Half-a-Mile From the Bridge

This is the day

Jack Bacon

introduces his son, Jackie,

and me, the neighbor boy,

to the trinity

of rod, river and trout

…out of the driveway

in the dark

all three of us smelling

of dreams;

the trip to the Rahway River

a mere twenty-minutes

but in the moonless morning

far longer

--a voyage across the Milky Way

into the realm of Orion,

as I doze in the back seat

leaning against Jackie

leaning against me.

A smear of light in the low Jersey sky

just above the tree tops

…we reach the bridge

over the Rahway,

follow Jack

single file

down the slope

to the river’s edge

where tree-tall men in hats and jackets

stand side by side,

the water visible only

in glimpses

between

heavy-denimed trunks.

Jack is our leader

and we are his boys.

He carries the gear.

We carry visions of arched rods

and water giving up its secrets,

visions that sustain us

walking by the

shoulder-to-shoulder giants

who cover every bump and dip of the bank

…Jack’s boys,

hungry to throw worms in water

to trick what he calls

“the wily trout”

…but he keeps walking

and we keep following

until the men thin out

and then

there are no more

between us and the river,

no human forms

or sounds at all,

only what Jack calls “true voices”

--water talking with rocks in its throat,

and wind with branches

and the squirrel with his cheeks full, chittering.

And now,

beside a dark

broad

quiet

pool

he places an upright finger before his lips

and motions with his hand for us to sit

and be still,

sit and be very still,

just as he has taught us the day before

and the day before that,

every day for a week.

Jack Bacon is our man

and we are his boys,

watching as if there’s nothing else on earth

but his thick fingers sifting through

the worm can

to lift out with index and thumb

a fat juicy night crawler that will,

he has assured us, dance on a hook

and curdle the brains of those fish

…thick fingers

the way we hope ours to be when

the distant voices of our own manhood

chase the birds from our throats,

hope on that day we too can find

in one quick sift

the best worm in the can

and hook him three times

so the line of his loop will be too beautiful

for the toughest old trout to resist.

Jack’s words are few and barely spoken

but the favorite is “beauty”

and at seven, I know how to spell

but every time Jack speaks that word

I see b-y-o-o-o-d-i-e in my head.

Three byooodies masterfully looped on hooks

cast to the other side of the pool

gently drawn into the depths.

All we can hear above the sweep of water

is Jack’s breath moving in and out

as he keeps a finger on the line,

studies it out there where it disappears

…we do the same,

hoping to know as Jack does

what is water nibbling

and what the mouth of a fish.

The silence is big

but doesn’t last long

because those loopy night crawlers do their jobs.

The fish go right out of their minds

and into our hands

dancing from dark water

--brookies, browns and rainbows--

their brilliant little brains

overcome.

Jack says, “Byooodie,”

and Jackie says, “Byooodie,”

and I say, “Byooodie”

over and over again.

A single word never felt so good

shooting from the lip.

We get to do a lot of

byooodie-shooting

this morning.

Jack is our man.

We are his boys

as we learn

to not just toss the fish in our creels.

No, he tells us a real man doesn’t want animals to hurt

and shows us the two-fingered

neck-snap

that takes them from misery and fear

in only a second.

Jackie and I study their eyes and actually

see the life shiver and swim

out of them

straight on up to the rivers of heaven.

Time

has been snagged

somewhere on an old log

back upstream

near the tree-tall men

until Jack Bacon whispers, “We’ve got our limit.”

Jackie and I are stunned

to be dropped so suddenly

back into the ticking world.

In silence

we tear open brown paper bags

and chomp down baloney

and peanut butter and jelly,

wiping our mouths

with the backs of our hands like Jack.

We gaze at the river

where it disappears around a bend,

wondering what secrets hold their mouths shut

down there

…yet, we stay silent

as Jack rises with his deep eyes on us

letting us know it’s time to go,

silent still

as we begin the journey back up stream.

Jack Bacon is our man

and we are his boys

--taller than when we got here

what seems like a week ago now

before the secrets came out

and the wisdom came in.

We pass the same few men,

then more and more,

hearing them curse the hatchery

for not putting enough fish in the river,

…still silent

as we stride up the final slope to the car

and get in with our heavy creels.

Then and only then, Jack speaks.

“You boys remember this.

Most of these fishermen are too damn lazy

to walk more than half-a-mile from the bridge.

It’s the same on every trout stream.

It’s the same in life.

So you remember. You remember to keep going

till they thin out and you find your own place.

That’s where the fish will be.

That’s where there’s treasure.”

This is the day Jack Bacon

is our priest

and Jackie and I his devoted,

leaning against each other

in the back seat

dreaming in the humming car

dreaming of the humming stars

across the realm of Orion

homeward…

homeward…to manhood.
C 2007 Bob Kamm