FISHING IN HOLY WATER
Arlin Schrock
July 1, 1991
"Oh, yuck!"
My daughter Laura stepped back and pinched her nose as I broke the neck of a hefty catfish, spilling its entrails into a blood-splattered bucket. Small price to pay for inch-thick, fresh fillets.
Small price, too, for building a relationship with the third fisher on this expedition, Jeremy.
Yesterday, sitting in my office for the first time, he wore a just-try-to-figure-me-out expression on his face. A high school senior, he came, he said, "just to keep peace with my mother." Two days before, Jeremy had been expelled for pulling a hunting knife on a classmate.
"So, why did you do it?" I asked.
Silence.
"What was going on in your thinker when you made your move?"
More silence.
"Look, I just want to be your friend," I said, but the words felt hollow.
"Prove it," his eyes said, then shifted to the wall on my right.
For more than an hour I tried to get through to him. But I felt like I was rowing around an island, getting a general view of things but not finding a place to land.
"I have a girlfriend at school," he said. They talk some, but not too much-afraid to get too close.
"Ever been hurt badly by someone?" I asked.
He admitted that he had, but he wouldn't talk about it with anyone, not even his mother. Lord, help me, I prayed. This guy doesn't trust his own mother, much less a probing stranger.
There, he did it again. Something on the wall to my right caught his eye. Oh, of course, the calendar. Nice picture: a swarthy Indian displaying his catch.
Walleyed pike, I think.
I turned away, and then it hit me. I played my hunch.
"You like to fish?"
"Love it."
"Really?" Thank you, Lord. "Been fishing lately?"
"Naw, not since we moved to town. But when I was a kid, we lived next to the Tensaw River, and I used to go every chance I got. ...
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