Fishing Season

“Where’d the time go?”, he wondered walking in his backyard drinking his morning coffee. “How many days and weeks amounting to months did I wish winter away? Now it’s gone, the daffodils are in bloom and I’m still right here, where it all began and I haven’t even ordered the new rods yet. Am I wasting my life away? I wish she were still here. Things be different then. I’d be alive. Not giving in.”

He usually awoke at half past five in the morning, suffering an old habit from years at the assembly plant. But lately, especially last winter, his first season alone, he slept until ten. He hated sleeping late, awakening feeling useless. Last winter was a vicious circle of useless mornings and empty nights. But now all that change, like a spring clock set ahead. It was time to get this year’s fishing license. This year it was free, after turning sixty-five; a benefit of paying taxes all his life. Today he sign up for his new and free fishing license and maybe check the boat. Today, drinking his morning coffee, he once again had purpose to his steps. Winter was gone, fishing season arrived.

* * *

“Is all the information on your driver’s license correct?” asked the discount-chain-store clerk.

“Yes, nothings changed. It’s all still the same.” He responded, his nostrils satiated by the discount store’s awful scent. He didn’t know why, but the store smelled like stale buttered popcorn from one of those red wheeled machines and your shoes seemed to stick to the tile floor like it was coating with invisible bubble gum. He hated the mall and it’s big store but there wasn’t any choice it was the only place which sold fishing licenses.

“Says here your date of birth is nineteen-thirty-seven. You look older than sixty-five. Your license is free, won’t cost you the twenty bucks. Here ... you gotta fill out this form and sign in three places. Here ... Here ... and there.”

“Okay”, mumbled the man. He wasn’t skilled at penmanship, most of his life he seldom wrote, unless it was something at the plant. She was the one who did Christmas cards and notes. Slowly, painfully in a scrawled wrote he completed the form, which required his signature in three places while thinking, “This isn’t worth the twenty bucks. Coming to this cattle market and filling this stupid form out.” It was different when he went to his friends Evelyn's, there it smelled of home cooking and fresh coffee and she filled out your fishing license.

* * *

River Bait and Tackle was the name of her place. More a home than a store, lures and plugs, spinners and spoons all shapes and colors piled in the two front rooms. Above the cluttered cash register counter, nailed to the wall in crooked fashion was a bulletin board with Polaroid pictures of men holding dead fish. No bragging was allowed at Evelyn’s, only your first name, date of catch and weight was printed on the lower white of the picture card. She took the pictures in her front yard and knew every story of how a particular fish was caught. To anyone who’d ask she do the bragging, recounting the twenty minute fight and how the fish would have gotten away if it wasn’t for luck and a big landing net. There was always a picture of him holding a fish on her slightly crooked bulletin board.

Evelyn’s board and the pictures are gone, probably taken out with the trash. She moved to Phoenix to be near family and desert heat. Gone was sitting at her back room kitchen table, drinking fresh coffee and maybe having a slice of home baked banana bread.

“Gonna be a good year, was an easy winter and soft spring, with a big run off. Them bass and walleye gonna turn on right quick,” she’d say in her Appalachian stained voice while writing his license. “You want another piece of banana bread? Made it fresh this morning.”

* * *

Now in 2003 he was standing in the fluorescent daylight discount mall store with some pimply kid who wore a cheap blue smock saying, “Fill it out, do yourself and you look older than sixty-five.” Gone was the radio broadcasting the Indians opening baseball game in Evelyn’s kitchen. Now the background sound was the public address system informing the shoppers about the latest “blue-light-special”.

“You want it laminated”, the kid impatiently asked. If ya do it’s two bucks and you gotta pay for it.”

“Yeah, laminate it”, the man responded. When fishing season was over he’d throw it in the old tackle box. Decades of cancelled licenses lay in that metal fishing box, which was once his father’s, and before him his grand daddy’s. Faded, water stained, dog-eared and wallet creased bits of paper stuffed in the box, like wreckage floating on the ocean. They were his genuine legacy, everything else was lost.

“Thank you for shopping with us today and you make sure you come back real quick again”, the store greeter said as the man tried to figure which door was the “out” and which was the “in”. Recognizing the “greeter”, the man tipped the brim of his old baseball cap low over his eyes and mumbled, “Yeah, sure.”

The greeter use to be the foreman at the plant. “Damn he must be over seventy”, thought the man trying to find the right exit door. “What a son of bitch he use to be about giving time off and if the line fell behind he’d have a fit. Now he’s wearing an ugly string cowboy tie slung around the collar of a cheap white shirt and that pathetic blue store smock around his shoulders with a big name tag, saying “Howdy my name is”. And those white loafer shoes? Where the hell did he ever get them? The plant had a good pension plan. What’s he doing here kissing perfect strangers asses? No amount of money is worth that part time job.”

The man never did like the overbearing foreman and walking to his car he felt a sense of satisfaction having that son-of-a-bitch being the greeter at the mall. The foreman didn’t fish, said it was a waste of time. The foreman could buy fish cheaper and faster at the market. He never understood the mystery of fishing season.

Sitting in his one hundred thousand-mile station wagon the man pulled his 2003-laminated license out of his pocket and read it aloud to make sure the kid got it right. “Name ... Eugene Booth. Address ... 101 South Broadway, Geneva Ohio. Age ... sixty-six. Hair color ... Gray. Eyes ... Blue Height ... five feet-eleven. Weight ... one hundred and ninety pounds. Expiration date ... March 2004.”

Satisfied, Gene (only his mother called him Eugene) reached around to the back seat and pulled a cold beer from the cooler. He’d been drinking more than before, but that soon end, soon subsisting on a steady diet of coffee and cigarettes.

* * *

He wasn’t in a hurry to return to an empty house. The dogs were okay, probably sleeping on some chair dreaming of past hunting seasons. The boat yard seemed like a good stop, he hadn’t checked on her since Thanksgiving. After late November piles of snow and ice closed the entrance to the fenced in lake front boat storage yard. The owners didn’t plow because they went south. According to some they were smart, leaving the hard winter behind. He once went south, when she was with him. A get away it was called. See old friends who moved there and maybe do some salt water fishing to boot. But after arriving he discovered his once alive friends seemed almost dead, counting the hours until the “Old World Buffet” served the four dollar dinner special. All they spoke or considered was Social Security and Medicare, grand kids and who’d recently passed away. The traffic was awful, the elderly driving aimlessly slow. Living south was no life, it was more like waiting to die. He loathed the winter’s cold but at least it made him feel alive, awaking him to the fact he still had his wits.

The dry docked boats still wore their winter covers some of which were white but most were that ugly shade of blue. “Who ever picked out that color?” he wondered. “Is it the by-product of some cheap manufacturing process that produces a color like that? God knows I’d never choose that. Why don’t they make them tarps in some color like gray.”

Passing the land-locked power and sailboats stored on trailers and cradles he parked his rusted station wagon near his boat stored at water’s edge. He was always the last to hauled and the first to be launched. The winter done no damage to his ugly blue plastic cover, all the tie-downs were tight. The only exposed section was the back-end, transom, which he’d left open to let air circulate. On the three by eight foot section of white fiberglass, above the two-hundred horsepower black out-drive, in red letters was written her name, Compass Rose. He’d picked the name, actually he stole it from a book he read one winter when he worked the midnight shift. The Cruel Sea was it’s title and the heroine was an English World War II destroyer by the same name. But like all tragic heroines she died, sunk by a German submarine.

Gene bought her years ago when she was already a well-used craft. He spent one winter fixing up the engine and painting her hull by hand. Even after the expense of the new equipment she was still a good buy. She always had a taste for a good deal. She was the one who found Compass Rose, neglected and abused, shoved in a trash foul dock. “You’re a better fisherman than most,” she complained. “Buy that boat and get your license. You can make extra cash instead of filling our freezer with fish we’ll never eat.”

That was fifteen fishing license’s ago. Hundreds of people gone fishing, thousands of fish in the net since then but what Gene remembered clearest standing in the cool spring breeze was her on Compass Rose. If the fish were biting he’d be off the lake by two, his paying customers gone; she’d drive to the lake with a basket of home cooking and cold beers. Lazy, windless, summer afternoons far out on the lake. Afternoons akin to new found lovers Sunday mornings in bed. Twenty-five fishing rods perched in their holders, she and Gene ignoring them. Sitting close together on the engine hatch, sharing wet swimsuit embraces under the hot mid-summer afternoon sky. Those afternoons were his happiest memories on Compass Rose. Not the dead fish or big customer tips. It was the era spent with her.

Standing, staring at the red lettering on the transom, Gene reached and tenderly touch his boat to recapture the past saying, “hello Rosie”. He always called her Rosie, it was special salute known only between her and him.

“Another season’s here Rosie. But this year it’s just you and me. I’ve got fifty charters booked already. But if the fish are biting what are we gonna do in the afternoon?”

Rosie never spoke unless she was in the water, after all she was merely twenty-five feet and eight thousands pounds of engine and fiberglass. Under way she communicated things like, “My engine needs oil or the trim tabs need adjusting because we’ve got five on board.” Rosie never asked where she was or why she left.

Knowing his best friend was silent until she was in the water Gene gently patted her side, checked the tie downs on his ugly blue cover; then walked to his car. The dogs need to go for a walk. The weather be warmer tomorrow, then he get her ready for the weekend. As was his custom he was first in the water, fishing season was here.

* * *

Upon returning home he realized there been a trespasser. The dogs were locked in the basement and he left them content sleeping on the living room chairs. His suspicions as to the intruder was confirmed after reading the note taped to the refrigerator.

“Pop ... Why don’t you ever return my calls? We worry if you’re okay. I left some meat loaf in the frig. You gotta eat better. Please call me tonight? Becky and Brandon send their love. Will you come for Sunday dinner? Love ... Jenny.”

What a nosy busy body she was but he loved his daughter, the mother of his only grandchild. Brandon wasn’t bad either, for a son-in-law; the man who took his only little girl away. Both were teachers and next year Brandon’s going to be the principle. “Sunday dinner”, he thought, “she’ll probably make spaghetti or roast beef.” Like her mother, Jennifer was a good cook and big on dinners, especially after church.

Gene seldom saw catholic mass, raised in the religion, he left steady services soon as he could. She was the one who took his kids to church. He attended only on special occasions like Christmas and Easter. Most of his life Sunday’s were spent working overtime, unless it was fishing season. But he was glad Jennifer (he never called her Jenny, like the rest of the world did) took Becky to church. A child has to have things to hang on to, even if it’s religion.

Unexpectedly what he was thinking disappeared while reaching in the refrigerator for another beer. It’d happened a lot lately, his mind going blank. It was a mystery why.

“Sunday dinner with Becky. That’s what I was thinking. But fishing season starts next week. Maybe I should spend Sunday scouting for bass. Should I kill the afternoon at her overflowing dinner table. Maybe Jennifer will let Becky spend summer afternoons out on the boat after the customers leave. I could teach her to fish and when she got bored like all five-year olds do we could swim. Could teach her how to dive in the water. Wonder if she’s too young for that? Nah, she’s a water bug, she’d love to dive. Yep, I’ll go to Sunday dinner.”

The dogs whining at the basement door returned Gene back to his sense. “Poor things, I forgot they gotta go out. Been forgetting a lot lately”, he muttered. Grabbing another can of beer Gene followed his two dogs outside to the fenced in back yard.

His home was situated on a large lot, even though it was in Geneva, a town of ten thousand. Three miles from lake Erie, its claim to fame were wineries and summer resorts. Wandering in his yard Gene wondered how many times he’d walked the same path. A two-acre lot with a nice house was a home not often found in the city. He and she bought the land long ago. What a scary adventure it was for the two of them, signing the twenty-year mortgage on the dotted line to build their new home. This was the only house they ever owned. Now thirty years later, the mortgage long paid off, his castle seemed more like a prison, Jennifer living in town, two sons in Cleveland, and she was gone.

He didn’t have much of an appetite that night, ignoring Jennifer’s home cooking which she loving supplied. Instead he ate left over cold meat, cheese and crackers. After feeding his two dogs he slumped into his old leather chair to absently watched the evening news. He didn’t care about current events, it was simply something to do. Many nights that’s where Gene slept. Their old queen size bed was too crowded with memories for a night’s rest. Some times while asleep in his chair, a one puffed cigarette burning in the side table ashtray, he dreamed. Tonight it was the first time they met.

* * *

“Is all the information on your drivers license correct?”

“It is. I haven’t seen you here before. You new around town?”

“Yes”, she said copying the information on his fishing license. “I just started. I’m a junior at the teachers college. My friend and I are staying with my aunt. I love the lake and the city’s so hot in the summer.”

“So you’re from Cleveland?”

“No, Pittsburgh. North Hills actually. This right? You were born in nineteen-thirty-eight? You don’t look twenty.”

“Everyone says that, look younger for my age. Sometimes it’s hard, especially when getting served at the dance hall. You like to dance?’

“Oh yes, I love music.”

“What else do you like?”

“Oh ... read, work with children but I really like the lake. This summer I want to swim every day down at the pier. I never have time when in class. They’ve got a new diving board you know. And there’s one other thing I want to learn this summer.”

“What’s that?”

“I want to learn how to fish. Well ... there you go ... all done here’s your new fishing license. That’ll be two dollars. It’s good until March of 1960.”

“Here ya go”, Gene said with a twenty-year-old voice, counting the two dollars out in quarters and dimes. “Fishing huh. You want to learn to fish?”

“Yes, I would”, the young woman responded with a shy smile.

“Well if you want I’ll bring an extra pole. I’m at the public pier every evening at sunset. The blue pike are hit’en real good after dark. If you want, I’ll teach you.”

“You would? I mean, that’d be great. I can’t come this evening but how about tomorrow night?”

“Tomorrow’s fine. I’m there every night. I sell the fish to some local’s for ten cents a pound. That’s how I got enough money to buy my fishing license.”

“Okay tomorrow night then and you can sell the fish I catch. Figure it payment for being a teacher. Should I bring anything special?”

“Nah, just maybe a sweater. It gets cool after sunset”, said the twenty year old man with thick blond hair and bright blue eyes whom stood tall with muscles like a lumberjack. He dated other girls but never asked them fishing, but this girl struck some mysterious fancy. Turning to leave the General Store through the wooden exit door, which rang a bell every time it was opened, he paused and embarrassingly asked, “You know my name, you filled out my fishing license. But I never asked yours?”

“My name is Nancy”, the young woman encouragingly answered. Nancy Fagnilli.”

* * *

Bathed in the television light, Gene was awaken by his old black dog licking his hand. Half asleep, still suffering a dream, he remembered Nancy. At first, he wasn’t particularly struck by the faired hair Italian girl. He never dated many Italian women. When twenty Gene was too busy hunting, fishing and working. Never a good student he barely finished high school and his job at Douglass Lumber unloading rail freight cars left him too tired to enjoy the hubbub of dancing. He preferred the peace of woods and water.

Gene always believed he was born one hundred years too late. He rather been a frontier woodsman or explorer, maybe even a mountain man. At twenty his occupation was long back breaking hours sorting and stacking B and C grade lumber at the rail road depot. It wasn’t a job he craved but Gene was never shy of hard labor, working since he was fifteen. Yet this occupation was killing time. The livelihood Gene was really after was the assembly line. He put his name in, did all the paperwork, joined the union and completed the interviews. Back then building cars was a highly sought after trade. It might take better than a year until hired, meanwhile he unloaded lumber from the rail cars.

Alone and retired, forty-five years later, groggy slumber still filling his wits, he gazed at the fake wood plaque hanging on the wall celebrating years on the assembly line. Gene recalled getting that swing shift job but more on his mind was fishing with her on the pier.

* * *

“Any luck yet?” Came a voice from over his shoulder. He didn’t expect her to show up, making the one hundred yard walk over boulders to the end. The May sun was just beginning to touch the lake horizon, soon it’d be dark when by lantern light Gene begin catching blue pike. Blue pike was a fish of three-pound weight, it’s sweet boneless fillets fetching ten cents a pound at the taverns plus a few beers thrown in. Most didn’t want to spend late nights fishing except but Gene did. He enjoyed the peace of night on the lake with a basket of dead fish his only company.

“Not yet. It’s not dark enough yet”, he said in a surprised voice. He brought a spare rod and reel but he didn’t think he brought enough bait. “They really don’t bite good until it’s dark. You bring a sweater? It’s gonna get cold later on.”

“Yeah I did”, she said in a bright tone. “It’s here in my basket. Also brought some sandwiches and a couple of beers. Hope you like ham and cheese.”