Editor’s note: We’re giving Seth Norman, the Master of Meander, a break this issue, and promise a treat from him in the one that follows. This provides an opportunity for another treat, though, a short story by a favorite writer, Jim Matthews…
Chet was sitting on the carpet, listening to his wife and boys sing, daydreaming. He remembered the chest pains he had three days before while he was walking the trail to the east end of Lake Perris to fish for bass. There was a mild shooting pain above his left nipple and a tightness that went away as he took a few deep breaths, picked up his walking pace, and coughed once. It concerned him for a second, but he saw a marsh hawk was flying toward him low over the chaparral, the sun came out, and he heard the longnecked grebes’ haunting mating calls.
The water was calm, and he thought the bass might be in the shallows where he and TJ, his best friend, fishing partner, and brother-in-law, would be flipping small streamers. TJ was behind him on the trail, telling him not to wait while he put on his waders, so he was alone with his chest pains and watching the wildlife as he walked to where they would drop down through the willows to the lakeshore and begin wading around in the shallows, looking for bass on spawning beds.
TJ caught up with him on the shore while he was struggling to put on the waders he’d carried in a small day pack. He was puffing when he had both feet into the boots and then rolled over on all fours to get up off the ground. TJ saw his red face. “You OK, Chet?” TJ asked as he came down the trail.
“Just getting old and fat,” Chet said. “Leading the life of a Thanksgiving turkey: Getting fat, waiting to die,” TJ said as he started to wade out into the lake through the thicket of flooded brush, seeing the flush ebb from Chet’s face. It was one of TJ’s favorite lines.
“Free at last, free at last,” said Chet, completing the standing joke between the two. Chet picked up one of the two fly rods he’d carried with him and waded out behind his old friend.
“I think the water’s a little higher than the last time we were here,” said TJ. “It’s always higher, or we’re just getting older and shrinking. It will be over my head soon enough,” said Chet.
TJ turned around to look at him with a quizzical expression. He was used to Chet trying out lines on him that he’d been writing. Chet would explain it later, if it all didn’t become clear.
They broke out of the thicket of brush at the edge of a little pocket of open water, and they split up and started wading around the opposite edges of the opening, slowly, peering into the water for bass on beds. Chet heard TJ say, “Carp,” once, and then the conversation ended for the better part of two hours while they were lost in that juncture between air and water, living in one world, exploring the other with their eyes, feet, and flies, looking to make a connection.
TJ was newly single, again. TJ’s marriage had lasted sixteen years, but for the last four or five it was kept alive in the emergency room with paddles and stents, and eventually they realized it just needed to be unplugged so they both could move on. That period was when TJ came up with the line he’d borrowed from Martin Luther King, Jr., adapting it to finally being free of that woman only when he died — free at last, free at last. But he didn’t die. They parted, and TJ seemed his old self again, happy even, always with Chet and Chet’s wife, Karen, his sister. It was like old times for awhile, and they were cooking together and fishing all the time again. TJ would come to Chet’s house when his two nephews were visiting on weekends; the two old men would cook and drink while the young men and Karen sang old tunes or learned a new song the older boy had written. Chet thought it was wonderful to have TJ back.
Then TJ decided he was lonely or horny, and he started the succession of short relationships with women who kept his painful reverie about the wife fresh and relevant. The latest departure was a sex-crazed French interpreter who had a broad stripe of insanity running right through the middle of her personality. Chet insisted she was trying to kill TJ, and all TJ could say to Chet’s concern was “Free at last, free at least,” with a weak smile. But when she wanted to get married and TJ had no interest in a prenuptial agreement, she was gone like the others.
Chet was relieved. It meant one of the four most important people in his life was back in regular contact. He knew Karen missed her brother, too, and the boys would come by more often if their favorite uncle was around to add to Chet’s badgering and encouragement. Chet smiled to himself as he thought he saw the shadow of a bass in the water ahead of him. He flipped a small white streamer to the spot and noticed his arm was asleep and waved two big arm circles at the shoulder to get the circulation going. He thought he saw the fish once more, but the bass never took the fly.
The conditions weren’t quite right. The morning had been overcast, so the sun had not warmed the shallows as it normally did, and the water was slightly off-color from an algae bloom or the carp stirring up the bottom in their spawning ritual. Visibility just wasn’t good for spotting fish, even though the sun was now showing brightly through the light haze.
As soon as Chet’s interest in the fishing dropped from the high-anticipation level he’d felt as they waded into the lake, his mind became flooded with his financial concerns. He and Karen weren’t to the point of losing the house, but Chet’s writing accounts were drying up, and Karen didn’t understand his desire to change gears completely and write the fiction he’d wanted to write his whole life. There were bills to pay, and quite frankly, he wasn’t sure his stories were good enough anymore. The cock-sure confidence of his youth had waned, and at sixty-two, he wasn’t sure the words were as concise and perfect as he once knew. Lately, he’d wanted to finish the novel he’d been writing for over thirty years. He’d done the heavy lifting for that story when his father had died over twenty years ago, and it was just a matter of doing a little research and tweaking a few details, polishing some dialogue, and he’d have his bestseller and blockbuster Hollywood movie.
Like his father, Chet had all but given up his first love to support and raise a family. He’d abandoned creative writing to become a skilled reporter and editor, with its reliable paychecks. Chet thought about his father, a man who had given up a brilliant music career, pouring heart and soul into his children and the security he never knew as a Depression-era youth. Chet’s dad had returned to music after Chet’s mother had passed away prematurely from heart disease. The old man played saxophone with three different bands his last ten years, and at his funeral, Chet remembered a tearful conversation with two old band members who’d played in what was left of Benny Goodman’s Swing Era band at the Queen Mary. The old men came up and took Chet by the arm, one too choked up to speak. The other simply said, “Your dad was the best saxophone player we ever had the privilege of playing with.” The other man just nodded. Chet already knew his dad was a father’s father, understanding that all of that creative musical energy was invested in him, his brother, and two sisters. What better could he have done if he had followed his music career, instead? Chet was never sure if he measured up to his dad as a father or husband, and he wondered if anyone would come up to his boys and say their dad was a great writer. But seeing Karen smile and listening to his boys sing, he didn’t worry about it much.
Chet remembered it was raining and windy, but he couldn’t place when that was happening or had happened. What he could see was his father sitting at a picnic table next to a roaring campfire in Colorado. They had been fishing the Lake Fork of the Gunnison River that day, and his dad had gone back to the campground and gotten the fire going while Chet made a few more casts. There was a beautiful eighteen-inch brown trout on a gravel that would die for dinner and his father sitting at the picnic table with a cribbage board all set up and the cards. He’d left the seat nearest the fire for Chet so he could sit with his back to the flames, warming up while they played cribbage. The table was set for supper. They would talk and play cribbage and then cook the trout. Chet heard TJ’s voice call his name while he walked along the shoreline, and when TJ emerged from the brush, they decided to walk over to another part of the lake, another little shallow bay, to see if the water was clearer there. Chet’s heart wasn’t in it. He’d tied on a big, flashy streamer to fling idly around the flooded brush and stick-ups, giving up on the hope of clarity and of actually seeing a few bass. He was thinking about what jobs he could get to try to catch up on all the behind payments, who he could call to get some extra work, how he could just hold on a little longer. Just a little bit longer.
He was humming the old song to himself when the big bass hit the oversized fly. It surprised him, shooting through his body, and he was calling out to TJ, to anyone listening. It was a big bass.
There was a clap of thunder, and Chet could see the hail falling outside the sliding glass door. He smiled to himself. The hail was bouncing off the ground like hot grease popping out of a pan. He liked that image and thought that he could write that in a story someday, using the juxtaposition to convey all the heat and passion, all the cold and fear of life. The boys and Karen were singing a song in the family room while the hail fell, and Chet could see his father at the picnic table. His dad had already cut the deck and was waiting for Chet to sit down and make his cut to see who would be dealing first, who would have the first crib, the first extra hand. The hail was still bouncing outside the window, and Chet wasn’t sure he had a choice, but he wanted to sit down at the table with his father and play that game of cribbage. The music had stopped, and there were three faces looking down into his. Chet thought they were asking to see the big trout and smiled at them, but then he saw his father again, and that was where he went.
