The Current
A Short Story by Jess Slusher
It ate at him –that sense of emptiness. Funny, that a void could have such power. It followed him, lurking behind any pleasant moment and mocking boldly when the fog and grey of a bleak afternoon loomed oppressive. It was a persistent heaviness, this emptiness. It was a labor for his soul even to breathe, as if he had been torn from a native element, like a landed trout gasping on a grassy bank.
He was exhausted. Life had worn on him, frayed him. He felt so tired inside, felt like he could not please God, that no matter how hard he tried he was always swimming upstream. He had not read his Bible for months, had not prayed with any purpose for much longer. He felt like an absent student hopelessly behind and forgotten. He had become grouchy and sullen at times. His temper was short and his wife and kids sometimes walked on eggshells. He felt bad about that but he didn’t know what to do, who to talk to. Perhaps the peace of the stream would give him a respite from his life.
The pole tip was dripping with water. The line under his finger was taunt and every vibration felt through his finger tip. This line was alive because this stream was alive, alive with current and purpose and filled with trout. They were lean and hungry from an inactive winter but warming temperatures of an early spring were stirring the stream to life . The pole tip arced just slightly as he felt the tug of the gravelly bottom on the lead split shot. Following the shot was a single baited egg hook.
Maybe today… a little brook or a greedy brown trout. He had taken a brown once in this spot. Browns flashed gold when hooked and clung to the bottom, going deep if they could find a hole. And always, always they swallowed the hook so far he usually had to cut the line after he landed them. He had never lost a brown because a hook came out, but only when the line was snapped by a deep dive or a sudden thrust of a powerful tail. Often a brown found the rim of a ledge or root that frayed and severed the line.
Perhaps a rainbow…a rainbow would be nice, not muddy tasting like a brown. Rainbows did not inhale the bait, they nibbled. Often a hook had popped off the outside of a rainbow’s lip when he lifted the net underneath it. How they danced when hooked…danced across the top of the water in a mad frenzy. He once had hooked an aggressive rainbow that leapt out of the stream onto the bank only to slap itself back into the water with the rejected hook embedded in a little blade of grass.
This stream, so different from the slack pond he had fished in the day before.Never did he feel the vibration of his fishing line, only the weight dragging across the muddy bottom as he reeled in cast after futile cast. In contrast the expectation in this stream was so palatable he thought he could smell the fish. He had startled one as he approached the stream that afternoon, saw it race out from under the opposing bank. His shadow had startled it. But the sun on this warm spring day felt so good on his back he didn’t want to move but enjoy the warmth as his first cast stretched across the surface of the stream. There were more fish, more opportunities, he could feel it.
From upstream a splash and a ring on the water – they were active. A tree grew out over the pool where the ring expanded, eventually swallowed by the prevailing current.A bright male robin chased an opponent from the budding green canopy over the pool and a piece of dry grass, thatch for a robin’s nest, fell to the surface. He watched as it swirled in an eddy of the stream and then was captured by the current. The stream carried it quickly over the rise of an underwater ledge that formed the lip of the pool. Once the blade of grass was caught in that slide it quickly made its way toward him writhing with each rush and flow of the stream.
It was then that he saw it, the rise of a dorsal and the tip of a tail, a trout, a big one just at the edge of the pool under the sheltering tree. The pool was fed by a series of small cataracts that could dislodge a nymph or a dragon fly larvae. The trout had risen to take an insect fallen from the tree above. It lay, almost languid, blending with the stream except for the erratic ‘v’ carved in the water by its dorsal and tail.
He reeled in his line while walking slowly up the bank towards the pool. Just a comfortable cast length from the top of the pool would give him the room he needed to drop the bait across the path of his quarry. It occurred to him as he cautiously made his way that most people would not have observed the trout. It lay under a patchwork of tree shadow and undulating light. It was a skill he had developed solely from experience, from hours of casting and observation and understanding not so much the movement of trout but of water.
He stopped, kneeling on the bank to observe the fish who owned the edge of the pool. The fish was cherry picking; every insect that found itself dislodged by the current or fallen from the branches of the spreading tree above floated past its lair. After his cast the ‘red wiggler’, the tiny, active earthworm on his egg hook, would drift and bounce on the gravel of the stream directly into the path of the trout and it would strike. He could see it happen, as inevitable as the current itself. It was the nature of the fish and its environment. It played out in front of him, the arcing line of the cast, the drift and bounce as the tiny sinker tumbled with the current around the edge of the pool and then into the sight line of the predator. The striking fish would likely not break water since the bait was not floating but would hit with a tap and a powerful jerk that would cause the line to become taunt and snap out of the water, ejecting little beads from the stretched filament. It was in that moment, that split second that he would have to set the hook or risk losing his rainbow. He thought it was a rainbow. A brown would lay close under the ledge. This fish was surfing the lift of the current as it rose out of the pool. ‘Could be a brook but it appeared too large. Once the hook was set the pool would become anything but passive. The rainbow would break the surface, thrashing its body, sending a spray of water droplets from its tail. This would happen again and again. The trick was to keep pressure on the fish by keeping his line high and taunt. Were he to give the fish slack and allow it to maneuver under a tree branch he would most certainly lose it. “Keep his head up!” – an echo from his uncle who had taught him to fish.
Kneeling by the bank he laid his rod down. He looked again at that presence in the pool. His heart pounded, surging with anticipation. His hand was shaking. In another few minutes he would cast and the fish would be his. Yet it swam in the current unaware of the struggle for life it would soon encounter.
This stream was so familiar to him. As a boy he had fished its stretches every spring. The fragrance of wild mint growing along the bank, crushed under his heal, brought back scattered flashes of memory like light from the water. He remembered sleepy hours along the streams bank as he napped under a tree. He had wandered its reaches in fall when ducks were landing on an occasional open stretch. He had explored it a couple of times in the depth of winter but walking deep in snow had made it difficult to go far…and nothing was biting – the world of the stream, still and silent in winter. He knew the stream well, but was never bored with it for it was always new.
“He is like that…” This thought jolted him from his reverie. He turned to look around him. No one there. It had been almost audible. He listened closely now, the gurgling of the current as it spoke. “Hmm…,” he muttered to himself. The current whispered again, “He is like that…”
He lifted his attention back to the pool. It was still. The ‘v’ was gone. Maybe resting, that big fish. Maybe even sleeping in the warmth of the afternoon, as he wanted to do. So he did. Stretching out along the stream bank he put his cap over his face and slowly drifted off, almost floating on the plunge, froth and current of the stream. “He is like that,” it said and “You are known…” It was that final thought that he took deep, down deep like a brown trout as he sweetly sank in the current of sleep. His ravenous, beleaguered, empty soul inhaled what his mind rejected, a baited epiphany, gentle as the breath of a butterfly wing.
He awoke to the arguing of robins and a bug tickling the outside of his ear. He felt he had slept for a long time. His back was sore from the hard ground, but he was rested. He did not feel so tired…so tired inside. The ‘v’ had returned and was feasting under the tree. He watched the big fish rise twice over the course of a minute, the second time with attitude, tail thrashing the water, sending a message that it owned the pool.
“Hmmm…I’m gonna take you.” He baited the hook with a red wiggler and cast to the back of the pool. As he anticipated, the bait drifted with the current towards the trout, the sinker sending out its vibrations through the line as it tumbled across the gravel bottom, the red wiggler behind it. “ Come on, baby.” The worm came into the trout’s sight line. The ‘v’ disappeared. The line went slack…then stretched and tugged once. His hand trembled. It was all happening as knew it would. The trout had the worm now in its mouth… the second tug…and ….the line went tight. “Now!” In that moment he set the hook, his arm bringing the tip of the pole back sharply and the dance was on.
The trout leaped out of the water, thrashing against the line. It came out once, twice, ripping several feet of line from the reel as it darted to the back of the pool. But there was nowhere to go. The big fish headed down stream, running, stopping, tossing its head, leaping out of the water. His pole was arced with the weight of the fish and the violence of its struggle. “Maybe five or six pounds, this one.” His heart was racing as he tried to ease the drag. “Give him line, give him room.” It was a big male. He had seen the hooked lower jaw as it came out of the water. Its color was vibrant, it was ready to spawn and all the energy of Spring was in its struggle.
The trout swam up stream again, still strong, still fighting with fury. He turned with the fish as it went upstream keeping the pole tip up. Now it would exhaust quickly if he kept the line tight for it was not only fighting him but fighting the current as well. With one great effort it plunged ahead taking line off the reel as it made its way back to its lair in the sheltering pool.
Everything had become strangely silent, the pool and stream were witnesses to this battle for life. Even the robins were quiet. He could hear his heart beating. The fish lay there in the pool resting. He kept the line taunt and several times tried to reel but it was as if he was at a stand off with the big fish. He knew from experience it was close to played out, he would soon land it as it struggled again in the pool and then, giving up in exhaustion, would weakly fight and thrash as he pulled it downstream toward him and the net. He saw it all.
“You are known…” There it was again, that voice. And it occurred to him that it was referring to him. Was he ‘known’ like that trout was known? Was God baiting him, hooking him, fighting him, exhausting him? He suddenly felt sorry for the trout. What should have been the joy of triumph in winning the battle with this huge fish was like a picture of his life. He was the one who was played out. He had been baited by God, hooked by God and, after exhausting himself swimming upstream against the current, he was ready to give up. He was the fish, God was holding the pole. He was without strength. God was fighting against him. He was ‘known.’ It was a hopeless struggle against God and His will. “Who can resist His will?”
In a moment, when this thought struck him, the line went slack as the fish drifted out of the pool and toward the bank where he stood, floating downstream with the current. He kept his pole tip up, reeling in the weary fish as he grabbed his net off his hip and bent down toward the water. Suddenly the trout broke heading downstream with a final rush. The line flew off the reel as the fish caught him by surprise. Now it was going with the current and every foot of line the fish pulled off worked against the reel as it too caught the current. Forty yards below him the stream elbowed sharply, the current piling up water against the bank as it made its turn. Here the big trout gained advantage and used the current of the stream against its body like the wind against a sail. The fish may have weighed only six pounds but the force of the current joining and empowering it made it feel like sixty. The line whipped out of the water, taunt and straining, spraying droplets across the face of the stream from the synergy of fish and current and snapped…
“He is like that…”
In disgust at having lost the fish he reeled in his line, keeping it tight with his hand so it would not snarl his reel. He found himself smiling. “I thought I had that fish…I thought I knew that fish.”
“You are known…” That haunting thought suddenly had a new meaning. If he was the fish…then did that mean that God had lost him, couldn’t catch him? Was he beyond God’s reach? He stood on the edge of the bank looking at the current as it gurgled at his feet. He watched it flow with certainty past him and bend the earth as it elbowed down stream.
“He is like that…” The current! God is like the current This thought did not comfort him…yet. He packed up his gear and walked through the warm afternoon away from the bank of the stream.
“You are known.” It stopped him in mid-stride, this final voice from the stream. “You are like the fish. You are not made for the bank. You are made for the current.”
He turned again and looked at the stream, its current reflecting the afternoon sun, and went home.
