The One That Got Away

Being a single father, I have many parental shortcomings. Skinned knees get rinsed with a garden hose. Papa John’s Pizza is on speed dial. And diapers only get changed after the number-two train pulls into the station.

Time at my day job also takes away from time at my dad job. Garrett, my oldest, played his Little League championship on Tax Day, a holy day for accountants like me. My middle child, Katarina, invited me to three tea parties last week, none of which I could attend. As for Baby John, he first said “Dada” on a FaceTime call, and I’m not sure whether he was talking to me or his grandpa.

So when I learned the annual Lawton County Father/Son Fishing Tournament was scheduled for my weekend off, I jumped out of my high-back, swivel chair and shouted, “Yes!”

Tammy Hamm, in the cubicle next to mine, must’ve thought I’d had an accounting epiphany—a miracle in our Main Street office. She didn’t know the parenting gods had finally smiled on Michael McCandless.

We McCandlesses have always been outdoorsman. Ever since King George banished our forefathers to his debtors’ colony in the New World, we’ve roamed Georgia’s forests and streams, hunting and fishing our way up the social ladder. A McCandless in a local fishing tournament was like Lebron in a game of pickup. At the end of the day, I’d have a bonding moment with my son, five hundred dollars in the bank, and a trophy bass on the wall. A win, win, win.

My plan had only two problems: Katarina and Baby John. Not that I didn’t love them. God knows I’d wrestle a rabid grizzly if it got between me and my kids. But it was a tournament for fathers and sons, not a tournament for fathers and sons and three-year-old princesses and babies that needed a bottle of milk every half and hour. If this was going to happen, I needed to find a sitter, asap.

Neither set of grandparents was available, and I struck out on every high schooler I asked. I thought it was a fluke until I learned Lawton High’s prom landed on the Friday night before the fishing tournament. The last girl on my list was my cubicle neighbor’s daughter, high school senior Marcia Hamm.

I said a quick prayer—“Dear God, please don’t let Marcia have a date to the prom”—then texted Tammy. I figured my odds were fifty-fifty. Marcia was…well, she had a great personality.

Seconds later, my prayer was answered. Yes, Marcia’s free. She’d love to babysit.

I texted, Great!!!, then thanked God for His providence.

Unfortunately, providence took a wrong turn on that Saturday morning. I woke up to three messages, all from Marcia. The first, a text, was sent at midnight: Hi, Mr. McCandless. I’m really sorry, but I can’t make it tomorrow. I’m not feeling well and don’t want to get your kids sick. She added an emoji of a masked smiley face.

At two forty-five, she left a voicemail: “Hey, I wanted to make sure you got my text about tomorrow…or I guess it’s today.” Giggle, giggle, tee-hee. “Anyway, thanks…I mean sorry. Bye-bye.”

Then at a quarter to four: “Mr. McCandy…I mean McCandle…this is—Hey, guys, keep it down. I’m trying to call someone. I can’t…what I’m trying to say is…”

The rest of Marcia’s message was lost in the thump of a techno beat.

Sweat dotted my receding hairline. It was too late to call a replacement. My remaining options were (1) cancel the trip and ruin my son’s life, or (2) bring Katarina and Baby John to the fishing tournament. I mulled over my choices for a solid thirty seconds. Then, still in boxers and a Five for Fighting T-shirt, I said, “You can do this. You’re a McCandless.”

I woke up Katarina first. She may have been three and a half years old, but she was female, and therefore took time getting out the door. Her slowdown that morning wasn’t in picking the perfect fishing outfit. The delay was in deciding what to do with Mr. Meowzer, the kitten I’d bought for her third birthday.

I tried coaxing her away with a healthy dose of dad logic. “He’ll be fine, sweetheart. We’ll leave plenty of food and water.”

Katarina looked at me as if I were a Disney villain. “No, Daddy. We can’t leave him alone.”

I didn’t have time to argue—and would’ve lost if I did—so I stuffed Mr. Meowzer into his crate and loaded him into the truck with my tackle box, a lunch cooler, life preservers, and my still-sleeping kids.

An hour later, our family of four was floating in Lake Wallaloosa, called Lake Wall by locals, probably cause we can’t say Wallaloosa. Ours wasn’t the last boat to arrive at the starting line, but it was the smallest. I wasn’t even sure my fifteen-foot BassBuster Pro was equipped for four passengers, so I covered Baby John’s bassinet in mosquito netting and pretended he was a giant cricket basket.

At seven o’clock, the tournament director blew his bullhorn. Dozens of Dixie’s finest fishing boats revved into action. And one BassBuster Pro puttered in their wake.

As unlikely as it looked, I’d planned for this contingency. Power boats, like their testosterone-fueled drivers, needed to flex their muscles. This vasectomy-snipped fisherman, on the other hand, had no such illusions of grandeur. What’s more, I knew Lake Wall’s finest fishing hole was only a skipped rock away from the starting line. Bass Cove, as I’d named it, was a McCandless secret. I powered my Minn Kota trolling motor and set course.

The morning hours ticked by with little success. The only thing I caught in Bass Cove was a lap full of regurgitated formula, courtesy of Baby John. At nine o’clock, a fog rolled in that was thicker than my Aunt Risa’s oatmeal, and you could cut that woman’s oatmeal with a knife. The sun broke the fog at ten, and the mosquitos that followed were so bad, I sprayed everyone, even Baby John, with Deep Woods Off. Then at eleven, while playing a game of Zippo, the Flying Monkey, Katarina dropped my iPad overboard, where it landed thirty-seven feet later on the bottom of Lake Wall. Our morning’s catch: a largemouth bass about as long as a hot dog and a crappie so thin, he may have been two-dimensional.

Discouraged but not defeated, I anchored in the shade of a sycamore and opened our lunch cooler. Inside were bottles of mustard, ketchup, and mayonnaise, along with tomatoes, pickles, American cheese, Dr. Pepper, and six packs of Goldfish. In my haste, I’d forgotten any form of lunch meat.

Hoping to hide my blunder under a generous layer of ketchup, I prepared two meatless sandwiches and passed them to my unsuspecting kids. Garrett, a brooding, silent sufferer, ate without complaint. His sister, though, was an act-first, think-later kind of girl. She took one bite, shouted “YUCKADOO,” and tossed her sandwich into the water.

Something miraculous happened as that Wonder Bread floated away from our boat. First, a soft splash, probably from minnows nibbling the underside of the sandwich. I stopped chewing and studied the water. Swirls rolled next to the bank. Something big was lurking nearby. Maybe a tournament-winning, hang-it-on-the-wall bass. I slung my own sandwich overboard and tied a jointed Rapala to Garrett’s line. It worked. On his second cast, he caught his biggest bass of the day—a two-and-a-half pounder by my scale. A minute later, he hooked an even larger one, though it got off before we could get it into the boat.

After both sandwiches had dissolved, the bass returned to whatever they’d been doing before lunch. The McCandless boys, however, had been reborn. No longer content to ride in the wake of our power-boating competitors, we were going to take the fishing world by storm. And I knew exactly how to do it.

“Hey, Garrett,” I whispered, as though someone might overhear us. “You know where last year’s Christmas tree ended up?”

“Didn’t you take it to the street?”

I grinned. “Nope. That’s what everybody else does. Ours is at the bottom of this lake.”

A smile crept over Garrett’s freckled face. He knew what I’d done. He was a McCandless.

Bass like to congregate around sunken trees, branches, tires—basically anything that finds itself on the bottom of a lake. Because of this, fishermen have been sinking Christmas trees for generations, probably going back to Jesus’ day. So what was the McCandless twist? Tinsel. A well-trimmed tree is like a five-star fish hotel with free wifi and a buffet breakfast. My dad even left a few ornaments hanging, and my granddad once drowned a Virgin Mary tree topper.

I’d marked the Fraser fir’s resting place with my fish finder and located it in no time. Seventeen feet down, a pair of big-bellied bass prowled its branches, like bouncers at a nightclub. I rigged Garrett’s pole with a Strike King 10XD—a deep-diving minnow perfect for catching Christmas-tree bass—and maneuvered our boat into position.

Nothing happened on Garrett’s first cast, or his second…or the one after that. I consulted the sonar. The bass were still there, and they’d been joined by a few friends. The Strike King must’ve tickled their fins as it passed. But for some reason, the fish weren’t interested.

At two forty-five, somewhere between casts sixty and seventy, I heard four words that sent a shiver into my soul.

“Daddy, I’ve got poo poo.”

The words came from Katarina, who was parked on the floor next to Mr. Meowzer’s crate.

My daughter’s poops weren’t the quick, push-wipe-and-flush events like her brother when he was potty training. They were a chance for her to sing a whole alphabet of Disney songs, from “A Whole New World” to “Whistle While You Work.” If I took her to shore now, our fishing tournament would be over. “We’re almost done, sweetheart. Can you hold it for an hour?”

Two casts later, my question got an answer. “Daddy. I’ve. Got. Poo. Poo.” Her little face was red, her little hands were fists, and her little voice a few decibels shy of a Boeing 747 takeoff.

I had one more trick up my sleeve. Bribery. With sugar. “I’ll get you a treat if you wait. You want ice cream with sprinkles?”

Katerina considered my offer for a moment, then unleashed a scream that may have split a seam in the space-time continuum. “POO! POO!”

Garrett tapped my shoulder. “Dad, look.” I turned, thinking he may have hooked into one of those Christmas tree bass, but he was pointing at the now fishless fish monitor. Dumbfounded, I stared at the screen and channeled a line from my wife’s favorite movie, The Princess Bride. “Inconceivable.”

And it was inconceivable. There was no way fish under seventeen feet of water could hear a scream on the surface. But then again, it was Katerina’s scream.

Garrett reeled in his lure. “Just take her, Dad.”

The jury had decided. And the bass agreed. This tournament was a flop.

I motored to shore, tied my BassBuster to a tree trunk, and took Katerina and Mr. Meowzer behind the nearest bush. I left her squatting and singing then joined Garrett and Baby John on the bank. Garrett had tied a chartreuse Jitterbug to his line. It was the wrong time of day for that kind of lure—top water plugs worked best in the morning or evening—but he didn’t ask my opinion, so I didn’t offer one. “Sorry it didn’t work out today, champ.”

“It’s fine.” He cast next to a submerged stump and started reeling. Behind us, Katarina was halfway through “Let It Go.”

Garrett’s Jitterbug danced across the water. “Do you think she can see us, Dad?”

I didn’t need to ask who “she” was. “Yeah, son. I do. And if Mom was here right now, she’d tell you how proud she is of you.”

“Really?” His voice was soft and as fragile as a spiderweb.

Thirteen and a half years ago I held Garrett for the first time. He fell asleep on my chest, his little hand latched onto my pinkie. How had that baby become a man?

I put my arm around his shoulder and pulled him close. “You want to know something else? I think you’re amazing, too. You’ve had to grow up faster than most boys your age. You take care of your sister and Baby John and now—”

Water exploded under Garrett’s lure. Line zinged off the reel, his rod tip bent double. “Dad! Dad! I got one.”

The fish took off down the shore. Whatever he’d hooked was big, but neither of us knew how big until it leapt out of the water, fins flapping, mouth gaping, and a Buddha-sized belly glistening in the sun.

Garrett woo-hooed. “That’s the biggest bass ever.”

He wasn’t too far off. Even if the fish wasn’t a Lake Wall record, it was certainly big enough to win the Lawton County Father/Son Tournament.

“C’mon, Garrett. You got this.”

Katarina paused her poop medley to cheer on her brother. After five minutes of fighting, both boy and bass were exhausted. I took over, reeling the fish closer, and when the bass was a foot away, Garrett scooped it into our net.

His bass weighed twelve pounds, six ounces. I handed the fish to Garrett, and he raised it in the air like an Olympic gold. That’s when I saw the bulge in her tummy. Garrett’s bass was female, an expecting mother no less. Part of me hoped my son wouldn’t notice, that he’d win the tournament and get his fish mounted without a second thought.

But he was smart.

Like his mom.

Garrett pointed to her belly. “She’s got eggs.”

His fish had been out of the water for a minute. Maybe more. She wouldn’t survive much longer. “Let’s get her in the livewell,” I said. “We can check her in at the dock and let her go. She might live.”

She might live. The words hung heavy between us. We’d heard that before.

Garrett looked up at me, his eyes brimming. Then, with trembling hands he lowered the fish into the water. Mrs. Bass didn’t move. Silently, I prayed, “Jesus, please help this fish live.”

Before the “Amen” left my mouth, the fish’s fins flapped, first the right, then the left. With a wick of her tail, she was gone.

An hour later, the McCandless family was back in my Ford F-150. On the way home, I stopped at Walmart and picked up a frozen pizza, a pint of Ben and Jerry’s, and a plastic bass that sang “Achy Breaky Heart.”

Maybe one day, decades from now, my children will bring their kids to visit their old dad. Then after dinner, while we’re all lounging by the fire, one of my grandkids will point at the singing bass and say, “Tell us the story, Papa.”

That’s when I’ll lean back in my rocker, take a drag from my pipe, and tell them about the one that got away.