Bookish | Fiction

The memories seem to be floating straight to me, as if born by the current to where I’m wading, and I can’t stop those memories any more than I can stop the river around me. Though I would give anything if I could make some of those memories fiction. Like Georgia...fucking Georgia. Man, what the hell was I doing? Sometimes I was a completely different person with him. Sometimes I was somebody I'd like to kick in the ribs. I shouldn't have even been in Georgia…

But I was in Georgia. For some reason, the road down is the first thing I remember. The route on I-40 East out of the piedmont is pretty nondescript as highway scenery goes - flat, bucolic and rows of tobacco and soybeans. It’s not a road you travel and get the feeling like you’re headed towards a potentially life changing day. You head down, this road to get somewhere other than where you were.

“You need to cheer up man. This is supposed to be a good time”. He was sitting where he was always sitting, right there at my right shoulder. We had about thirty beers on ice, and I could tell he was itching to pop the top on one, the sun inching up just past nine a.m..

“I just want to get on the water and find a tailing red,” I said.

“Fuck tailing reds, man. If that’s what this is about, you might as well leave me behind. ‘Cause it sure as shit isn’t what I’m after,” he replied.

Shaking my head a little I retorted, “What the hell are you talking about? I just need to figure some shit out. But I don’t need to figure out whether or not I want to catch a Georgia red”.

“First off, sure we’ll go catch a fish. I know you can’t get that close to water without putting a line in it, but listen, seriously.” With a perceptible lowering of his voice and sobering tone, I steel myself against the inevitable conversation about to start.

“You secretly hate your life. Hell, you didn’t even start fishing hard until you couldn’t stand being in your own home anymore”.

He didn’t say anything I haven’t thought before. But for some reason, hearing it that way, on that day, crushed me. My chest felt like I was in deep water. I needed to cinch down my wading belt over my jacket as tight as I could against the building pressure of the water on my body.

“You my fuckin’ therapist now? Fuck. Let’s just go fish,” I spat.

“We’re rolling. By the way, you said ‘Georgia red’, not just red. And you pulled off of 40 about thirty miles ago and we’re headed down 95. Where’re you taking us?”, he asked.

The SUV was now doing eighty-five, but looked to be standing still as it got passed by traffic. Yup. This is I-95. At some point a destination, geographical and emotional, had materialized in my head. I inched it up closer to ninety, and grabbed the tin of Skoal that was sitting in the dust on my dashboard. Pinning my knees against the wheel to keep us straight, I pinched the moist tobacco and transferred it to my lip. I had quit earlier and wouldn’t have had the tin around, except I don’t clean my car. I’d quit doing a lot of things earlier but hadn’t cleaned all the remnants out of the dust.

Still slightly bristling from the reality he had forced upon me, I took solace in snatching his bottled water from the cup holder and expelling a brown swirl into it.

“South” was the only answer I permitted him as I replaced the bottle. A sideways glance to see how he took this action revealed only a grin that alluded to an unspoken understanding.

“South” he repeated.

The next few hours were quieter and uneventful. The Allstars, Drag the River, and DBTs kept rotating in and out of the CD player until finally he reached over, killed the power to the radio and said realizing our destination “Savannah. Oh sweet Savannah.”

 We stretched our legs, ignoring the questioning looks on the valet’s face as he accepted the keys to an SUV with a boat on top and jam packed full of waterproof shit. . This place must get close to two hundred a night without advance reservations.

Peeling off a single to the disappointed valet, who wore what looked to my unrefined eyes the equivalent of a kimono, I picked up my day bag and headed inside to check in with the usual fabrication. “I’m with the federal fish hatchery at Warm Springs and need a place for one night so I can get some local water samples. Ya’ll got Federal Employee rates?”

Sixty seven dollars and five minutes later there was only one problem to be addressed, and since none of the dudes still outside the door were the one I shafted on the tip, it was directed to them. “Friend of mine said there’s an Irish pub here, said it kicks ass. Know where that would be?”


The next day, or maybe two days later, the drive back was quiet and miserable. Down all cash, all credit cards, and one computer, we couldn’t even buy ibuprofen or coffee. God knows which cards got left at which pubs, or what the fuck happened to the computer. In light of what I did know, I couldn’t give a shit less. I remember slinking into the room about an hour before check out. And I remember him laughing, pointing out that I had indeed gotten a tailing, freshwater Georgia red. Just landed her in a hot tub instead of the Atlantic.

Too bad we filled up when we got there. Otherwise there would have been a reasonable hope that we would have run out of gas and not been able to get home that day. 

Another tear rolls out from under my glasses and I am back on the river. The same cold, drowning water that filled his lungs, swirling about my legs, I am staring at his face again. I was back at the exact spot where he bobbed in the water. I know I left, went on downstream, but there I was looking in that face, one last time. And there he was, a slowly moving statue, submerged below the surface, his drowned smile mocking me… one last time. Without thinking, I collected the lanyard around his neck. I made that a few years ago from old fly line and several volcanic rocks given to me some years ago by a young Central American grad student in Nicaragua.

It felt like some sort of goodbye was necessary. As I struggled with it, my brother appeared on the bank above me. “Hey Bro! Time to get on the road if you want to get back in time for your daughter’s party!”

So I took a swig from the flask I always carried, poured the rest into the water, and simply turned away, finally in peace, content to do the right thing and get back home on time.

Back at the car, my brother noticed his absence, but kept his words indirect.

“It’s weird, huh?” he asked.

“What’s that?” I replied trying not to feel self-conscious.

He didn’t miss a beat while unlacing his wading boots, but gave recognition of my change, in the form of a knowing tone. It was easy, and good to be talking with a voice outside my head for a change.

“After I quit smoking up and cut back on the drink. I took my son for the first time to that spot. I got to that hole and stared into it for probably an hour and a half. The old timers used to say it is a place of rebirth.” He had been here before.

My brother continued, “Reflection hole. They say that you can see yourself from outside in that water; like you’re looking at somebody else. Whatever you see there …my advice is to let it go.”

I decided he was right, and the guy that drowned in that hole would stay there forever. He needed to be gone.