Widower

by A. R. Francis

The bridge crossing the reservoir between Gunpowder Falls and Millgate had no name. It was an unlined steel grate so narrow its cars might only pass with a breath between them. In its distance were hills, dense and green. Come spring both towns agreed to replace the bridge with no designs for the old nameless thing. There, they would leave it to rot away, uncrossed for years alongside its heir. A cement barrier at each entry, overrun with weeds.

Clint stood in the shadow of the bridge, water gently lapping the rocks beneath his feet. A night heron cut across the water. The sun was low. Clint baited his rod the old-fashioned way, winding the elastic body of a night crawler around the hook’s curve. Above, a dump truck hauled across the bridge. The terrible grind of metal. Clint side-cast with two hands and watched his line tink the dark water. He closed the belt and reeled the line into place. A good cast. He sat back on a rock and watched for bites, his creel and tackle box beside him.

There were too many men along the roadway, each in their yellow vests and hard hats. Trucks lined a place along the road usually marked by teens drunk on beer.  Two men set the dynamite. The rest seemed to be, all at once, doing nothing.

The line dipped. Clint tugged the rod, its baited hook swung free. The fish didn’t take.

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Back during his first uncertain days at Gunpowder High, Clint and his father had hiked down the Big Falls trail to this unremarkable rock beach. His father dropped a cooler, flicked his knife blade and halved a night crawler, baiting Clint’s hook, then his own.

“Hold your finger here on the line,” said his father.

Clint trapped the line against the rod. He cocked the rod back over his shoulder.

“Two hands, son.”

Clint snapped the rod forward, loosing his line into the air.

“How bout it?” he said. The hooked worm landed out past the rocks.

“Lift the tip. Keep your line tight.”

Clint reeled his line slowly back to shore. His worm gone. No fish.

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The blast sent rock and dirt over the cliff’s edge, pitting the shoreline, rippling still water. The hard hats and yellow vests stood about. An excavator scraped away loose dirt and rock from the hillside where a short strip of road would soon route the new bridge. The bobber dipped and Clint tightened the line.  The fish hooked, darted for the tangled bottom. Clint yanked the rod and reeled hard. The fish surfaced, quit its fight, and Clint drew it to shore. He unhooked a black-back perch, ran his fingers along its yellow belly, unzipped his creel and tucked the fish inside.

‡

“The water’ll lie to you,” had said his father, pointing his rod, “You keep your slack in and it won’t matter what moves up here.”

Nothing was taking. Clint reeled his line to find a half-eaten worm on his hook. Frustrated, he threw the remains into the water, knifed a fresh worm, baited, and cast. The bobber dipped. Clint yanked the line hard, this time flinging the hook from the water into the air. No fish.

“Watch how I do it,” said his father, “Watch close.”

His father flipped the bail and cast, long and clean.

“God dammit,” said Clint.

Clint snatched the small container of night crawlers and threw them out into the water.

“How you plan to catch anything with our bait drowning out there?”

“We ain’t catching shit anyway,” said Clint, “What’d you bring me here for?”

His father laid his rod in the dirt, reached in the cooler and pulled two beers. He handed one to Clint.

“What’s this?”

“Go on.”

Clint opened the beer. He narrowed his lips, swallowed. A stale brown taste. His mouth filled with saliva. He spit.

“It gets easier,” said his father.

Clint wondered of the feeding frenzy, the bass and crappies suddenly endowed with a feast of fat worms. The worms’ terror as the dirt muddied and left them naked in the dark water. He chucked a handful of rocks, disrupting the stillness.

“This’s how it is, son. You don’t quit five minutes before the miracle.”

“What makes you think a miracle’s coming?”

Clouds moved across the sky setting shadows on the water and the rocky bank.  Over the way a dogwood stood, bent, flowering.

“It’s just a thing to say.”

His father stepped from the shade, removed his vest, and re-cast his line.

Clint sipped at the beer, cleared his throat and spit again.

“We’d have more luck if we had a boat.”

“We’d have more luck if our bait wasn’t out there.”

His father tugged gently at his line, reeled.

‡

Two yellow vests directed traffic. A woman held a big red stop sign and spun it to read Slow on the off chance a car came past. Most folks knew construction was underway and avoided the bridge altogether. Others – nosy types – couldn’t help but see about the fuss.

Clint read a how-to on fileting and cooking small fish. He piled logs and gathered kindling and leaves from the woods. He sparked his lighter and lit a small fire, blowing gently on it to stoke the flame. He gripped the perch. It’s meat and scales tough. He knifed around the ribs, along the spine, tearing the meat as he cut.

With a sharpened stick Clint skewered the small filet and held it close to the fire. It warmed and flaked. He wasn’t hungry.

The day’s last blast. Rock trafficked the cliff wall and skittered across the water and shoreline below. The yellow vests and hard hats thinned out. A rusted bulldozer turned rock and dirt, clearing the growing path. Clint chewed the hot, tasteless fish. In a few hours he’d steady himself against a rotted stump and spew black bile into the dirt.

‡

The line dipped again and his father set the hook. He eased the line to let the hooked fish run, then reeled, tighter, playing it. His father brought it to the water’s edge, kneeled, and ran his fingers slow along the spine. A small bass. For a moment, his father marveled at its helplessness. He unhooked the fish and released it, watching it descend to knee-high depths and on.

“You’re going to hear some things,” said his father.

“Mom said you did it.”

“You believe what you want to believe.”

Clint ditched his beer in the rocks. His father twisted his vest back on.

“Let’s go,” he said.

Father and son climbed their way back up the trail to the roadside. Clint took his time crossing the bridge. His father walked ahead.

“Mom said –”

His father turned.

“I’ll drop you at your mother’s. I’m going to drive around awhile.”

“That girl went to my school.”

Clint looked down through galvanized holes in the grates, stories of free fall below. Down in the cold dark water, night crawlers churned, all the unseen things eating away at them slowly till they’re gone.

‡‡

A. R. FRANCIS’S work has appeared in numerous publications including the Columbia Journal and Glassworks. He currently lives in Maryland.