Duck. Duck. Goose.

DUCK, DUCK, GOOSE.
By
Justin C Gordon

         The tide was still out, so everyone had an excuse if they went home empty handed from the long pier at Goose Island State Park. It jutted out sixteen hundred and twenty feet between the Saint Charles and Aransas Bays. The pier’s middle had a tall hump that was so steep the only way to see the other side was to climb to the top. The apex was Roy and Jeb’s favorite spot to cast from.
         Both men were in their upper sixties and stood up there everyday to fish. Roy used lots of sunscreen, was tall, wore a wide brim straw hat, white linen shirt, tan chinos, and would cast at all hours like a smooth machine. Jeb had a leathery tan, was short, wore a baseball cap, loud Hawaiian shirt, dark shorts, and would let his rod sleep in a holster as his binoculars swept everywhere.
         Jeb narrowed his lenses on the pier’s entrance where excited Boy Scouts surrounded a white bucket, “What did the kids catch over there?”
         Roy reeled in, “They caught two crabs: one medium and one smaller.”
         “You get a picture?”
         From his pant’s pocket, Roy took out a small digital camera with a screen on the back and cycled through images, “Here.”
         “Good, now I don’t have to walk over there.” Jeb let the binoculars hang on his neck and inspected the picture, “Wouldn’t want to get any exercise.”
         “Yeah, that would be a shame.”
         “They tie the claws?” Jeb cupped the screen against the light.
          “I told them too, but you know kids.”
         “You got to tie the claws with two crabs and one bucket.” He turned the camera off and then handed it back to Roy.
         “They’re too small to eat.” Roy pocketed the camera and then reeled in his lure full of sea grass.
         Jeb raised his binoculars. “I’ve seen guys eat worse.”
         Roy cleaned the lure, cast out, and hit thirty-five feet. “Yeah?”
         “Carp.”
         Both men shivered over the bottom feeder.
         Jeb spit off the pier, “Yep, a forty-five pounder they put in beer batter and fried. They hadn’t caught anything in two days and couldn’t wait anymore.”
         “The batter help?” Roy reeled in.
         “They said battered fried crap would’ve tasted better.” Jeb laughed then lowered the binoculars. “That little crabs a goner. Savages.”
         “Kids don’t know better.” Roy said. He sipped his water bottle then capped it. “I did it and I bet you did a lot of stupid things when you were younger.”
          “I saved up all my stupidity for retirement. I’m playing catch up.”
         “You’re making quite a job of it.” Roy cast again.
         “Why do anything if you’re not going to do it right?” Jeb finished his beer, crushed the can and put it in the plastic bag tied to the cooler. From the corner of his eye he saw a flash of green over at the campsite, “Damn, that’s a nice car!”
         Roy paused from reeling.
         “Over there.” Jeb raised his binoculars. He saw Roy’s RV, then his own, and beside it an empty lot where a pine green Jaguar parked. Dirt from the campsite’s only road clung to the car. The driver’s door opened. A man in a polo shirt and khaki shorts stood up, looking like he hadn’t slept or shaved for days.
         “What do you see?” Roy asked.
         “It’s a young guy.” Jeb leaned on the rail, “Bet his old lady threw him out.”
         “Why do you say that?” Roy tried to reel in, but it was stuck.
         “He’s got a nice ring and no woman in the car.”
         “That describes all the guys here.”
         “He’s got tons of bags from Cabelas!” Jeb burst out laughing, “I bet he hasn’t camped a day in his life. Nice rod. That’s probably a two hundred dollar rod. He’s getting a box out. It’s a Ralph Lauren tent! The city boy is going camping! Hope he doesn’t meet the gators.”
         “I’ve been here six months and I haven’t seen an alligator yet.” Roy let out some slack.
         “I’m from Louisiana and you don’t want to.” Jeb lowered his binoculars and reached for the cooler, “The Park’s pamphlet says they have them.”
         “The pamphlet also says they have ample fishing and look at our run today.” Roy cranked tension on the line.
         “Damn.” Jeb scanned the cooler and then stood up, “We’re out of beer.”
         “You mean you drank all our beer.” Roy yanked on the line. It bent his rod.
         “Now let’s not place any blame. It just means I have to go and get us some more. You need anything else?”
         Roy frowned, “I have everything I need, except fish.”
         Jeb stomped off down the pier as if fish were deaf.
         Roy got the lure free and brought up what looked like hair pulled out of a shower drain. He cleaned it off, cast out, and tried not to watch the new visitor fumble over his tent instructions. Jeb would have loved it, but Roy turned away, and looked down the other side of the hump to the end of the pier.
         Everyone avoided that area when the water was low. It became mud flats that formed a wall of parched sea grass and exposed oyster beds the sun had cooked open for the gulls to pick clean. This cut off the water and fish from returning to the sea until the tide returned. Wade fishing was strictly prohibited from there; the mud would suck a man down to his chin. It stunk like a hospital: bile, urine, and decay.
         It always surprised Roy that only hundred feet out from this mess, the bottom plummeted into deep blue. There, boats zipped at ridiculous speeds and caused so many accidents, the rangers outlawed dropping an anchor to fish there. Inaccessible by pier and boat, it seemed everyone from the campsite to the nearby town of Rockport had a yarn about giant fish that waited to be reeled in from that unreachable spot.
         Roy thought the pier was a life cycle. One end had kids catching crabs, then death at the other, but if you lived right, maybe a fisherman’s heaven of deep blue was the reward. Jeb’s philosophy was different, believing the pier was like a penis and catching fish was like making a woman squirt. He had explained that women don’t squirt all the time.
         Roy sighed, “We’re just two old farts on the hump.”
         “Excuse me?” The owner of the Jag huffed up the pier using his new rod like a walking stick. His other hand carried plastic bags with Cabelas’ logos.
         “Hello.” Roy hoped the man hadn’t heard him talking to himself, but then was impressed by Jeb’s assessment of the rod. It was a G.Loomis Greenwater Spinner and it pained him to watch the man drop the handle against the ground.
The man was sweating. “Either this pier’s steep or I’m really out of shape.”
         “This humps pretty steep.” Roy figured the man as in his late twenties.
         “Why’d they make it that way?” The man set down his stuff and stretched.
         “The pier’s long. If a storm hit, anyone at the end couldn’t make it to land.”
         “That happens?”
         “Yeah, storms come up so quick you just cut the line and save the rod. You get to the highest spot and grab something solid.” Roy said, “The waves knock everything into the bays and suck it out to the Gulf.”
         The man looked at the calm water, “Hard to imagine that.”
         “Well, the tides out.” Roy said.
         “So, you’re not suppose to see the bottom?” the man looked over the rail.
         “It’s preferred not to see the bottom.” Roy pointed out thirty feet, “That spot there is at least five or six feet deep. For now it’s the best spot.”
         “So there’s fish out here?”
         “There’s that saying: if there’s water, then there’s fish.” Roy smiled, “Doesn’t mean there’s lots of fish.”
         The man opened a small cardboard box, and took out a reel almost as expensive as the rod. He looked to Roy, “Could you tell me how to connect this?”
          “Slide the foot; that bar under the reel into the reel seat; that indent there in the butt of the rod.” Roy said, “You crank the slip ring down and tighten it around the top of the reel foot.”
         The man followed the directions. He used his right finger and thumb to turn the silver ring clockwise locking the reel in place, “Thank you.”
         “Anytime.” Roy cranked his lure, “Now say ‘I do’ and you’re married to it.”
         “Is this a real fishing ritual or you pulling my leg?”
         “Marrying your rod is supposed to make you feel inseparable to it.”
         “Depends on your view of marriage.” The man frowned at the ring.
         “You got me there.” Roy tapped his wedding ring against his own reel’s ring. “It’s something old farts with too much time on our hands do. Take it for what its worth.”
         “Okay then, ‘I do’.” The man laughed, pushed the release to draw out the clear line, and threaded it through the eyelets. “I’ve never fished before. The salesman said it would be easy.”
         “The more you get out here, the easier it gets to set up.”
         “So catching fish doesn’t get easier?”
         “That’s up to the fish.” Roy said, “What’s good about fishing is that most of the time you’re hooked by one thing or another, like family or work. Fishing is a chance to take the hook out of your mouth and catch something else with it.”
         The man felt inspired dug into his shopping bags. He withdrew packs of shrink-wrapped sardines for lakes, stuff for fly-fishing in streams, and heavy bomb shaped weights for deep-sea work, “What are you using?”
         “Lures.” Roy offered a sandwich bag full of rubber lures, “Try one.”
         The man took and inspected the bag, “How much do you want for one?”
         “Just pick one. If you lose it, take another.” Roy cast out.
         The man felt embarrassed and picked through the bag, “Where’d you buy these?”
         “I made them.”
         The man selected a purple kind with a lead bullet shaped weight he saw Roy using. The tail was cut like a ‘J’ hiding a large steel barbed hook.
         “That’s a good one.” Roy reeled in. “The tail corkscrews when reeled in.”
         “Thanks.” The man went cross-eyed attempting to thread the lure.
         “Wait.” Roy put his rod in a holster, “You’ll want a clip. That way you can swap them out. Let’s see what the salesman sold you.”
         “Do those guys get commissions?”
         “Kid, there’s no such thing as an underfed salesman in a sporting store.”
         With stuff from the bags they organized the man’s tackle box. Roy found a clip that had an eye and a clasp. He cut off some line, ran it through the lure, and then showed the man a fishing knot. The man knotted line from the rods tip-top to the clip’s eye and then did the same from clasp to lure. The man closed the clasp and looked like a kid having a great birthday party.
         “Thanks. I didn’t know any of that.” The man offered his hand, “I’m Steve.”
         “I’m Roy. We all had to learn it too.” he shook, “Where you from?”
         “Austin.” Steve raised his rod back and snapped it forward. He released the button late. The cast splashed five feet from the pier. “When do you let go?”
         Roy reeled, “You ever jump off swings when you was a kid?”
         “Yeah.”
         “When would you jump off?”
         Steve imagined it, “When you go up, before the swing feels like it’s suspended. Is that when?”
         Roy nodded, brought his rod back, whipped it forward, and at the last moment before his body would brake against the momentum, he released the button. The lure shot out thirty-five feet.
         Steve nodded and threw himself into casting. It went out, sometimes too close, other times all over the place. Once, Steve forgot to release and it spun like a cheerleader baton at the end of his rod, but he kept trying.
         Roy continued to cast and left Steve alone. He saw over at the campsite Jeb’s truck parked. His friend got out with two six packs and kneed the door shut.
Steve sent a cast out twenty feet, smiled triumphant, and said, “What you said about the swing helped.”
         “That’s a good cast, son. Now watch: lower your pole,” Roy angled his pole forty-five degrees down over the water, “this way when you reel in, the lure doesn’t break the surface. It stays level and doesn’t get stuck in turtle grass.”
         Steve mimicked the pose, smoothly reeled the line in, and cast back out.
         Jeb climbed the hump looking happy, “I just won a dollar!”
         “Yeah?” Roy knew scratch off games littered Jeb’s RV.
         “I convinced those kids the little crab had a chance.”
         Roy shook his head. “Did you just rob Boy Scouts?”
         “Not robbed, I bet and won.” Jeb set the beer in the cooler, “My big crab ripped a back leg off the little one.”
         “I don’t remember a gambling merit badge.” Roy turned to cast.
         “I taught them a valuable lesson.”
         “What, don’t talk to strangers?”
         Jeb laughed, “I taught them that life’s a gamble.”
         “What did their scoutmaster say about your lesson?”
         “He wasn’t there.”
         “Give me your binoculars.” Roy said. Jeb handed them over. Roy holstered his rod, adjusted the lenses, and observed.
          “What’s going on over there?” Jeb repositioned his cap.
         “The Boy Scouts,” Roy returned the binoculars and frowned, “are taking bets from anyone walking by.”
         Jeb’s face lit up proud, “Them my boys.”
         “Until a Ranger sees it and you’ll wash your hands of them.” Roy cast.
         Jeb knotted a lure to his line, “Look, can’t I bask in their success?”
         “Why couldn’t you teach them about fishing?” Roy saw two ducks on a sandbank, “You could’ve said: ‘fishing is like duck, duck, goose. You don’t know whose going to get tapped and what’s going to end up in the pot.’”
         “Teacher, aren’t you retired?” Jeb asked. “Besides, it’s whose in the pot, not what.”
         “A teacher is always a teacher.” Roy reeled in.
         “You were a teacher?” Steve looked over.
         “It speaks?” Jeb anchored his line in his hook keeper.
         Roy introduced everyone and the men nodded to each other.
         Steve asked, “What grades?”
         “Thirty years in elementary; fifth grade.” Roy proudly recalled. “Before hormones mess them up, like Jeb here.”
         “Nice car you have.” Jeb dumped his rod in a holster.
         “Thanks, not very practical for camping.” Steve saw his car across the bay and thought it looked ridiculous. He did like his new tent. It meant something he couldn’t name to have a tent and know how to assemble it.
         “You drink, Steve?” Roy realized his lure was stuck again.
         Steve hesitated.
         Roy felt like he just offered a Baptist a beer, “We also have bottled water.”
         Steve spoke quickly, “I’d love a beer.”
         “Jeb, can you give him one while I fix this?” Roy tried to free his line.
         Jeb tore a beer from the plastic rings, “Lone Star; it’s fancy beer.”
“          Thanks.” Steve opened the can. “Anyone else catching anything?”
         “No,” Jeb said, “The fish are mocking us.”
         “Put something in the water before you start complaining.” Roy said.
         “I’m waiting until dark.” Jeb said.
         Steve gulped the beer then asked, “Is it better then?”
         “Yeah, the lights come on then.” Jeb pointed at the tall lights on steel beams placed every twenty feet of the pier, “When they come on, the small fishes swim wherever the light is and brings out the bigger fishes. I just stand out here now so Roy doesn’t look like he’s talking to himself.”
         “I feel like I’m weeding a garden today.” Roy’s lure had more grass on it.
         “Why don’t we call it quits for now.” Jeb took a pinch from a tobacco tin and put it in his lower lip. “C’mon, cut the line and save the rod.”
         Steve asked, “What does that mean?”
         Roy said, “Your rod is your most expensive piece of equipment, so you don’t want to lose it to anything. Say you catch something big…”
         “Like a whale.” Jeb said.
         “Yeah, we get a lot of those here.”
         “Point is, don’t ever lose your rod over a fish. Cut your line and move on.” Jeb turned to Roy, “Now why don’t we go use that laptop you got and chat with some old ladies. I know they send you naughty pictures.”
         Roy blushed, “It’s not like that.”
         Steve seemed startled, “Do you have satellite on your RV?”
         “Wi-fi.” Jeb spit over the side, “Couple of the state parks have it so old perverts like him with ‘cams’ and laptops flock here.”
         “You’re just jealous you don’t have a computer. You stop drinking so much and save up, you could buy one too.” Roy looked at Steve, “Don’t listen to him. My kids got me a laptop and a digital camera last Christmas. I took some computer courses at the Y.M.C.A. and now, I chat with my kids and grandkids. I belong to fishing groups on ‘MySpace’.”
         “MySpace?” Steve blurted as if a bug stung him.
         “They give you a free webpage. Got a bunch of my old students on it as ‘Friends’ that are grown up. Then, I found some people I went to U.T. that formed the ‘Tea Sippers Group’.”
         “They just make Aggie jokes on the message board.” Jeb said.
         Roy said, “Sometimes. You on Myspace, Steve?”
         “No.” Steve looked away. “My wife is.”
         “It’s a wonderful tool.” Roy said, “Lot of weirdness too.”
         “I’ve heard it ruins marriages.” Steve scowled, took up his rod, and cast.
         Roy and Jeb’s eyes met to determine if both had heard the same thing. They nodded, but remained silent. It wasn’t good to ask a man they didn’t know about his wife. Jeb checked on the scouts with his binoculars. A man in a scout uniform was yelling at the troop. Jeb snatched up his rod and started casting.
The three fished in silence. Steve churned over something, Roy caught up in casts, and Jeb waited for repercussions from the B.S.A. Slowly the sky changed from light blue to yellow to cotton candy pink.
         Steve rolled his shoulders, popped his back, and then grabbed his beer. Without taking his eyes off the distance, he said, “When you shoot TV commercials, this is called ‘The Golden Hour’.”
         Roy nodded, “I can see why.”
         “Yeah, film crews set up hours in advance, then the whole expensive production halts. It’s like Jeb said: it gambles that they picked the right spot, brought the right lenses, and the right equipment. They pray the weather doesn’t change and if it does, there’s a short window to correct things.” Steve looked utterly miserable, “Like if it goes wrong.”
         Jeb spit at the water, “Does it go wrong?”
         “Something always goes wrong.” Steve studied the clouds, “You plan for that, but when it happens you’re still surprised.”
         Roy asked. “What do you do?”
         “You haul ass and salvage it. You never get the shot you planned but you get something you can use. The client doesn‘t know any better.” Steve finished his beer and crushed the can, “You put these in the trash cans?”
         Jeb pointed to a plastic grocery bag tied to the cooler handle, “Otherwise I have to fish them out of the dumpster.”
         Steve looked baffled, but Roy added, “Jebs a ranger here.”
         “Honorary.” Jeb noted proudly, “They give me a free lot for doing odd jobs here like changing light bulbs and collecting empty cans for recycling.”
         “Oh.” Steve’s tone had pity in it.
         Jeb’s hand crushed his own empty can. “You’ll see when you retire. You need to have stuff to do to keep busy.”
         Roy said, “Even if you have a good pension, like Jeb here. He retired from the post office and has money from wherever he’s gambled or stolen it from.”
         “Bet you wish you knew.” Jeb checked his line.
         “That’s the only reason I talk to you coon-ass.” Roy opened the cooler and offered the two men beer, “You’re worst enemy is time. It can make you nuts. You spend all your life being on the clock and saving for the time when you’re off it, when it happens, you get bored shitless.”
         “It can make you go crazy.” Jeb open his beer, “I got friends that survived cancer, heart attacks, and raising awful kids. They retire and can’t find a reason to get out of bed besides Jeopardy. To me, Death’s face looks like Alex Trebek.”
Steve scratched his head, “I always thought it would change.”
         “Sorry to blow it for you. You know those Wal-Marters?” Roy looked at Jeb,          “What do you call them?”
         Jeb rolled his eyes, “Greeters.”
         Roy said, “Everyone looks at them Greeters like their senile old things that didn’t plan for retirement, but they were once successful people in their field, just like you are. Now they’re trapped in their homes, going to funerals, waiting for their kids to put them in a home, but for ten or fifteen hours a week they get to chat it up with customers and coworkers.”
         “It helps them get their dignity back?” Steve asked.
         Jeb and Roy looked at each other and laughed.
         Jeb spit over the rail, “Boy, they don’t sell that at Wal-Mart.”
         “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like...” Steve stumbled over his words, “I’m in advertising. This is the first time in a couple years I’ve turned my cell phone off. It rings when I’m asleep and I have to answer it. I’m always on the clock. What you said made me feel like for the last couple of hours I’m not ‘Steve the creative director’. I’m just ‘Steve trying to learn to fish’.”
         Roy nodded, “We’ve been there.”
         “When you mentioned Wi-Fi, my gut feeling was to call my boss with ideas for selling ad space on the pier’s rails.”
         Jeb laughed, “Would it say, ‘this sunset brought to you by McDonalds?”
         Steve blushed, “It’s crazy, but being in an agency trains you to think like that. But here you are using the Internet to connect with family and not sell. It makes me feel shallow.”
         Roy said, “Give it a day or two down here. Everyone needs to unwind.”
         “Find trouble to get into.” Jeb checked on the scouts, but they were gone.
         Steve’s eyes followed his line to where his last cast hit. It was forty feet and he felt proud. He wanted to carry that feeling back home, but feared the sounds in his office would drown it out. “You guys ever lost a rod over a fish?”
         “Once, something tried to pull me off a boat out there. I wasn’t strapped in right. There was no time to cut the line.” Roy said. “It was a nice rod.”
         “I fell asleep once and something took it. Must have been a shark.” Jeb tapped his rod, “Steve, how long you here for?”
         “I don’t know.” Steve reeled in slow. “Seeing if the wife misses me.”
         “Fishing can make a woman jealous.” Jeb cast out.
         “Had many arguments over it, as if I was having an affair.” Roy said.
         Steve winced, “Is your wife here now?”
         “I’m a widow.” Roy cast again.
         “I’m sorry.” Steve looked at the rings on his rod and finger.
         “Thanks. I’d be happy to argue with her again.” Roy cast. “I’d let her win.”
         Jeb coughed, “My wife wishes she was a widow. She’s visiting her sister, who after thirty-eight years I still can’t stand. I’m sure you have in-laws stories.”
         “I call them out-laws.” Steve dug his phone out of his shorts’ pocket. He felt guilty but switched on the phone and stuffed it back in his shorts.
         The lights above hummed and began to glow a blue white light against the black that swept down over the sky. Puddles of light floated on the water.
         Steve’s cell phone rang. It displayed a blurry photo of his wife’s face labeled ‘Nancy’. He had taken it with the built in camera and regretted never making the time to take a better picture of her.
         Steve’s rod tugged.
         Roy shouted, “Lock the reel, son!”
         Still holding the phone, Steve awkwardly turned the reel and locked it. The line pulled back hard. The phone rang loud. Steve’s pole bent.
         Jeb set his pole in a holster, “Put the phone down and bring it in.”
         The catch fought and tossed side to side. Squeezed between the rod and Steve’s sweaty hands, the phone popped up, and headed for the water. Roy caught it and for some reason answered it, “Hello?”
         A drunken woman slurred on the line, “Baby, I’m sorry. It was a mistake.”
         Steve fought the fish using both hands, “What’s she saying?”
         Roy caught up in the moment listened and repeated. “She said she’s sorry. Reel it in, Steve!”
         “She said to reel it in!” Jeb shouted.
         Steve tried but the line ground out against him.
         Jeb reached over and rolled a wheel in the spool, “Your drags not set. You have no tension, now you do!”
         Steve’s rod suddenly had strength to it. He pulled back on the rod and it bent forward, “What’s she saying?”
         Roy listened and then said, “She’s sorry some more. She’s sorry she called you a selfish bastard and…” Roy’s face blanched and before he could stop said, “She love’s your man-meat?”
         “That’s her name for it, not mine.” Steve leaned back, the rod jerked up.
         Jeb grabbed his binoculars. The end of the line was thirty-five feet away, shy of the light’s reach, and too dark to see what Steve hooked. “It’s big, kid!”
         Steve shouted, “Now what?”
         Roy listened and regurgitated Nancy’s words, “She shouldn’t have gotten sucked into MySpace. She was lonely with you working all the time and your drinking. Wait. She needs to light her cigarette…”
         Steve scowled, “I hate her smoking.”
         Jeb watched the line, “Wear it down.”
         Roy nodded, “Yes, I’m still here.”
         The pole flexed and bent as Steve yelled, “What’s she saying now?”
         “She’s crying.” Roy listened then said, “She says your fifty times more creative then Riley…”
         “She did?” Steve asked.
         Jeb looked ready to snatch the rod from Steve, “Who’s Riley?
         “The damn kid gunning for my job.” Steve’s rod tugged violently forward. “Are you sure she said that?”
         Roy felt he should throw the phone out into the water. That maybe after Steve’s first fish, which might teach him to catch and not be caught, then let him talk with her. Steve waited impatiently like all young men on the clock. Roy held the phone out, “She did.”
         Steve let go of the rod. Jeb lunged for it, but it was gone. It hit the water and sliced across the surface out into the bay. Steve grabbed the phone and ran down the pier shouting, “You really think so? A partner one day?”
         Jeb and Roy hung over the rail quiet. They watched the Jag light up, back out, and take off on a three and a half hour trip to Austin.
         Jeb offered Roy a beer and then began cannibalizing the Cabelos bags. “Well, I guess he has nothing to show the client…”
         Roy looked past the end of the pier to the deep blue and wondered what swam there, “Yeah, but the tides out.”
         Jeb raised his beer up in salute. They tapped cans, drank for a few minutes, then returned to fishing off the hump in the pier.