Jason and Elihu. Shelley Fraser Mickle
at it in awe.
Grampy Luke leaned over Jason to read the article to him. So on Grampy Luke’s deep, soft voice, Jason heard how, over the years, Florida bass were transplanted to California. There, in March of 2006, the most enormous bass anyone had ever seen had been caught. It weighed twenty-five pounds and one ounce. But it had not broken George Perry’s record, for the fisherman had been using a small white jig and a fifteen-pound test line. He’d been fishing in only about twelve feet of water that was clear enough for sight-fishing. The giant bass had been foul-hooked in the side, which was against state law. So the catch did not count.
Photo of Mike Wynn by Mac Weakley
Gainesville Sun Newspaper Photo, March, 2006, article by Tim Tucker.
Bill pointed and whispered, leaning close to Jason’s face. “Any bass that big is rare as looking at an eight-foot human!”
“Sure ’nough.” A man in overalls, sitting against the wall added. He stood up and came close to Jason. “A bass gains ’bout a pound a year, so old Elihu must be well over twenty-five by now. Something else, boy, you best know. Each time Elihu’s been hooked, the old bass has whispered a secret.”
“Secret?” Jason stared. He almost had to read the old man’s lips to understand the word; it seemed so out of place. How could any fish whisper a secret?
“Umhumm,” Bill added.
“Secret,” someone else echoed.
The whole room buzzed, Umhumm. Several shook their heads. Wally whispered, “Whoever touches Elihu learns the secret.”
Jason turned in a circle, looking at each one of them. He laughed. “Aw, you all are just teasin’ me. A fish can’t talk.”
No one said a word, but it was a talking-silence. Then the men laughed. But it was a mocking laugh, the kind that said Jason was the joke. Jason turned another circle, looking at each, “So, just who all’s caught Elihu?”
“Me, most lately.” A tall skinny man stood up from near a bait tank. He had a chin of scruffy brown whiskers. Bill introduced him as Skeeter Nelson.
When Skeeter Nelson spoke, his nose flared. He shivered. “Beware of Old Snout.” He looked deep into Jason’s eyes. “Soon as I hooked the giant bass, that gator come to bump the side of my boat. Going to flip me for sure. Old Snout raised his great mouth to show his teeth. And hissed. His foul breath went up my nose with the stink of rotted fish. That gator was licking its lips. It was eyeing the meaty part of my thigh. It was smelling its breakfast–me! I cut my line to Elihu quicker than you can say ‘Stink Bait.’ No fish is worth being Old Snout’s dish.”
Now, lying in bed at the Orange Lake Fish Camp, Jason pictured Elihu in his mind and knew they were bound to meet. They would most likely meet in just the way his daydream showed him. Only in real life, he would catch Elihu. The great fish would be his.
In the twin bed beside him, Grampy Luke snored. His breath went in and out in a little whistle. Jason threw back the covers and stood up.
Now that he was eleven he thought he ought to be much taller. Slow-growing his mother called him. She said he was like her brother, who ended up six-feet and did all his growing after he turned twenty. Jason sure hoped his mother was right.
His hair–the reddish-brown color of his father’s–was just about the color of a new pencil’s eraser. More than a dozen times he’d been called Eraser Head. Pipsqueak and Squirt, too. At least, those were some of the names. There were more.
He ran his tongue over his front teeth where they overlapped like an X. His bare feet padded on the wood floor. He put his hands on the windowsill and leaned against the screen.
The moon shimmered on the lake like a ruffling bed sheet. A shiver ran up him as, in distant water, a gator bellowed, “Haummmpppppph.” Glancing back at Grampy Luke, Jason could see that his grandfather’s mouth was open to the size of a quarter. Grampy Luke’s chest rose up and down with each whistling breath. His ring of silver hair spread out on the pillow like the fuzz on a dandelion. His grandfather’s sleeping face against the pillow sported wrinkles like brush strokes.
Whenever Jason was with Grampy Luke, he felt happy. But Jason did not really know Grampy Luke very well. Only recently Grampy Luke had moved down from Michigan to live near Jason and his mother. Jason never knew what Grampy Luke would do or say.
But he did know that if Grampy Luke hadn’t moved from Michigan, he, Jason, might be locked away in a back room at Mrs. Hasturn’s—that is, if she had anything to say about it. Mrs. Hasturn had gotten Jason into so much trouble, he didn’t know how to get out.
Then, his grandfather had come, saying, “We’re going to learn how to fish that great Orange Lake, my boy. We’re going to have a grand time. Mrs. Hasturn can’t own every Saturday of your life.” And when he’d said it, Grampy Luke’s voice sounded like the bold low notes on a saxophone.
Yet so far, Mrs. Hasturn did own every Saturday of Jason’s life, and now after a Friday night at the lake, he had to rush back home in the morning to be once again her prisoner.
He pushed the window screen open. The October night was warm. Florida seasons were like cousins, alike in warmth and the color of green. He leaned out, straining to see more clearly what was moving in the water.
Light poles threw a silver glow across the cove in front of the cabin. There, a big fish jumped. Whoosh! Its splash was like the beginning of a rain storm. It left a ring of ripples wider than a tractor tire.
“Elihu?”
The ripples disappeared. The surface of the water was once again smooth, like a dark dinner plate. Grampy Luke stirred under his blanket.
Tiptoeing back to bed, Jason thought, Well, if that had been Elihu, the great fish hadn’t bothered to introduce itself.
Silently he laughed, making up his own joke–for if any fish could talk, wouldn’t it surely be a largemouth bass?
He pulled up the covers. There was now only the buzzing of crickets and the galumph of frogs. And not one of them was giving away Elihu’s secret.
Jason closed his eyes. Again, he pulled up the dream on the inside of his eyelids. Tic, tic, tic, Elihu began nibbling.
He put his arms over the bedcovers to practice holding his rod tip up. Bam! He expertly set the hook. He braced his bare feet against the bottom of the bed, ready for the fight.
Elihu, Elihu. Yes, he would catch Elihu.
THREE
JASON’S SENTENCE
It was three weeks before on a Saturday when Jason became Mrs. Hasturn’s prisoner. It happened soon after Mrs. Hasturn’s husband died. Right after the funeral, Jason and his mom took a casserole to the Hasturns’ house. It was right next door.
Out on the porch Jason’s mom said, “When we take this in, tell Mrs. Hasturn we’re so very sorry for her loss. Can you remember that, Jason?” His mom’s short, dark hair curled around her face like feathers. Her eyes were the color of a pecan, and they often held sadness the way a cup, left out in the yard, might overflow with rainwater.
Jason nodded. “Yes.”
“And she’s going to be living all alone now. It’s going to be very hard for her, so we’ll offer to help any way we can, right?” His mother’s voice almost hiccupped on her last word.
“Sure.”