what he wanted with a knife anyway. "Ben, get out of the water—there's a gator on that line!" I didn't know that, but I could see that whatever its identity, there was at least five feet of it.
"No it's not...", but his words were cut off when 'the creature' turned and came at him. "Whoa, God-a-mighty..." and he came high stepping back to the bank, water flying in all directions. This went on for several more minutes, back and forth, before Ben decided he wasn't getting anywhere. I thought about cutting the line before something terrible happened, but the look of determination in the darkness of his face suggested something terrible happening to me if I did. This was Ben's moment.
His catch made the mistake of getting over a shallow sandbar momentarily and Ben decided it was time to make his move. "The knife! Okay, hold onto this thing...here," and he thrust the pole into my hands and grabbed the knife. "Don't break the line—keep it tight, though. Easy, just pull back some."
I could see whatever it was, thrashing about in the water only ten or twelve feet from shore, but it was dark and the light from our fire only served to cast a morbid yellow sheen off the frothing water. But I could see it well enough to know it was a fish, because it had a fleshy dorsal fin that was situated far back by its tail.
It was huge, and when Ben waded quietly into the water and circled around behind it I thought he had taken leave of his senses.
"Bendigo, what are you doing? Get out of there...before that thing takes your legs off." But something more than hunger was fueling him now. He was in need of a victory, of gratification, of young male ego vindication. The whole nine yards.
"Shush,” he said. “Just get its head pointed toward shore. Tight...keep the line tight."
There was precious little I could do to influence the fish, but by pulling on the line I at least kept its attention focused on its troubles while Ben slipped up close to it. A pause in the action stilled the night as the fish took time to catch its watery breath. The length of its scaly back protruded from the stream, and it occurred to me that this finny bundle of muscle with gaping jaws had earned its place here, as well as on life's family tree. It was a survivor, armored from tail to snout against failure and predatory pretenders.
Still, Ben, savvy woodsman, was hungry.
In the quiet of the moment Ben moved stealthily while I continued to apply pressure with the rod. He transferred his knife to his mouth, gripping it like a pirate boarding a ship, then took one more step and committed himself as he fell toward his quarry—like a cowboy coming off a horse onto the back of a steer.
The fish may have heard his last step, or maybe it was just tired of waiting, but it's big tail thrashed the water as Ben fell forward, causing him to land further back than he had planned. He was astride the creature, fighting to get a firm grip on anything rough. All he could manage was a slippery embrace as he wrapped his arms around its body and hung on, occasionally trying to lift it out of the water.
At that moment I became pure spectator, for the line had snapped and all I could do in my excitement was to prance up and down along the beach, rooting for Ben while he wrestled the fish in the mud and foam. "That's it, Ben!" I yelled. "Don't let it throw you!" And I must say, he performed as though he had ridden fish all his life, which was far from true. He might ride a horse if called upon, but he had never shown interest in the backs of other farm animals. Much less fish.
But this was as good as any rodeo I’d seen, and after the initial flourish when I thought Ben was getting the upper hand, his efforts took a different turn, directed more at staying in his own element rather than being pulled further into the fish's domain.
The fish rolled into deeper water and Ben rolled with it, and I think he sensed his chance was beginning to slip away. He came up spluttering, with muddy water draining from his mouth, the knife gone. He was tiring fast, but so was the fish. It rolled twice more, with Ben still aboard, then found its bearings and pointed its head toward the far shore and freedom. Its tail made slow but powerful swings through the water and Ben countered by hooking fingers in its gill slits and digging his heels into the sand. They remained locked in that position for a suspenseful time, fish below, brother above, each of them needing the same thing: the body of the fish.
The fish lunged forward a final time and Ben's hands slipped out of its gills, then found a grip around the small of its tail. I’m sure it was a strategy he wished he had used from the start. As he inched closer to shore I waded out and added additional pulling power.
It was over. The giant fish lay with its body on the sand and its head still below the brown water. Gills fanned as we pulled back again, and the head and jaws of a fishy nightmare emerged.
"Whew, look at that," Ben said, and I forgave myself for thinking it was an alligator. The jaws were narrow, but a foot long, and they were fully provisioned with rows of spiked teeth. "Alligator gar," Ben said. "Six feet of one mean fish. Wow! We did it, Ab, we sure as heck did it!" I don't think I'd ever seen him so happy.
Whatever meanness the fish possessed had been worked out, leaving only the will to live. Its grotesquely primitive body was magnificent, even in the light of a sliver of moon and an unenthusiastic fire. Perhaps even more so because of the mystery the darkness imparted. Ben was slathered in mud, his hair a sodden mass and plastered tight against his head. His chest still heaved as he fought for his own breath, but his hands never left that tail.
I was on my knees, drawn to the flesh of so bizarre a species. I had read about these fish, how they had out lived the dinosaurs, surviving almost unchanged for tens of millions of years. How many great, great, great grand forefathers did that make?
"Oh, man, this thing's incredible," I said.
"Pretty amazing, all right. Not like any fish I ever saw. I'll bet there's eighty pounds of good barbecue on this thing." The gar lay with the quiet inertness of the defeated, and Ben sighed deeply. "It's something. Could feed all of Peach Creek." He grew quiet again, and he gradually pushed the head and gills back into the water. "Probably tough, though, you know? Probably tough. Gotta wonder how old it is."
He had shot, trapped, or hooked about every kind of critter that could be found on our farm, and eaten them all, never voicing a regret. He felt a kinship with the mountain men, who used to say, "meat's meat". Ben was pretty focused when suppertime rolled around.
But as I watched him, sitting there in the mud astride his hard won prize, one of his hands left the tail and carefully stroked a scaly side. The fish quivered, almost the way a horse does to discourage flies.
"It's more like a dog, or a pig," he said.
"Yeah. Reminds me of Matilda." Then a heavy silence came down on the scene, and I felt like a spectator seated before an ancient stage. The tail moved, a tired muscular contraction that went back a hundred million years. A horned owl called from across the river and a leopard frog chirped. A raspy croak revealed a great blue heron as the forward edge of a cloud mass moved over the moon, winking its light on and off as the moisture thickened. The night was waiting.
Ben sighed deeply again and patted the fish on its back. He shook his head and said quietly, "You're the biggest fish I'll ever catch."
We sat in the darkness beside the gar, two kids lost in time, and found an unlikely kinship with something out of the distant past. "Not very hungry anymore," Ben said. "You?"
I just shook my head, and after a final caress Ben's hand loosened its grip on the fish's tail. It melted back into the river and the stirred mud as though it had all been a dream.
***
Dad's eyebrows arched up in twin V's when we paddled up to the take out bridge the next day. I still had a clean change of clothes from the night before, but Ben had only his 'fishing threads', as he came to call them. Red streaks cut a crosshatched maze across his face and hands, and the stream had been less than effective in removing the mud from his hair. His tattered clothes were still uniformly wet and they carried a distinctive piscator
ial aroma.
"For God's sake, Ben," Dad said, retreating, his nose testing the air. "What in the world you been fishing for, squid or shark?"
Ben backed off a little, and I could see how Dad's words had stung. "Just a fish, Dad." Dad's eyes shifted to me, my clothes clean and in good shape.
"That's not quite how I remember it," I said, unable to suppress a silly grin. "We were fishing for memories. Caught some dandies, too!"
****
By the way, that psychology paper did get written. Turns out Ben was right. We saw the same things and heard the same things, but in comparing our memories, I reckon Ben's recollections must have gotten all churned up with that fish. About half a turn of the eggbeater, I estimate.
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