The FisherMan

The FisherMan

    Ned’s only son, Kale, just got caught cheating again by his chemistry teacher.  He tried to blame it on his lazy eyes but he just dug himself deeper into his mistake because he didn’t have a lazy eye and another classmate, Charles, does and the teacher, Mr. Stale, wants to talk about Kales’s de-sensitized nature in a parent teacher conference. 

    The day proved to be extraordinarily foggy, even in the early afternoon, and Ned wanted something to stabilize his wandering mind.  Even though he heard the forecasts of this drowning fog and the news reports of people reportedly gone missing due to the fogs ever growing density.  It was growing like a balloon being blown up and specialists were worrying us what was going to happen when it bursted.  These strangers being swallowed up by moist air didn’t turn Ned off of his self-made proposition.  He wanted to go fishing before this hupla of a conference even though it was still rather early.  He packed up all his equipment, the bamboo rod, the silk fishing line, his metallic blue tackle box and packed all of it in his matching blue pick up truck and took off without even leaving a note. 
    He drove to the nearest lake, Lake Lucid, and even though he couldn’t see anything but the road on his way to the lake, Ned decided that everyone was just complaining of a little mother nature.  He only parked 40 yards from the lake and from his point of view, he couldn’t see even see that water, only a creamy white shape whirling around what should of been the lake.  He picked up all his equipment and started to walk to his docked boat. 
    A little, 80’s speed boat, that hardly get any use anymore, with muck encrusted where the water splashes upon it.  The water looked so dark that it could of been a shadow of this illuminating fog.  The boat hardly puttered off the metal frame holding it aloft and Ned was off to the middle of the lake where he remembered that he caught a plethora of fish before Kale was born.  The spot where him and his now ex-wife used to come and fish and also talk. 
    The conversations, which were dreadful to envision for Ned, never ended and what inevitably led to their split because they both wouldn’t stop and on the day that the communications broke down, so did they.
    His boat waddled passing little islands filled with oak trees as big as 2 story houses and bird shit and he took a swift slice towards the back of one and saw a familiar buoy that jolted his memory; marking the spot.  He picked up the fluorescent yellow anchor and tossed it over the boat railed, as he watched the rope which was raveled around like a snake sleeping, he saw the knot tied to the floor break off.  He looked over the side and saw the anchor continually sink until it vanished in the black lagoon. 
    He tied the red and white sphere to the end of his line and put a wax worm on the hook, sliding it through the middle of his flesh and shook the bamboo rod back and cast.  Then he just watched the line gradually disappear into the opaqueness but he could still see the bobber, so he just sat back and relaxed as the bobber moved left and right from the waves.  The water seemed severely choppy that day but that could of been due to Ned’s inexperience with this lake after the last decade of un-occupancy. 
    The bobber just kept wadding back and forth hardly going under the crest and Ned proved his uneasiness by his reflexes because he kept reeling in his line and double checking his worm, making sure it was either still there or on correctly.  Each 20 minutes he kept getting more and more agitated by the lake and its ineffective ability to produce any fish.  Not for a whole hour he was here.  A bite could of brightened up his day.  The place just didn’t prove to be the same as it used to been.  Nothing does usually.  So he remembered not to pick up the anchor because that wasn’t have it early and decided to barge from his boat probably due to the thinness of the string.  And he coasted off in a different direction for a new fishing zone, a place he’s never been before on the lake, by the dam which they put in quite recently to stop the flooding that was occurring.  It was quite awhile away, 25 minutes on full speed with Ned’s boat and when he got their it seemed to be kind of dangerous.  He could hear the dam, the water racing over the cement and landing, splashing, leaving a mist from the steam that protruded from the surface of the chilly water.  There probably would of been a mirage of a rainbow if the fog let up but he couldn’t see, not even the dam itself, just the spectacular aura happening above it. 
    Ned stood up and picked up his fishing rod and lunged his back backwards, gripping the end of it with his gloved right hand, extra friction, and struck it forward, each second increasing his angle until he zipped it forward and the line sailed through the fog, damaging it, and leaving Ned just the right path of vision to view the bobber just sitting there like before.  Like everything always does, wading, wandering from sight back to reality, Ned was wondering where it went, where the fish went, and where the time went.  He had to be back in about an hour if he wanted to make it to the conference but that was the finale on his mind.  He could really care less how he was portrayed to the school’s faculty. 
    Ned never got why parent’s were the first ones to be blamed.  He was there, tried to be at least, throughout Kale’s adolescence but some children just are different that other children.  Ned didn’t think we should compare good, straight A children, to bad, cheating and lying, children because not everyone is the same and a person can’t be compared to another person.  He courageously regretted these conferences for two moral reasons.  His wife was going to be there, well his ex-wife, and this is the only time they ever see each other.  It’s pretty humiliating walking into a room with a person you used to know for twenty years and then somehow it all just went away, packed underneath a rug, like there was no problem and no separation.  They talked but only of the lucid small talk that plagued conversations.  The second reason was the anxiety.  They want you to fix it, the problems that your child is going through, but it’s never is that easy.  It’s not like a flick of a wrist and everything is okay.  Can’t the teachers just give him a break, cut him some slack, his parents are divorced and Ned’s tearing up.  His eyes filling with what looks like dew, right on the ridges of his eye sockets, sending off a reflection of the smog, a gray blotch on his white pupils, stained with clarity, lost in the misery of Lake Lucid.
    He decided to leave but to Ned’s knowledge, his pull has gotten a bite; the only way him knowing this is by the device of the bobber, sinking and eventually being pulled under so he instinctively grabbed the pull, the one he left un-attended because he was packing up and getting read to leave.  He lunged for it, the rod bouncing between opposing finger tips, bobbling it while he eventually got a hold of it he tugged at it, setting the hook on the flesh of the rock bass’s jaw.  He studied the line for a little while longer, feeling the tug and squirm, until he decided to reel it in and check out his prize that he won paralleling the game of claw grab at the nearest pizza chef in town.  He pulled it up to him after reeling the line all the way and studied it.  It just kept wiggling, the only movement a fish has while in danger and Ned touched it with his newly bare hands.  After he let the fish slime ooze on his hands, he prodded the bass’s fish wide open and reached in its mouths to un-hook it then taking it by the hand and tossing it aside into the lake.  Ned decided even though he was already packing up that one fish was enough for today and he thought he might come back out here another time while he puttered the boat back to shore.
    When docking the boat, Ned noticed a piece of sunlight beaming through the fogs misty surface revealing the sky, something it felt like he hasn’t seen in a few days and the gap, the one that the light shined through, kept evaporating from the heat burrowing away and un-sheathing itself.  Before leaving Lake Lucid, Ned could almost see to the other side of the lake where the houses where bigger and the yards had some amazing landscaping done to them.  Bi-layered gardens, stone steps, marble counters and all resting on a lakefront.  He never even knew anyone that lived in a house like that, probably were teachers.
    He picked up all his equipment and headed to his car and from there he knew the fog has lifted off and resumed back as clouds, heightening its presence but it held no density thus the blue sky still radiated past it’s transparency.  Ned wondered how many people got lost during this travesty.  He could fish out in it but some people just forgot how to walk, to explore, without the use of their eyes.  He put his equipment back in his truck bed and started his car and, even though he was going to go back and change his outfit before the conference due to his communion with nature but he decided against it.  He didn’t want to overestimate this meeting like the other ones, try harder than he actually was capable of or even what he was comfortable with, he told himself that this will just be to prove who he was even if it isn’t how a parent should be acting in his early 40’s. 
***
    Jill, Ned’s ex-wife, Mr. Stale and the Principal, Mr. Yule, were sitting around in the local high school’s chemistry class for 15 minutes waiting on Ned to arrive and to start the meeting.  He was running a tad late he told himself but this is who he was or rather who he was becoming.  While the three of them sat, staring at their silver watches as the minute hand kept on going and going, Ned was driving the exact speed limit with his windows down gasping in the fresh air on this spring evening.  The wind rolled through the air and he sucked it up like he had a straw trying to pace himself before entering the school. 
    Ned arrived at the dreary parking lot and parked his car right next to his wife's Honda Civic, the one she won after the lengthy divorce, and as he got out of his car he accidentally flung his door into her silver painted car leaving blue streaks on her luxurious car.  He decided to walk around the campus before entering so he could sulk in the newly, absent air.  The smells of rejuvenated grass and sprouting deciduous trees were in the aroma and Ned took it all in at stride.  The building was made out of sun-burn red bricks that encompassed the schools colors with red and brown.  They were the fighting Cavaliers but nothing had any chivalry in the whole building.  They hardly had a handicap ramp.  Ned decided that his fashionably late entrance was late enough so he opened the doors which were rather heavy for primarily entering in high school students.  It felt like a wind tunnel was pushing up against the doors, barring him from entering.  He grasped heavily and after a few seconds of budging the door slightly, he entered, walking directly to Mr. Stale's class.  He remembered the chemistry class well because he had to take it twice at this very school.
    He opened the door and anticipated eyes of anxiety to be staring at him but they just glanced at him, making brief eye contact, all three of them, and then Mr. Yule, with his flabby arms did a "your seats right over there" gesture and Ned in his flannel and khaki pants paced to his seat like a child that knows he is already in trouble.  Mr. Yule started the conference by stating what the child, Kale, did in the classroom.  They were taking their Moles exam in class today, which Ned thought was really weird that this all unfolded in one day and how they expected us to be able to come in on a dime's notice just because it was their son, and Mr. Stale noticeably saw Kale cheating on Charles exam.
    "How did you know he wasn't just glancing around?" Ned wanted to defend his child.
    "Because he did it more than once and was just peaking around during the whole hour."
    "Well, Ned the cheating wasn't the worst part, it's what your son did while he was confronted by the conviction."
    "Maybe he really believes that he has a lazy eye, you never know with something like that."  Ned stood his ground.  He got irritated by them emphasizing "your son."   
    "Ned, just let them finish." Jill tried to dismiss her ex-lover's building rage.
    "If Kale can't be here for himself then who is going to support him."
    "Well Kale can't be here because he isn't an adult, Mr. Timely."  Mr. Yule said. 
    "Yeah how does that affect anything?  If my son said that he wasn't cheating and he has a lazy eye then maybe he didn't and he does.  Have you even checked the test that he was supposedly cheating on or did you just assume?  Ned hated being called by his surname. 
    "Have you Mr. Stale?"
    "Well like we said, it isn't the cheating that we...."
    "But how does someone cheat if they don't even have the same answers.  Or did you just assume because my child doesn't get the best of grades that he would have to cheat."
    "Let me just go check for a second before we get ahead of ourselves."  Mr. Stale and Mr. Yule left the room and walked with caution out of the room.  Jill clenched her purse as soon as they left.  Ned grinned and reclined in his seat.  He studied Jill's movements and just watched her tan skin emboss from the countless lights parading from the ceiling.   He knew just by the look of her that she was uneasy which she always got when Jill was around Ned. 
    "So can you believe we are actually here right now.  Back at this place haha." Ned tried to break some ground between the calmness.
    "Yeah, its quite odd."  Jill soothed out breaking her anxiety.
    "I just can't believe they accused our son of cheating."  Ned almost laughed, trying hard to hold it back.
    "They got the wrong person.  How could a Timely cheat!"  They both bursted into laughter.  Ned was a notorious cheater through school.  They both knew it.
    "Why would they ever assume such a thing?  Even if he did do it, I am not going to sit here and let them assume it was on our parenting.  This is all just preposterous."
    "I can't believe you are so defensive.  I thought I was just going to come in here and nod and then feel guilty and then walk out." 
    "I figured we should try and do something for Kale.  It's the least we can do.
    Mr. Stale and Mr. Yule came walking back in the room and look flustered and out of breath.  They looked at the two and walked back to their desk hoping it was a turret nest.  They sat down with anguish and whispered something before they began to speak out loud. 
    "So we checked the tests and..."  Mr. Stale spuddered and regretted this conference.
    "He didn't have the same answers.  He got a C and Charles got an A.  Their tests weren't even close to be identical."  Mr. Yule spoke for Mr. Stale.
    "I am so sorry for having to bring you here."  Mr. Stale said.
    "It's no problem just do a little research before you accuse.  It's a big problem when you become and adult."  Ned just wanted to slam them one more time.
    "You two have a good day." Jill got out before leaving the door.
    They both left the building together down the hallways where they met such a long time ago.  When they left the entrance doors which were much easier then earlier, Ned had a few paces ahead of Jill.  He unlocked his car door and hung out of it.
    "Well it was nice seeing you again Jill.  Hopefully Kale will let one of these happen again.  This was a lot of fun.  Good Night."
    "Ha Ha yeah you too Ned.  Nice seeing you too."
    Jill didn't notice the ding on her car until she got home.  She laughed at the blue streaks knowing exactly where they came from.  She walked inside her 1 bedroom house and before dropping taking off her coat, dropping off her purse, and going to the bathroom she decided to give Ned a call.