And Then, After All These Years, it
Happened.
HORSE-PIKE!
Okay. The important thing is Jeff was driving.
Jeff was driving, see? He's an excellent driver. Drives like the wind.
Navigates like Copernicus on methamphetamine. Rarely hits a big rock close
to the Abrams cabin-- an area he should know like the back of his
gland--scaring the shit out of his partners. Rarely! Almost never.
What? No. No. No! He didn't actually catch
the fish, but what the crap, man: he netted it. Are you even paying
attention? Drove, too! An excellent boat driver. And he navigates. That takes a robust skills-set... yeah, yeah; I'm about to tell the story. If
you'll let me, that is. Grab a Popsicle and chill, wouldja?
Okay. So. This is high excitement, 'cause Jeff
is driving, excellently, by the way, and he has a PLAN--as he always does!
Jeff's plans are to take the party to the East Bay. They've never been there and the host has told him there's good fishin to be had. It's still early in the week and he figures in his lucid, crystalline mind that it's a small trip that will orient him to his surroundings, staging his navigatorial excellence which would be revealed full-bore-like in a subsequent, longer trip to the storied English River Falls--fishing nirvana central.
Anyhoo, halfway to the bay, a storm blows in.
Not just any storm, either. It's one of those vicious, capricious summer
blows that resembles a rapidly approaching white shower curtain torn from
the bathroom of God himself. And God is pissed. Jeff can see it ripping down
the lake. He fears for the safety of his charges. A man of action, he
decides to tuck the boat in to the windward side of an island. "Windward" is
a nautical term, you see. Jeff knows that, though he confuses it with
"Leeward," and, especially after a few Labatt's Blues, uses the oppositional
terms as virtual synonyms, and does so with impunity. How does he get away
with it? Cause he's Jeff, damn it; and a damn good driver. Navigates, too.
Look at him.
Here's the twister: The blow comes through, but
it's not that bad. They spend a few minutes tucked in near what Jeff thinks
is Robinson's Island. Or is it Windy Jim's? Hell, he doesn't know. He's all
turned-around. Heck, let's face it: The guy's half in the bag.
As the storm blows over, Jeff consults his
besotted map, looks at the puppy-like expressions of expectation on his
buddies' faces, tosses the map on the boat floor, farts pointedly, and kicks
the Honda four-stroke into sinewy, silver-tongued action. Privately
disoriented, he turns them into a woody and weedy bay, wherein, he imagines,
he can right his mind/compass and continue their journey into the heart of
darkness.
[Production note] Time stands still in situations such as these; situations where all you've hoped for, all you've longed for, suddenly get boated. I'm talking horse-pike, my friends, and was it an hour, ten minutes, or a mere nanosecond that transpired from cast to catch? Who cares? It's horse-pike; big, fat, and surly, so read this knowing that time-or the illusion we perceive as "time- is but a rubber band soaked in bleach which stretches out and then busts, just like you knew it would, until knotted together once again in the cerebral folds of our collective memory. Heady prose, no? Hey: You wouldn't have a cigarette, wouldja?
So, It was like this: James is pitchin' his yellow fiver into a fairly wooded and heavily weeded patch of cover. There was maybe four feet of water. Suddenly, he encounters pull and Jeff is thinking "he should have gone weedless; the man clearly has a snag." Moments--or eons--later, Bob exclaims something unprintable. Followed by "Did you SEE him!!!?
He--it--comes to the boat, and everyone sees the
face of the enemy: fat, long, and very pissed. Northern, my friends.
Horse-pike. Drag is adjusted moments before he makes his inevitable run and
everyone is thinking that we may have seen the last of him as he rockets
away. Years later, after several powerful runs, Jeff grabs the net as Bob
gets footage of what could very well be the most heart-breakingly lost pike
of the team's collective career. They all think it. And they know
they all think it. And It is clear that the fish is longer than the net will
afford. Nevertheless, James guides the sea-serpent to the boat. In an
adrenaline swoop, Jeff nets James' trophy and barely manages to deposit his
pissed-off hulk in the boat's transom. Holy crap. There is a short flurry of
debate about whether or not to keep him, but James decides, magnanimously,
to let this 36 inch fat-boy grow to see life beyond the yard.
Jeff extracts the fiver from the fish's bloodied
lip-plate and hands it to the new Master Angler, Jimmy, the Snubber, Braun.
Pictures are taken, and, most touchingly and triumphantly, a movie is
recorded of The Giant's safe release. The boys watch in
near-religious transfixion as this awesome Canadian critter shakes himself
off and cruises back to resume his rightful position as "Pit Boss."
The monster-pike is embarrassed; shaken
undoubtedly, but the circle remains unbroken. Born Free. Free as the wind
blows. Kumbayya, my Lord, Kumbayya. That's
what it's all about.
Several cigarettes are smoked as the episode is
recounted, inflated and thoroughly cele-baited. Horse-pike. Got one. Holy
Crap. Eventually Jeff's blood pressure attains near
normal ratios and, relatively assured that they'll be stroke-free, the boys
fish on...
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