Caterwaul

Blogger's Note: You may wish to start this story from the beginning, with Cattywhompus and Catastrophy. But you already knew that, didn't you?

The morning after landing, carving and grilling Cattywhompus, the Old Man was something of a celebrity around the campground. He didn't act any differently: rose early, made coffee, ate a breakfast of thick pancakes, cooked apples, pepperjack cheese and maple syrup with fried catfish scraps on the side, and headed back down to the water to take his seat at the end of the off-kilter dock. I shuffled down a short while later, bleary and yawning.

"Why dinja wake me?" I asked.

"Did," he said. "'Bout an hour ago."

"Any luck?"

"Not yet."

I walked down the boardwalk to the houseboat to fetch my pole. When I turned to head back, I saw two kids on bikes, with fishing poles, standing at the shore end of Dad's dock, urging one another to speak up. Finally, one said, "Hey mister! Catchin' any?"

Dad shook his head, but didn't turn.

"Boy, that was some catfish!" said the other.

No response.

"Whatcha fishin' with, anyway?"

"Minnows."

The boys look at each other, grinning. One says, "Uncle Paul's got shiners!"

"Nah," says the Old Man. "Not shiners. Sucker minnows. Big ones. Can't get 'em around here."

It's true, I thought. We brought ours from home, because the Hardy bait shops didn't have them. We set up two old steel laundry sinks in the shade beside the camper with a bubbler to keep them alive.

The boys faces fell, and they whispered back and forth. Then they headed down toward me, past me, to an empty dock and began casting with tiny spoons. I hooked a sucker minnow and sat at the end of a dock across the cove from Dad.

Before long the boys were bickering back and forth about who cast too close to the other and why the fish weren't biting. They got more and more animated, then finally hopped on their bikes and pedaled away.

Across the cove, I see the Old Man's shoulders slowly unravel and relax. I notice one of them has left a fishing pole in the weeds along the boardwalk.

Half an hour later, Mom comes down, hooked a sucker minnow and tosses it into the cove. It makes a flat splash when it hits the water.

"Dangit!" snaps Mom. "Well, that probably killed it."

She peers at her bobber for a couple minutes as it rocked listlessly on the water. "Come on, little fella," she coaxes. "Wake up."

The Old Man exhales deeply and adjusted the tilt of his broad-brimmed hat. I watched the water bugs skate across the surface and try to stay quiet. A soft breeze and the hum of dragonflies are the only sounds.

"Hun!" calls Mom. "Do you think I should change minnows? I think I killed this one."

His grunt is noncommital. "What, hun?" calls Mom.

"Hafta check'm, I guess," he replies.

Mom reels in and holds her minnow up before her clip-on shades. It wiggles violently on the hook.

"Oh!" she says. "Go, baby!"

She throws bait, weight and bobber back into the pond. It splashes hard again.

"Oh for Pete's sake!" Mom shouts. "Well, I'm sure that did it."

After awhile, Mom heads to the camper to find Sinister and work on lunch. As she heads up the hill, the two boys bike back down the hill and up the boardwalk—buddup-buddup-buddup.

"See!" shouts the first, pointing to the pole in the grass. "Told ya!"

"It's not mine!"

"Sure it is! I saw you—you were using it this morning!"

"So? It's not my pole. It's Uncle Paul's."

"Well, you were using it, so you should bring it back up," says the first boy.

"He's your uncle, too," says the second, and speeds off.

"Hey, wait up!" shouts the other.

Next, four teenage boys come down the hill, poles in hand, joking and laughing. One, carrying a massive tackle box, gestures toward Dad. "Hey!" shouts another. "Whatcha catch?"

The Old Man doesn't say. "Catfish yesterday," I venture. "Big one."

They hadn't seen me across the cove and scowl. They weren't talking to me. "Anything today, mister?"

Dad shakes his head once. One boy elbows another, and they all laugh. Then each takes a dock, ties on the biggest crankbaits in their arsenal and engage it what appears to be a casting competition, throwing out as far as they can with a tremendous splash, then reeling in as fast as possible, and jawing one to the other.

"Daryl!" comes Mom's voice from the top of the hill. "Lunch!"

The Old Man reels in and folds his chair. "C'mon, Dogbreath," he says. Across the cove, the older boys laugh and laugh.

We eat longhorn burgers and macaroni salad. The Old Man eats quickly, stands, stretches, and says, "That dock's playin' hell with my back."

He walks to the truck, rummages through his massive tool box and emerges with a small sledge hammer.

"What are you going to do?" asks Mom.

"Fix that dock."

He heads down the hill as we finish lunch. Moments later we hear it: CLANK! CLANK! CLANK!

I run to the steps that head down to the docks. The teenagers are gone. The Old Man's boots and socks are on the boardwalk; he is up to his waist in water, beating on the high corner of the aluminum dock with the sledge, trying to unjam it.

CLANK! CLANK! CLANK! With each hammer strike, birds scatter, and the cove gets quieter and quieter. Mom appears beside me. "What's he thinking?" she says. "Won't that scare the fish?"

As we clear the table and wash dishes, we watch our fellow campers stop and stare at the Old Man beating on the dock below. Young and old alike, they shake their heads: "He's gonna kill the fishing. Gonna scare all the fish."

A bit later, he comes up the hill in dripping jeans and a half-soaked t-shirt. "There," he says.

"It's level?" I ask.

"Yup," he says, "It's floating again."

"But won't all that racket scare the fish away?" says Mom.

"Maybe," he says, "maybe not."

He puts his tools away and heads back down to the dock, unfolds his chair, and tosses a minnow into the pond. Not a bite, not a ripple, not a sound, either. The Old Man sits peacefully by the water in silence 'til sundown.