The Monster of the
Lake
Darft_1
By: Chase L. Currie
“Time to wake,” the hand said
followed by his rough voice. “If you want to eat tonight then we have to go.”
This always happen in my morning
haze when I'm away from my bed and when the sun has just yawns from her long
sleep. I always think of waking me up to go fishing. It was how we ate dinner
on those long-ago summer nights when I spent weeks with him and my grandmother
at the lake. We caught fish for dinner, every night.
So on mornings where the sun had a
hard time getting up for the day and my Grandfather Currie and I would be
walking to the lake to get dinner. As a small child – if you believe I was
every small –would be caring both fishing pole, while my grandfather would be
whistling some nameless song carrying a bucket and a red and gray tackle box.
The walk seems shorter with him
then when I would do it alone or with friends. We would have to pass the pool
to get to the best fishing spot on the whole lake. I never went swimming in the
pool. I hate it. I hate the idea of going to a chemical fuel pool when you had
the whole lake right at your fingertips. I could not fathom why people would do
this.
Sure, there was snakes, snapping
turtles, a leech or tow, and I once heard crocodile lived in the water, but
that is what made swimming in the lake fun. Although, I think the crocodile was
a lie made up by my brother, who told me to keep me from going into the water.
It had the opposite effect. The child adventure and warrior in me would jump
head first into the water looking for this crocodile. I would spend hours
looking for it and would be upset at my mother when she physically picked me up
out of the waters to take me home.
I never found him.
We sat up our fishing poles, me one
dock and my grandfather on the other dock. And we sat.
Now if you have never been fishing
let me inform you to a child it is worst then watching your big brother play
with all your new toys because he somehow tricked you into letting him tie you
onto the bed. "We'll go to play escape artist." Escaping wasn't an
artistic talent I had . . .
And on the dock, I felt tied down
because there was the perfect water to go swimming in. One step forward and off
I would go chasing after the snapping turtles, but I needed dinner for the night
and all my toes.
Hours – days fell away from me
wanting to go for a swim and to be done with fishing.
It was never going to happen. I was
never going to get a fish, I rarely did. Everyone else would catch dinner but
me. The fishes seem to hate my line and I guess they didn’t like the idea of
swimming around in my belly.
But I like the idea.
Boom! Something pulled on my line,
pulling me to my feet to use all my tiny strength to try to whip the fish out
of the water, but I was failing. Every foot I would gain I would lose two to
what I thought was the crocodile. It had to be the crocodile. It was too strong
not to be the monster of the lake. I would catch it and stick my tongue out to
my bother telling him I got it.
I wanted to cry out for help but that
would take too much of my strength, so I pulled and pulled. The child eating
monster – it seems to never eat adults in the stories I was told – pulled me
closer to the edge of the dock. My toes started to find the air at the other
end.
I was doom. I was going to be
pulled into the depths of the lake where all the turtles would judge me for
trying to catch them, and they would find my guilty of the most heinous crime –
fishing. My punishment would be death by crocodile.
Now, now, of course, I would have
let go of the pole but just thinking that is foolish really.
Goodbye cruel world as my feet
lifted off the dock and my grandfather caught me by my belt. He tossed me back
onto the dock, grabbing my pole and in with one quick motion pulled free the
biggest catfish ever. It seems to be the size of me. He fought with the beast
in the air trying to pull it back to the dock. The battle must have lasted all
day, maybe all night but at the end, he won. He raced back to the house to show
my grandmother and she couldn't believe how big it was.
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