The Shine Journal

I climb after my dad into the small metal boat. I sit up front, like when we launched years ago.

The motor won't start. Dad yanks the cord, tries different maneuvers. We drift.

"It's not far," he mutters and grabs the oars. He rows to his favorite spot, where we anchor in a light current. Dad baits both our hooks with salmon eggs.

Waiting to cast, it's as though his spell over me never lifted. Daddy and I, off at first light, our long poles swaying, lines weighted just so. He passes my handle and I grasp damp cork, testing the spinner with my left hand, taking the line with my right. Pole behind my shoulder, I feel a nudge in my middle as I swing forward, releasing the line. It arcs over gray water and drops yards away.

"Good one, kid," Dad says. He casts, then lets his bait sink and bounce on the reservoir's bottom.

Mallards yak nearby. Farther off a fish jumps and somebody speaks in muffled tones from shore.

I ask if it looked different out here when he was twenty.

Dad's eyes brighten. "Over by the highway, a drainpipe emptied in. It's gone now. But I used to fish next to it, hooking one almost every cast."

I've encouraged his stories since he and Mom retired and moved back to Eugene. Here in Oregon's Willamette Valley he grew up with eight younger siblings. He starred on the high school football team, ran track, and decided to become a minister.

"I used to get out by six o'clock and fish," he says, "before my shift at the shingle mill. Then I came back after work. Sometimes I came out on Sundays." That was his first year married to Mom. I picture him, tall in a black suit, casting his line while going over the sermon he would deliver at his student pastorate in tiny Walterville, just downriver.

He brought home so many fish that Mom complained, "Give me back my freezer!" The trout were stacked like cordwood.

Now he pauses, leans forward, and flicks his pole. Smiling, he reels in. "Grab the net."

I lift the first catch of Dad's season from the water. With a towel he grasps the rainbow trout, rummaging in his tackle box. "Swallowed the hook." He speaks softly to the fish while extricating his bait from its gullet.

I catch nothing. Dad reels in four more.

Last summer he asked repeatedly for my company in the boat, but I put him off. Was I really too busy? I think I was scared to watch Dad doing what he loves but losing steam. How would we deal with trouble if the boat sprang a leak or his truck broke down? Both of us are older than we used to be.

Finally, in August, I agreed to go with him for an afternoon. The moment I set foot in the boat, his old spell returned. My worries evaporated. We waited, no nibbles, yet Dad's eyes shown. After two hours my pole twitched, and Dad cheered. "You've taken the skunk off," he said, netting my trout.

Today it's my turn to be happy for him. I am, but I notice water seeping around my feet. "Uh, Dad," I say.

He looks down. "Better row in and check the plug."

Water sloshes. The shore seems miles away. I consider. Shoes, phone, camera. What would I trade for these moments?

He rows. When we scrape the boat launch, I scan Dad's face. Though winded, he looks fine. "My feet are wet," I say.

Dad's gaze lingers on the water. "I'll bring the truck."

My toes warm against the dashboard heater as we drive back.

"You keep the trout," Dad says when he drops me at home. "Feed your family."

I take this as a challenge. I set out to clean all five fish.

Daddy always did this in my childhood--the bloodletting, the heads severed near the hose that issued a chilled stream.

His spell lingers now, and I set to the task. Ten silver eyes stare.

I thank the fish for their assistance, their being, their role in Dad's life. What would my childhood have been, if he hadn't fished?

My orange cat sniffs, watches the water and my stiffening hands as they work the dark innards free. He turns up his nose.

Dad is at his own house, feet up in his recliner. Mom is humming while she cooks their lunch. Mexican chicken. Dad sleeps, mouth open, as if to swallow it whole.

Motivation: I had to ask myself what motivated me to decapitate and gut five trout on my back deck last spring. It was all my dad's doing. His influence on me banishes fear and trepidation.

Bio: Deanna Hershiser has published work in joyful!, Relief Journal, Long Story Short, flashquake, and Camroc Press Review. She writes and blogs from Eugene, Oregon, where her big orange cat treats her with great affection when not attacking her ankles.