The Morning We Saved Eleven Hundred Fish

Closing the Valve

Rodney went down to the dam that Saturday, a week after he opened it. I watched him from the kitchen window.

He had the wheel handle with him, the one he had taken off the stem. He had kept it in the cab of his truck the whole time.

He put it back on the stem and turned it closed. It took him a long time.

The valve had sat open for a week and the gate was full of silt. I saw him lean on it with his whole weight, again and again, until it finally shut.

I did not go help him. I thought about it. But some things a man has to do with his own hands, and I believe he knew that.

When he was done, he walked back across the dam to his place. On his way, he stopped where he could see my kitchen window, and he raised his hand.

I raised mine back.

Over the Winter

It rained in November and snowed twice after Christmas. The water came back a little at a time. First it filled the low spot in the middle where the last pool had been.

Then it spread out across the gray mud, slow, a foot at a time. By February the old stump was under water again. By March the water had a ring around the old stump again.

Rodney caught up on his daughter’s support by Christmas. I do not know all of how he did it. I know he took on a second job running a snowplow for the township, nights.

I know his mother sold a piece of jewelry she had been saving for her granddaughter. And I know Harlow called him in January and put him on a hauling crew for the highway job, at regular wages, all through the spring.

Harlow never told me he did that. Rodney did. I have never met that man again, and I have thought about him more than I think about most people I see every day.

April

Mrs. Pruett called the first warm Saturday in April.

“Barrett,” she said, “those boys of yours haven’t been down here once since October. I’ve got eleven hundred of their fish in my pond eating me out of house and home. You tell them they can come fish any day they want, as long as they put back what they catch.”

So they did. Eli and Wade rode their bikes down the blacktop that same afternoon with their poles strapped across the handlebars. They fished her pond until dark. They went back the next day. They went back every Saturday that spring.

In the middle of April, Wade came home with his face lit up like a Christmas tree. He had caught Pop. He knew it was him by the dark stripe and the size of him.

He held him for a picture on Mrs. Pruett’s dock, and then he let him go, the same way he did in October, slow, with both hands.

Two weeks later he caught him again.

In April Mrs. Pruett let them fish her pond any day they wanted, and they caught the same bass twice.