Cedar Lake
An excerpt from my upcoming book by the same name
by Glenn B Miller
No hurry now I guess. I sure as fuck don’t want to go to no funeral or memorial or shit like that. Still… Cedar Lake is only a couple hundred miles from La Crosse… and the schedule afforded the time so he was out of excuses. Maybe I can give Bobby a hand with something. Yeah right: As if Bobby had ever accepted help from him doing anything.
Cale drove on in silence eventually turning on the CD player: CRR, “Long As I Can See The Light” was the very first song up. Even now Cale drug his feet still not wanting to come home too soon. Cale’s plan was to stop at Cedar Lake like when they were kids. He told himself he needed time to think even though he’d had nothing but time for a couple hundred miles. He stopped at a Walmart on the outskirts of town. That was new. That wasn’t here the last time, was it? Was Walmart even a thing back then? I sure as hell don’t remember seeing any. He bought a little rod like he’d used as a kid, some bobbers, hooks, lead weights with rubber in the middle so you could twist then onto the line, and… night crawlers. They were Cale’s bait of choice back in the day because they were so much easier for a little kid to get on a hook. As Cale got out his credit card, the check out girl looked around as though looking for Cale’s grandson standing behind him. The Old Man would have paid cash and he’d have sworn that fish are more likely to bite on plain old earthworms.
I think this might be the exact spot where I used to stand. Cale looked down at the muddy sand of the undercut bank as though expecting to see his childhood footprints. I stood right about here and The Old Man would be over by the tree. Then when Bobby came along, he’d be over there on The Old Man’s other side. I see why The Old Man set it up that way now. To The Old Man’s left was the inlet and the bank eased into the flow. Easier to haul Bobby out if he meandered in — which he did more than once. The Old Man never got mad at him once though I don’t think. If it was me, he’d have “boxed my ears” like he used to say. ”Hey Dad, it’s Cale. How are ya?” That last part was force of habit. Cale wasn’t practiced in talking to the dead. Nonetheless, he felt embarrassed for saying it and said nothing more for a long while.
A freight train rumbled onto the bridge where it crossed the inlet overhead behind Cale. How many times had Cale witnessed it before? The bridge had seemed rickety to Cale even back fifty years ago, but all that seemed changed In the intervening years was the addition of graffiti. Back then he could hardly concentrate when a train would go by because he liked trains almost as much as he did fishing. The sub-sonic rumble made the hair on the back of Cale’s neck stand on end just as it always had. Cale resisted the urge to wave at the engineer. After sneaking looks at the engines while rummaging around in the plastic Walmart sack that now served as Cale’s tackle box, he baited his own hook resisting the urge to turn around and watch the whole train. Doing so would have incurred the wrath of The Old Man. “Are you here to fish or watch the god damned train?” The ground under Cale’s feet vibrated as the train passed trumpeting its single sad, piercing note. The vibrations sent ripples across Cedar Lake disrupting the reflection of another Iowa summer’s sunset. “The more things change, the more they stay the same, huh Dad?” The difference was Cale now baited his own hook even if the act of doing so seemed a little strange and awkward to him. It had been decades since he’d last fished with a night crawler, hook, and bobber.
“Hey I’m sorry I didn’t get back to see you… to see you before you passed. But it’s been kind of a shitty year so far and I just couldn’t eat the entry fees ya know? That would just about sink me right now.” Cale cast placing the bobber right next to the sunken log without thinking about it… just as he’d planned without thinking about it. “Yeah, I know, I know: You never did want me going pro.” The life of a pro tournament fisherman wasn’t what most fathers considered a viable career path. “If it makes any difference to you, I finished in the money.” Just then, Cale saw the bobber start swimming away and slowly sinking. He set the hook hard: Just like he’d been taught.
I’ve been working on a story lately about a father who’s passed. The perspective is through the eyes of one son in particular. Here’s a scene from that story that I thought fitting on Father’s Day.
