The Young Man and the Creek

“Fish, I love you and respect you very much. But I will kill you dead before this day ends.”

“Then the fish came alive, with his death in him, and rose high out of the water showing all his great length and width and all his power and his beauty.”

–from Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea

Unlike Santiago, Number Two Son had no intention of killing the Great Goldfish. But he was, by gosh, determined to snag him in his net and put him in his place. It would be his personal rite of passage, a test of his budding manhood pitting his own power against the greatest of beasts, an attempt to discern his rank in Nature’s cold and cruel hierarchy. Besides, if he managed to catch “Goldie,” he would be the coolest kid on the block. Like the Great Gold One, he would be the stuff of legend, an Arthurian king among the legions of young men who had trekked to the banks of Aldridge Creek hoping to make the catch of their lives.

As to how Goldie ended up in Aldridge Creek, one can only guess what strange odyssey led him to his new home in the deep water beneath the golf-cart bridge of the Valley Hill Country Club. Perhaps someone grew tired of feeding him and dumped him there, thinking that Nature would take her course and he would adapt and survive or else perish in her impartial and uncaring clutch. Maybe he had simply been taking a nap, mistaken for dead, and subsequently and unceremoniously “buried at sea,” only to be revived in the terrifying subterranean world of the Huntsville sewer system. Some have said that Goldie is an “orange carp” or perhaps a Japanese goldfish who took a seriously wrong turn near Nagasaki. But such mundane explanations have never deterred the young men by the creek who insist that over the past 7 years they have watched Goldie grow from a thumb-sized youngster to his present “biggy-sized” self.

Whatever strange path he traveled, it was apparent from the neighborhood buzz that Goldie had indeed adapted to life in the creek and that bottom feeding had suited him well. Goldie, so I was told, was a house pet gone very bad– a mutant Cyclops with piranha-like incisors and a cool arrogance that mocked the young men who lined the creek bank and peered in trepidation at the land-locked leviathan. For some time, they had tried in vain to snatch the golden prize with their nets, always missing their mark by inches. Had they known a little law of optics–that Goldie, due to the light’s deceitful bend from beneath the water, was, unlike the objects in the side-view mirror, always a little “further away than he actually appeared”—he might have been captured long ago.

But like some kind of wispy phantom, Goldie always eluded their grasp. Last Sunday, on a balmy and promising spring day, Number Two Son, along with two companions, journeyed to his favorite spot, seeking to do what no young man in our neck-of-the-burbs had ever done before. Wearing a brand new pair of khaki shorts, an old t-shirt and his Tennessee Vols cap, he took up his usual post atop the golf-cart bridge.

Fishing from the bridge is technically trespassing, the punishment for which is usually a series of sharp rebukes by the cartloads of aging, argyle-clad linksters who zoom past on their way to the 12th tee. But for Number Two Son and crew, the chance to match wits with the oversized, 7-year-old, 7- pound monster fish is always worth the risk of getting busted.

As if on cue, Goldie made his appearance, circling lazily and glaring at the young fools-in-the making with his one good eye. Number Two cast his net into the water and at first Goldie was startled and kept his distance from the unwelcome intruder. Number Two kept the net very still, and as Goldie slowly became more accustomed to its presence, he swam ever more closely to the waiting trap.

Suddenly, with the quickness and ferocity of seafaring ancestors coursing through his powerful hands, Number Two drew the rope tightly, snaring the surprised animal in the net’s grasp. Caught up in the titan struggle of man versus beast, Number Two let loose with a primordial yell which echoed throughout the 18 hole course, drawing the unwelcome attention of a peeved patron whose 6-foot putt on the 11th green had been rudely interrupted by the ruckus. As he stormed toward the bridge, intending no doubt to show the young trespassers the business end of his Big Bertha Driver, the angry golfer stopped short, and realizing the magnitude of the moment, uttered softly, “Nice catch.”

As Number Two started to draw the struggling fish out of the water, he realized that its great weight might tear a hole in his net if he attempted to lift Goldie to the bridge. As one of his companions stayed behind and held the rope, Number Two waded into the creek and grabbed his flailing quarry, lifted him from the water, and started to make his way toward the bank.

Goldie’s length, width and power were great indeed. It was a fierce Darwinian dance of death, a veritable festival of blood, sweat and tears that could have lasted for days, but in fact, lasted mere minutes. For soon Goldie, feeling the strain of oxygen debt, resigned himself to his fate and gave up the fight.

Exhausted from battle, Number Two collapsed on the creek bank, his new khaki shorts caked with mud and a broad smile slowly forming on his grizzled and weathered face. He carefully removed Goldie from the net and proudly displayed his prize as one of his companions recorded the scene with his cell phone camera. Here is the end result, and as you can see, Goldie turned out to be much more than just another Big Fish Story:

The victory celebration completed, the young man by the creek released his catch into the wild. Now Number Two swears this is true (and since I wasn’t there, who am I to say it’s not?): As Goldie started to swim away, he turned, and with a trace of a wry smile forming on his puckered lips and a mirthful glint in his bulbous eye, bowed knowingly to his captor, no doubt some sort of primeval salute passing from the conquered to the conqueror. He then turned again and abruptly swam away, this time diving a little deeper into the murky waters of Aldridge Creek, out of sight, but not out of the minds of the young men, who, with mouths agape, had witnessed this epic struggle between man and creature of the deep.

I cannot say for sure what sort of intimate knowledge passed between the two of them in that moment. Perhaps it was an old language that was spoken (as old as life itself), the freshly-discovered lyrics of some ancient song beating out the archaic rhythm of winter to spring and death to life and heralding the hope of more golden moments to be lived beneath the summer’s long, simmering sun.