The Trashman by Terry McDonald

Author:Terry McDonald
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Terry McDonald
Published: 2013-09-10T06:00:00+00:00

*****

The relief Becky afforded me with her effort at surgery was so great that the next morning I decided to try my hand at fishing. I’d only been fishing once in my life. It was so long ago that I forget names, but I was friends with a boy in a rural neighborhood where Sam and I live with a set of foster parents for a short period. He invited me to go fishing with him and his dad.

I went. On the trip out, the two of them made it sound like we were going on the grandest adventure of all time. They made fishing sound glamorous. The actuality was entirely different. They fished from the banks of just north of the city of Bainsbridge.

Fishing was touching squirming red worms, impaling them on a barbed hook attached to a line and then with a flick of the wrist and the release of a button, flinging the mortally wounded worm out into the water to drown if he were lucky, picked to pieces by nibblers if not.

The worm’s true luck came if he was swallowed by a fish. His luck would be to die without further suffering. The fish would end up with the hook through its lip and would swim like crazy trying not to be pulled out of the water. Once out, he got a metal shaft pushed through his gill and out his mouth and strung on a string to feebly swim while we caught more of his brethren.

Needless to say, I didn’t enjoy the excursion. I do remember how to clean a fish, mainly because it was such a cruel, nasty affair. This day though, I planned to catch and release. I mainly wanted to see if I could catch some if push came to shove.

I didn’t have any worms so I took along a big chunk of leftover spam. I didn’t have much faith for it as bait, but mostly I wanted to have something to do.

The trail led to a bend in the creek. The water moved at a fast clip and the bed was fairly wide. The outer edge of the curve across from where I stood was eaten away by the current and presented a three-foot high vertical bank. The trees and underbrush had been cut back, and my side sloped gently to a sandy beach. The sand, actually sand and gravel mixed, was not white, but had a reddish hue.

Two split-log benches were in place above the high water mark and were close to a stone fire ring.

I’d chosen a rod we brought from the main cabin. It already had a hook and weight attached. A pinched off piece of tough, fried spam slid easily onto the hook. I cast into the flow and stood there, rod in hand fully expecting nothing to happen. Ten seconds later, there was a tug on the line and then the reel was spinning as the fish ran with the bait. I flipped on the drag and gave the rod a tug.

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