Fishing, At Night

By Megan Shaffer

There are only certain things that my father will whisper when we’re out fishing, and they’re always about the moon or the stars or the water.

Mo is sitting next to our dad on the boat, his lips so dry they’re always cracking with blood, and when he smiles sometimes it drips down his chin. When that happens, he’ll look at me and stretch his lips into a wolf grin to purposely bleed himself and say, “Boo.” 

Dad will say, “Stop scaring your sister like that.”

And Mo will just flip me off with his blue nail finger. A week ago, he slammed his finger in his truck door, screaming so loud that it woke dad and I. Dad didn’t want to go to the hospital, so he took Mo into the garage and used Monkey Glue to piece the nail back together and push the skin back to the right place. 

It’s nighttime, and the bugs are flickering around my ankles and neck even though I’ve got my hood up and tucked Mo’s old jeans that I’m wearing into my socks. The houses alongside the lake aren’t blinking, their window eyes shut. Dad casts another line while Mo holds the live bait in his hands. Even in the dark, I watch the worm wither around his palms. 

“Stop, you’ll kill him,” I say.

“I’d rather be dead then bait,” Mo bites back. 

Dad looks at both of us. He’s tired and his bones seem to be closer to his skin each and every day. The older he gets, the earlier we end up going back to the lake house rather than spending all night fishing until the sun came up like we used to. Because Mo can now drive and I’ve hit thirteen, these moments with him are more and more finite.

“I’d rather be all the way dead than half dead,” Dad tells us. After that, we don’t really talk the rest of the night. I don’t catch anything and neither does Mo, but Dad does. Every time he shows us, letting me feel the scales on each ones’ belly before throwing them back into the water.

The next morning from the couch in the living room, I see Mo taking the plastic container of live worms out of the fridge when dad is in the bathroom and walking outside the sliding glass door. When he comes back, he’s empty handed. 

That day, when I walk to our dock, it will rain. All the worms will crawl to a dry place. Mo stays inside our room, windows shut but curtains open. The rain won’t let up and, on our last night at the lake house, we won’t go fishing. Dad will fall asleep with his mouth open on the couch and I’ll have to sleep in the room with Mo on a thinned, frayed layer of blankets until Mo wakes up and realizes that I’m on the ground. Then, he’ll heave me up onto the small bed and tuck the blankets around my body like he did when I was little. I’ll fall asleep to the creaking of floor as he shuffles around on the blankets beneath me.  

I am on a boat and he is underwater. Dad is on the shore, in a house, with eyelids as dark as the windows. 

Megan Shaffer is a senior Creative Writing and Publishing and Editing double major. She is from Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania and is the captain of the swim team along with being a member of Alpha Delta Pi.