The cool air that early mid-November morning hung thick with frosty moisture and the lingering sweet-tangy scent from heavy rain that had fallen soon after midnight. It flooded Timmy’s lungs with every misty breath that awakened him to the quiet mystery of this ancient angler’s ritual. His father had taught him well during those few short years they were allotted by God or Fate or Chance as Wounded and Fisher Kings, teacher and pupil, or simply as father and son.
Every early Saturday morning, long before sunup, Timmy’s father would take him rowboat fishing for carp at the slough near the southern bed of the Makittan River, only yards from the Wochtaquoan Bridge.
“Every good mariner faces his greatest challenge from the deepest of waters, Timmy. The Sirens, half-birds, half-women, lured maddened sailors to their deaths on the sharp coral reefs. These seasoned mariners couldn’t resist the sirens’ enchanting song and became blind to the rules of navigation. Or the Scylla, a six-headed sea monster, and its companion guard of a narrow strait, the giant whirlpool Charybdis; they both forced Odysseus to make a fatal choice.”
His father seemed to consider something omitted, something forgotten or missed. He joggled his reel to rattle the rod a bit, maybe to awaken the fish, but no takers so soon after midnight.
“The giant squid Kraken would drag ships to their destruction.” He nodded as if certain he had found a good example. “That’s all it did, though. Nothing to learn there.”
He laughed at that and Timmy laughed back, not knowing why.
“One dark early morning in May,” he continued in his bold theatrical way, “just before the fishing got started, while the birds still slept and the frogs dozed, and the waters flowed placid and silent, Great Grandpa Withers told me about Wisaweg of the Makittan. Lenape town lore.” He winked once and smirked. “A human-sized catfish with a huge set of long, razor-sharp teeth, a nasty disposition, and the crafty will of a genie, and the power to boot.” He raised his brows. “A single wish he’d give to fishermen on their daily dinner hunt, during a full moon, in exchange for one expected offering, but you had to be careful not to let that sneaky creature trick you into anything you’d regret.”
“Like what, Dad?”
“Never you mind,” he’d say. “Better to miss the train to the crash.” Which meant, don’t run across Wisaweg in the first place. A tried-and-true proverb.
Timmy enjoyed their talks. Cloaked in the early morning dark, they would drift on the serene backwaters of the Makittan and whisper their concerns in the wide-open air.
“Do you think Mom’s worried about things?”
His father didn’t answer, at first. He loaded the hook and cast it into the dark water.
“You being drafted, and all.” Timmy forced himself to finish. “And having to go.”
“She’ll be fine, Timmy, and I’ll be back before you even notice.”
Timmy needed to pursue the subject.
“What’s Mom gonna do when you’re gone?” His voice grew louder, panicked. “She won’t be okay without you here.” Timmy turned out to be right about that. “And what about Fisherman Saturdays, Dad? Who’s gonna take me out, then?”
Hurt from the worry of loss brought on the tears. They added pain to the hurt that already swelled in his chest. It left Timmy in hysterics.
“Don’t go, Daddy. Please. Stay here. With us.”
His father shook his head.
“I have to go, son, I’m sorry. Rules.”
Timmy wouldn’t let that be. He couldn’t.
“But we could go somewhere. Hide.”
His father remained silent in his worn angler’s fatigues, until he couldn’t seem to bear it any longer.
“Stop it, now.” He demanded. “Stop your worrying.”
Timmy caught himself and held in the dread.
“Listen, Timmy, I’m an electrician.” An attempt to reassure him, Timmy guessed. “I have a valuable skill and the Corps’ll keep me busy, far away from the front lines. Promise.”
Timmy swallowed the pain and forced himself to believe. What else could he do?
That was then.
Timmy stood squat in a dense pool of pasty mud near the lip of Hackers Woods, only yards beyond the weed-wild boundaries of that small backyard behind his mother’s rented single-story cottage. At 4:30 a.m., barely awake and his mind half-in and half-out of the dreamscape, Timmy pictured himself stooped in a bowl of homemade chocolate icing as it glistened in the moonlight.
You gotta get dirty to get clean through it, Timmy.
His rear hung low, perched on the heels of his rubbers with their high uppers crumpled in the pits of his knees. Timmy knew his boots were already cemented in that muddy quicksand and he would soon be struggling with all his might to free himself from its stubborn hold. That was fine by Timmy. The weight of his whole body stood balanced on the balls of his feet and he needed his boots stable as he hunted for the biggest of worms. They flayed about among a writhing intertwined mesh of at least fifty, each deeply rooted in that slimy pit of earthen muck. Timmy figured the trouble was worth it, although his determined enthusiasm was diminished somewhat by a dulled understanding that his father might never again be there to help pull him out.
Timmy’s eyes were locked on that small spot of ground caught in the bright beam of light pouring from his father’s old Magnet. He held the flashlight in his left hand with the cool chrome casing pressed against his temple as he scanned the squirming blob of night crawlers for those special ones as plump and as lively as an angry cat’s whipping tail. They’re the best, his father had told him often enough.
And that one there’s as big as a python, Timmy. Snatch it up. It’ll be a mirage feast for the catch your mother’ll be frying up for supper soon enough.
Timmy reached down with his right hand and plunged his pudgy fingers into the icy-cold mud. He clamped the huge pale-white nightcrawler between his thumb and index finger before it had time to slither away into that blackened mineral mush. It wriggled with surprising strength and Timmy had to tighten his finger-pinch squeeze on that slimy tubular whip.
“Oh, man. I think it’s an albino, Dad. And a real big one, too. Bigger even than some of those perch we catch.”
Bigger than all of them, son. It’s a special worm, that’s for sure.
Next to Timmy’s knee was a beaten rusty bait can with a huge dent in its metal body, severely twisted handle wire and a wooden grip that had been loosened by a huge split. It was his father’s boyhood minnow prison; and it now belonged to Timmy, a cherished inheritance he kept under his bed each and every night. Inside the can were at least two hundred earthworms. They twisted and thrashed away at each other in almost synchronized unison, and Timmy imagined they were a single organism with detachable tentacles.
He dropped the monster nightcrawler into the can and witnessed first-hand how much bigger it was than all the rest. The worm’s unfamiliar cross-hatched furrows with their smooth, opaque-glass sheen only added to Timmy’s uneasiness. It was a feeling that had crept up on him unexpectedly, and Timmy was disturbed by his need to hide it from the incorporeal voice of his dead father.
“Wow, Dad. It’s the biggest one I’ve ever seen. Maybe too big. I should probably—”
No, Timmy. You just hang on to it, now. It’ll help you catch your prize catfish, the one you’ve been fishing for since October…
For one brief moment, Timmy wondered how his father could have found out—
Yep. I know all about that, Timmy, and it’s been almost three weeks, already. But the day’s almost here. Full moon Friday. And this is the worm, for sure, son, don’t you worry none about that. Trust me. I know.
Timmy was satisfied his father did know. He had known lots of things before he disappeared from Timmy’s life, and not once had his father ever misled him.
Besides, I think you’ve got all the bait you’re ever gonna need. You better head on inside for breakfast before your mother starts her worrying. You know how she gets, Timmy.
He certainly did.
“Timmy!” And, sure enough, it was the echo of his mother’s soft call gently rolling over with the breezy early morning currents across the grassy lea.
What’d I tell you, Timmy?
Timmy had to rip his rubbers out of that moat of mud at the edge of their recycled metal fence, between the cottage and the wild ne’er-do-well wheatfield beyond. It took some physical strength, but his determination won the day’s morning reward—a layer of sludge and pebbles down his shirt and all over his chest. Timmy set his rubbers aside, next to the porch steps, and hosed them down. The water pressure blasted away at the drying mud until they shined in the waning moon light. The rest of him still caked in drying chipped earth.
Time to head on in, Timmy.
“Land sakes,” she moaned as if in agony when he stepped through the front door. “You’re drenched in muck, Timmy.”
He didn’t enjoy the feeling.
“Yeah, Mom. Sorry.”
Her disappointed smirk and tense desperate look were accentuated by the pot of boiling eggs as it steamed and rattled on the stove.
“Get in the shower and scrape some of that off.”
You need to listen to her, on that point, Timmy.
Timmy slunk past the kitchen table and into his bedroom, undressed and climbed into the shower. He held his face up to the on-and-off pressure of those uneven spits of water, frail and wild coughs from the aggressive jerks of a worn pipe.
As he scrubbed off clumps of dirt from his face and neck, Timmy wondered how things would be if the War had ended before his father’s deferment, first for being a student, and then for family hardship as a devoted father. What would it be like if he hadn’t been shot in the upper thigh and died of sepsis in some wet grassy swamp, assumed dead and abandoned by the rest of what was left of his platoon? Or so how Marine recruiter Sgt. Warf explained to them both, only with more pleasant wording, and a much more agreeable tone than the grinding sound in Timmy’s head, the same sound he heard when they first realized their time had run out.
Don’t think about it, Timmy.
“He’ll be fine, you two.”
We had to believe whatever he said to be true. It was Sgt. Warf, of course, in his steam dried Blue Dress uniform with its shiny gold-colored buttons and green chevron, for goodness’ sake. And his father’s certainty only reassured them.
“I’ll be back before you know it,” he promised. “You’ll barely notice me back, banging on that front door like I always do after Mommy locks it every day, and chews me out every time because I always manage to forget the housekey.”
He grinned over at Timmy’s mother from across the breakfast table. She flashed a full, closed-mouth smile as she held back a giggle in her throat, too busy chewing a mouthful of scrambled eggs and bacon to laugh out loud. Was it real? Did she really believe?
Daddy didn’t come back.
Timmy dried himself off with a fluffy fraying old towel embroidered by Field and Stream, ESTB in 1871, a gift from Timmy’s father for his sixth birthday. He dressed in his worn denim jeans and faded cotton shirts, and he paced.
Timmy couldn’t relax. Next Friday night would be the anniversary the day they estimated his father died alone in the Shau Valley a year before, November 13th, 1969. The full moon would hang high early that Saturday morning, and Timmy would be there to hunt his watery prey.
“Think about Dad much?”
Timmy’s mother sat across from him at the kitchen table, arms crossed and waiting.
Better to keep quiet about us.
She eyed the answer out him.
“No.”
She seemed taken aback.
“Not even a little?”
Timmy shook his head, Face blank. His mother didn’t wait.
“You mean I don’t hear you talking to him? When you’re in bed pretending to be asleep?”
She surprised him, but he wouldn’t budge.
Not another word, Timmy.
“You know I can hear you,” she declared, accusatory, “answering him back.” Timmy wondered what it all meant to her.
She studied him for one brief moment.
“Well, don’t be wishing for your Daddy to come home,” she said, breathless and shaken. “Nothing good’ll come of it but a broken heart, Timmy. He’s dead and gone. Buried for seven months only God knows where. Later carried home all shriveled and rotten in a dark olive-drab casket.” She paused. “Six feet in the ground now.”
Eye to eye, she commanded. “Let him go, Timmy.
Timmy wouldn’t listen. He couldn’t. Full moon Friday would soon be there…
To be Continued…
ojoblacke 