Growing Gills

by David Joy

  I sped toward water, the liveliness of summer becoming apparent as giant moths smashed against the grill and windshield of the speeding Chevy, the thuds still audible through the blare of O.A.R.’s “I Feel Home.” A blur of bushy tail shot across the pavement as a red fox made its nighttime chase. Through a stand of jack pine on the right, the dirt road to the Bear Lake boat landing came into view, and we eased into the empty gravel parking lot, the unsettled dust clouding the road behind. I steered toward the boat ramp and parked under the fluorescent glow of a streetlamp, insects swarming the bulb, the light barely reaching the darkened shoreline.

  “Will you grab the cooler?” I pointed to the passenger floorboard of the pickup.

  “Sure, and what else?”

  “I’ll get the rest. You just grab the cooler.” The beer cans sloshed in the icy water as she lifted the red Igloo onto her lap.

  “Let me get something else.”

  “No, just get the cooler.” I opened the door and stepped outside while Sara checked the hour on her phone one last time.

  The smell of dead fish blended with the sweetness of barley grass and the sourness of Queen Anne’s lace growing alongside the boat ramp, a repulsive smell to most, but a cologne reminiscent of nights on the Catawba for me. A little brown myotis bat shot low past the driver side, and I heard the velvety flaps of winged hands. I looked up and saw many more spiraling, flipping, dropping, ascending after the erratic flight patterns of nighttime insects.

  “Bats,” I called just as Sara began to step out of the truck.

  “Where?” she yelped, looking up toward the light as one of the winged mammals flew low and cut off into the black. “Holy shit!” she screamed frantically, her feet breaking into some scared-shitless river dance, the door slamming behind her as she jumped, yanked, and shut the door in one clean movement.

  I cracked the driver side door. Sara sat in the fetal position on the passenger side bucket seat.

  “You know they’ll lay eggs in your hair and you’ll go crazy,” I prodded her with lies.

  “Shut up, David! That’s not funny!” Her voice held a seriousness best left alone, but my comment had to be true—after all, I’d heard it from Barney Fife on The Andy Griffith Show, a true authority on life.

  I grabbed the rods out of the back of the truck with one hand and picked up the old Plano tackle box and the fly case with the other. I headed toward the lake, stopped in front of the truck, and motioned for Sara to come on.

  “Are they gone?” she yelled from the safety of the cab.

  “You’re fine.”

  “You sure?”

  “You’re fine, babe. Grab the flashlight, while you’re in there.”

  Sara emerged, the cooler sloshing in one hand, the flashlight in the other guarding the crown of her head as she ran toward me, her petite frame wobbling from the weight of Busch cans and ice. We walked out of the circled light of the streetlamp and headed toward the glint of shimmering water.

  The crickets and bullfrogs silenced as we neared the shore, and Sara shone the flashlight onto the planked dock lining the landing. We stepped onto weathered boards, the fasteners creaking along the posts as the dock shifted under our weight. I set the boxes down and handed Sara her rod. She cut the light and blindness set in.

  *****

  When the lights faded and vision vanished, my other senses strengthened as I tried to make out what was left. Night blindness forced me to heighten my other perceptions in order to decipher the world around me. I felt the wind pushing from the east against hairs on my legs. I smelled the blend of yellow poplar blooms mixing with the water as the scents rode the breeze across the lake.

  I heard a raccoon making its way along the bank to the right, the nocturnal hunter scratching the sand for buried clams. I could not see the trees that I smelled or the animals scavenging, but I knew they were there. Creating a world in my mind, I imagine the cast, the place where the fly will meet water, and I begin the motion, sending the Whitlock Mouse into oblivion.

  *****

  Sara walked to the edge of the dock, the planks rocking with each step, and cast into deep water. I heard the Rooster Tail splash in the night and the spin of the reel as Sara brought the lure back to the dock. I started a backcast—careful to avoid the thick mix of alders, elms, and poplars on the bank behind—and sent the fly toward a point of riprap off the right side of the dock. The fly landed silently, the elk hair of the mouse pattern disturbing little water as the fly struck the surface. A loud pop echoed from the area where I suspected the fly had landed, and then I felt tension on my line. First cast and a fish was on.

  The 7-weight throbbed at the tip as the phantom fish dug toward the rocky bottom. I couldn’t know what was on the end of the line, but whatever it was had smashed the Whitlock Mouse as soon as it touched water. I reeled the fish toward the dock and asked Sara to bring the flashlight. I heard her set her rod down and walk toward me, shining the light onto the surface. I could see a nice-size rock bass still tugging toward the dock posts. I lifted the fish from the water and laid the bass on the weathered wood, the rough planks drying the scales of the fish.

  As the rock bass lay on the boards, its crimson eye shone in the glare of the flashlight. The eleven-inch marvel—its brass-colored sides mottled in dark brown, the white belly, and golden pectoral fins rowing in the night air—was a vicious striker. The Whitlock Mouse was larger than the fish’s head. The fly extended from its mouth, over the gill plate, and rested beneath the rotating pectoral fin. I questioned what a fish that size was doing eating a mouse, but its bass genealogy left little to be explained. These were ferocious game fish and they make delicious table fare. Only trout are too holy to be eaten as far as I’m concerned, so this fish was headed home with us.

  I ran a nylon stringer through the fish’s gills and out of its mouth, then secured the cord to a dock post. Sara cut the light; I cracked a beer; and she lit a joint I’d rolled for her at the house.

  The fizzing hops and metallic taste of cheap beer in an aluminum can was a perfect celebration for the first fish of the night. The smell of reefer held strong around the dock, and I swallowed hard to get the beer from can to stomach as quickly as possible. I picked up the rod, swung the fly into my hand, and felt the wetted hair of the mouse. I secured the fly to the hook keeper of the rod, sat down on the dock, lit a cigarette, and stared up into the May sky.

  “There’s Orion,” I said as Sara took another drag from the joint.

  “Where?”

  “Come here and I’ll show you.” She walked toward me, her face becoming visible briefly when she pulled on the joint. Standing beside her, I took her hand and drew lines in the sky. “You see it?”

  “No.”

  “You see it now?” I traced the outline of the archer again.

  “Yeah, I see it now.”

  She sat down beside me and smoked her joint while I finished my beer and cigarette. When the break was over, we went back to casting, the plop of her lure breaking the silence of the summer night.

  We cast for the next hour or so, and eventually the 7-weight began to take a toll on my wrist. I sat back down and took another can of beer from the icy water of the cooler. I was sprawled out on the dock, elbows holding up the weight of my torso, cigarette dangling from my lips, beer resting to the right, when Sara shot to life. “I’ve got something!” she said, her voice giddy with her first fish on the line.

  I sat up fast, accidentally kicked the unseen tackle box by my feet, and lunged toward her as I tripped down the dock. “It feels big!” She was becoming louder now, her shouts ricocheting off the softwoods lining the bank.

  I could see the silhouette of the rod bouncing against the cobalt sky. Her small hands struggled to turn the reel handle as the fish put pressure on the spool. The fish slapped across the surface, ripples becoming visible as the stars glinted against the black surface. She reeled the small fish all the way to the tip-top of the rod, Granny’s steel pole bowing to the weight. I gr
abbed the aluminum flashlight by Sara’s shoes and shone the blue-tinted LEDs toward her catch. “That’s another rock bass,” I said in surprise.

  “It’s big, ain’t it!” she said, her pride evident in each word.

  “Yeah, it’s pretty big.” I tried to be as enthusiastic as she, but years on the water had depreciated my empathy for first fish trophies. The fish was around eight or nine inches, but what it lacked in size was made up with the same gorgeous coloration as the first. Its copper sides were brighter than my fish’s and the eyes more blood red.

  I snapped photos as she stood proudly on the dock. The developed pictures show a gorgeous young woman, bright-eyed as a child, smile spread across her cheeks, with a small rock bass dangling close to her face. We strung the rock bass next to the first, and Sara relit the extinguished joint, her own celebration of sorts.

  While she sat on the dock, I picked up the spinning rod and started making casts along the bank. I hadn’t fished with Granny’s rod in a long time. When I’d moved to the mountains, I’d switched entirely to fly fishing and hadn’t looked back, but with the heaviness of the 7-weight wearing on my long arms, the limber spinning rod felt good. I cast across the landing, reeling the spinnerbait above sunken riprap and over submerged concrete. As the line neared the dock, I felt weight. The rod wasn’t slammed but felt like I’d snagged a log. Then the headshake told me otherwise. A fish was on, and it was no rock bass.

  “Sara, get the light; there’s something big on.” She grabbed the flashlight and came toward me. “It’s got to be a big brown,” I guessed. Thoughts of the large trout that we’d seen earlier in the day lurking just out of casting range ran through my mind, then images of Joe Humphreys’s trophy that he’d spent months pursuing.

  The rod bowed to the water, the steel pole doubled over by the thrashing fish. This is what night-fishing is about—hooking into something huge and having absolutely no clue what in the hell it is. Sara shone the light into the clear mountain water, and I saw the monster shaking its head along the sandy bottom. I pulled up, drag ripping from the spool at the first sign of tension, the fish rolling its white belly into the light. The fish exploded through the surface, ten feet out from where I stood, and I reeled hard, knowing I had it as soon as it came atop.

  “Hold the rod, Sara.” I handed her the cork grip as I stretched across the planks and hung over the edge, trying to get close enough to grab the fish. Sara held the rod in one hand and attempted to shine the light accurately with the other. I reached down, the fish swiped madly, and I saw teeth, lots and lots of teeth, clamped around the tail of the spinnerbait.

  “That ain’t a trout!” I yelped, the large scales a giveaway that this was no brown.

  “What is it?”

  “I don’t know, some kind of toothy bastard! But it’s big!” I grabbed behind the head, while the large tail slapped furiously against the water. Gripping firmly, avoiding teeth, I lifted the fish from the lake and set it on the dock. The fish flipped over and over as Sara shone the light down on the greenish yellow body.

  “It’s a walleye!” The catch marked a new species on the totem pole of my life.

  “I’ve never caught a walleye before.”

  “What’s a walleye?”

  “It’s a fish that they go crazy for up north, but I’ve never even seen one in person. They’re supposed to be damn good eating too.” The light shone on the golden eyes of the walleye, the pupils opaque in the glare of the flashlight. The fish easily weighed six pounds and was at least twenty-four inches, a pretty nice size for a first walleye and a trophy for me.

  I dug through the tackle box and pulled out an old rusty pair of needle-nosed pliers, the rubber grips dry rotted and peeling away from the handles. As I tried to unhook the fish, I saw that the treble hook of the Rooster Tail was stuck deep into the maxilla, a large bone along the back of the upper jaw. In the light I could see teeth coming straight out of the roof of its mouth behind rows of primary fangs. Indeed, this was one toothy bastard.

  Sara lifted the stringer from the lake and brought it to me, her rock bass hanging lifeless atop my flopping first catch. I grabbed the walleye strongly behind the head, the sharp dorsal spines sticking up behind my grip, and noticed the fish’s belly protruding below my curled fingers. It was a large pregnant female, full of eggs and heavy in my hand.

  The thought crossed my mind to release the trophy, but memories of recipes for walleye in back issues of In-Fisherman forced the stringer through its gills. I held her up for Sara to get a good look and then lowered the stringer into the lake. The walleye yanked on the nylon cord as it sharked beneath the surface, the two rock bass being pulled to the side of her face. The one rock bass that was still alive flapped against the side of the walleye with bursts of inherent flight response.

  Sara cut the light and the night was again black. I sat down beside the cooler and opened another beer. Sara picked up the rod and began to cast again.

  “Ain’t that just the way it goes?” Sara asked from down the dock.

  “The way what goes?”

  “Soon as you grab my rod, you catch that damn thing,” she declared, the disappointment now made clear in her tone.

  “I can’t help that, Sara.” I laughed under my breath, not wanting to hurt her feelings.

  “No, but that’s just how it goes.”

  I kept quiet, tried not to rub anything in, but damn, that was a nice fish. I was floating, but I didn’t let it show.

  Her casts became more determined now. Out of jealousy or spite, she cast faster and reeled harder, but nothing bit.

  I lit a smoke, the smell of burning tobacco holding around my face, and listened to a fish break the surface somewhere out on the lake. A great horned owl hooted from a limb along the shore as I lay back on the splintery planks and listened to the whiz of Sara making another cast.

  This was night-fishing at its best: a warm summer night, a new moon, a cold beer, a half a pack of cigarettes, and a damn nice fish on the stringer. I drank a few more beers, but not even the alcohol could numb the intense perceptions brought on by the darkness. The sound of another fish splashing in the water echoed across the lake. The hairs on my arms stood on end as the noise reverberated in my ears. I was experiencing euphoria on that dock.

  I could have sat there until morning slowly spread across the waving water. But there were fish to clean, and I knew that dawn would only bring a bitter end to my sweet blindness.

  Sound of Silence

  Snow had fallen the night before in Jackson County and was supposed to continue all day, but in Cullowhee midday temperatures rose, melting white powder into muddy puddles and leaving nothing more than patches in the coolest shadows. The snow had turned to rain, and the plowed piles along the roadsides had been compressed into dense, smoke gray slush. I climbed into my truck, cranked the ignition, and waited for the engine to warm. I put the truck in reverse, turned onto Highway 107, and headed toward the creek.

  Driving in silence, I hoped the snow was still falling on the highlands, that the fresh powder blanketed the naked peaks, brightened the dead browns of winter, and hung on the tree limbs like layers of thick white lichens. Having spent Christmas in Charlotte, I yearned for the stillness of the mountains, and although I knew the fishing would be difficult, time on the water is always time well spent. I could sink into a single place and time and become centered in the wild.

  As I climbed, the precipitation slowly evolved: first rain, then sleet, and finally snow. The flakes came down heavy, and the barrage of snow pummeled around the Chevy. The snow never actually touched metal but zoomed in and passed in white lines like stars when the Millennium Falcon hit light speed. The yellow lines were barely visible, but I leaned forward, chin hovering over the steering column, nose close to the windshield, and drove on.

  Caney Fork Creek ran beside the road, the dark current running black like spilled molasses, one thick line always moving onward. Rocks that broke the surface were shelled in white humps. The w
orld was a monochromatic pen-and-ink drawing, all blacks, whites, and grays in a blend of lights and darks: shadowy gray clouds, black creek, white snow, crosshatched bark of naked trees. Without distractions, I was able to focus on everything as a whole.

  The plank board sign bearing the creek’s name was almost buried, but I made the turn onto the gravel driveway and slowly eased toward the creek. Smoke bellowed from the tin flue on the house next to the stream. I parked beside a line of rocks supporting wood posts worn gray. Barbed-wire fence dangled between the posts, and the iced-over barbs looked like glass jacks strung along the rusted wire. The horse pasture was empty, but a mixed-breed mountain dog scurried across the blanket of snow toward my truck.

  I cut the ignition and opened the door, the heat of the cab escaping as my skin was finally exposed to the cold mountain air, a good ten degrees cooler here in the highlands. If one word could describe the air, it was penetrating: penetrating my layers of clothing, penetrating my skin and bones, rattling my skeleton and waking me to winter’s harsh reality. It felt good—nothing like an uncontrollable shiver to let me know that I’m alive.

  A short-legged mutt stood at my open door, his body shaking, mouth panting, and tail wagging. His movement seemed to speed his heart and warm his muscles. I knelt down, stroked the spaniel-spotted coat, patted hard on the large black spot wrapping around his back, and stared into his eyes, one blue and one brown. I tried to assure him that winter is only a few months; that warmer days are on the way, my anthropomorphizing denying that the animal was better suited for the weather than I was. I gathered my gear and headed for the creek. The grinning mutt stayed by my side until my first step into the water, when he looked one last time and took off through the tangled underbrush.