The Fisherman

by John Langan

fishing was no miracle cure but, on balance, I guess it did save my life.

It wasn’t until I was back at my spot on the side of Springvale, Yankees cap on my head, rod in my hands, trying something new, a green and white jitterbug lure, that I felt myself unclench, like a fist you’ve been making so long your fingers have forgotten they ever knew how to stretch, and then, all at once, your hand opens. From talking to people at work, comparing notes, I’ve learned that not many men or women feel this way, this passion so strong you can completely relax in it, about much of anything.

What do you say?” Dan’s scowl wavered, then dissipated. “What the hell,” he said. “Why not?” And that was how Dan Drescher and I started fishing together.

“She told me she understood me and my redneck ways a whole hell of a lot better, now.”

Overhead, the sky was pure blue, the sun dazzling. Despite the sunlight, the trees across from me—not only the spaces between them, but the trees themselves—were dark, not simply in shadow, but truly dark, as if they’d been shaped out of night itself.

You may kick folks up and down your front walk; you may maneuver them out of their businesses, land, and homes; but if you show up in church and contribute generously to the collection plate, it helps to mollify public opinion some.

Outside her sister’s radius, Clara is relaxed, forgiving, and even funny.

“What does a minister know about any of this? They spend all their days worrying about who might be thinking impure thoughts—who might be thinking at all.

“Why is he fishing here?” “The water runs deep.”

“It is as it is underground,” Rainer says, “as if the world is as flat as men once believed it to be and it is floating on the dark ocean. In places, the earth is thinner, the distance to the ocean not so great.”

God, but I love that first cast. You pinch the line to the rod, open the bail, lift the rod over your head, and snap your wrist, releasing the line as you do.

There was hope, a suggestive passage in what might have been Greek, beneath a woodcut of a fanciful sea-serpent, sporting amidst stylized waves.

the same evidence can lead to diametrically opposed conclusions, depending on who’s reviewing it.

They had, I fancied, my mother’s nose.