12 minute read
WELL DONE! Fiction - Pop’s Boat by Michael Spake
Pop’s Boat by Michael Spake
The oppressive heat of the South Carolina summer holds everything still except the Ford Taurus station wagon Pop steers with his sun-blotched hands and the green fiberglass boat he hauls behind it. Pop, the only one in our family who knows the backroads of the Santee coast. He directs my attention to each landmark and its history along the unmarked curving roads. I only see the clouds of red dust as he stirs up from the dirt road.
Pop, pure as a packet of Dixie Crystals, and full of life. He carries a gentle but determined work ethic. Frugal, he always makes do. A Clemson man committed to improving the world, he never hesitates to sacrifice for others.
As he drives, I listen to Pop's drawl. He reminds me of the techniques of trolling for flounder. “If you’re not bumping the bottom, you’re not fishing.” For me, it is not that simple. I have fished with Pop for three years. Unlike other family members, I have never caught a flounder. Each year my family reminds me, “Pop is getting old. This will probably be the last year he brings the boat. It is just too much for him.”
I feel troubled, almost desperate. The clock of life can only be wound only once.
We pass New Beginnings Gospel Church, and Pop turns the car. Down the dusty road between a divide of trees, I recognize signs of our destination.
Old, rusted Cadillacs rest in the woods. Mother Nature’s moist coastal salt air slowly disintegrates each car. Creeping Kudzu vines cover the remains. Each Cadillac emblem stands like a headstone for the marled skeletal car corpses.
Rotted boats also sit in the woods, tipped on their sides like decaying animals. Hosts of palmetto bugs, termites, and silverfish devour each carcass.
The remnants of a 1950s Coke machine lean against a tree. Its doors removed, showing its rusted “portholes” that no longer hold glass bottles, 10¢.
Pop reminds me the property owner lives in the woods. He owns the bait shop at the end of the road. I see his rundown rusted, double-wide, partially covered by green algae where the sun peers its rays through the forest clearing. No signs of life exist except the trash and debris left outside the crumbling front door.
The property owner has a girlfriend. She lives in a different trailer in the woods on the opposite side of the road. She keeps cinnamon buns and bags of dog kibble in the trunk of the Cadillacs, which she feeds the many hound dogs that roam the woods and live as strays around the bait shop.
Pop continues down the road. I hear the incessant baying of the hounds. Their yodel, not the heroic baying calls of regal English Foxhounds on a fox hunt. Instead, the savage cries of South Carolina Coon Hounds. Their baying announces we are near the water’s edge.
The car bumps onto the dusty black asphalt parking lot of Mann’s Boat Yard. I look back. The small fiberglass hull with its seven-horsepower outboard motor glistens in the sun. I see the patchwork layers of raised fiberglass splinters where generations of hands have balanced in and out of the boat. The boat leaks. By the end of the day, more minnows will swim in the bottom of the boat than in the bucket holding them.
I step out of the car. The humidity holds everything in heavy stillness. The dense, moist air allows only the ancient spiritual chorus of cicadas to break through its veil. I listen to their singing cacophony of prophecies until they are interrupted by three hounds surrounding me and thumping their wagging tails against the side of the car. They sniff out the graham crackers in my brown paper lunch bag. I oblige their relentless search. Each dog devours the honey-flavored treats. Then, content, they return to the shade of the large trucks. Their paws over their noses, they watch and wait for their next visitors.
A small-dilapidated wooden bait shop stands at the edge of the water. Its boards show rot and decay. Algae grow up the sides. The roof folds inward like a loaf of bread taken out of the oven too soon.
An aged woman sits in a rocking chair under the shop’s eve. Her gunmetal gray hair, fixed in a bun. It pulls her weathered worn face tight, giving her a strained look. She wears a bright pink polyester suit. It smells of stale alcohol and cigarettes. She cradles a shaking Chihuahua and frantically grooms it with her withered brown hands.
The woman does not acknowledge us. Her head nods in constant motion as if agreeing with sentiments no one else can hear, or perhaps she listens to the ruminations of her mind, mulling over a lifetime drawing to a close.
Inside, a haunting blind man sits in a torn recliner. His only company, a small black and white TV with fuzzy reception. The man shakes a handful of coins in his arthritic hands. An old captain’s hat covers his wispy white hair. A white beard covers his blue-grey skin, and his prominent crooked nose barely holds a pair of sunglasses that rest far enough down his nose you see his empty eyes.
The old man, the property owner. The woman, his girlfriend. Together, they are the only residents of the inlet. Local stories about them abound like folklore. They live in poverty.
Land developers offer millions of dollars for their inlet property. A simple “No thank you,” the old man’s only reply.
Inside the bait shop, a live well. Its churning waters, full of mud minnows, two dollars a dozen. Pop’s frugal nature stops him from buying mud minnows. Instead, he prides himself on trapping these bottom-dwelling creatures during the falling tide.
After a few minutes of browsing the assortment of tackle that fills the rest of the shop, Pop finds a minnow net. Without saying a word, the old man says, “Them are a dolla apiece.”
Pop reaches into the pocket of his stained khaki Dickie's. “How’s the fish’n been?”
“Doubt you will catch much,” responds the old blind man, “Too much water a’coming in, and it’s a’moving just a tad too fast.”
Pop thanks him and places a handful of the coins in the old man’s extended hand.
Outside, Pop backs the boat trailer to the water. I peer into the shallow water full of life. Minnows and small crabs surround my feet as if preparing to hoist me into the boat. I struggle to enter the boat and fall backward into the water. Baptized by the shore water, I worry this is a bad omen. Pop does not say a word. Instead, he quickly uses his hand to hide his grin.
Pop pilots the boat up and down the inlet waters of the Santee Inlet. We troll around the large banks of green marsh grass. We see white sleek bodied egrets and masked green herons searching for a meal as the falling tide slowly brings more shallow water.
We fish for hours in the same tidal creeks where Pop always finds flounder. I remember the pictures of all the cousins and Pop holding giant eighteen-inch flounders. We sit in the same water where they caught them.
The day, passing. The tide, falling. We approach an area where two inlet creeks intersect, forming a cross. I feel desperate again.
Trolling up and down the inlet rivers all morning while the scorching sun beats down on our necks, with no fish to show our efforts, begins to break my spirit. My hope and optimism, gone. This will be another unmet achievement.
Pop studies the flow of the water. “You see where those two creeks make a cross? There’s got to be some fish in there. Let’s try a fresh new minnow.”
A fresh minnow means the last minnow of the day.
I reach the small net into the minnow bucket. Both netted minnows wiggle out of the net and into the leaky boat. With enough water for them to swim in the boat, I give chase and eventually retrieve them and bait our hooks. We put in our lines, and Pop increases the motor to trolling speed as the fiberglass boat creeps against the current.
Pop begins reeling in his line as we move over the point where the two streams cross. He shows no excitement. “I only have a little trash on the end of my line.”
Ever so slowly, Pop reels until I notice the rod bending and the line tugging. Pop shows a slight grin. I wait and wonder if he is teasing me. Pop’s face turns bright as his grin grows wider. He gives a deep pull with his broad shoulders and makes the giant flounder appear at the top of the water. It is the largest I have ever seen, over two feet long and larger than the ones in the photographs that hang in Pop’s room back home.
I let out a giddy yell, “Bring it in!” as I hold the net in the water. Pop guides the fish into the net, and I need both hands to bring the fish up into the boat.
Pop unhooks the flounder and places it in the cooler. I listen to the flounder hit the sides of the cooler as it flips and flops. “That’s the most beautiful music in the world,” says Pop.
Together we listen until I feel the slightest tug on my line. I begin to reel my line, attempting to remain calm and steady. I worry. The day will be over once I retrieve whatever pulls my line, and it feels too small for a flounder. I will have to wait until next; if there is a next year.
My worry turns to nervous excitement when I see Pop reach for the net. I had hooked fish in previous years, but Pop never readied the net.
Pop bends over the boat and nets the fish. His football shoulders block my line of sight. I wait. Seconds seem like hours until Pop turns to me with an ear-to-ear grin holding a flounder, and says, “I am really proud of you.”
Pop’s words send me into a cloud of unknowing where I sense time standing still. I do not hear the boat motor or the sounds of the inlet. Everything, clear. I see only a brightness beyond light. I let go and feel nothing but love.
Pop brings me to reality when he says, “The tide is getting too low. We better start for home.” Then he says something unexpected. “Do you mind steering the boat?”
Over the many years of fishing with generations of family and friends, even before I was born, Pop never asked another person to steer his boat. I feel the significance of this moment and steer the small outboard motor toward home.
A passage into a new life.
*
The following year I return to the Santee inlet with my family. Everything, the same, except Pop. He died three months after our last fishing trip.
I bring Pop’s minnow traps, rigs, hooks, and boat. My children, too young to fish. One day they will join me. For now, I fish alone.
I arrive at Mann’s on the Santee coast. The smell of the marsh reminds me of how the waters are full of creation. I make my way through the excited hounds and into the bait shop. The same old man sits in the bait shop. I share the sad news that Pop has passed away. The old man only nods. The girlfriend sits on the front porch of the bait shop, still wearing a pink polyester suit and brushing the mangey hair of the same trembling chihuahua. She does not say a word.
This, a world that forever remains unchanged.
I ease the boat down the ramp and into the marsh. Out on the water, I attempt to troll my line while running the outboard motor. I use my left hand to operate the motor and my right hand to feel the gentle bump of my bait on the sandy bottom. Surprised, I steer the boat and can easily feel the bottom.
Within minutes I feel the tug of my first flounder. I pull it into the boat. Before placing the fish into the cooler, I admire its flattened, symmetrical body. Its olive-colored skin, liberally marked with dark and white blotches, makes a perfect camouflage for sitting on the sandy bottom—a beautiful fish, at least a foot and a half long. I grow confident and fish the entire afternoon.
At the end of the day, as the tide falls with the setting sun, I pull in my lines. Before turning the boat to the marina, I open the cooler and admire six flounder.
I pilot the boat to the marina and watch the sunset. Its majestic and endless orange glow stretches across the horizon. Once in the marina, I load the boat onto the trailer. Ready to leave, I look at the water one last time. The rich orange and purple tones fade into the horizon. Dusk descends, turning the water grey. The small waves gently splash.
I breathe in the marsh, its peace, and the remembrance of my transformation.
