The Old Man

[danbo]

The Old Man

 

by Dan Reid

 

Autumn leaves swirled in the eddy by the little falls. Dappled shadows of the afternoon sun through the trees, flickered & danced with the breeze. He always came to the river, to clear his mind.

 

The salmon were in, their dark forms streaked across the rocky floor of the shallow pool. After all the years, he still got a kick from fishing. It was his greatest passion in life.

 

Reaching into the satchel he had brought, the old man snapped-open the little plastic box that stored his collection of home-made flies. Today, the clear flow of the water called for a dark pattern to tempt the fish with. Puffing on his smoke, he plucked a small black & chartreuse "woolly bugger" out of the menagerie & reached for the line hanging from his fly rod, to tie it on.

 

As he quietly picked his way over the shoreline rubble to position himself to cast, he thought he saw a flash in the water below. There, where the red willow bush hung over the surface, he caught another glimpse of the fish..and Lord, what a fish it was!

 

38 years of raking this stream, yet he had never before seen a fish of such magnitude. He could usually guess a fishes weight just by looking at it, but this one boggled the calculator in his head. His nerves began to tremble as adrenalin coursed through his veins. Mother Nature must be playing a trick on me, he thought. Suddenly, the big Chinook leapt clear out of the sparkling pulse & hung in mid-air momentarily, just long enough to show it's glistening mass.

 

God Almighty, it had to go 80 pounds or better! As the old man's jaw hung slack, his heart raced so hard with anticipation, he feared he was having another "attack". Now, collecting his senses back together, he raised the graphite rod to begin his cast...

 

The sound of an electronic "beeping" was the first thing he heard. The muddy outline of the nurse leaning over his face added a surreal dimension to the fuss going on about him. A terrific weight pressed down on his chest, while another pain seemed to push-back against the invisible force that overtook his entire body.

 

"What the hell is happening to me", he writhed with the awful sensations that were crushing upon him. Suddenly, he felt his life-energy leaving his body & rushing into oblivion. As the room grew darker & the surroundings became distant, he faintly heard the sound of thousands of children singing from far away. A single spot of white light raced towards him, ever expanding with its approach.

 

Helpless & immobilized, he floated in a warp of time & space, beyond anything he had ever imagined before. This is not a dream, yet somehow, he felt no fear. As if entering some crystalline palace, the light energy enveloped him & took away his pain. Gently & unobtrusively, a woman with long flowing red hair appeared before him, though her facial features were indistinguishable. Words were neither spoken, nor heard yet, somehow, the message was conveyed.."you are loved and everything will be ok". Then as if someone was working a remote control, like with a television set, the channel was "flicked" & he felt the warmth return to his body, as he awoke again in the hospital bed.

 

"Dear God", the nurse wept, "we lost you!" The tired old man looked up into her tear-swollen eyes & smiled. "Lady", he mused, "If you only knew the half of what I saw..thank you for staying with me. I can't wait 'til I can get out of here and..go fishin' ".

 

A story by Dan Reid

[danbo]