It took place in no more than half a minute, I’d guess, but it had the lengthy rapture and terror of a whole tale. Something bit and then was jerking, small but solidly, then it was too big, and I began moving in the water and grabbing the butt of the rod again because what was on had taken it out of my hands. When I caught the rod up, I was moving toward the barnacled pole with the tide slopping on it, and that was the only noise around. I went in to my neck in a muddier scoop in the bottom, and then under my feet something moved. I knew it was a giant stingaree instantly. Hard skin on a squirming plate of flesh. I was sorely terrified but was pulled even past this and could do nothing, now up to my chin and the stiff little pole bent violently double. I was dragged through the mud and I knew the being when it surfaced would be bigger than me and with much more muscle. Then, like something underwater since Europe, seven or eight huge purpoises surfaced, blowing water in a loud group explosion out of their enormous heads, and I was just shot all over with light and nerves because they were only twenty feet from me and I connected them, the ray, and what was on my hook into a horrible combination beast that children who waded too far would be dragged out by and crushed and drowned.
The thing pulled with heavier tugs like a truck going up its gears. The water suddenly rushed into my face and into my nose, I could see only brown with the bottom of the sun shining through it.
I was gone, gone, and I thought of the cats watching onshore and I said good-bye cat friends, good-bye Cousin Woody, good-bye young life, I am only a little boy and I’m not letting go of this pole, it is not even mine, it’s my uncle’s. Good-bye school, good-bye Mother and Daddy, don’t weep for me, it is a thing in the water cave of my destiny. Yes, I thought all these things in detail while drowning and being pulled rushing through the water, but the sand came up under my feet and the line went slack, the end of the rod was broken off and hanging on the line. When I cranked in the line I saw the hook, a thick silver one, was straightened. The vacancy in the air where there was no fish was an awful thing like surgery in the pit of my stomach. I convinced myself that I had almost had him.
When I stood in the water on solid sand, I began crying. I tried to stop but when I got close to Woody I burst out again. He wanted to know what happened but I did not tell him the truth. Instead I told him I had stepped on an enormous ray and its hook had sliced me.
No.
Yes. I went into briefer sobs.
When we checked my legs there was a slice from an oyster shell, a fairly deep one I’d got while being pulled by the creature. I refused treatment and I was respected for my close call the rest of the day. I even worked in the lie more and said furthermore it didn’t much matter to me if I was taken off to the asylum for stingaree children, that was just the breaks. My cousin and the rest of them looked at me anew and with concern but I was acting funny and they must have been baffled.
It wasn’t until I was back in the dreaded schoolroom that I could even talk about the fish, and then my teacher doubted it, and she in goodwill with a smile told my father, congratulating me on my imagination. My father thought that was rich, but then I told him the same story, the creature so heavy like a truck, the school of porpoises, and he said That’s enough. You didn’t mention this when you came back.
No, and neither did I mention the two cats when I walked back to shore with Woody and the broken rod. They had watched all the time, and I knew it, because the both of them stared at me with big solemn eyes, a lot of light in them, and it was with these beings of fur then that I entrusted my confidences, and they knew I would be back to catch the big one, the singular monster, on that line going tight into the cave in the water, something thrashing on the end, celebrated above by porpoises.
I never knew what kind of fish it was, but I would return and return to it the rest of my life, and the cats would be waiting to witness me and share my honor.
Two Gone Over
I WAS IN NORTH DAKOTA AROUND THE SAC BASE IN MARCH. THE WIND blew hard across the beet fields and the tarmac, wherever it was. I had done my duty in Grand Forks and we talked in a bar. She and her girlfriend were both in cowboy boots. The woman I was interested in had very excellent calves. Her face was high cheekboned with huge eyes like china marbles. Her forehead was touched around by brown bangs that made my stomach ache. She was a Florida beauty, Tallahassee, just a slight quarter inch heavy with winter flesh, that’s all, a slight quarter inch.
I told her she was the one who broke my heart in high school and made me cry on my pillow. She was the type. Little Anthony and the Imperials sang about her. I loved Little Anthony because he could gasp so good, he wrung it all.
Later, when I was alone with her, she said she wasn’t really that type. She was a simple Southern girl, but her father was Satan. We were in those couples apartments near the SAC base. The apartment was similar to rooms I had down South when I was first a bachelor, divorced. But they were even smaller and poorer, with a feeling of transience, little attempt at decoration.
My home woman and I had become, I think, old friends more kindly than passionate. In fact she was still married although long separated. We had hung together in a vast common loneliness almost like love. I liked to see her onstage in a gown playing her flute in the orchestra, very well. She had a doctorate from Boston University, which I understand is something.
She had lent me some money in a humiliating emergency, and now in Grand Forks I had a check in my pocket. I could repay her and I felt square, decent, and very American all of a sudden, as when you leave a gym with your hair seriously combed, wet, and walk into the cool evening. The earth is glad to see you.
The girl from Tallahassee was only twenty-four. I was forty-two.
She showed me album after album of B-52s in the air and on the ground. Her husband had wanted to be a fighter pilot but had not come up to the mark when he left Colorado Springs, the academy. I didn’t mean to be ugly but I thought this was boring, the sky and the bombers, the ground and the bombers, the squad and the bombers. I might have said this. But she thought they were beautiful and told me so again and again. She was divorcing her husband, who was in the air now, but she thought the B-52s were exquisite. She wanted something beautiful in her life, these pictures, and I should not have commented at all, especially since her father was the Devil and she did not have him either.
After the tour through the photos I told her I ought to go back.
This is not turning out like I wanted it to, she said.
Well, this is your home, your married home. I couldn’t possibly do anything here, don’t you understand? Their married bed, and besides the husband might come in from an aborted mission. She could understand that, couldn’t she? I couldn’t have her here.
But — looking back — maybe her point was to have it here, right here. Don’t be fast, be slow, she insisted. Right in the middle of the B-52 pictures. However, we drove in her car back to the motel. Crying cold black wind outside, all over Dakota.
I knew it would be like this, I could imagine, she said when we were in my room. She was downcast. I felt sorry for her. My clothes were strewn around. I didn’t care for the look either, although I had never planned on much in this town. I wanted her in an almost crippling way now. It seemed more urgent with the black wind out there. Don’t be fast, please. Just don’t be fast, all right? she asked me.
You have other experiences?