The Little Fishermen
Finding Actionable Love when you figured it was Lost ….
He carried the three fishing poles and the tackle box like he was afraid he would miss something important along the trail. I was right behind him and my younger brother, Bo, was directly to my right. Frank was a worrier, an angry man prone to spells of screaming orders at everyone whenever the mood struck. This had been my mother’s bright idea.
It was the summer of 1982, and I was ten. Bo, three years younger, wore cutoff jean shorts and his old, red Keds. He wore no shirt. No self-respecting southern boy would be caught dead fishing at the channel with a shirt on. I had blue shorts and bare feet. Frank wore long khakis and a Budman t-shirt. He probably would have brought the sports section of our county paper along had it not been so windy.
Unusually windy and a hot wind at that. South Carolina was known for long, hot, still, and oppressively humid summer days, but this Thursday it seemed like someone had turned on the oven and coated the entire coast with desert wind.
My throat was dry as toast and anyway I couldn’t find anything to say to that man. That man who had entered our lives and our home and had claimed a stake on our mother’s heart. We wanted him to go. No dad was better than what we had gotten!
We arrived at our destination — a camping spot along the reeds and sand banks of the intercoastal waterway near Beaufort. Dolphins customarily churned the waters here with their flippers to strand small mullet on the bank before gulping them down their gullets. Sea bass, American chad, stingrays, and small shark were our most usual catch here.
Bo and I had been out ourselves plenty of times. This was Frank’s first-time fishing. Ever. He was from a northern city, what did he know about fishing? White egrets, pelicans, and seagulls floated over the water like they owned the ocean, occasionally swooping into the water to catch their own snacks. Bo used to call them Snatchers.
“Put the bait on for us, Dave,” Frank said.
“Yes, sir.” I opened the tackle box and took out a half-frozen chunk of squid. It smelled like Frank’s feet. I fastened the squid to the three hooks, and we were off. I kept on watching Frank. He was up to no good, I knew.
On the other hand, Bo seemed to be slowly falling for his charms. I knew better than that. Bo would smile when Frank pulled in his line only to find another empty hook. I figured he was about to start yelling at us.
“Why don’t you two go for a swim!” It was hot, and by now my brother and I would have customarily been paddling in the water. Bo looked at me with sparkling eyes.
“Maybe in a while,” I sputtered. Then Frank caught the first ocean critter of the day — a twelve-inch sand shark. He pulled it in with a prideful look, but he had trouble unhooking its mouth, so Bo rested his rod atop a Y-Shaped branch stuck into the sand and went on over to help him.
Bo, a consummate fisherman like me — we had grown up with rods in our hands — expertly delivered the shark’s teeth from the line and tossed it back into the water. I’d of swiped the creature’s mouth, with its sharp teeth, at Frank’s nose. Bo turned to get an approving look from Frank, and to my surprise, the new man-of-the-house smiled at him, and then patted his blond hair.
“Dave, Frank ain’t such a bad guy, I don’t think, “ Bo said to me when Frank left off a way to go relieve himself. When he returned, Bo had just pulled in his line to reveal another empty hook.
“Let me get that this time, Bo,” Frank suddenly blurted out. Bo could do it just fine. But Bo allowed the man to squat down and twist the flesh of the squid onto the hook. As Frank wrapped the squid around the hook, I watched my brother hitch himself against Frank’s side, and then he put a hand onto his shoulder.
I then snagged a devil ray. Mean, ugly, its mouth puckering open and closed around the line, while its tail twisted wildly left and right. It was a sight.
“Don’t get stung, buddy,” Frank said.
Like I would. Bo came over and pushed his Ked down on the thing’s tail while I unhooked the metal claw from its mouth. We let it go and watched it fly away into the deep blue water. Frank came my way and placed his hand, still sticky and smelly from the squid, on my hot head. “You guys know what you’re doing, don’t ya?” He said.
I shrugged. As the afternoon wore on, worthier fish were hooked, and I noticed that he wasn’t afraid of the fish, didn’t seem to mind getting his hands dirty with the blood and guts from the bait, nor from cleaning the fish. He could wait without nervously pulling his line up every five seconds like most Northerners would do in my experience.
He wasn’t that uncomfortable with this. I kept hoping he would mess up somehow, which would have given me further reason to both dislike and distrust him, but he never did.
Frank was equally well adapted to collecting dry driftwood for the campfire. After lighting it, Bo and I took turns stoking it. He told us he was not good at cooking the fish and so Bo and I stripped the bone from the fish without leaving little splinters as we cleaned them. We showed Frank how to do this and he learned quickly.
We then put them in the skillet they sizzled. We taught Frank how to turn them before they burned and became like rubber. I was so hungry — I could not wait to eat! We each took pieces of the others’ catch, and it was all nice tasting, but my sea bass was the largest and sweetest tasting of them all!
When hightide had filled the channel, seeing as we were so filthy and sweaty, we all jumped in with our undies on. I had to watch to make sure Frank didn’t drown, but as it turned out, he was a pretty good swimmer as well. Bo clambered onto his shoulders, and after a while, they chased after me. I tried swimming around and toppling them, which wasn’t very easy, since Frank was such a big man.
As the sun began to set, and with our poles resting on their tripods as the water rocketed past us on its way back out to low tide, Frank seemed at peace for the first time I had known him. He threw a reed out into the current and we all watched it bob up and down atop the gushing ripples, as it fled its way towards the big, blue ocean.
Frank then dug his toes up into Bo’s side, tickling my baby brother. Bo giggled and I could not help myself from smiling upon seeing my brother’s happiness.
Out of nowhere, Franks said, “You know I can’t replace the father you boys never knew. But I can find it easy to love you both as friends. I love your mommy a whole lot, and she’s come to mean the world to me over this past year.” He stopped and took a measured stare of the expressions on both of our faces, which for Bo seemed to be curiosity, while for me it was skepticism.
“I don’t mean to get so angry at times.” Bo swatted some mosquitos away from his legs as Frank continued, “My own daddy used to yell a lot, and I know what a drag it can be.” Bo shot a smile in my direction. “I’ll make you this promise.” He paused and took a deep breath. “You boys try allowing me to be a friend, that’s all, and I’ll try not sounding like my daddy so much.”
He then looked directly in my eyes, and at first, I was going to look away, but suddenly I saw a pleading stare coming from within him. This surprised me, and I held his gaze a moment longer before turning away. For some reason, I started doubting myself, and I wondered what had caused me to hate him so much all this time.
Contemplating this as I watched the water rushing away, something must have broken open inside of me. Suddenly, two dolphins popped up through the surface and began playfully splashing each other while gliding along the channel sidebyside. My eyes had welled up with moisture, and I realized that my hatred of men, almost all of them, was because deep down I had always wanted a daddy.
None had ever come along.
Now when there was a man available to take that role, I could only be critical of him. I had been angry at Frank for his trying to be the daddy that had left us long before. Looking at my brother, I saw he was appealing to me with his angelic face and those aqua blue, soulful eyes of his. I knew what he wanted — my permission to love Frank just a little.
I looked up at Frank and it took me only one more moment to decide what I had to do. I lifted my big toe and planted it into Frank’s gut. I wiggled it deep into his side, until finally he grabbed my knee and pushed it away. He burst out laughing, then suddenly he was reaching his hands to my sides and tickling me.
Surprising myself, I allowed him to continue, instead of pushing his hands away like I usually would. Giggling, Bo joined in, and soon we were all squirming and tickling each other in the sand until we were covered with it from head to toe, and so then we had to jump back in the water all over again to wash off.
We left for home with a large catch and a new, more favorable, connection to the man who was dating our mother. Perhaps also, we had just a bit more respect for the woman who was our mom. It became easier for me and Bo to get to know and to like Frank after that.
He and my mom married seven months later, and that camping area near the channel became our favorite spot. We came almost every Sunday to fish, swim, and spend timeless days together as a family engaging in the things we loved the best!
Though something of a new experience for my little brother Bo and myself, having a dad around was exactly the kind of thing we had wanted and needed for most of our young lives. Now, thirty years later, Frank and Mom, and me and Bo with families of our own still visit our favorite spot on the banks of the intercoastal near Beaufort….
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