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"The slow, shimmering water, the different, but merging melodies of unseen birds, washed out the angry thoughts in my mind and, like a river flowing backwards, towards its mouth, swept me into the long-past to the moments I caught and landed my first trout, and heard my grandfather tell me how proud of me he was."

The Bad, The Good and Two Fly-Fishing Women
By Randy Kadish

Part One
Now, as I approach the autumn of my life, how do I describe myself? As a wife and a mother who loves her family, as an attorney who admires the law, and as a fly fisher who proudly says she learned from the greatest fly fisher she ever knew: her grandmother.
   And whether by accident or not, my grandmother taught me something even more important than fishing, something that, even after such a long, long parade of days, I still cherish, like an antique fly rod, and wish to pass on.
   The lesson happened near the middle of trout season, on the first day of summer, June 21st. I was fourteen years old and very, very hurt and angry.
   Why? you ask.
   A year had passed since my grandfather died of a heart attack while fishing a nameless, but very beautiful, pool on the Junction River. My grandmother and father came to believe if someone had been with him he might have lived.
   But in spite of their belief, my grandmother often told me, "Amanda, be thankful he at least died doing what he loved. Besides, I know he's waiting for me. Maybe by the time we meet again he'll stop burping at the table."
   I tried to see it my grandmother's way, but couldn't. Deep down inside the truth was I desperately wanted him back so he could hug me and tell me fishing stories I knew weren't all true. Besides, he lived close by, so he was the one I often ran to when the fighting between my mother and father got real bad.
   Whom did I blame for the fighting? I guess both, even though I knew my father was only trying to stop my mother from getting high. And I wanted her to stop. I hated the smell of marijuana. The smell meant my mother watched television with a stupid grin on her face, a grin saying silently, but loudly: don't even try to get me to help you with your homework.
   To make things worse, I couldn't look forward to my father coming home, because his coming home usually lead to another fight, and to me running to my room, slamming the door and putting a pillow over my head. The pillow filtered out most of the words, but the anger always found a way through, and made me pray for my mother to stop getting high.
   She didn't. So every day when I walked home from school and passed our town's beautiful, old white church, I wondered if there really was a God.
   On one of those days the sky was so clear and the sun so bright that winter felt like spring. Suddenly I forgot about all the bad things in my life, and dreamed of fly-fishing and catching a big trout.
   I walked up the wooden steps to my house, and into the dim kitchen. My father sat at the table, staring out the window as if he were lost in space.
   "Dad, why are your home so early?"
   He looked up at me. His eyes were red, as if he had just cried. "Your mother ran off with, with another man."
   Surprisingly, I didn't feel much of anything, maybe because I felt both good and bad at the same time: good the fighting was over, bad my mother wasn't going to change into the loving mother I wanted her to be.
   During the next few months my feelings froze into opposite halves.
   As for my father - well, he tried hard to hide his feelings, but he didn't do a very good job. Hour after hour he sat in the kitchen all by himself; so even though he threw out all my mother's pictures and never mentioned her name, I knew he still loved her - for whatever reason - and he couldn't kill his pain. And so he worked long, long hours in his tire store; and I usually came home to an empty house, put on the TV and ate dinner by myself.
   Maybe that's why my pain and the angry voices inside me swelled and soon drowned out the TV. Night after night, I put down my knife and fork and cried. Is it any wonder, therefore, I was thankful when my grandmother moved in with us and tried to take my mother's place?
My grandmother cooked, helped me with my homework, and tried to make me feel loved. There was something, however, she couldn't do: erase my deepening shame, a shame I tried to hide by telling my teacher and classmates, "My mother is in New York taking care of her sick aunt."
   But in a small, close-knit town, I soon learned, some things, like the moon and the stars, are impossible to hide. My classmates made fun of me behind my back, then to my face.
   What did I do? I punched one, but then I just turned away, and fished more and more. You see, being in one of nature's poems, a beautiful river, made me feel I was a part of the good side of the world. Sometimes I even came close to believing there was a God.
   Whether or not there was, my grandmother and father became scared of my being alone on a river; so one day when I was at school, they went to the pound, adopted a German Shepherd and put her in my room. When I came home I heard her bark. I ran to my room. The dog looked at me, then tilted her head. Her eyes seemed to ask, "Who are you?" Her face was almost all gold, her body almost all black. She struck me as being funny looking.
   I got down on my knees. "Hello doggy."
   She walked to me slowly, as if a part of her was scared of me. I petted her and looked into her eyes. She jumped up, licked my face and suddenly seemed beautiful. I hugged her. Right then and there I named her Shana. And from that day on she looked at me with so much love in her eyes, I wondered if she was really a person in a dog's body. Often I asked, "Shana, do you miss whoever raised you? Well, I promise to love you so much that pretty soon you'll forget all about them."
   She answered by licking my face; and I wished I could forget bad things as easily as a dog could.
   I took Shana fishing with me, and I tried to train her to wait on the bank, but she always insisted on following me into the river, except where it was fast and rocky. Then she stayed on the bank and barked. Angry, I often called her a bad girl and told her to be quiet, but she wouldn't listen. I wished there were wading sticks for dogs, but there weren't; so soon I stopped wading into fast water, and lost opportunities to catch a lot of big fish. At first I resented Shana for it, but having Shana and her love close to me, I learned, was a good tradeoff.
   One day, as I retrieved my fly, I looked at Shana and said, "Unlike my mother, you'll never leave me. Maybe having you is better than having a real mother."
   My mother never visited or called.
   Day after day I still cried, but never in front of my father, even though my grandmother told me crying was all right. One day she said, "I'm sure that your mother still loves you."
I insisted, "If she did she wouldn't have left."
   "Don't be so sure. She's probably just confused. That happens to grownups sometimes. She'll again be a mother to you, probably real soon. You'll see."
   "I won't, because I'll never even talk to her again. I hate her!"
   "You mustn't hate, Amanda."
   "Says who? People hate all the time."
   "That doesn't make it right."

   A month or so later another really bad thing happened: my grandmother got sick and underwent all sorts of medical tests. We anxiously waited for the results. Finally, as my father and I stood in the long, narrow hospital hallway, the doctor walked up to us. His eyes spoke sadness. I took my father's hand. The doctor told us my grandmother had cancer. Immediately, I ran into her room. She smiled. I hugged her and said I was scared of losing her and of not having any sort of a mother.
   She kissed my forehead. "I'm not ready to die. I'm going to beat this cancer, you'll see. I guess worse than losing my hair is, for the first time since I met your grandfather, missing the opening of trout season."
   "I'm going to miss it too, because I don't care anymore about fishing. I want to stay with you."
Opening day and then the cold-as-ice winds of April came and went. Finally, my grandmother left the hospital, but three times a week she went back for chemotherapy. I always visited her, even though I soon I hated seeing so many old and sick people. I said, "Grandma, when I get old I'm never going to get sick."
   She smiled. "Amanda, we don't always have the choices that we want, but right now you have the choice to go home, take my Heddon Rod and catch some trout for the both of us."
   "I'm not going to leave you."
   "Your father will be here soon. Please listen to me. The pain and sickness of one old woman doesn't stop the world. The leave have already bloomed. Your way past fishing time."
   I muttered, "All right." I trudged home, put on my waders and boots, and went into my grandmother's room. In the corner stood her bamboo rod. Its finish shined like polished gold, a gold I felt I shouldn't smudge. I looked at Shana. "Girl, do you want to go fish?"
   Shana barked.
   "All right. Let's go."

   Shana and I waded into the shallow, gentle riffles of School House Pool on the Junction River. I didn't feel right being there, knowing my grandmother was probably throwing up from chemotherapy. I looked at the tall trees lining the bank. The branches looked too long for their narrow trunks. Maybe that's why the trees reminded me of a giant, chain-link fence. Feeling protected, I stared at the clear water and waited for insects to hatch.
   They didn't, so I tied on my grandfather's favorite searching fly, an Adams, and pulled line off my grandmother's black Meek reel. I cast to the far bank and watched my fly float downstream. The slow, shimmering water, the different, but merging melodies of unseen birds, washed out the angry thoughts in my mind and, like a river flowing backwards, towards its mouth, swept me into the long-past to the moments I caught and landed my first trout, and heard my grandfather tell me how proud of me he was.
   My Adams dragged in the slower water near the bank. I retrieved line and again cast.
A few hours and two-landed-trout later, when the long, wide shadow turned the color of the water to dark gray, I left the river knowing I'd be back the next day.
   And when I was, I fished the pool that got its name from its shape: Banana. In middle of the pool, the sun engraved a long, thin triangle. For an hour or so I had no luck; then I made a bad cast and landed my Royal Wuff in a long, low branch. Gently, I pulled my fly free. It landed in the water, behind a big boulder. A trout gulped it. I pressed my finger against the fly line and the rod handle. Calmly, the way my grandmother taught me, I swung the rod tip up and set the hook. The trout bolted downstream, jolting the line, the rod and me with life. The rod throbbed like a lovesick heart, and sent invisible, shapeless, but real surges rushing down my arms and through my body. Suddenly it seemed as if a little dam was opening and closing inside me. As fast as I could, I reeled in all slack line. Holding the rod still, I let the trout run. The spinning reel shrieked. To Shana it must've sounded like a cat. She barked wildly. The trout neared the fast, foamy tail. Knowing I had to keep him away from it, I palmed the reel and slowed it. The trout - a big rainbow - jumped out of the water and shook its head. For some reason I saw the strange image of a quarter-moon trying to escape the earth's orbit. I pointed the rod tip down about three feet - the way my grandmother taught me to fight jumping fish - and reeled in line. The rainbow dived back into the water. The fly line went dead.
   I lost him, I thought. Damn!
   I reeled in line. Suddenly it jumped up from the water like a grasshopper and snapped tight. The rainbow was still on. He broke toward the far bank, nearly yanking the rod out of my hand. I pointed the rod up, squeezed the handle as tightly as I could, and pulled my elbows close to my body. I breathed hard and fast for air.
   How could a trout, I wondered, seem to weigh three or four times its weight? Hold the rod still. He's taking more line, and seemingly pulling me with him, taking me deeper and deeper into the obsession, the killer instinct, that's boiling inside me. Am I any different, than a wild animal? Than Shana?
   At least I talk instead of bark.
  The trout pulled my rod tip down. Is he going to win? In my mind I heard my grandmother say, "Amanda, stay calm. Wait until the trout lets up a bit, then to get leverage on him, lift his head out of the water and reel."
   With my reel hand, I grabbed the rod above the handle, and slowly, slowly pulled the rod tip back up, and the trout's head out of the water. The once-throbbing rod now pulsed as if it were on life support. Steadily, I reeled the trout closer and closer, not expecting him to make another run.
  He bolted right towards me. As fast as I could, I reeled in line, but not fast enough. He lowered his head. Now he had the advantage. He swam past me. I let him take line. He slowed, finally. Again I lifted his head and turned him toward the bank. I reeled him closer, and closer. Yes, he was tired too!
   "Mr. Trout," I said, "if you don't run, I promise I'll let you go."
  He believed me. Easily, I landed him. I won! Shana barked wildly. The rainbow was about three - no but at least two - pounds. He was scarred near his tail, as if he had been another fight.
  Was it with a human or another fish? Is that fear in his eyes? If he could, wouldn't he beg me to let him live? But if I do, who, except my grandmother, will believe I caught such a big trout?
   No one.
  "Shana I promised to let him live." I took the fly out of the rainbow's mouth and let him go. The funny thing was that he didn't leave. Like me, maybe he wanted friends. Shana lunged at him. He darted away.
   "Bad girl!"
   Shana licked my face.
   "I still love you and, like a good mother, I always will."
   An hour later, I went straight from the river to the hospital, and walked into the hospital and told my grandmother about my victory, then asked, "Should I have taken him grandma, to show people?
   "You showed yourself you can land a big trough. That's all that should matter."
   But it doesn't! What's wrong with me?
   I fished the next day and caught three small trout. The sun slid behind the tall trees and the water darkened into gray and the breeze quickened into wind. I left the river, walked home and told my grandmother the flies and the tactics I had used, and which ones caught fish.
  "Rivers are like poems," my grandmother said. "No matter how beautiful they are, your first have to study them, and read between the lines before you plan your attack. The answers to catching trout are half in the rivers, and half in our ourselves."
   I wasn't exactly sure what she meant by that, but knowing how tired she was, I didn't want to ask.
   "Now tell me, Amanda, what was the water you fished like?"
   "It was slow and clear and littered with big rocks."
   "You might want to try a longer, thinner leader the next time. And where was the sun? Fish run from moving shadows the way people run from the deep shadows inside them."
   And so day after day, my grandmother made more and more suggestions. Each one I tried; and as the days got longer and the trout season went on, I caught more and more fish; so many in fact that pretty soon desperate men anglers ate their pride and asked me for advice. Something - maybe the good inside me - told me to give it.
   Unexpectedly, I was rewarded. Soon I felt real special, even though I still had no friends. And feeling special, I quickly learned, was far more important than all the flies the men gave me.
So that's where I was, emotionally I mean, on the morning of June 21st when I cooked my family's breakfast. My father left for work. My grandmother went to her room to rest, or so I thought, because after I washed all the dishes and cleaned up, I went upstairs to get my books. The door to my grandmother's room was open. She wore her fly fishing vest and hat, but not her gray wig. Her Heddon rod and my grandfather's antique fly box were on the bed.
   "Grandma, what are you doing?"
   "I'm not going to miss the whole trout season. I want at least one day on the river."
   "But you're sick."
   "These doctors don't know everything. There's more to life than new science. I think fishing will do more for me than chemo. Now you go to school and don't worry about me."
   "Take Shana with you."
   She smiled. "I'll be all right."
   "If you don't promise to take her, I'll call my father and tell him what you're doing."
   "I promise," she swore.
   I hugged her. Something hard and round - my grandfather's revolver, I knew - pressed against my chest.
   "Why are you taking a gun?"
   "A woman needs to protect herself."
   "From what?"
   "Bears."
   "No one has seen bears around here for years."
   "You never know, and I can't walk as fast as I used to. Don't you want to know that I'm safe?"
   I left for school; but as I sat in that small, dingy classroom, all I thought about was how my grandmother probably wasn't strong enough to fish, and about how my grandfather died fishing by himself. Suddenly terrified, I wanted to be with my grandmother more than I wanted anything.
   "Amanda!" My teacher called my name. I came out of my haze. My teacher folded her arms and stared at me.
   "Amanda, didn't you hear my question?"
   I shook my head no.
   Everyone laughed. I wanted to crawl under my desk.
   "You're a fish brain!" yelled Mark Klinger.
  I jumped up, clenched my fist, and ran up to him. I froze for a moment, then opened my hand and slapped him real hard on the back of his head.
   "Amanda!" my teacher yelled.
   "I'm not a fish brain!" I ran out of the school, and away from the wrong I did. I kept on running until I reached home and opened the door. Shana jumped all over me.
  Grandma lied! Why? She's supposed to be good.
   I looked into Shana's eyes. "We're going fishing."
   She licked my face and followed me to my room. As quickly as I could, I put on my waders, my vest and my hat. I turned to get my rod. My grandmother's rod was in its place. On the floor was my grandfather's antique fly box
   Maybe the cancer, the pain, is really why she took her gun. But I'm not going to let her leave me.
   I stuffed the fly box into my vest pocket. "Let's go Shana."
   I could barely breath when I reached one of my grandmother's favorite spots on the Junction River, the wide, slow-moving bend just below Bennett's farm.
   My grand mother wasn't there.
   Vernon was. He sat on his wooden milk box. He was a very big black man, older than my father. His tile-like teeth looked too big and white for his mouth. Often I wondered if they were just bad fakes. Vernon's big straw hat had a hole in the brim. He worked, I knew, as a night watchman in the glass factory, and always fished worms on an old spinning rod. My grandmother, however, told me not to hold it against him. He fished for food instead of for sport. Besides, he never broke the law and kept trout shorter than the eighteen-inch limit.
   A bottle of half-full whiskey was near his feet.
   I asked if he had seen my grandmother.
     "No." He didn't look at me.
  I read a lie between his lies. I walked towards him.
   "I told you: I ain't seen her!" His tone was like a jab a boxer used to keep his opponent away.
  I walked through the punch. On the other side of his milk box was a creel, decorated with the small trout my grandfather had painted. It was my grandmother's creel.
   I asked, "Did you try downstream, just behind the fallen tree?" He turned. I snatched his bottle of whiskey and ran. When I felt far enough away, I stopped and faced him.
   "What you take that for?" he shouted.
   "Because you lied to me, and if you come after me I'll put Shana on you. How come you have my grandmother's creel? Did you steal it from her?"
   "Looky here, I never stole anything, since I was a kid, I mean."
   "Then how come you have it!"
   He didn't answer.
   I pulled the cap off the bottle. "You'd better tell me the truth or I'm gonna start pouring this on the ground."
   "It ain't yours to pour."
   "That creel isn't yours either. Tell me the truth."
   "She gave me the creel as a present."
   "No. She loved that creel!"
   "She often gave me things, like flies she tied herself."
   "You don't even know how to fish with flies."
   "I still like havin' and lookin' at them. To me they're like little pieces of art."
   "Just tell me which way she went, upstream or down?"
   "I promised her."
   "She's very sick with cancer. She shouldn't be fishing by herself. Remember what happened to my grandfather?" I poured out a little of his whiskey then, trying to look real mean, I glared into his eyes.
   "She went down river."
   I pushed the cap back on his bottle.
   "Let's go Shana." I put the bottle down.
   "Wait!" Vernon yelled out. "You ain't goin' by yourself."
   "I am too!"
   "You're a girl and girls shouldn't be alone."
   "I'm alone all the time. Shana will protect me."
   "I'm goin' with you."
   "You're not!"
   "I am too!" He got up and reeled in his line.
   I knew I couldn't stop him. Besides, was his coming with me such a bad idea, especially because I had always liked him?
   No, it wasn't.
   He put his whiskey into my grandmother's creel.
   I suggested, "Why don't we hide your milk box?"
   "When we come back it will still be there. You'll see."

To Be Continued!

About The Author:
Randy is an outdoor writer living in New York City. His historical novel, The Fly Caster Who Tried to Make Peace with the World, is available on Amazon.