Fishing Season

“Gee thanks, yah I do”, Gene quietly reacted, thinking no one ever made him a sandwich, except his mother. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“Well ... I thought we might get hungry later on. Lake air always makes me hungry. So what do I do? Can I bait my own hook? What bait are you using and how can you tell when you’ve got a fish?”

It didn’t take long for Nancy to learn. Despite not being experienced teaching the trade Gene patiently demonstrated how to bait the hook and gently cast it out in the lake. They didn’t have to wait long for the blue pike run. The fish began biting after sunset. Before Gene and Nancy could think about eating their sandwiches or drinking the cold beer they were occupied catching fish. It was after baiting her own hook and catching as many fish as him that Gene began to study Nancy. Her hair was jet-black, thick and long to her shoulders and she had small ears pierced with tiny gold rings. Her face bore no make up, her Italian heritage ensured her skin had a permanent tan. Nancy was a handsome girl, especially in lantern light catching blue pike.

“Oh I’ve got another”, she yelled while laughing. “This is great, I think I’ve caught more than you tonight Gene.”

“Yeah, you’re a natural look at your basket. It’s full. We’ve caught our limit.”

“You mean we’re done already?”

“What da ya mean already? It’s one in the morning.”

“One? God I’ve had so much fun I’ve lost track of time. We never ate our sandwiches or drank the beer. You want to call it quits and eat?”

“That’s fine”, he said reeling in his line and covering the baskets of blue pike with wet burlap so they wouldn’t dry out. “The bar and restaurant where I sell these is open till two. We got awhile before we have to leave. So tell me about your wanting to be a teacher.”

* * *

He never did get to the restaurant to sell his fish. They talked until four, so he had to put them on ice and deliver them during his lunch hour at the lumberyard. And being they weren’t fresh caught he only got a nickel a pound, instead of the customary dime. But he gave his loss no mind. From May to early July, Gene and Nancy most nights on the break wall, fishing. For nearly thirty nights neither stole a kiss or held a hand. Both were shy, almost embarrassed about approaching, it was she who made the first advance.

* * *

“Not much biting tonight. Guess it’s like you said Gene, come Fourth of July the blue pike run stops. Where do they go anyways?”

“No one knows for sure. It’s a mystery.” He said reeling in his line and checking the one-hour touched bait. “Maybe the middle of the lake. Out where's it’s deep. But no one has a boat to go twenty miles offshore. Least not for fishing anyways.”

“Guess we won’t be seeing much of one another then, if fishing season’s over.” Nancy quietly spoke, looking up to the night star filled sky.

Gene had rehearsed his next planned words, even spoke them aloud to his reflection in the bathroom mirror. Yet, sitting on the break wall the week before Fourth of July the speech left his mind. Normally he spoke proud and lofty, like any twenty-year-old would but tonight he soften into a little boy.

“Gene, you’re awful quiet tonight. Something on your mind?”

“Well,” he responded clearing his throat. “I’ve been thinking.”

“Thinking?”

“Yeah. You want to go dancing this weekend?” It wasn’t the speech he had prepared. The one he practiced for a week was more romantic. Asking her to go dancing was the first thing his lips could blurt out. He didn’t particularly like dancing, music too loud, the room too crowded, him having two left feet.

“Dancing? Yes, I’d love to”, she happily answered. But then she paused, her dark brown eyes penetrating the embarrassment of his question. “But I know you don’t like dancing. Can’t blame you, sometimes crowds and noise get to me too. Maybe we should do something else.”

“Like what?” he asked.

“Kiss me”, she answered.

* * *

It was under the light of a nineteen-fifty-nine moon on a pier along lake Erie that Gene and Nancy first made love. Most thought they were all wrong for each other. Her an educated school teacher. Him working in the local lumberyard waiting for a job at the assembly plant. Most thought the affair would pass until a year later when he gave her the gold wedding ban. Now, she’s gone, two sons living in the big city, a daughter living in town who’s sometimes a pest to her aged father. Exhausting nights looking at past pictures but never their wedding bans. All he wanted was to awake and gaze at her sleeping face, a woman so correct and fine. She was all he ever needed to see him through.

The blue pike are now extinct, victims of a strange disease. He never figured Nancy be like blue pike, taken with no warning. Cancer it was called by those who didn’t suffer with it in their home or bed. Hell, was its name for those who wore the wedding ban.

The End of Chapter 1