“How much farther?” I asked.
“We’re almost to where we leave the boat. It’s neat in here, huh?”
“Neat,” I said, and whacked another mosquito.
Pretty soon the terrain humped and the stream widened into what looked to be a pool at the foot of a series of short, naturally terraced steps. The water came bubbling down over them, making cheerful noises in the gloomy stillness. That was as far as we could take the boat — unless we portaged up over the rise, and Chuck relieved me of that unappealing idea by announcing, as he nosed us onto a slope of shore mud, that we’d hike the rest of the way.
“It’s not far,” he said. “About half a mile.”
“What about this pool right here? No good?”
“Nah,” he said. “Chuck’s Hole is where they hang out.”
So we tromped overland on an all but invisible deer trail, Chuck setting a brisk pace despite the poor light and me struggling to keep up and not injure myself on rocks, root tangles, and other obstacles. It wasn’t really a bad trek, even though it was mostly uphill in a series of gradual rises, but by its end I was tired, scratched, lumpy with mosquito bites, and wondering why I put myself through little adventures like this. For the kid’s sake, in this case — sure. But part of it, too, maybe, was to prove to myself that I was not quite to the geezer-in-the-porch-rocker stage yet.
Yeah, I thought, except that right now that porch rocker looks pretty good. Eh, Grandpappy?
Where we emerged, finally, was into a big, open glade filled with early-morning light. The sky was a milky blue that would deepen and brighten as the sun rose. The creek ran off to the left and the pool there, shaded by trees and a mossy outcrop, was long and wide and pretty as the proverbial postcard. As soon as I saw it, I felt less creaky and more pleased with my surroundings.
“Chuck’s Hole,” he said proudly.
“I’m impressed. No kidding.”
He grinned. “Best place to fish is up on that outcrop.”
“You’re the boss.”
He led the way upstream to a place above the pool where we could ford it, then back to the outcrop. He already had a line in the water by the time I finished tying on one of my flies, a #14 Iron Blue Dun. Chuck was using his prized PMD, the #18 Mathews Sparkle Dun with the Zelon shuck. It must’ve been right for this pool because he got the first couple of nibbles, hooked and then lost a smallish brown, hooked and landed the first fish of the day, a handsome speckled cutthroat in the pound-and-a-half range.
We’d been there about forty minutes before I had any luck. I made a pretty fair cast into the shadows under a thick cluster of ferns and snaky tree roots, and almost immediately something smacked the fly and jerked the line taut, with enough force to yank the rod out of my hand if I hadn’t had a tight grip on the butt. I knew I’d hooked a rainbow even before I saw it, by the way it battled: a cutthroat brown is tricky and fights with its head, while a rainbow is stronger, speedier, and fights with its tail. It took me a while to work the fish and reel him in, with Chuck calling excited encouragement the entire time. He’d brought a net and he used it when I lifted the flopping trout out of the water. Otherwise I might’ve lost it — and before long I wished I had.
“A beauty,” the boy said, his eyes shining. “Two pounds at least, maybe two and a half. Nice going, man!”
I removed the hook from the rainbow’s mouth. As soon as it was free, blood glistening on the barbed tip, the same aversion as yesterday came over me: I didn’t want to kill it. I think I would have released it, the way I had the cutthroat brown, if Chuck hadn’t been there grinning approval at me. We’d forged a bond this morning, the boy and me, become friends across the double-wide generation gap; if I let the trout go, I knew he would lose respect for me, no matter what I said to justify it. He was only twelve and fishing was his passion; he’d never understand. I weighed his disfavor against the fish’s life. And the fish lost. The arguments on the side of my relationship with Chuck were stronger: The whole purpose of this outing was to catch trout for eating, wasn’t it? I’d had no compunction about the trout I’d eaten last night, had I? Or about killing and consuming hundreds of other fish over the past forty-some years? Why spoil things for Chuck because I’d suddenly developed a problem? A fish, for Christ’s sake. As Strayhorn had said, it was just a fish.
None of that helped much. I still did not want to destroy the rainbow, and if I turned the job over to Chuck it would be the coward’s way out. I’m a lot of things, but a coward isn’t one of them. So I used the handle of my knife, doing it quickly, then gave the stilled body to the boy to put in his creel with the one he’d caught. He didn’t mind that; he considered it a gesture of our friendship.
“I’m going to take a break,” I said, “finish the rest of the coffee. You go ahead and keep your line out.”
“Sure,” he said. “Plenty more down there. Bet I catch a bigger one than yours.”
“Bet you do, too.”
I moved off the outcrop and sat in the shade, my back against a pine bole. I felt lousy for a time, worse than the situation warranted, but then I began to develop a different perspective on what had just happened. Suppose, I thought, I’d killed the trout not for Chuck’s sake or the sake of my relationship with him, but for my own sake. To prove something to myself, beyond any doubt.
That I was through with fishing? Maybe. No, probably. There was still pleasure for me in tramping the woods, picking out a suitable spot, casting a line, but the affinity for the catch, the fight, the final victory was all but gone. Finishing off that big, strong rainbow, then, might’ve been a symbolic act of closure: washing my hands of the sport in the trout’s blood.
But there was more to it than that. It wasn’t just the prospect of sacrificing any more fish that left me cold; it was a visceral repugnance at the idea of ever killing anything again.
So damned much death in my sixty years. All the corpses I’d seen, all the atrocities one human being can visit upon another. My own direct responsibility for one man’s sudden end, and indirect responsibility for a couple of others’. The countless other life forms that had ceased to exist because of me, too: the birds I’d felled with a slingshot when I was a kid, the buck I’d shot and wounded and had to put out of its misery on my one and only hunting trip, all the trout and bass and salmon I’d caught, all the rodents and even the insects like those mosquitoes this morning that I’d carelessly disposed of. Enough. I’d had enough.
Life is too short, too precious. Even to a fish. Even to a bug. And man’s intelligence puts him well atop the natural food chain; no creature has the right to interrupt his cycle of life, especially one of his own kind. So why should he maintain the smug, arrogant position that it’s okay for him to indulge in casual slaughter outside his species?
Let others rationalize answers to that question. Not me. Not anymore.