Читать книгу Reeling In Time with Fish Tales - Brian E. Smith - Страница 13

I was excited. I was more than excited. Fully adjusted to the darkness in my room, my eyes watched the old digital alarm clock flop over number 12:57 a.m. I’ve got to go to sleep. Are my two fishing rods ready? They had fresh line, fresh grease, the drag was smooth, and they were fully rigged the way Dad taught me to do it. Do I feel sleepy? No, I could go run laps at the moment. What about my tackle? Hooks, sinkers, bobbers, jigs, Rapalas, Jelly Worms, Bullet Weights®, Snagless Sallys®, Hula Poppers (big and small), finger nail clippers to cut the fishing line, knife, swivels, extra fishing line, leader line, and…. Did I remember the plastic worm hooks? Yes, they are next to the Bullet Weights®. Let me go through the list again just to make sure. I’m not tired, but I’ve got to get to sleep. Mentally I went back to the tackle list another time, and again, and again.

The buzz of the alarm clock at 5:30 a.m. was shocking. The tackle list worked like counting sheep for me. I crawled out of that warm bed and put on the jeans, T-shirt, and an over shirt that I had laid out the evening before. The first stop was the bathroom to take care of urgent business and wash my face. In the kitchen, Dad was over the stove scrambling eggs in the bacon grease. He is such a morning person.

“So, today is your big day to go fishing with Mr. Poe in his nice bass boat?”

“Yes, sir,” I said in a yawn.

“You don’t seem too excited about it, Champ. Go ahead and drink your orange juice. Mom packed you a lunch last night before she went to bed.” Mom isn’t a morning person and I’m just like her. The best time of day is in the morning, but I just wished they started a bit later.

At 5:55 a.m., I was leaning against the door jam, looking out the screen door, keeping an eye on my two fishing poles and tackle box that I set by the maple tree in the front yard. I had my jacket and my ball cap from last year’s Little League team on. Well worn, the hat had both sides of the bill bent down to look cool. It had a distinctive odor of boys’ play juices rung around the sweatband. I was poised in the door, anxiously waiting the day in a sleepy state of go.

Six o’clock sharp, Mr. Poe coasted to a stop at the edge of the yard. It looked like an eighteen-wheeler out front, with the amber running lights adorning the top of the truck cab, down the running boards and continuing along the trailer, ending in two big red brake lights mounted a good foot higher than the gunnels of the boat. The lights reflecting off the freshly waxed truck and shiny aluminum sixteen-foot bass boat, made the rig look much larger in the darkness than during the day.

“He’s here!” I announced to Dad. I ran outside with my lunch bag in one hand and grabbed my two poles and tackle box with my other hand. I sat my bag lunch on the bow of the boat, while I stepped up on the trailer tongue to put the fishing poles and tackle box in the bed of Mr. Poe’s truck. Dad had followed me out. He shook hands with Mr. Poe.

“Champ, come here,” Dad said, and then started chatting with Mr. Poe. They talked a few minutes about fishing, weather, and tomato plants. I was standing beside Dad when he bent over, gave me a hug, and said, “I love you.” I was at the age when you get somewhat embarrassed about being hugged and so forth by your parents. I was an outdoorsman, and true outdoorsmen don’t get hugs from their dads before going to conquer the outdoors. When I ran around the front of the truck to get in the cab, I was happy Dad sent me off with a hug, but next time we might have to do the hugging part in the house.

Billy, Mr. Poe’s son, slid over next to his dad to give me some room on the bench seat.

“Hey, Billy.”

“Hey, Brian,” we exchanged, when I got in the truck. We ran together so much we didn’t have to catch up with each other’s goings on. Mr. Poe and Dad, finally, were just finishing their conversation.

“Have fun, boys,” Dad said, as he patted the truck with his palm and walked across the yard to the front porch.

“You boys ready?” asked Mr. Poe.

We both said, “Yes, sir,” but were sound asleep within a mile. I opened my eyes a couple of times en route, just long enough to notice the sky changing colors, but dozed off quickly to the sound of country and western music from the radio.

The truck came to a stop about an hour later on the right side of a dirt parking lot at Muddy Creek Marina on the edge of Back Bay, Virginia. Billy and I woke up in the sho’ ’nuff country. The kind of country where you feel like you traveled back in time. Weathered skiffs, with antique black or white motors, hung off the sterns, atop rusting trailers along the shore. Under tin-roofed pole barns, crab traps and eel pots, thinly coated in dried algae, were loosely stacked for storage. They were amongst a clutter of outboard motor parts, containers of lubricants, trailer tires and rims, trailer parts, a scattering of tools, an anvil on the end of a very well built wooden workbench, and a double handful of extra-long cane poles, their brightly colored floats making them stand out amongst all the other stuff. Additionally, there were some children’s toys they had dropped off here and there when the mood hit them to go do something else. Dirt covered most everything in and around the pole barns. A pattern emerged; the higher something was off the ground the thicker it was coated with dusty spider webbing. If the coat hangers, used to suspend the cane poles from the rafters, would ever give way, the poles would remain in place.