Death and the Fisherman
 

    Whatever had taken the bait had taken it straight up, taken it in a single heart-stopping rush that bent the rod double and set the reel screeching and this time, at last,  it could not possibly be a carp unless there were a carp large enough to swallow a nine inch sucker and if there were such a carp in this world  he would be very very glad to see it. 

 The fisherman set the hook, or hoped he set the hook, and tried to hang on.  He was in the middle of Rockmeyer Lake which was not really a lake but a river, dammed up now and flooded all over what had once been the loveliest valley in the state.  He was very glad to be in a boat that was wide enough and stable enough to anchor in 25 feet.  He was alone.  He was always alone and he had gotten used to it.  Live long enough and everyone dies, and then you better get used to what comes next. 

 The fish, if it were a fish, there was always the possibility of a turtle, please god, no turtle, not even one as big as this, was trying to make its way toward the trees.  Let it reach those trees and you could say good-bye fish, and that was as good a reason as any for using 25 pound test line.  The fisherman watched that line, tight as a wire, cut the water; he could actually hear it hissing when the fish changed directions.  He could feel his heart pounding, ready to leap into his mouth, and wouldn't that be something if they found him dead in the middle of  the lake with his heart in his mouth?   But he stopped the fish before it reached the trees and now he knew for sure it was no turtle.  No turtle had that speed, no turtle had that little spinning move.  At the very worst he was hooked onto a gar, and if he had hooked a gar he would be very glad to see it too.  When he was a boy there'd been a gar almost eight foot long that someone brought into the bait shop, speared it, they said,  and  because you weren't supposed to eat gars they had simply let the head dry out and nailed it up on a tree, and if that what was on the end of his line, he would simply bring it up to the boat, have a good look, and cut it loose.  And that would be okay.  Maybe, even, if this were a big old flathead he would do the same.

 "No you won't," he said aloud.  "You'll take her back to the dock and do your bragging."

 No sooner had he said this than he realized he was no longer alone in the boat.  What was most odd was that he was not surprised to see the dark figure sitting in the bow, and what was even less odd was that  he immediately recognized the figure as death.

 "Well," he said.  "You sure couldn't have picked a worse time."

 The fisherman hoped this was funny.  He'd always admired people who could joke in the face of death.  His father had done it quite nobly.  But in fact he felt something akin to terror and had to remind himself that death was not the enemy any more than time was.

 Death sat in silence  The fisherman could see his white features, his empty eyes, his bony hand--more a shadow than a man.  "I got one on the line," the fisherman said.  "You don't mind, do you, if I bring him in first?"

 The air had grown cold; there was a wind and the wind brought a chop to the water.  On the other side of the mountains something that looked like lightning licked across the sky.  

 Death spoke.

 "It's not usually done."

 "Good.   That means it's occasionally done."  The fisherman said this hopefully, and kept on fighting the fish, giving line whenever it seemed certain it might break, applying as much pressure as he dared, working to keep the fish away from trees.  You couldn't see the trees, but he knew they were down there, almost all the way to the channel bed, an entire forest submerged, the crest of it rising out of the shallow water in the bays, drowned and leafless, some coming alive again in a manner as seeds took root in the rotted trunks and bravely began anew.

 "This is one hell of a fish," he finally said.  "I've waited all my life to catch this fish.   I'm not complaining.  Not to you I'm not.  I've had a good life.  And I've caught some good fish."

 Then he told Death about the pike he'd caught in Upper Michigan.  "Whoa!  You should have seen that guy.  As long as my leg!  You bet he was.  I measured.  That was a fish.  I brought him back to the cabin and showed him to my wife.  She never fished.  She'd just sit in the cabin and knit.  ‘Are you bored?' I would say.  And she'd say, no, she wasn't bored at all.  She thought I was being bored out there on the lake.  Oh, this pike was a dandy.  14 pounds.  I weighed him.  But he never pulled like this one.   Look at that!  He's got the rod bent double.  A catfish, that's what I'm hoping.  A big old flathead.  Or maybe a blue.  Won't be no channel cat get that big.  You don't get a fish like that maybe one time in a lifetime.

 Death was very silent and very stern, and it was exactly then that the fisherman felt the thing he called his heart stop.

 The fish did not know it had a heart.  It had lived a very long time in the dark, finding its prey by feel and smell, making its way through the sunken forests by feel and smell.  The fish had no thoughts at all.  It felt, it sensed, it swam, it did not understand the force that was pulling it toward the surface but did  remember, although not in the way  a man might remember, that it had felt this thing before and had always come free of it.  The fish did not really know fear, only resistance to its will, and it patiently, deliberately, and with all of its considerable weight, directed that  will against the thing that was trying to draw it toward danger..  Again and again the fish spun and dove and tried to reach the sunken trees where it had always hidden and always known safety.  And yet, even as it fought, it finished swallowing the bait, that same bait  it had found with its blind senses, and would have, given the opportunity, swallowed again..  It did not know that there was a hook lodged deep in its throat, and that this hook had already started a process that would inexorably kill it.

 There was a wind on the surface, and what had been a chop had turned into rolling whitecaps.  On the south dock three people were watching the fisherman fight his fish, two men and a woman.   From where they stood the fisherman was a tiny figure, almost toy-like, and they did not know his name or what dock he had started from.  ‘He's anchored," one of the men said.  "But he's got something on."  After a while they saw the fisherman fall but it took a few minutes before they realized he was not going to rise again.  "What do you suppose is wrong with him," the first man  kept saying, and the woman suggested the men take a boat out and check.  But the only boat available was a 16 footer with a 5 horse motor and not a very reliable motor at that.  "Look at those waves," the man said.  "I don't know about those waves."  "You're right,": the woman said.  "Don't try it honey.  I'll make a phone call."

 The men waited on the dock and watched the fisherman's boat swing back and forth in the waves.  "I think he had a big fish on there," the first man said.  "He wouldn't have just let that go.  Something's wrong."

 "Yeah, yeah," the other old man said.  They were both old men.  The woman who had gone to make the call was old too.  It was late September, kids were back in school, and families with kids had already said goodbye to the summer.  Only the old and the free stayed by the lake now.  And the sky was dark and the wind was up and the boat was swinging back and forth on its anchor in the middle of the lake.

 "She'll call the marina," the first old man said.  He had white hair and a white moustache and a bit of a pot belly.  He knew very well he was not the man to take a boat out in these waves. "They'll be someone along.  Soon.  Soon.  She'll get someone."

 The two old men had lines in the water.  They had their rods set up against the elbow-high rail of the dock, resting in little grooves someone had carved with his pocket knife You couldn't catch much but turtles from the dock, but maybe, on a dark windy day like this, catfish might work closer to shore, might even mistake day for night.  Sometimes it happened.  If you kept on fishing everything happened.  Sooner or later.  You only had to keep on fishing.

 The second old man, he was short and stumpy with dark hair greased back on his rounded skull, picked up his rod and turned the reel.

 "You don't suppose he went over the side?"  the first old man asked. "Maybe he just went over when we weren't looking?"

 "If he did," the second old man said, carefully tightening up his line, "There's nothing we can do about it.  Not a god damn thing."

 We could try, the first old man thought.  But he had only met this second old man this morning, and already knew how difficult it would be to convince a man like him of anything.  And the wind, of course.  And the waves, of course.  It would take two men to do anything out there, and for all anyone knew the man in the boat was just lying down.

 Lord knows why he would do that.

 The boat swung back and forth in the center of the lake.  It was going round and round its anchor, almost as if something was pulling it.  It wasn't natural the way that boat was moving.  After a while the man who knew there was not one god damn thing to be done looked up from his line and said:

 "Hear that?"

 The first old man joined him at the rail.  "There it is," the second old man said, pointing.  "A helicopter.  A god damn helicopter!  I thought they'd send a boat!"

 The first old man knew that helicopter sound all right.  He'd heard it some years ago in Chicago at an anti-war demonstration.  Somehow he'd been caught up in that and along with a quite a few thousand other people found himself in Grant Park shaking his fist at an overhead helicopter.  Now he waved, as if to direct the pilot to the empty boat swinging  in the center of the lake.

 "Oh, they see it all right," the second old man said.  "My son flew one of those in Nam.  He says you can see everything."

 Deep within the lake the fish had given up on reaching the trees.  Something stopped it every time it tried.  Stopped, the fish would swim to where the pressure was the least, and then be stopped again, and when it once more swam to where the pressure was the least,  it be would be stopped again.  Not knowing what held it or how, the fish would dive and spin and spin and finally rest.  No longer was something trying to draw it upward and out of its element.

 The fish only knew what it felt.  What it could not know was that the other end of the line was now being held by Death.

 Death, who had no sense of humor.  Death who knew he had been tricked.

 It had been such a simple request.   Unexpected.   Most pleaded for life.  Another year, another week, another hour.  One man had asked for another minute.  This man had only asked that Death pick up his fishing rod and see his business through.  "He's hooked good," the man said.  "But be sure you use the net.  He's a big one.  He'll break that line on you.  You can tell me how it all came out on the other side.  There is another side, isn't there?"

 "You will see me," Death promised.

 So what was carried off in the helicopter was not what Death had come for, but what remained in the boat was not exactly it either.  "Well, I missed you," Death thought.  "I do miss a few now and then.  There is always later.  Always."

 Death gave the reel a turn.  The fish below felt this new  pressure and once more tried for the trees.  It is impossible to say what Death felt when that line began to hiss through the water, when that rod tip dipped dangerously double.  Even if Death could be as we are, with heart and lungs and blood, how could he possibly have felt as the fisherman felt?  In this world there are some things that can only be clearly understood when you have done them for yourself, and that means you have to have done them entirely from the start to the finish, and that includes all the failures and all the defeats and every disappointment that precedes any hint of success, large or small.  Death would have to have been a small boy who had never been taken fishing, and he would have to have worked the better years of his lifetime with only a week or two off to fish in the dog days of summer; he would have to have had children who did not much wish to accompany him on his fishing trips, and he would have to have had a wife who died before her time, and he would have to have gone on alone for many years before he finally reached this moment with a fish such as he had often dreamed of but never dared imagine on the end of his line.  Then and only then could Death fully experience what the man had almost achieved.

 But there was strength in Death's bony grip, as those who have felt it would tell you–if only they could.

 If there are things that Death cannot imagine, there are places men cannot imagine and the Kingdom of the Shades is one of these places.  That it exists we cannot deny for we all shall someday reside there, and when we see it we shall know at once that it is as we always knew it must be.

 There is darkness at the entrance of the Kingdom and The Keeper (as we shall call him) who stands at its gate is dark, just as Death himself is dark and what lies behind that gate is even darker.  Time does not exist  in the Kingdom of the Shades, nor does space as we know it, and the sighs from within may only be the sighs of our imagination, just as the bitter cold that flows upward may only be the cold of our own spirits.  All stories end here.  When Death approached he was carrying a great slate colored catfish that on earth would have weighed at least 40 pounds.   It is impossible to say if Death who had gathered so many souls out of the seas was impressed by so modest a creature or why he saw fit to bring it here.

 "The man tricked me," Death told The Keeper.  "They have him in the hospital and are bringing him back to life."

 The sighs from beyond the entrance seemed more acute.

 Death held out the fish for the Keeper to examine.

 "What does it mean?"  The Keeper asked.

 "It means nothing," Death said.  And the fish, bleeding badly from its gills, dissolved.

 "And the man?"  The Keeper asked.

 "I will wait," Death replied.

 No one can say for sure what Death thought at this moment, but I believe I know.  I believe that Death, as he stood there at the entrance of the Kingdom of the Shades watching that great catfish dissolve  felt gratitude toward the fisherman who in what was to have been the last moment of his life had given him, Death itself, a chance to feel what life was really like.