended into the shade of bark. I wondered when the split had occurred, when the adaptation had brought about different colors in the same species. Their hues were an amazing defense mechanism, driven by inherent instinct and natural selection but were definitely no deception.

  We humans rely heavily on language to solidify our world, and often we completely ignore our sensory perceptions. We look at a tree and see only a verification of the word, but a caddis does not know our meaning of tree. The caddisfly only knows which trees are good places to hide from predators; then they fly there and disappear.

  Annie Dillard wrote, “The weasel lives in necessity and we live in choice.…I would like to live as I should, as the weasel lives as he should.” How glorious it must be to “live under the wild rose as weasels, mute and uncomprehending.” I go into the woods to try to escape the hypocrisy of my species. I catch glimpses of a life driven by necessity but soon fade back into what I am—a human and a liar. I think too much and live too little, but I yearn to revert to primitiveness—only then would I know what it is to truly be alive.

  *****

  In early October I stood at the tailout of Caney Fork Creek where the water emptied into the Tuckasegee River, the two currents colliding and moving west. I’d waded in from East LaPorte in hopes of finding some big brown trout moving up the creek for sanctuary. The onset of fall meant the trout were just beginning to make their way into tributaries for the spawn. I’d seen a couple of fish holding on the sand where the creek entered the river, but the prospect of sex had them spooked.

  Whoever lived in the trailer along the right bank had spread their home out under the Highway 107 bridge. The place looked like some shantytown of gypsies had set up a campsite along the riprap. Weathered folding chairs, empty bean cans and beer bottles, a small fire pit, and a clothesline supporting a dirty flower-patterned sheet were set up like a home away from home. Trying to enjoy the beauty of a trout stream in the fall, I found the sight a bit disturbing, so I tromped toward a large bend.

  The creek was shallow with few ripples running over the collage of mixed stones. A large trout made a beeline up the shallow, the fish’s back completely out of the water as it swam, the exposed dorsal slicing a V in the stream. To conceal my approach, I hopped up the riprap on the left and slowly stalked the trout. I’d seen where it had swum, but as I peered down from behind stalks of field grass there was no fish in sight. I made my way a bit further and continued peering through the sheen. Nothing.

  I sidestepped down the embankment and back into the water. I was close to the bend now and positive the big trout must have kept moving for deeper water, eventually settling in the curve. I took a step upstream and immediately saw another wake as the same fish took off from the right side. I had looked over every inch of creek and must have run my eyes over that exact spot at least four times, but the fish had been there, invisible, and now was gone.

  I was stunned I hadn’t seen the trout. I’d stared down from directly overhead and seen nothing. I daydreamed of the cast I could have made, imagined the perfect drift and the trout taking the fly, but it would never happen. The fish was far more suited for the creek than I was, standing there like an alien misfit in green waders, leather boots, and a clanking vest. I couldn’t have vanished if I’d been Eric Rudolph—the infamous abortion clinic bomber who hid in these mountains for five years before being caught—but the trout had no trouble disappearing.

  I waded toward the bend and hoped the large fish hadn’t spooked every other trout in the hole. A sandy mix of rock and mica created a beach on the inside of the bend. I crept on the shore and tried to remain low, unwilling to frighten any more trout. Kneeling on the pebbles, I made a cast to the head of the run. The Elk-hair Caddis bobbed through the curve and as it moved around the outside of the bend heading toward the tailout, a fish rose and took the fly.

  I set the hook, felt weight, but not enough weight, and knew it was a different fish than the one I’d seen. This fish was not nearly as large, and as it made a run downstream, I felt only a slight resistance tugging the trout through the current. I moved to the water’s edge and pulled the small fish into my hand.

  In my palm squirmed a native that had come far down the creek. I’d caught hundreds of native specks farther up Caney Fork and in every tributary of the creek but had never seen so fine a fish this close to the river. I didn’t know if a harsh flow from recent rainfall had sucked the marvel down or if the brook trout had another reason for coming to the river, but I didn’t question it.

  The color of a spawning brown would have been glorious to see, but a brook trout, in my eyes, was the cream of the crop. Gorgeous shades of green veined the top of the back and the season of fall was defined down the trout’s belly. The colors were magnificently brilliant, but I wondered what the reasoning behind the adaptation was. Why did the trout turn these shades and how did it manage to disappear from predators?

  I kissed the fish and released it back into the bend, but the questions continued. As I sat on the pebbly bank and hypothesized, it all began to make sense. If looked at from above, those green markings would disappear in the webbing of light being shattered as the sun came through the water. If seen from an angle or from below, the spawning brilliance would blend with the shades of the fall leaves and the sun. No matter which way the predator observed the trout, the brookie could disappear into its surroundings. Nabokov may have said that it was a “prodigiously sophisticated illusion of protective colors,” but to me it was the perfect fusion of evolution.

  In the trout’s existence I found something that I wanted for myself. I was the only liar in the place, my Elk-hair Caddis a deliberate deception mimicking the hatch. I also had covered my pale skin with layers of clothes in natural hues in an attempt to meld with my surroundings, but it was obvious, at least to me, that I did not belong. I could never fully join the world that I loved so deeply. I was the species that dismantled the world with empty syllables, with metaphors meant to dominate. I wanted out. I wanted to become a fish.

  I wanted nothing more than to shed my humanness like a snakeskin, to revert to a reality driven by instinct. I was tired of living in language-derived consciousness and yearned for moments without cognitive thought. I wanted to feel raw emotion—not to think—but just to experience it wi
th my hairs standing on end, the pores beginning to sweat, my heart racing, as I was consumed by total fear. How pure it must be to truly experience the world even through fear! The only thing I wanted was to become what they were—wild—if only for a brief moment. Then and only then would I know what it was to truly be alive. Then, and only then, would I experience the rawness of the wild.

  Wild

  A breeze blows through a Carolina silverbell, showering its white bell-shaped flowers onto the mossy earth. One rattlesnake orchid grows in a damp corner of the creek bank, and beneath the flower’s snakeskin leaves, a rabble of black and eastern tiger swallowtails suck moisture from the soil through uncurled proboscises like spiraled straws. I stand knee-deep in the crisp water and cinch the knot down on the hook eye of an Adams Trude.

  The caddis hatch has been thick all day, and as the sun haloes the western peaks, the cloud of flies deepens into a gray fog over the stream. I pick my mark, make the cast, and watch as the calf-tail wing of the Trude slowly rides the surface along the seam of current. A brook trout rises, and I set the hook a bit too soon, only pricking the trout’s olive green mouth. My heart pounds inside my sweat-stained undershirt. The moment of mistake has left me thought-less and I know that the fish will not rise again. More than the fish, that moment of thought-lessness was what I sought, and with my mindscape barren, I climb the hillside and emerge on the gravel logging road. I look back down at Moses Creek one last time and find the line the trout had taken. I breathe deeply and deliberately, suck in every molecule of sweetness that the trumpet honeysuckles can spare, and then hike toward the truck.