Trout Fishing With T.S.

(Short story; Published in Meat for Tea: The Valley Review)

The smoke vanishes into the trees on the shore as quickly as it emerges from the mouth of the smoker. Think about the allusions and references, and soon the smoke is no longer smoke, the shore no longer shore, and T.S. Eliot sits puffing a pipe on a rowboat, riding the wake of a 4-stroke skiff screaming across the water. His body bounces against the waves.

“Marie, Marie, hold on tight,” he says, but I am already listening to the sound of piss cascading on the Coors Light cans in the coffin-like urinal, stretching from the floor to my neck, and I’m writing my epitaph on the white porcelain, smiling and chuckling at the shivering Englishman on the lake.

I walk to the shore from the bathroom. I try to tie a fly to the end of my line, but I cannot ignore the sniveling Englishman surrounded by bass boats. T.S. Eliot in the flesh, frowning, and anxious, packing a pipe of Peterson’s finest cavendish and holding on tight to the dingy.

I use a blood knot, clinch knot, surgeon’s knot, double knot, and yet I cannot untangle the vision from the perception, the Eliot from the lake, the rowboat from the wakes.

“What do you want, T.S.?” I shout.

“I want to be remembered,” he says.

I double over my tackle on the shore, laughing and heaving most violently.

“Remembered? You are immortal,” I say.

“And yet you laugh at me.” He starts to row towards the shore, plumes of sweet, grey smoke billowing out of his mouth like a steam engine.

I give up on the fly, switching to a hook. I hear the fish are biting bait this morning. I hold a slick nightcrawler in my hand. I ram the hook through its slimy body. It recoils, sprawling and wriggling on the hook. It keeps escaping its inevitable impalement. The hook pierces through one side of its body, and I say that is good enough. I slide the body further up the hook till it covers the throat, shank, and eye. I flick the worm across the wavy lake, fixing my gaze again on the rowboat, bobbing helplessly against the elements.

“Do you want to try trolling, my young man carbuncular?” Eliot says. He is getting closer. This is real. “You might do better in this dreary weather.”

I set my rod in the holder that is staked deep into the bank. I think about the beers I keep in the cooler. At least if I did not catch a fish, I have a sixer waiting for me. The rowboat runs aground on the shore, the bow and bottom boards carving out the muddy ground. I crack a beer as the rigid man in club collar, vest, and tweed jacket soils his Florsheims in the hematite-rich sediment. I sip the foam in the early morning light streaming through thick cumulonimbus. T.S. Eliot is still puffing on his pipe, the bottom of his white flannel trousers rolled.

“I’ll take my chances fishing the bank,” I say.

A flash of lighting saturates the whole lake. The thunder follows shortly after, shaking the ground. The line on my reel goes buzzing. The rod tip buries under the weight of some great big fish. I drop my beer onto the sandy bank. I race to grab the rod. Eliot is giggling. His hands are clasped together in anticipation.

When the struggle is done, the fish lays twitching on the shore. Its slick body is wreathed with lake weeds red-brown. Blood runs down the side of its mouth. I take a seat on the shore. I massage my shoulder and look at the fish. Rainbow trout. I can see the body heaving, drowning in the open air. An osprey circles above me in the cloudy sky.

Eliot reaches for a rock at his feet.

“Do I dare?” he asks. He points to the twitching fish, gripping the jagged rock in his other hand.

“That’s no way to kill a fish, T.S.,” I say. I pull a pair of scissors from my pocket. I hand them to Eliot.

“You want me to stab it,” he says.

“The fastest way to kill a fish is to cut the gills. The fish will bleed out in seconds,” I say.

Eliot frowns. He bends over the fish, straddling it like a colossus, scissors in hand. One lonely fish eye stares at the Englishman—its greatness flickers into nothing and the color of the fish fades. It knows what will happen. There is no time for revision.