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Though the wind was still up this weekend,
I knew that a cold front would be dropping
in Saturday night. Not about to miss any
opportunity to get on the water again, I
went out twice on Saturday.
Mostly due to the intolerable price of gasoline,
and not a little due to the fact that I just
wanted it this way, I left the big fiberglass
boat under the tarp at home. I took my father's
boat out of the garage at my mom's house, cleaned
her up and together we returned to the lake.
The boat, twelve-feet long and with low sides,
was in every way my cradle in life. Built two
years before I was born, it is as sound as it
was the day he first launched it. My father
built many boats for customers all over Louisiana
and adjacent states, but this is the only one
I know of surviving, except for a pirogue in
the hands of a family friend. At least two or
three times a year I take it out, because like
many things in a life, a wooden boat must be
used or it dies of neglect. It needs to feel
water under its bow, needs to slice through
waves, needs to drift obediently through backwater
slews and into the back ends of dark canals where
the thin places are.
The fish were extravagantly crashing at everything
that touched the water. I fished a Jitterbee under
an indicator the entire weekend. Within half an
hour of arriving at the lake Saturday morning,
I had landed four very nice bass. The rest of
the two trips that day were filled with sun
perch, redears, catfish and more smaller bass.
It's not a comfortable boat. It has bench
seats fore and aft. My father built it with
very low sides because he didn't want to have
to stretch far to retrieve fish from over the
gunwales. The bench seats are not comfortable,
my knees are bent toward my chest, and my back
ached badly by the time I got home. I am still
using an eight-pound thrust Minn Kota trolling
motor on it. My father bought that motor in the
early 1990s, a point where I knew he was feeling
his age. Before that little trolling motor, he
would paddle the little boat around the lake with
his left hand and cast with his right, all day
long. Even as light as the thrust is, it moves
the little boat admirably.
All morning I fished a little eight-foot unknown
model Montague I had refurbished. That evening,
when I returned, I also brought along an
eight-and-a-half foot Rapidan to pitch a few
streamers, but the Jitterbee was still the
preferred prey of everything I caught. I was
deeply satisfied. There I was, on the lake my
ancestors took as their namesake, in my father's
wooden boat, fishing with bamboo fly rods. What
man could have been happier? I had invited no
one along Saturday. I needed that time alone
with the lake, the boat, the rod and the eager,
thrashing fish that came to my hand.
When I was very young, we'd fish from dawn to
dusk. We always had oatmeal crème pies and soft
drinks in the boat if I was along, but when dad
went fishing alone he brought no food and no
drink. We would spend the whole day, but
eventually I would grow cranky and tired, and
when we finally made our way home, it always
seemed to me he was leaving something of himself
behind on the lake. Today I know what it was. As
the years converge behind me, I know what he felt
as he throttled the engine up, the boat's nose
lifted and she peacefully slid along the surface
of Sheti, lake of the Chitimachas. A little part
of himself lived there, a little part of myself
lives here also. Now, when I fish along the shores
of the lake, sitting on the front bench seat and
working the trolling motor, I am mournfully aware
of the absence of him, but his spirit is strongest
on this old lake. If the boat was my cradle, the
lake was my playground and sanctuary.
I stumbled on a nest of redears. They attacked
the Jitterbee with such ferocity as soon as it
hit the water I missed several trying to get the
line in my hand to make a hookset. They were big
and dark and beautiful. I fished along the left
fork of Sawmill Bayou until it converged in the
rear, where a hunting club has put up cables and
wire and a metal gate. The bile rose in my throat
again, as it always does. For eight thousand years
my grandfathers and grandmothers fished these
waters, lived on these shores. For my entire life
until that gate was erected I knew the twists and
turns and canopies of cypress behind it. Now those
who would barricade free-flowing waters and possess
that which can never be possessed forbid me the
right of my blood. The little boat pointed its bow
at the back of Sawmill Bayou, drifting as I thought
about the loss, and it floated just to the gate and
slowed there, stopping inches from the metal bars.
Together, we stared behind that abhorrance, wishing
not for fish but for freedom.
I coaxed the boat around. It stuggled with
reluctance, but obeyed. We followed the right
fork of the bayou out, catching more fish as
we went, until we emerged on the open lake
again. Following the north shore, I caught
more big redbreasted sunfish over sunken
timbers. Darkness threatened. It was time
to go home. There were a dozen and a half
panfish in the livewell under the front bench
seat. I knew I needed to get home and get them
cleaned and put up. But I took a leisurely cruise
on my way out of the cove, letting the blazing
oranges and ochers and silvers saturate my skin.
The varnished topsides of the boat were like fire,
like sacred fires, like the fire my grandfathers
brought from Natchez to burn eternally until the
great darkness settled over our nation and so
very much was lost.
"This one's for you, pop," I said aloud to the
lake, to the boat, to the old man's spirit who
was with me, and to the brilliant sunset of
sacred fires. "This one's for you."
Out of the lake, I turned the bow toward home,
gave the engine about three-quarters throttle
and the boat slid across my native waters quietly,
purposefully, carrying me there and back safely
once again. Just as it has always done. Just as
I always depend upon it to do. Just as my father
built it to do.
This one's for you. Both of you. ~ Roger
It's out! And available now! You can be one of the
first to own a copy of Roger's book. Native Waters: A
Few Moments in a Small Wooden Boat
Order it now from
www.iuniverse.com, Amazon.com,
or Barnes & Noble.com.
Roger will also be giving away three autographed copies to
readers. Stay tuned, for an announcement on the Bulletin
Board on that soon.
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