Francis hadn’t been fishing since his daddy shot himself in the head. Nobody much fishes in the Big Black River anymore. Few white people ever did. When he was a boy, he and his daddy would sneak down under the shade of the overpass, always on a Sunday morning when blacks and whites alike were busy worshipping the same god in their separate churches. Or in bed one, recovering from hangovers. On occasion, when he moved back home all grown-up, he and his daddy would go down for some ‘lawyer talk.’ Lasted a minute, two maybe, his daddy’s closing argument the same puzzle every time with the same staid side-eye. ‘If life hands you lemons, Son, you know what to do.’
According to his daddy ‘Fishing time is the best thinking time, bank fishing that is. Casting gets in the way of thinking.’ After two years of not fishing, not much thinking either, Francis is in dire need.
The letter announcing the culminating meeting in two weeks had been a shock. No divorce he ever heard tell of goes that fast. Certainly not when kids are involved. It had only been four months since she kicked him out. And after a miserable week in a motel, he found himself in an even more miserable apartment, a damp cell in shades of beige that sucked the blood right out of you. Not a minute goes by she doesn’t enter his mind. Every part of her. Inside and out. Mostly out. It’s become pathetic how much he misses her. And his girls. He had had no idea. How did he let this happen? How had he let it get so far out ahead of him? Every time he sees her attorney, the bastard, he wants to knock the smirk off his greasy face.
He strips down to his boxers and slips into his jeans. Finds a shady spot. After an eye-watering slug of ice-cold beer, he squeezes a wad of rotten chicken liver onto his hook, catfish caviar. Washes off the god-awful reek and swings his line out into the muddy waters, so solid-looking it’s like magic when his lead sinker is sucked in. He sinks his backside into a cool niche of sandy red clay. As his ears become accustomed to the absence of hard-edged noises, the critter music of the river basin sings out its hypnotic momentum while the swampy smells and slimy layer of scum swirling on the water make him droopy-eyed. He leans back on a cypress knee for the long wait. If he’s lucky, nothing’s biting. A random line of knees marches down into the dark river, giving it the look of a watery Civil War graveyard, tombstones askew. The green blades of the cattails move together with the breeze, synchronized worshippers, limbs raised to the heavens and swaying to the gospel of the current. Water bugs zig-zag about in their perpetual spurts of search for some elusive thing they never seem to find, leaving behind tiny concentric circles growing bigger. As he relaxes, she enters his mind.
But down the bank a piece, light catches a crescent of water out of synch. Francis locks his eyes on the spot. Then another movement at the water’s edge, closer. An S curve. Ah, a no-nonsense water moccasin slow-motion cruising in and out of cattails that barely budge, moving like a slow streak of molten copper gently shoving aside little oil slicks that carry all the colors of a prism. Francis steels his position to predict, maybe, what the snake has planned. Looks like not much really. Out for a leisurely swim. Maybe a bite of dinner. He’d killed a few water moccasins in his day, but this is the first time Francis had watched one go about his routine business. About six feet away from Francis is a belly-up catfish sloshing against the ragged edge, the snake due to hit that spot in a matter of seconds. A foot from the fish, the snake comes to a sudden halt, alert, just the tip of his nose protruding above the surface. He waits. He bolts. Damn! Impressive. The fish is big. And bloated. The snake’s jaws had hinged open several inches. But the fool’s latched on to more than he can swallow. He’ll figure it out soon enough. Snake and fish slap together against the bank with each subtle whoosh of muck. Francis keeps his eyes glued to the unlikely couple. The snake appears to be disinclined to let his booty go. Francis had thought snakes strike only instinctively, for defense or to numb their prey for a more relaxed meal. Now if this snake is in any way a normal snake with normal instincts, he would know that catfish is terminally numb. But. The long fellow appears to have been blessed, or cursed, with a decided degree of doggedness. Francis becomes more and more enthralled by the whole episode. Watches for the remainder of his six pack. He could learn a thing or two from that snake. Tenacious bugger. It’s been good while. Who knows, maybe he’ll hang onto his treasure until death parts them.
A visual memory lights up his mind. He closes his eyes to see better. His daddy, shriveled up by cancer, had been a larger-than-life man who had lived in the world as concretely as an oak, his weighty, protective branches reaching out over decades stuffed with beaten-down people on thousands of hectares of some of the richest soil in the world, all drowning in one way or another. Francis hears again, loud and clear, the last words his daddy said to him the night he left his brains blasted across his wife’s favorite flowered wall paper. ‘Son, whatever you do after I’m gone, do not let that extraordinary woman get away.’
Francis jumps up and yells to the snake, “I know what to do!”