LatinosUSA

Some decades ago, on the Exploits River in Newfoundland

I was fly fishing for Atlantic salmon, my guide a local

who’d befriended me, telling of his FM fishing show and

letting me meet the tolerant woman who lived with him.

He was a man of enthusiasms, vulnerably open and uncritical,

subject to the stabbings that such openness allows to happen.

And because I never judged him, he shared of himself.

Our fishing together came during paper mill visits,

wedged into evenings or a Saturday I stole from

my family so I could inject my fishing addiction.

One Saturday morning, he showed me his favorite perch,

facing the mill cross-river, and attainable only after

the mill dam’s sluices were shut and the water level low.

Those nearby fished from shore, waders and staff unneeded.

The wade out was chancy, slippery rocks and brawly water,

but the salmon channeled just below, and the fishing was sweet.

That morning, I didn’t hear the warning horn or it wasn’t blown.

The water surged in seconds, rising from my ankles to my waist.

I was braced on my wading staff, unable to move without washing

away into a standing flume five meters tall that would carry me

over the Grand Falls. I was in a numb moment before drowning.

But he’d seen me, and grabbing a downed sapling trunk,

ran down to shore, waded in as far as he could, and

dropped the skinny trunk just upstream of me.

I wasn’t rational enough to drop my tackle and grab

the bole two fisted, but did grab with my off hand,

and held on long enough for the current to swing me to shore.

When the river lowered, I went back out to his spot to fish.

I bought him dinner and left that next morning.

We never spoke unless I was on the island,

and I couldn’t return for almost a year.

When I called the recording said phone disconnected.

The mill manager said the man had committed suicide,

but didn’t know the specifics of where and how,

only remembering my friend as a little peculiar.

His girlfriend had left, his FM show was off air.

The obituary was vague, the relatives distant.

All I knew was that he was a gifted fisherman

who had let me fish the pool of his being

deeply enough to admire his genuineness

but not so deep as to see the roiling water

that rose to take him in a standing flume.

First published in The Get Real