Garfish

“You girls want Daddy

to catch that big old sh for you?” I joke. We are on a high ledge over a clear creek where the current over the centuries has cut a deep channel through a hammock in the oodplain, a ditch too wide to jump across. Beneath us the torpedo shape of a vefoot gar sh lies suspended in the turquois water, its toothy bill nearly a quarter of its length.

“Oh yes, Daddy. Catch it! Catch it!” squeals Maisy. Mary Catherine, in the third grade, is dubious. She rolls her eyes.

It’s my day to play with the girls—Daddy’s Day, a day outside. We’ve come downriver in my johnboat with the new Boykin puppy to Little Dent, a spring fed creek deep in riparian wetlands. We’ve secured the johnboat where veins of clear water trickle into the honey-colored Flint River south of Albany, Ga.

We peer over the high bank at this prehistoric creature immobile in nearly stagnant water. I know it’s a she because females are larger. I’ve caught gar nearly her size with a piano wire noose and saltwater tackle, smaller ones on a y rod with unraveled strands of nylon that tangle in double rows of razor-sharp teeth, but this is the largest longnose gar I’ve ever seen.

Of course, I have no intentions of actually trying to catch this gar sh even if I had the means to do it. is is my rst outing since a heart attack and coronary bypass operation. I’m taking it easy. An allergy to catheter dye brie y stopped my clock during the angiogram. Fully conscious I’d watched the snake-like catheter enter through the aorta and spit a dark cloud of fatal dye into the chambers of my heart. I watched the monitor atline, saw myself die. From outside my body I watched the doctor and nurses working to bring me back, saw the infamous tunnel of bright light. e cardiologist revived me with a shot of adrenaline into my heart. I spent a month in the hospital while my immune

By O. Victor Miller

system was tampered with and a second catheter and bypass were performed. I’m glad to be out of the hospital, weak but elated to be alive and spending a precious afternoon with my children, taking them to this spring, a swimming hole I’d bathed in during my own childhood.

Resurrecting has intensi ed my appreciation of life and natural beauty. ese wetlands glimmer with a splendor unnoticed before. Wild plum and snowy dogwood blossoms oat like confetti against the green gold of new growth beneath the open canopy with rashes of redbud and golden ligrees of Carolina jasmine. e early spring air is fresh and ne. A breeze sizzles through last year’s brown hickory leaves, swaying nappy beards of Spanish moss. A second chance has made me playful. I’m willing to take my time, to enjoy lucky glimpses of the natural world through the unjaded eyes of my children. is is an enchanted forest, where all things are believable, where wood nymphs haunt the deep shadows of the old growth swamp. Where the wide base cypress trees are giant stalks of celery. Where spiders spin webs of purest gold.

I shush the girls. “You have to be very quiet to catch a gar sh,” I whisper. I ease with exaggerated tiptoes down to the water’s edge, well behind the immobile sh. e bank is edged with cypress knees, the mud laced with raccoon tracks. I don’t bother to remove the dog whistle from around my neck or empty my pockets. I slide into the cold spring water up to my chest, sneaking slowly toward a living fossil that hasn’t changed in more than 150 million years. I’ll stalk as close as I can without spooking her. When she bolts upstream, I’ll yell and splash, pretending that I have the gar sh or the gar sh has me. e girls peek over the ledge. Maisy’s dimpled ngers seal her lips. Mary Catherine, a grown woman at eight, hangs on one hip pretending boredom. I inch closer. My pretended quarry lies about a foot beneath the water and about a yard o shore.

Gar sh can sip air from the surface, supplementing oxygen with modi ed swim bladders that gave rise to the rst lungs. ey’ll op for hours on the bank before they die. e esh is edible, even delicious if the sh is taken in healthy water, but they can tolerate polluted water depleted of oxygen. Gar sh can live in a ird World sewer. eir roe is poisonous to humans. e ganoid, diamond shaped scales, harder than teeth, don’t overlap but t together like enamel tiles. Native Americans used them for arrowheads, the armored hide for shields. I saw one thrown to the hogs once. It sounded like they were chewing up a windshield.

I take my time sneaking up on the gar sh, dragging out the suspense for the girls. I’m surprised how close I manage to get. Is she asleep? I reach for the sculling tail, actually touching it before the startled sh bolts in a quick circle, turning on me, charging not upstream as I predicted but into my face. Her head rides across my shoulder, bowling me over backwards underwater. My arms instinctively wrap around her long hard body, her armored head drubbing my shoulder. We splash to the surface and I regain my footing. e side of her head cracks against my temple. I nuzzle her against my neck, her beak wagging behind my head. I hug the struggling sh to my chest, afraid of holding on and more afraid of turning loose. We waltz in circles, churning the water white. I’m not up to this. I’m out of shape; I’ve been on my back in the hospital too long. I nally manage to tuck the slashing body under one arm, aiming the long snout toward the bank. “Get him, Daddy!” Maisy cries. “Get him!”

Yanking the whistle lanyard from my neck with my free hand, I wrap it quickly around her gills, pulling the whistle through the open loop forming a noose. en I manage to heave her up above the water and hook the lanyard on a cypress knee. Her head bound, she struggles and splashes in place.

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I crawl halfway up the bank, sucking air in ragged breaths, leaving the gar to wear herself down. e e ort has strained the new sutures in my chest. Angina pools in my jaw, shoots down my arm. Gasping, I lie still for a while, like the gar sh half in and half out of the water. My mended heart throbs and my chest aches. I dig into my pocket for the little glass bottle of nitroglycerine tablets. I fumble one out and place it under my tongue. I’m exhausted, but the gar sh continues to swim in place against the cypress knee. e pain in my jaw slowly subsides. I curse myself for hubris. How utterly stupid and careless I’ve been. What if I’d had another heart attack? What would happen to my children? Not even their mother knows we are here. What was I thinking? Boy, am I dumb. e puppy comes down to the water’s edge to lick my face. Dumb!

It could be argued, I suppose, that the sh, cut o from open water, hadn’t actually attacked but had merely tried to return to the river and I was in the way, but it sure seemed like an attack to me. You couldn’t convince me otherwise with an ichthyologist and a stack of bibles. Besides, an attack makes for a better sh story, in which embellishment is pardonable, if not preferred.

We leave the gar sh bound to the cypress knee, its head out of water, its long body swimming slowly but steadily in place. We follow the trail along the edge of the creek to the headwater spring, a clear pool rimmed in duckweed and bright green algae. Mossy fossil rocks are stacked where the pool over ows, the water pouring through the rocks in silver ribbons. A little water snake pushes tiny ripples across the water. It slithers up the bank and disappears into the rocks and maidenhair ferns. We sit on the bank above the deep blue crater and the indigo cave, the underground source of the artesian spring. e girls discover a vein of kaolin under the bank. Squealing, they slather the white clay on themselves, on each other and me. Before long they’ll be immune to the joy of getting dirty, lost to womanhood. We lower ourselves into the chilly pool, splash and wipe the clay o each other as the clear blue water turns white as milk.

We return single le in wet bathing suits along the high bank above a beaver dam. Me rst, then Mary Catherine. Maisy hurries along on stubby legs. We come upon a golden orb spider as large as a child’s hand. A honeybee bumbles in a quivering web of golden silk. e girls haven’t developed a

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