Photo by Suzanne Keating

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The New Student

Late one evening, I slipped Willie into a harness that held him at my chest and grabbed a spinning rod that rested across two nails on the wall. He was 7 weeks old. We had his passport and visa now. Soon we'd head back to Moscow.

We stepped outside. His tiny hands were balled to fists against my shirt. I hummed to keep him still. We stopped on the docks between the Polaris, a tug painted red, and the Suppan II, a dinner vessel that looked as if it might have plied the Mississippi a hundred years ago. The water was deeper here, and fish often suspended near the hulls. My rod dangled a small tin jig, a wafer-thin version of what Norwegians use for cod. I ran my thumb and index finger along the monofilament strand, checking for abrasions, then pulled steadily on the line. "The knot's okay," I said.

Willie watched everything and nothing, mesmerized. I ran the hook across my fingernail-sharp enough to catch.

Out flipped the jig. It hit the water with a plop like a dime tossed into a wishing pool. I watched it juke right, drop, and disappear. Four perch rushed the place where it passed, dorsal fins high. Then they dove. The line went limp. I knew what that meant: One had caught up with it. I snapped the rod back. It bent and stayed down. The fish made a few thumps as I reeled it toward the surface and swung it onto the dock.

"Look," I said. "Perch."

Willie's expression was unchanged. The fish meant nothing to him. I turned the hook out and dropped the fish into the basket.

When we left at 11 P.M., I was carrying a basket of 28 perch and Willie was asleep. I passed through the yard, climbed the creaking steps, dropped the fish into the sink, washed my hands, and placed the baby beside his mother.

The filleting began. It was a task so familiar that my age seemed to fall away. I was no longer a father of four. I was a child again, like my sons and daughter asleep in the other room. My sun-darkened hands worked automatically. My mind seemed empty, lost in the monotony of plenty, as if I were sorting fruit, as if time had stopped when I first started passing blades through fish more than three decades ago. Slice by slice, perch by perch, a ritual in a string of uncountable fish-cleaning sessions that blend together as one.

The Last Lesson

Two days before we were to leave, Suzanne made an early dinner and packed a bag of snacks. It was mid August. The first chill of autumn was in the air. By this time Jack and Mick had caught a few hundred perch, and we had packed away meat for winter meals. I hoped now for a graduation exercise. Our landlord, Robert, had given us permission to use his 14-foot boat. The three of us would try to catch a pike.

I had studied the chart, bought a pack of steel leaders, and explained the need for them to the boys. On one rod I snapped on a spoon; on the other a white plug with a red head. I cut the speed about a mile from the harbor and hung the plug over the side, working the throttle until it had just the right wobble. I cast it onto the surface beside the trailing wake and left the bail open. Coils of line left the spool as the boat pulled away. I closed the bail and handed the rod to Jack. "Hold the tip out," I said. "And hold on tight."

Jack flexed his body as if he expected to be yanked over the side. Then I cast out the spoon and handed the second rod to Mick. He nodded.

"A pike!" Mick shouted. Sure enough his rod was bouncing. He handed it to me, excited. The fish stopped fighting immediately. I reeled it close: a big perch.

We trolled on.

Anticipation drained out of the trip during the passing of an hour, and the boys rummaged in the cooler and found the snacks.

"Pay attention," I said. Too long without a strike-they were unconvinced.

We trolled around an island and turned south along the channel, zigging over its edge and then zagging over weed flats to its west. The Suppan II was heading out. It chugged down the channel. Dinner guests stood at its rail and waved. We had become scenery.
Jack's rod lunged hard. "Dad!" he shouted and tried to reel, but the fish was too heavy. He handed the rod to me. The fish came in thrashing, tried to dive under the boat, and then yielded, exhausted, and allowed itself to be led, mouth open, into the net.

"A pike!" Mick shouted. "A pike!"

I lifted it onto the boat. On the Suppan II, where the skipper had idled to watch, they were cheering.

I looked down at this creature in the net, white spots on pine green, its mouth gripping the balsa plug. It was only a 5-pound fish. But I understood what it meant. "We caught a pike!" Mick shouted. "A pike! A pike!"

A few minutes later the boat rose on plane in the golden light. We were headed back to the dock. Our season was over, and with it the first lessons of their fishing lives. The boys' short hair whipped about their foreheads as the boat skimmed along. None of us spoke. We were fishing partners now.