It’s the summer of 1999 and I’m sitting shotgun beside a man I’ve spent most of my life genuinely afraid of. Grampa isn’t much for conversation, at least with me, and I was far short of excited to learn that I’d be spending three days at a fishing camp in Rangeley, Maine with him. I’m going through with it because the alternative is listening to Mom’s ex-boyfriend crying in our garage as he tosses all the junk he’s filled our house with for the last five years. It’s all going into a dumpster in our driveway and it’s the sort of eyesore that draws neighborhood attention.
9/11 is still two years away and it’s the tail end of a decade that was nice to grow up in. Marcy Playground and Fastball are in my CD player, and they’re slowly getting scored by the laser that reads them. My ten-speed is my primary mode of transportation and I’m able to make my way around town easily enough, enjoying getting lost and trying to make sure I get home in time to claim it isn’t dark yet. It’s a pretty idyllic time bridging the gap between teenage youth and actual adult responsibility.
Why was I going on a fishing trip out of nowhere? Maybe Mom wanted to spare me the grief at the house, or maybe she wanted me to spend some time with the man, but I was having trouble reconciling the relationship I had with Grampa and the objective of the adventure. I’d spent most of my life passively avoiding a man that I was about to take a road trip with.
Fishing isn’t even on my radar at this point. Grampa tried to take me when I was younger but it didn’t take. Mostly, I think, because he expected a 6-year-old to be able to sit still for more than three minutes watching a bobber with a skewered, half-drowned worm on a hook. He ties flies with my uncle and they fish together, bitten by the fly fishing bug decades before. It’s their bonding element. Their special club.
Grampa purchased three-day licenses for us and bought a bunch of flies out of the glass-topped counter. “A Gray Ghost,” he pointed out to me; a name that had exactly zero meaning to me at this point. Our cabin faced the lower lake and I’m told that after the power is turned off I’ll have to flush the toilet with a bucket of water. I’m charmed by the simplicity and immediately wonder if there is a way to spend the rest of my life like this. Just disappear and never be heard from again.
Lakewood Camps is place out of time and there are no real roads to get there; somewhere between Kinnebunk-Nowhere and the third moose on the left; the sort of place where they say things like “A’yuh,” or “Ya cahn’t get there from hea.” He calls the lodge from a gas station pay phone to tell them we were twenty miles away and continue on passing buck-shot-riddled yield signs and endless evergreen forests. A retired Maine Game Warden picked us up at the dock and brought us down the length of the Richardson Lakes on a boat to a place called Middle Dam. At 10 p.m. they shut down the power to discourage the sort of loud booze-hounding and substance abuse I’d be doing with fishing buddies a decade later. You didn’t go up there for that.
We started out just below the dam on what’s known as the Rapid River. I received a short lesson in fly casting and could sense the frustration in his tone as he guided me, neglecting his own rod to make sure I was getting the most out of the trip. I didn’t have much in the way of luck, but Grampa’s tone is such that I want to do well in his eyes. I hate to disappoint people, and he is someone I’m genuinely afraid of, so my motivation is peaked.
We move down the river over the next few hours, rock-hopping from boulder to boulder, trying to keep my back cast out of the trees that line the bank behind us. With his trained eye he manages to spot a fish holding on the downstream side of a boulder on the opposite bank. It takes a few attempts, but I manage to drop the Gray Ghost just upstream of the boulder and let it sweep around, pulling slack out of the line just like Grampa told me. The line goes tight and I look on in horror as the rod bends and I feel the line slip back through my fingers.
“Easy,” he breathes. “Keep the pressure on him and gently pull him in on the line.” I do exactly as he says, almost fearing that the net he’s lowering into the water might get swung on me if I lose this fish connected to me through a few feet of line, feathers, and a barbless hook. In one of those wonders of parenthood, he manages to get the fish to slip effortlessly into the net like I knew what the heck I was doing. I take hold of the net and he’s snapping pictures on his SLR and he’s coaching me on the way to lift the rainbow out of the net to get the hero shot. This is easily the biggest fish I’ve ever caught (which isn’t saying much), dwarfing the bluegills I’d spin cast for in the ponds of my childhood. It kicks and squirms out of my hands before I can turn, splashing into the cold water.
I expect a burn. I’m waiting for the cutting remark of failure I’d learned to associate with a man who grew up bitter and angry at the world for the hand that it had dealt him. Turning shamefully to look in his direction I see his smile, the one my daughter will have in another couple decades. “Very good,” he says. I’m relieved. I’ve passed some kind of test and I feel like I’ve done something that counts in his eyes. My feet, encased in hip waders, are dangling in the river and I can feel the cool pull of the water against my ankles. I look at the rod in my hand feeling the weight and the balance with the reel. I’m in the club now.
Later that night the power is shut off as promised, but we’re sitting out in rocking chairs on the front porch of our cabin. The air is cool despite it being August and I’m glad to be wearing the sweatshirt that Gram told me to pack. Our rods are hung up on pegs behind us for easy access in the morning. Between us there is a pair of glasses and a bit of ice marinating in Jim Beam – working-class bourbon and his preferred brand. It’s something I’ve come to associate with him now and there is always a bottle in my own liquor cabinet today. It’s Jim Beam, Gray Ghosts, Brut aftershave, and the Masons that tie me to Grampa.
The layers that make up the man seem to fall away in the midst of this bull session. I realize there is much more to Grampa than I could have understood from my vantage point. He’d been intimidating in my eyes for years, but now he was different. He seemed a whole person, a human, and I was starting to understand him. He puts his glass down after a thoughtful pull and leans back in his rocking chair looking out on the still lake reflecting the stars in the heavens.
“This…” he says with a sigh, and I get it.
James Windale is the author of Twenty-Five at the Lip, Just Say Maybe, and The Delirium, A Zombie Opera of the Great War. Follow him on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter
James Windale 