By Foster Trecost
Like a slow leak, that’s how it starts, but before long, whatever’s left gushes out like a wide-open faucet. My dad always spoke in riddles and so went our Sunday morning conversation. I didn’t add much but sensed he wanted to tell me something. He kept on with words I recognized, words I’d heard, but in that grouping they landed like a foreign language. I guess he picked up on my misgivings and that’s why we went fishing, his cure for a long list of ailments, including confusion.
At the pond we walked the length of an old pier, some boards warped, others missing. We reached the end and he cast his line off to one side, then leaned his rod against the rail and cast mine to within a few feet. “Well, I still got that,” he said. We stared at corks floating on the surface and it reminded me of being stuck in traffic, waiting for the cars in front to inch forward but they never moved. And neither did our corks. He continued in a distant tongue and asked if I understood what he was trying to say. I didn’t, but grounded in a desire to please him, I lied and said that I did. And that’s when my cork twitched, then bobbed like a ballet dancer. I set the hook and dialed in my catch, leaving him alone in the traffic, not a ballet dancer in sight. And without another word, I solved the riddle. I understood what he’d been trying to tell me. Maybe fishing really can cure confusion, but it can’t cure everything.
I went back a few times but at some point, stopped going. Besides, I never could cast like him.
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Foster Trecost writes stories that are mostly made up. They tend to follow his attention span: sometimes short, sometimes very short. Recent work appears in Club Plum, Flash Boulevard, and Roi Fainéant. He lives near New Orleans with his wife and dog.