A Worm in Three

My dad always said the best time for fishing is right before sunrise.

On summer vacation we'd drive up to the family cottage for a week of rest and relaxation, and then the man would have me up before the crack of dawn to get on the lake.

“The fish are most active now,” he would say as he sliced a worm in half and threaded the pieces onto each of our hooks. Even as I got older and learned to put the bait on by myself he always did the first worm for me.

I look over at my rod. It's still too dark to see much of anything, but I've been doing this so long now I could hook the worm with my eyes closed and not get poked. The styrofoam box stays by my feet, unopened and at risk of being kicked into the water.

For the last 42 years my family has made the 5 hour drive from Toronto to Calabogie, trading the concrete jungle for the serenity of the forest-lined lake and quaint little tourist town. My parents started doing it when I was three years old. They saw an ad in a camping magazine for a cabin rental. Apparently I was a terror on the drive up, but by the time I was six I'd learned the faster we got here, the faster I could go play in the water.

When the owners said they were going to sell, my parents jumped at the opportunity. That year we spent almost the entire summer at the cottage, doing repairs and necessary upgrades. I was eleven then, so old enough to be almost helpful and young enough to not be bitter about the long days of unpaid labour. Despite all the work Dad was doing, he still got both of us up a few times a week to go fishing, rain or shine. Some days I'd be too tired and try to refuse, but Dad would refuse my refusal.

“Up and at ‘em,” he'd half-whisper so he didn't wake up Mom. “The fish will be hungry.”

Maybe the fish were hungry, but they seemed to know what part of the lake to avoid. Year after year my dad and I did our little ritual, and in all those years we only caught a handful of fish worth eating. I only ever saw him clean a fish maybe 4 or 5 times.

The first rays of light lick the silhouettes of the trees on the east side of the lake. Dad would have insisted we have our lines in the lake by now. I pick up the worm box and hold it in my lap. The fishing pole stays laying on the dock. A loon's lonesome call skates over the water.

Every morning, my Dad would insist that the fish would be raring to go. “It's going to be a good fishing day, I can feel it, son.” We'd stumble down the dirt path to the dock, holding trees to both make sure we didn't slip and so we could find our way.

The mornings would be so still, so silent, that the sound of our footsteps on the wood planks felt like they echoed across the lake, overshadowing the gentle lapping of the waves at the shore. Even after we replaced the old dock with a new one, it still creaked as if the weight of a family legacy was standing upon it.

The ‘new’ dock isn't new anymore. We replaced it when I was 20, when my parents were thinking of retiring up here. Eventually my mom decided she didn't like how isolated it was and that there would be no public transportation, but they still installed features into the cottage that came with planning for a lifetime. The downstairs bathroom now had a walk-in tub, and both the front and back of the cottage had ramps over the old stairs. They never did the full move here once they both retired, but they would spend the majority of the summer here, and a good amount of the spring. This was their Eden, their reward for living fulfilling lives.

The birds are starting to wake up, their first songs rising from the trees by the shore. An odd sense of guilt starts bubbling in the bottom of my stomach. My dad would have cast his line a few times by now, and I still haven't picked up the rod. It stays on the dock.

This isn't the first time I've been fishing here without my dad. Back in college my folks let me bring some buddies for a weekend. Even though we'd be up til 3 in the morning, I'd be out on the lake 2 hours later, alcohol still very present in my bloodstream. At that point, Dad had driven this habit into me and not participating in a morning fish was like forgetting how to breathe. It just didn't happen. That was actually one of the few times I caught a fish big enough to eat. My dad's voice was thick with worry and sleep when I called him from the landline, but woke right up when he heard what I needed help with. He spoke loudly as I left the phone facing up, guiding me through the steps to clean and filet the largemouth bass. By the end of our call the kitchen stank of fishguts and there were bones and scales everywhere.

“Good job, son.” Dad beamed over the phone. “I'm proud of you.” He probably would have been less proud if he could have seen the hackjob I did, or the mess that was left, or how horribly charred the fish was a few hours later, but it meant the world to me just the same. My buddies, who were all hung over and woke up to the stench of dead fish, were a little less impressed.

The tips of the deep green waves tinge with the ochre from the sun, rising higher as the world wakes up and disturbs the water's surface. A motorboat can be heard in the distance. I spot two kayaks out by the resort across the bay.

My dad always wanted a boat, but Mom refused. “The two happiest days of a man's life are when he buys a boat, and when he sells a boat.” she would refrain. She allowed us to get a canoe about thirty years ago. We tried fishing from it once, but that ended in blood and tears. Dad's blood, my tears. A backcast gone wrong resulted in my hook going into my dad's cheek, not even two inches from his eye. He was lucky I didn't finish my swing, or I would have yanked it right out. He calmly reassured me as we both paddled back to shore. Mom was less calm as she lectured both of us while helping Dad work the hook out and cleaning the wound. We saved the canoe for just paddling around the lake after that. Dad ended up getting a little scar.

I finally reach over and grab my rod and get ready to bait it. Before I let the line go slack, I balance it in my hands.

The rod was a wedding gift from my father. “A little something extra for the honeymoon,” he winked. Ellie and I were poor when we got married, and wanted to pay off our student debt instead of paying for an expensive trip. My parents suggested the cottage as a cheap getaway.

“Are you trying to keep him away from me?” Ellie joked. “He'll never leave the dock, now.”

My dad grinned. “Don't worry, I got you one, too.”

She had never been fishing before, and we both got a kick out of my ‘lessons.’ I only got one early morning out of her, though, so that trip was my second time fishing alone on the dock.

Ellie never really took to fishing. She'd join me and my dad to humour me sometimes, but it was mostly just the two of us until Jacob came along.

I hear a sliding door slam, but can't place if that's my cottage, or the one next door. The neighbours have always been early risers. I finally take out a worm and grab the hook.

“Dad?” Jacob steps on the dock, which does its standard screeching creak despite the lightness of my six year old's steps.

“What are you doing up, buddy? Does Mom know you're down here?” I move the rod and he comes in for a hug.

“She was asleep.”

I frown. “You know you're not supposed to leave the cottage without one of us.”

“Sorry.”

I kiss the top of his head. “It's okay. Just don't tell Mom. And ask next time.”

“Okay.” He looks at my lap. “Can I fish, too?”

I nod, and he runs off to the shed on the shore where the rods and tackle box are kept.

Dad bought his grandson his first fishing rod when Jacob was four. The first time he split the worm into three parts instead of two his eyes shone and his Adam's apple bobbed up and down. He struggled a little bit to get the shorter pieces onto the hook, but he managed. It wasn't long before he had mastered his own technique at getting the stubby little pieces stabbed and ready to launch. Last year Jacob joined us every morning and had a blast. I'll admit, all his questions that early in the day before coffee made my eye twitch, but my dad answered every single one of them eagerly. What kinds of fish live in the lake? Are fish only here in the summer? Do fish sleep? My dad knew most of the answers, but sometimes he didn't so he started keeping a notebook on him. He would write them down, and then he and Jacob would go look it up in an ancient almanac or go to the library once the sun was fully up.

Jacob patters across the dock, holding up his rod triumphantly. I give him a thumbs up. He puts it on the dock and lets the line slack just like we taught him to last year. I kneel beside him, hoping the creaking of the dock covers the cracking of my joints. My rod goes beside his and I finally open the worm box.

He points to a fat one at the top. “That one!”

I hold it to the wood plank with one hand while opening my pocket knife with the other. The blade hovers over the middle of the worm when Jacob stops me. “Wait! Why aren't you making it three?”

I'm confused for a second, but I get there. “We don't need three pieces, bud. There's just the two of us.”

“Oh. Right.”

My dad's aneurysm was a shock to everyone. He wasn't very old, not even eighty, and he took pretty good care of himself. In the end I guess none of that mattered. It’s been seven months since then and I can still barely get through a day. This is the first time we’ve been up here since he passed. This is the first time Jacob has gone fishing without his grandpa.

“Can you still make three? I want to put one in the water.” I hand him a piece and he tosses it into the lake. We watch it sink a few inches before a mouth comes up from the deep and snatches it. He giggles. “The fish are hungry.” Then he turns back to me. “Can you teach me how to put the worm on my hook?”

I show him how I do it with mine. He reaches for his rod, but I stop him. “You can do the next one. I'll do the first one of the day.”

“Just like Grandpa did!” His excitement catches me off guard. All I've felt this trip is loss, and yet Jacob has found a comforting connection. Through a third of a worm on a hook, of all things.

“Yeah, just like Grandpa.”

The sun peers over the trees and glints over Jacob's eyes as he winds back and casts his line. For a moment the world is silent. Then I see his smile, and the dock creaks.