He turned it over in his hand and bounced it, feeling its weight. He nodded as if he approved.
“Here,” I said, “Fish in these parts are kinda particular. Maybe I can show you a thing or two.”
He gave me back the lure, and I readied my line.
“We’ve spooked them here, so we got to move to another pool where they haven’t seen us yet.” We walked right up the middle of the stream because the banks are overgrown, past the spots I’d already fished. He placed his feet carefully, like he was old, then I decided that he was just getting a feel for the stream. Who knows what the rivers are like in his world? Heck, just going from the Blue Bottle to Jumbo Creek a valley over is a switch. Here the bottom’s moss-covered stones all round and slick, and there it’s all busted-up slate and pea-sized gravel, so I don’t blame the alien for treading lightly. Heck, I’m not as fast as I used to be myself.
I peeked over a boulder that marks a bend in the creek. On the other side were a pair of those tiny holes I was telling you about. Ideally, I’d fish ’em from the side, dropping the lure in the foam at the far side of the pool, then working across the current, but there’s no way to get to the side without the fish seeing you, so I’d have to try the cast from here.
The alien moved out of the way of my backswing, his pale eyes glittering with interest, so I felt kind of pressured to do it right. Wouldn’t look good if I hung the hook up in a tree or something. I’ve been doing this a long time, though, and my habits carried through. The lure plopped into the edge of the first pool instead of splashing into the middle or clanging off a rock, which would’ve scared the fish for sure. The alien studied my lure as it came back. How fast? he was probably thinking. How deep? Water was as clear as air, and we could see that spoon wiggling and waggling as I reeled her in.
Next cast I got a strike. The trout jumped once, dove for a shadowy spot under the rock, but I’d already reeled in part of the line, and he pulled up short. A few seconds later, he was flopping in my net.
I held the net to the alien, and he peered at the fish without touching, which was good. These creek trout don’t take much handling. I pulled him free of the net, measured him against the creel—he was a smidge under ten inches—then unhooked him as gentle as I could and let him wriggle free. Water felt cool against my wrists, and I rubbed the fish’s slipperiness off my hands.
“Someone else will have a chance at him now,” I said, and the alien nodded. Deep in my creel, I found two other Daredevils and offered them to him. “Maybe you ought to try one of these.”
He hesitated. I thought, heck, if it were me, I’d be embarrassed to have another fisherman tell me my lures were no good, and maybe that’s what was going through his head. But he took them, hooked one in his hat, like mine, and pressed the other to the end of his rod. Don’t know what held it there, but it dangled free and easy like it ought to.
He nodded his thanks and headed upstream. I watched him picking his way among the boulders, walking in the water when he had to, until he vanished behind a willow stand twenty yards away.
I thought, here’s a story to tell the grandkids. I taught an alien how to fish. Shoot, they’d never believe that, and I laughed. Laughter sounds a lot like creek water on rocks. It blended in real well.
Rest of the afternoon I worked through my favorite spots downstream. I tell you, there’s a lot to be said about water and rocks and looking at a brook like this one the way a fish must see it. And it started me thinking about the Universe—not that that’s unusual for fishing—and all the wonder of it: I’m flipping a lure into little patches of calm water behind rocks, beneath overhangs, along the banks; reaching in with my lure to see what lives there, and every once in a while I find out. Kind of like those aliens trolling through space, until they fetched up on our calm spot and found us. Makes space travel sound right restful, thinking about it that way.
Meanwhile, everyone else is in a lather about the aliens. Heck, from the one I met, they seem regular enough. Not all that different. Course, I have no confidence about that. Maybe I read him all wrong. He was from a strange world. Got his own way of seeing things. Maybe aliens and Earth folk can never get along. I heard a commentator talk about “modes of commonality,” which is just fancy for stuff we can agree on. Maybe there isn’t enough of that, and the aliens will go away, figuring we’re a bad bet. Or worse, like some folk fear, they’re judging us. If we don’t pass the test, then they’ll just dust our little rock off.
You reporters sound plenty scared. Lots of worry.
Still, flicking a lure into the water soothed me, so I wasn’t really stewing over those questions. Air smelled like fresh-cut watermelon, all alive and tasty. Water rolled around my calves, tingling where it splashed high up, and numbing everything below. I had a few good strikes. Brought some of them in. Lost a couple of others. Finally, the Sun slanted long and low through the pine on the top of the hills and, fishing pole resting on my shoulder, I headed for my car. A long day of fishing like that just puts the life back in a man.
And there, leaning against my car, was the alien. His clothes were wet to his armpits. Somewhere along the line he must have slipped and fallen in. Told you that the rocks were a bother in the Blue Bottle. He waited until I got close, then straightened up. He held out his hand, and there were the two lures. I can tell you, I didn’t think I’d see those old things again. I’d already written them off to interstellar diplomacy. My contribution, as it was, to peace among the stars, but there they were, glittering in that setting Sun, so I took them and dropped them into the creel.
“Any luck?” I asked. I looked around. My car was the only vehicle in sight. Don’t know how he got there.
He nodded, holding up four fingers.
“Great,” I said. “How big?”
He put his hands less than a foot apart.
“Yeah,” I said, “Stockers. We see a lot that size from the hatchery.”
Then he made a fist with one hand and swiped the top of it with an open palm.
“Sorry. Didn’t get that,” I said.
He repeated the gesture, then waved his fingers back and forth like a fish swimming.
I laughed. “Ah, one got away.”
He nodded.
“How big?” I said. The Sun was setting behind his back. The light was all yellow and dusty now, full of pollen, and I felt like I was in the middle of a Norman Rockwell painting: two fishermen standing by the side of the stream at the end of the day, swapping stories.
He held his hands about eighteen inches apart.
“Really?” I said, and something in the tone of my voice must have caught his attention, because he lowered his eyes sort of sheepishly, it looked like to me, and moved his hands four inches closer.
“Wow,” I said. “That’s a good fish.”
He nodded, and I thought he seemed happy. Couldn’t really read anything for sure in that face of his.
We stood there, sort of awkward like for a minute, then I said, “Well, I got to head on home.”
He didn’t make a gesture or anything. He just spun on his heel and walked away from my car, up the hill, and I watched him until he was out of sight.
I stowed my gear, started the car, drove away from the stream, and I was thinking those folks in Washington are all hot and bothered over nothing: tiptoeing around the aliens and wondering if we got anything in common. Shoot, even a retired old fisherman could see right away we got no cause for worry. If this alien was typical of the rest, we’re gonna be OK, because any fool could tell you that there hasn’t ever been a fourteen-inch trout in the Blue Bottle, but a lot of human fishermen will swear that the one that got away was at least that big.