Growing Gills

by David Joy

  We all stopped talking as James pulled to the side of the dirt road and cut the engine, three fishermen itching to get in the water and try our luck. We hopped out in unison and walked to the back. Ron and I started putting on our waders, lacing our boots, and rigging up our fly rods. Ron had his old bamboo rod back now, and, just as I had suspected, the cork was beautiful. James, wearing shorts and sandals, ran monofilament through the guides of a micro-spinning rod. When Ron had told me that his son wasn’t a fly fisherman, I instantly thought he couldn’t be raising him right. After talking with James, I picked up on his love of the wild and assumed that the lack of fly rod was circumstantial; he just hadn’t reached that part of his angling development, and I knew of no better man to get him there than Ron.

  With flies cinched tight to tippet, and a chocolate brown Trout Magnet hooked to the eye of James’s rod, we headed up an old logging road toward the growing murmur of fast water. The air was cool, even for May, beneath the cover of new growth white oaks, red maples, and shagbark hickories. The dense forest cloaked the smell of conifers, morning glories, and fresh water. We remained silent; the only sounds were chirping wrens, the scatter of squirrels across dried leaves, and the creek. We could have continued the conversation, but what can be said in a place so magnificent? The wild had left us speechless.

  The stream was right beside the trail now, the cold current pushing under low branches of rhododendron, then dropping into open pools as it ran through the valley. We got to a place where the land flattened out beside the stream, shallow runs working through a mountain hollow, a steep bank all that separated us from the current. “This is where I usually get in,” I said. Holding to the thin trunk of a redbud, I eased down the bank, scattered with Dutchman’s breeches. Layers of wildflowers and underbrush covered the flat, but we were all focused on the stream, all of us staying far enough back not to spook any fish hiding just beneath the ripples. “Go ahead, Ron. There’s usually a fish holding right there in the middle where the current wraps around that rock.” I pointed toward the stream with my rod tip.

  “James, you go ahead.” Ron passed the torch.

  “No, you get in there and show me how it’s done.” James refused the offer, choosing to see his dad catch the first fish. Ron didn’t pass up the chance again. As he crept toward the moving sheen, he pulled his fly, a weighted Woolly Worm (his go-to fly for every situation) from the stripping guide and took out just enough line from the reel to make the cast. He worked the backcast beneath leaf-strung branches and dropped the fly just above the ripple. An orange strike indicator ran along the seam as the Woolly Worm bounced along the freestone bottom. James and I watched closely. Staring at Ron, I could sense the emotion of a man who had finally come home, a man who knew nothing better than mountains, cold streams, and native specks. He set the hook as the Woolly Worm passed through the section I knew kept fish.

  “Missed one.” Ron turned toward us. James and I remained transfixed in meditation. I saw the perfect convergence of man and water. I never questioned whether or not Ron fit; the answer was obvious as his leggy frame and scruffy shave melted into the thin trunks and rough bark of red bays. After a few more casts, Ron gave the next section to me. He hadn’t hooked a fish, but he had missed one, a sure sign that trout were there.

  I began throwing flies to incoming seams of current. The Parachute Adams rode flat upon the run, the dangling Pheasant Tail dragging across stones as the flies came back toward me. A trickle along the left bank emptied into a small pool, bubbled, and rejoined the brook. I knew there would be a fish keeping steady on the sandy slope of the pool. Whipped into the trickle, the Parachute Adams disappeared into the bubbling foam, emerged on the inside cut, and curved toward the main current. The Adams, yanked under with force, vanished. I set the hook and felt fish, the 2-weight rod pulsing. I lifted a small native from the stream—its colors a squirming reflection of a James Prosek painting—and held the speck out toward Ron and James.

  “Look at that, James. That’s a speck. That’s the fish I write about.” Ron explained the magnificence to his son, who had not yet caught a wild trout. James peered hard at the glorious marmorations of the brook trout, the fire orange fins and gut. If a picture’s worth a thousand words, a brookie’s worth a million. Yet, there was nothing to say, all of us awestruck. Lowering the trout back into the stream, I watched the fish merge back into the darkness and vanish among the rounded backs of stones.

  James took the next stretch. He was larger than his father but just as agile in the stream. Tossing the small lure, he had a hard time keeping up with the quickness of a narrow rush of water. When he reeled too slowly he got slack line, too fast and the presentation was unnatural. I sensed that if Ron and I couldn’t push James to pick up a fly rod, this outing might. James got a couple of bites but was unable to set the hook.

  Ron took the lead and sidearm cast under overhanging branches that enclosed the stream in a tunnel of foliage. His touch was soft, the placement perfect. The fluorescent orange strike indicator disappeared, Ron pulled up, and a fish was on. With fish in hand, Ron stared into the trout’s red jasper eyes, took in every speck of splendor, and released the fish back into the water.

  We took turns as we headed upstream, rotated positions to give everyone a shot at trout. Ron and I generally hooked into something or at least got bit on our turns, but James was having trouble adjusting to the small scale of a native stream, where everything must be perfect. I could see that James was getting antsy, itching for a speck of his own. A large, deep hole widened at a place where lichen-covered boulders worked as dams along the banks. If there was a place for James to hook a brookie, this was it. The water was deep and wide, a perfect spot for his lead-headed Trout Magnet. He cast the dark brown grub into the current and held the rod high, keeping the lure down, but not sunk. The line twitched, the rod wavered, and he set the hook without hesitation.

  James’s eyes lit up with the same passion I’d seen in his father. Until that point, I hadn’t thought James looked very much like his father. Ron was tall and slim, lanky like me, and James was mid-height and stocky like a football player. Yet, in that excitement, I saw the same glint flare from his pupils, the passion for things wild, a bond perhaps deeper than blood. “I got one!” James called to make sure his father took notice.

  As Ron walked across a pebbly shoal toward his kneeling son, I was reminded of fishing with my dad, unforgettable moments shared on the water, James held the beautiful native proudly in his hands, carefully removing the hook, holding the fish just long enough, and releasing the trout back into the unknown.

  With slime still fresh on his palms, James looked up at Ron with an unbreakable smile. In that instant two words seemed to pass between them: “I understand.” Maybe I’ve romanticized the moment, dramatized an innocent smile, but I witnessed something, one more thing shared between father and son: a fish that belonged, an acknowledgement of what it meant to be wild and native, the life force of Appalachia.

  James and I continued up the stream, swapping holes, the one in back always looking on at the one in front, both wanting to see a fish. After a while, I noticed that Ron was no longer with us. I turned around and saw him about thirty yards downstream. He was sprawled out across the cool surface of a flat granite car-size boulder covered with lime green lichens like fungal camouflage. Through leaves spread like hands across a glass pane, he stared up into the afternoon sky. He adjusted his legs, shifted his spine, and closed his eyes. Only one thing can fuse a man to a place like this—only one thing, and all three of us knew exactly what it was.

  The Ritual

  When a fellow graduate student mentioned he wanted to learn how to fly fish, I immediately offered to take him. I rarely invited anyone to join me on the water since Zac had graduated and left Cullowhee, but Greg was different. The courses we had together gave me a slight insight into his priorities and high on the list was his affinity for the natural world. His love for the wild emerged in his writing and his
extensive knowledge of the environment was an equal offering to what I could teach him.

  He was a man of few words, but when he did choose to speak, it was generally something substantial, borderline brilliant. His short, no bullshit style of speaking reminded me of reading Hemingway’s dialogue. I respected him as a writer, a thinker, a lover of the wild; but more importantly, as a man. Time on the water would allow me to get to know him; or if he never opened up, at least there’d be fish.

  I loaded the rods into the truck and drove the half mile to where he lived in Cullowhee. I didn’t have a clue what to expect when I arrived, but as I pulled into the parking lot behind the small apartment building, Greg was digging through the floorboard of his small pickup. As I parked beside him, he looked up from whatever he was doing and gave me a nod, not much else, little expression.

  I got out of the car, lit a cigarette, and walked over beside his truck. Greg looked up, pulled a white undershirt on over his muscular torso, looked at me through thin-framed glasses, and headed toward an open apartment door. I took a drag off the cigarette and followed him to the step. “You can come in,” he said, and motioned for me to step into the cluttered apartment. I hesitated, not knowing whether or not I could smoke inside.

  “I’m going to finish this cigarette right fast.” A small strawberry plant, with a single berry ripened and bright, grew in a terracotta pot outside the door. Beside that, a three-foot tomato vine was tied off to a stick he’d stuck in a larger pot; a few small tomatoes shone green along the stalk. “Where’d you get these plants?”

  “I planted those a while back. Ain’t producing much.” Greg’s Georgia accent carried as he walked around the apartment.

  “That strawberry looks pretty nice.”

  “Yeah, there were three, but two of them disappeared. The guy that lives down there on the end said something about them one day, and the next thing I knew they were gone. I bet that son of a bitch ate them.” I smirked at his resentment, tossed the cigarette out into the driveway, and stepped inside the small apartment. Two raccoon skins were draped across the back of the couch to the left, and another lay next to a sun-dried tortoise shell on a bookshelf to the right. On a small shelf built on the end of the kitchen counter, a few mason jars held some type of dried plants.

  “Where’d you get these hides?”

  “A friend of mine sends them to me. He catches them in traps and skins them.”

  “What’s that in the jar over there?”

  “Some plants I dried to make tea.” From a distance it looked like a Mason jar full of pot, a sight I’d grown accustomed to in Appalachia. Dried plants for tea made more sense. He was big into self-sufficiency and living off the land, but I’d just as soon not take a taste. “You ready?” Greg grabbed a pair of sandals and stood in front of me.

  “Yeah. You got everything?”

  “Yeah.” His olive-colored cargos were rolled up his legs like depictions of Huck Finn, and his T-shirt pressed tight to his back as he walked barefoot across the pavement. As we got into my truck, I remarked to Greg that he hadn’t locked the door.

  “It’s okay. Jen’s coming back.”

  “Who’s Jen?” I cranked the engine and began to back out.

  “My wife.” In the year and a half that I’d known Greg, he never once alluded to being married. I’d noticed a unique band on his ring finger a couple of times, something I later found out she’d made him, but never thought anything of it. Generally, I can tell when folks are married, or at least they’ll offer a hint, but Greg never said a word, a testament to how little information he released about himself.

  We headed down the road, past some Christmas trees growing on a small farm up a hillside. The midday sun was bright overhead, but the heat would have little effect where we were going.

  “Where we going?” Greg asked.

  “Mull Creek up at the top of Caney Fork.”

  “There many fish?”

  “Yeah, there’s a lot of native trout up there and some pretty nice wild rainbows too.”

  “Think we’ll catch anything?” His succinct questions continued.

  “Oh yeah. And you’re going to have to kiss the first one.”

  “Why?”

  “Ritual.”

  *****

  Kissing fish had been a habit of mine for as long as I could remember. I first picked it up as a kid after watching Jimmy Houston, the host of a Saturday fishing show on ESPN, kiss every bass he hooked into. As a child whose heroes were all fishing hosts, it wasn’t long before I made it a ritual.

  I can remember the slimy remnants of bluegills drying on my lips, the pungent smell of fish sticking there after a long day of catching sunfish. The stench brought new meaning to the comeback “It’s probably your upper lip.” My feeling was that if the pros did it, then it had to be right. So I puckered up. Zac also kissed them. The first time we’d ever fished together he’d made me kiss my first native trout. He didn’t know kissing fish was something I would have done anyway. Now, it was my turn to pass on the tradition.

  *****

  I drove toward the creek, and as we pushed on, Greg began to open up more. We talked about our favorite authors and the art of writing. We joked about the suck-ups in our writing workshops, the ones we both hated, the writers who used the class as a counseling session, and the girl who thought she was the next Emily Dickinson. Greg laughed heartily as I cracked jokes with my usual brutal honesty and disregard for human emotion and, for the first time, I began to see who he was. He wasn’t shy a bit; instead, he was completely full of conversation, his strong, silent front just an attribute of his unfettered masculinity.

  Before long we were there. The gravel road ended in a small circle where Beechflat Creek joined Mull.

  “This it?” Greg asked.

  “Yeah, Mull Creek’s the one on the left. We’re fishing it.” As we stepped out of the truck, I grabbed my waders and boots from behind the seat, lowered the tailgate of the truck, and began putting on my gear. “I’ve got an extra pair of waders in the truck, if you want to wear them, but they might be a little big.” I was a good bit taller than Greg, but I had to at least offer.

  “I’ll be fine.” He’d already begun strapping his Teva sandals on.

  “You going to be all right wading in those? Might be slippery.”

  “I’ll be fine. This is what I wore when I used to raft guide for the NOC.” (The NOC is an acronym for the Nantahala Outdoor Company, a nearby guiding group that takes tourists through whitewater. The Nantahala Gorge offered some nice rapids and often the poorly prepared out-of-towners swam.)

  I started rigging up the rods, running line through the guides, and attaching tippet to the end of both leaders. Greg watched intently, learning the knots without ever saying a word. When I began to choose the flies, he asked questions, wanting to know every detail about the entomological basis of each pattern. I explained the dries and nymphs and showed him what we were using. I put a Parachute Adams onto the end of his tippet and dropped a Pheasant Tail sixteen inches off of the bend. For me, I chose a size 18 Stimulator I’d tied to mimic the black caddis hatch and put a dropper identical to his off the back of mine. I handed him his rod, threw the fly vest over my shoulders, and tromped toward the creek.

  Greg stopped along the bank, bent down, and looked intently at something growing amidst the dangling ferns. I looked over his shoulder. “Jack-in-the-pulpit.” I identified the wildflower as he ran his finger against the bud.

  “Yeah, I know. You know a lot about wildflowers?” Greg asked.

  “No, not really, but that’s my favorite.” I’d first been introduced to that particular flower while reading a Silas House novel. It instantly became my favorite for its name and aesthetics. Then a Georgia O’Keefe painting of the flower sealed the deal. I figured Greg knew a lot about them. Hell, he could’ve probably named every species along the creek, but he didn’t continue the conversation.

  I pointed to the creek with my rod and began explaining
the intricacies of reading water before we stepped close enough to spook any fish. He caught on quickly, his rafting experience giving him a wonderful point of reference, and we moved into the current. A small pool gathered right before the creek separated into two seams. I’d caught a fish there before and used the opportunity to show Greg the technique of dappling native trout from a narrow stream.

  Before the cast, I explained the motion and what to do if a trout rose or the dry fly disappeared. In one flip the tiny Stimulator floated on the left seam of the main flow, the elk-hair wing holding the body of the fly in just the perfect angle beneath the surface. I concentrated on the pepper color of the grizzly hackle wrapped around the head of the dry. The gray feather was the only detail keeping the fly visible. Then it was gone and I lifted the rod. A small trout dug into the bubbling head of the pool, but I lifted it through the foam and swung the small native into my hand. We both stared at the seven-inch brook trout, dull with the colors of spring, but still more gorgeous than any fish swimming downstream.

  “Pretty, ain’t it?” I asked as I held the fish out toward Greg.

  “Yeah,” Greg agreed.

  I kissed the fish and released it back into the pool.

  “Now why’d you say you’ve got to kiss them?”

  “Out of respect,” I answered as the juvenile speck finned away from my fingertips. For the first time, I realized that the ritual had become more than just mimicry of childhood heroes. It had become a symbol of my undying affection for fish. Until Greg had questioned me, I’d never really thought that deeply about why I did it, but as we made our way up the creek, it began to make sense.

  *****

  In the fly fishing documentary Patagonia, a dialogue breaks out between two fishermen after one of them has just kissed and released a gorgeous Tierra del Fuego rainbow. “You’re going to catch some kind of fish herpes, if you keep kissing fish like that,” one fisherman says to the other.