We rode bikes up to the reservoir in the afternoon. Dad crouched at the water molding pink clumps of PowerBait onto his hook while I foraged for Indian paintbrush up the wooded hill. I must have suckled on forty of those sweet stems by the time his line caught and he called to me from the end of the old pier. Still half-sick from the nectar, I tucked a final morsel behind my ear and rushed down the slope.
It’s not pulling so hard yet, he said. You hold it.
I clutched it low, by my waist with my knees bent, like he’d taught me. The pressure of the taut line rippled up the rod and across my fingers.
The jolt came violently. He cast his arm across my chest and tore the rod from my hands. Leaning, straining, grunting—he fought with his entire face furrowed toward a point on the bridge of his nose. He shouted to grab the net, but not at me, for in the same moment he snatched it and dove to the deck.
The silver and lenticular fish that he pulled from the water seemed impossibly large as it flailed in the net. It kicked into the air and fell to his feet, flapping across the dock. I remember the sound most—scale on skin on damp wood. Slap of flesh and squelch of fat. Every squeaking slip followed by some mumbled curse. His panting flooded my ears.
There was a final burst of percussion before the combined energy of the wrestlers drained through the slat gaps. Four limbs and a tail descended gratefully to the pier to rest. There he lay, his beer-bloat heaving, his neck soaked in sweat and water both.
I peeled the green-white stem from its sticking place behind my ear and considered who needed it most: Dad or the fish.
-Ren Topping
Illustration courtesy of Alicia Gan.
