Steven Rodas
The fish would desperately gasp in an old paint canister that had been given a rinse and fashioned into a pail for my dad’s catch. Eyes widespread, I looked at their jaws; their tiny lips opened and closed. Sometimes, when he wasn’t looking, I grabbed one and quickly plunged it into the water.
He always knew when to check each of the fishing poles. He confidently drew in each line, white arms cut and coated with moles. I sat back and gazed at his prowess. I hoped the next blue would be bigger. A popular game fish, bluefish—or blues as the men that frequented Lionel Park in Hughesville, New Jersey referred to them—were common around that time of year. Subtle in appearance, coated in white and blue, they shimmered like a pair of washed-out jeans. A small fin rested on each side and perched, tiny faces gave the inflection of grumpy old men. When you caught one, it didn’t feel very rewarding, like reeling in a Hammerhead or hoisting up a King Crab in a trap, but after a dozen, that feeling was there.
Rain cascaded down in brazen force and it was ill advised to visit Lionel in such weather.
“WARNING: HEAVY RAIN MAKES FOR HAZARDOUS CONDITIONS,” read a sign planted at the park’s gates.
My father had the demeanor of a bull. A New York Yankees cap sat on his head, hiding a receding hairline and pear-shaped scar near his left temple. A white-tank top wrapped around his beer-belly and exposed his arms. Loose-fitting camouflage pants reached down his legs and covered the tops of his rugged boots. Lines ran across his forehead, like the roads that he spent years traversing throughout his life as a trucker. The only defined feature on his face was his nose, which sat above a shaggy brown moustache.
Sometimes, the hook latched onto their gills, spurting blood out onto their bare backs and my father’s hands. When this happened, he would sigh, put the fish in the canister next to me, and then hook another earthworm before launching the line some twenty yards. Five poles would be hammered into the ground.
The fisherman’s “spot” had no special qualities but was theirs nonetheless. It ran down the west coast of a grouping of bungalows that served as restrooms and half-strewn paulownia trees. Fog set in as the rain pressed on, joined by heavy gusts.
At times, one of the poles would bend, almost in half, and I’d squint, anticipating a snap. I’d point, and my father would smirk and let the line be. Within minutes, it would bend back to its original arch, and my squinted face would reconfigure just the same.
My boyish frame was crouched, as not to disturb the graveled ocean below me, with hairs of brown grass that poked out and tickled my ankles. Doll-like, I stood by my father’s side, I was not masculine in nature nor did I pretend to be. Lanky arms hung at my sides. Hairless legs exposed. I sported a bright beige rain jacket.
The leg-openings of my trousers were chewed up, which played nicely in conjecture with the litter-filled rocks. They produced a canvas of disorder: candy wrappers, rusty salt-water lures, and pieces of tire rubber.
Soon, I was lost in simply observing. After he poured water on his callused hands, my father grabbed the handkerchief from his waistcoat and rubbed it against the prickly hairs rising from his cheeks. The earthworms wiggled. My father pinched the closest one before he drove the hook into one end, pushed all limits of the skin, and drove the hook out the other. The reel swung the hook eastward with the wind, and my father held back the poll in hand like an ax, then lunged an almighty thrust unto the line to travel far off into the hidden sea.
His makeshift medical station was sprawled over a large rock. It consisted of a miniscule scalpel, butcher knife, grade, tongs, a box of Kleenex, and a Sunny Delight jug filled with water. He grabbed one of the petrified fish from the bucket next to me. When all life had left it, dry from asphyxiation, he rubbed a metal grade against its breast, stuck each thumb into the open gills and made dead skin flake upon the rocks and latch between the hairs on his arms and legs. When six of the fish were naked and skinless, he revisited the first.
By then, my father dripped with sweat. He wet his hair with saltwater before he poured it over the fish, sure to wash away any skin that remained. Then, he took a small knife and ran it from the orifice to where the fin ended and briefly stopped at the anus. He made sure to drench away the fecal matter; he achieved this with water and tiny jabs. Finally, a clean cut allowed him to fully outstretch the small carcass. This freed the stomach and small pouch of intestines that he ripped out all at once, leaving streaks of bloody entrails. The beheading was facilitated quite easily with one swing of the blade.
A creature of God reduced to a small sack of meat.
I sat and watched him clean his hands with the very rag he used to wipe the sweat from his forehead.
I sat idle.
An onlooker, much like the rocks, I very subtly added to the setting.
PATHs 