Night Fishing

The jolt from the explosion knocked my Dodge truck into neutral, causing me to coast down the road a ways, north, far enough to understand what I had just done but also far enough to give the cop reason to contemplate ticketing me for leaving the scene of an accident. It was an accident, even if it was brought about by negligence and my failure to grasp just how wide the front end on a 1984 Dodge pick up really was. I should have known I was off that night. I was given plenty of opportunity to correct my sloppy driving, a slop made evident by the way I tightly cornered and clipped the elevated curb at the corner of Conference Point and Liechty. I drove north and pulled quickly around that corner heading east, nipping the back wheel on edge of the road, and bounced east towards the lake. I should have registered that quick bump as a warning that I was steering a bit carelessly, but I didn’t.

When I came to the forced turn onto Walworth Avenue from Liechty, I swung wide, adjusting my previous tight turn into a grand sweep, floating to the right as one should do on that intersection when approached from the south, a swing made necessary by the potential for oncoming southbound traffic. When I turned onto that wide road, with cars parked on the left and the right, no other car was approaching, but pedestrians, perhaps two or three women, or girls, were. I adjusted my gaze from the road to the pedestrians, not for long, but for long enough. The wide turn evolved into a path that would have me veering too far towards the curb, the curb where one small, golden Pontiac pretending to be a Ferrari was parked. The car was parked parallel to the curb, the curt back end facing my oncoming, meandering front bumper. With my eyes transfixed on the street walkers, I was unaware of the rapidly approaching date with that Fiero’s destiny.

My truck didn’t as much crash into this small attempted sports car as much as it punched it, like a big steel bully would a small fiberglassed nerd. The big front bumper on my truck punched out at the rear driver’s side of that coup, and while my reaction was good once contact was made, the damage had been done. The fiberglass of the Fiero exploded off the car, like it was waiting to do so and I simply provided it with an excuse. The fiberglass flew off the rear quarter panel, and off the door and into the night sky. I was panic stricken. I pressed the gas to drive on, to drive deep, to drive off and away where I might hide and never be discovered. Somewhere I would live, far from this place, where I might grow a beard and raise animals and live where no one could find me and tie me to this crime. I would cover my bruised truck in tarps inside my barn, and sit on my porch hoping that no cop or relative or witness would ever find me. But the gas pedal only revved the engine and didn’t move the truck. Forlorn, I pulled over to the east side of Walworth Avenue, and awaited my punishment.

I dispatched my younger brother to run back to the house to get my dad. My dad. I knew he’d be mad. I knew I was in trouble. But I was more worried about what I had just done to the truck that I had just bought and driven with the driver’s license that I had just been granted. Later that night, I walked home in tears. My truck, my shiny, white, just won truck, was scarred. The front bumper was dented and a crunched gash marred the front quarter panel on the passenger side. The truck was worthless to me after that night, though I would drive it to school that coming September, with crudely applied bondo filling the void left by that little gold Fiero that I had spray painted white, hoping no one would notice.

That steamy summer night I had left my parents house with my younger brother and two fishing poles. We were going to go night fishing, something that I hadn’t done prior, and obviously didn’t do that night. The bright lights at the municipal piers were new back then, with the boat piers having only been recently constructed, and I was certain that there were fish to be caught on summer nights under those yellow lights. I never went back to fish those piers that summer, nor the next. To this day, I have never fished those municipal piers, under those lights on warm summer nights, but I have finally and thoroughly embraced the night fishing that I tried to embrace on that July night some 18 years ago.

Michael Stipe would have you believe that night swimming is fun, and he’s right, it is fun. But night fishing is better. This summer, on both nights cool and breezy and nights still and sweaty, I have fished into the night on my increasingly trustworthy fishing boat. I have left the pier with my son, or my daughter, or my friends, or by myself, at 6, or 7, or even 8 in the evening, and I have fished through the setting sun and into the darkening night. I have caught some big fish, and some small fish, and I lost a fish two nights ago that I deemed the largest I have ever almost caught on Geneva Lake. That fish hit a trolled lure in front of the Congress Club in about 35′ of water, and hit it hard. It pulled line in the way that a Jack Crevalle might when hooked on a mullet in the open sea. It pulled to the point of almost spooling me, that is taking all of my line, until I followed it back with the boat in a fishing technique reminiscent of Hemingway’s marlin adventures. The fish dove, and I applied patient, yet steady pressure. I regained much of my line, and had the boat readied. My son grabbed my pliers and laid them on the seat next to me. He grabbed the net and had it at the ready. I fished, we smiled, I was a mess of anticipation.

And with a simple head shake, my lure floated carelessly to the surface. The big fish was gone. There were to be no pictures taken that night. I would send no pompous texts to my friends to brag about my catch, or my skill, or my luck. There was only me, my son, my lure, and an unnecessary fishing net left to our thoughts and the heavy, lingering, dashed promise of what might have been. We fished on that night, into the dark, as we have many times before and will many times more, catching nothing but fully realizing what a privilege the night was.

There is night swimming with these night time fishing adventures, but it isn’t the sort that Stipe was talking about. This isn’t swimming for fun, this is swimming because the only way to get from a buoyed boat to the pier is to dive off the gunwale of the boat and make a few strokes towards the pier. If my boy is with, we’ll both stand on the side rim of the boat, and dive off together, swimming to the pier in the dark water surrounded by darkness, with only the light of the Loch Vista Club pier to guide us. These are the night swims I’ll remember, and in this night fishing turned swimming there is no chance of any small golden Fiero’s meeting their untimely end.