Poetry | September 01, 1997
Fishing With Uncle Walter In World War Two
Walt McDonald
I remember the first tub of red racers I saw in a walled shed
in Arkansas, down by the Ouachita. My uncle led us there
when I was nine, my father, and another man with some
4-F condition
or too old. We drove five hundred miles in World War Two
over bumpy roads at night to see my aunt and uncle
who lost their only son at Pearl Harbor, to grieve again
about what happened two years ago, to fish the river
my father trawled and trapped when he was a boy in
poverty Arkansas,
Granddaddy dead, his scattered brothers fretting for their boys
flung out across the world like dice and black bones,
a mystery of fate. My older brother was in jungles of Saipan
or Guam, pinheads on a map my mother kept back home.
But here was rot,
real darkness in some back-swamp bait shop, a dozen washtubs
of rotting crawdads, eels, and fish heads, the hot shed
squishing under my Keds as I ducked in mud under cobwebs
long as nets. My uncle punched me in the ribs and kidded
what my girl friends would think of this. I mumbled something
and my uncle laughed. What all this rot and splash of slime
in barrels had to do with fish I didn’t know, the perch and bass
we caught back on the Brazos suckers for worms and grubs
the size of snot. I wondered if this was one of those places
we whispered about at night behind the barn, where men
went to women, where boys were lucky if they came back alive,
bleeding, part of their things chopped off, circumcised
or sick for weeks. I shuddered, that odd, familiar swelling
in my pants and taste of alum. My father walked behind me
like a guard, and I followed my distant uncle and a
one-armed man
who hobbled to a row of tubs and buckets. My God,
my Uncle Walter said, stepping back and clapping
as if he’d found the manger, always one to make the best
of everything. I stopped nose level with the tub, nothing
but fifty pounds of straw and dirt. My father bowed down
to smell,
big-knuckled fists on the nicked and rusted rim. The one-
armed man
who owned it all reached around my back and tapped the tub
with a hammer. Chaos swarmed, enormous worms twelve
inches long,
swirling out of black dirt and squirming over each other,
gone in the blink of my eyes, the fastest motion I’d ever seen.
His nub still around me, the unshaved owner banged again,
and out they wound and slithered, red racers fat and slimy
naked.
I imagined the fish these would catch, the sharks or alligator gar
it would take to swallow them, the meat hooks we’d have
to squish
and impale them on, if any of us could hold them writhing
like fire hoses. I don’t know how many gar and big-mouthed
bass
we caught that week, what bait we used. I remember my uncle
suddenly weeping against the wall, sunlight odd on his
balding head
in the bait shop. I remember my father clearing his throat
and staring at worms with unusual interest, big knuckles white
on the tub. Now that I’ve been to war, now that I’ve
watched TV
around the clock and worried about one son under Iraqi rockets,
I can hear my Uncle Walter beating his fist against the wall
of that bait shop, there to fish with only his brother
and a distant nephew. I can’t remember much about that day,
but my father’s face sunburned. Out on the lake, I drank
my first half-bottle of beer. I got to pee from the boat,
standing up, a long-arched splash and ripple my uncle
promised
would draw fish. I know we carried two canoes over a crust
of mud that shuddered like dough, and fished the river
past midnight. I remember Uncle Walter cursing, clubbing
alligator gars with his oar, trash fish he hated, head down,
shaking, smashing them in the moonlight with his fists.
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