Jason and Elihu: A Fisherman's Story

By Shelley Fraser Mickle

As soon as Jason hears the legend of Elihu, he knows he must catch the great fish. But Old Snout, the gator, guards Elihu. Legend says, too, that whenever Elihu is hooked, the bass whispers a secret. This novel also features two foster children looking for a home; Sundance, the miniature horse with a craving for peppermints; and a young girl who edits her dream of becoming an ice-skater as she recovers from a brain tumor that has robbed her balance.

• Language: English
• Publisher: eBookIt.com
• Release date: Apr 26, 2016
• ISBN: 9781456613136

Shelley Fraser Mickle

Shelley Fraser Mickle is an award-winning author who has published over a dozen books, which, along with her commitment to literacy and the power of story, led to her being nominated to the Florida Women’s Hall of Fame in 2014. Her books have been New York Times Notables, Library Journal’s Best Adult Books and her nonfiction book, Barbaro: America’s Horse (2007) won a Bank Street Award. She lives on her ranch in Gainesville, Florida.

Book preview

Garcia-Bengochea.

ONE

THE WIDE-AWAKE DREAM

Tic, tic, tic. The line in Jason’s hands bobs. The great fish Elihu is about to strike. Shhhh. Wait. Careful. Go slow, Grampy Luke whispers from the back of the jon boat behind Jason.

Near the bank, Jason thinks he sees bottle caps floating in the water. But suddenly the caps rise and swim toward him. They are alligator eyes. Jason swallows. There! Old Snout! Grampy Luke, fight him off!

Grampy Luke picks up a boat oar and holds it like a club.

Tic, tic, tic. Elihu is still nibbling.

Old Snout is the twelve-foot gator that guards Elihu. Old Snout never lets a fisherman pull Elihu into a boat, if he can help it.

Quick, like a lightning strike, Jason’s line disappears under water. Now, Jason! Now! Set the hook! Grampy Luke whisper-cries.

Jason jerks his line. He feels an answering tug from deep under water.

Keep your rod tip up! Grampy Luke yells.

I’m trying! Jason shouts back. A great yank bends Jason’s fishing rod double. A voice in his mind keeps coaching: Hold on, Hold on, Hold on! His hands cramp. The muscles in his fingers feel as if they are being twisted in wire.

Whoosh! Elihu breaks through the surface of the water.

The hook goes all the way through the side of the great bass’s mouth. Jason has set the hook perfectly, and now Elihu dances on the end of the line like a roped tiger.

The fish’s inky, green scales glisten over its body, and its girth is so enormous! Why! Elihu is as big around as a five-gallon pickle jar. Now Jason can see the great bass’s eye staring at him, as if saying, Ah! It’s you.

Jason works the reel, but Elihu takes the line and runs under water with it. Shhhhhh, the reel sings as the line goes out. Look! Jason points with his chin toward Old Snout, for he can’t ease his grip on the rod for an instant.

Hold on! Grampy Luke raises the oar, ready to swat Old Snout. Just watch your line, Jason. Watch your line.

Old Snout’s eyes are yellow fire as he enters a circle of water lilies and aims straight toward them. He opens his mouth. The alligator’s teeth are like razors.

Whoosh! Elihu again explodes from the water.

The bass is like a black diamond rocketed from the center of the earth. Jason freezes in wonder as the great fish dances across the water. Now Jason can clearly see the markings that Elihu is famous for: the scales darkly tinted from the tannic acid leeched from the cypress trees near the bank. And the white stripe on Elihu’s belly is as wide as a hat band, wider than most.

That stripe helped Elihu grow to its great size, since bigger fish are always looking for smaller ones to gobble up. So when Elihu was a baby, that wide stripe appeared like sunlight coming from above, and Elihu escaped.

Elihu’s one eye is a famous sign too, for long ago, the other was lost when caught on a trot line set out to catch whatever swam by. Now Elihu’s good eye is fixed on Jason, locked in battle with him.

Old Snout swims through the last of the lilies into open water as if he’s caught a bullet train straight for them. Jason’s throat tightens. His heart beats like a mad clock. Start the motor, Grampy Luke! Back us up!

The jon boat motor chugs. It runs along for a good minute, then dies like a swallowed cough. Dadblasted yellow stumpsucker! Grampy Luke shouts and bends over the motor. Recently, Grampy Luke made a rule: whenever he and Jason are in the boat, out on the lake, they can say as many bad-sounding words as they can think up. But the words now cannot come fast enough.

Gullywompus festatatious! Grampy Luke again fake-cusses as the motor sputters but doesn’t catch.

Like a sheath sharpening a knife, Old Snout closes his mouth over his razor-teeth and keeps coming. Elihu beats the surface with its great tail. Hold on, hold on, hold on! Jason must never let go! Not ever let go! Elihu. Elihu. He has caught Elihu.

Now Old Snout is so close that Jason can smell the ugly gator’s musty hide. Then, Bang! Old Snout hits the boat.

Hold tight! Grampy Luke yells and grabs the sides of the jon boat as it rocks and fills with water, almost like a big spoon dipped into the lake.

Suddenly, Old Snout rises out of the water. The gator opens its huge mouth and bites the line. Snap! Old Snout’s smelly breath floats over Jason’s face like an opened sewer. It is a smell worse than rotted-meat stink, and the line on Jason’s rod goes slack.

Elihu swims free. The great fish slaps the water in a loud Ha! and dives.

Never mind, Grampy Luke says. We’ll try another day. He reaches for his tackle box and takes a screwdriver out to work on the motor.

Old Snout goes back to his cover of weeds, and Elihu hides happily once again on the bottom of the lake.

TWO

THE LEGEND OF ELIHU

The daydream stopped.

Jason opened his eyes. He was lying in a bed in a cabin at the Orange Lake Fish Camp. Just as if he’d been watching a movie on the inside of his eyelids, he’d been going over all he’d heard that afternoon in the Tackle Shop. He’d been going over it so much that he began imagining it happening to him.

And soon it might.

He first heard about Elihu when he and Grampy Luke stopped in at the Tackle Shop to buy minnows for catching crappie. Fishermen were always in the shop, standing around, buying bait, drinking coffee and talking.

You ever heard of Elihu? A man with a dark bushy beard leaned into Jason’s face.

Jason shook his head, no.

Look, then. Bill, who owned the Tackle Shop, pointed to three photographs tacked behind glass. The photos were of famous fishermen holding up big bass. Old Elihu’s bigger’n even that.

There were no pictures, yet, of Elihu, because whenever Elihu had been hooked, Old Snout had set the giant bass free. Only stories and the names of fishermen were linked with the famous fish. Sometimes those who touched Elihu brought back one of the bass’s inky scales–darker than most–to back-up their tale.

In that one instant when Jason heard about Elihu, it was as if a match were put to dry brush: the way the dream to catch the great fish blazed up in his mind. Right away he knew he would one day catch Elihu. Elihu and Jason. Jason and Elihu. The story of Jason and Elihu would travel for miles and miles around the lake and beyond. Their names would be linked forever.

The desire to catch Elihu quickly became a dream-fever. It was like a fever in the way that it burned through him with an unquenchable longing to catch the great bass. Elihu would make Jason the most famous eleven-year-old boy in Florida, maybe even in the whole United States. Jason’s photograph would be in the Tackle Shop, then. Nothing else you ever heard about him would matter–nothing, nothing at all. Jason would be known only as the boy who caught Elihu.

Then the men in the Tackle Shop started telling about another great fish, and when Jason turned to hear what they were saying, this time he heard about a bass somewhere else.

He leaned in toward the cash register to watch Bill behind the counter point to a newspaper article. Bill read parts and told parts, so Jason soon knew of the June morning in Georgia in l932 when a nineteen-year-old boy named George Perry caught the biggest bass on record.

That boy had cast a Fintail Shiner next to a cypress log. It was raining, and it didn’t seem there would be much chance of catching anything. Then bam! The great bass had hit George Perry’s line. As he started to reel it in, he realized he’d hooked something like a monster. What a nice chunk of meat to take home to the family, he was thinking. For it was during the Great Depression; a lot of people were out of work. Many worried about starving, and George Perry’s family was poor.

The bass on George Perry’s line fought harder than a Spanish bull. It bulled around until it was totally exhausted, and only then could Perry haul it into his boat. He looked wide-eyed at the monstrosity he’d caught. Right away, he drove it to a general store, where the owner weighed and measured it and wrote down the record. George Perry’s bass weighed twenty-two pounds and four-ounces. It was a record that was yet to be broken. It was the most famous bass of all time.

And Elihu’s even bigger, Wally called, sitting by the shrimp-bait live-well. Wally was known as a bassmaster fisherman who fished many tournaments. His coffee cup steamed up over his face. His eyes glinted with a playful look.

Jason shivered.

No picture was taken of George Perry’s bass, either, Bill said, touching Jason’s shoulder and laughing. Because that young George Perry took it home and ate it. But the record stands for sure. Now come look at this.

Bill’s red whisker stubble reminded Jason of a dusting of orange clay. Bill pointed to another piece of newspaper under glass near where the fish knives were kept. This was the picture of a bass so big that the man holding it was leaning back, straining. He had one hand in the bass’s giant mouth. That ’un was in California. Bill thumped the glass over the picture and looked at it in awe.

Grampy Luke leaned over Jason to read the article to him. So on Grampy Luke’s deep, soft voice, Jason heard how, over the years, Florida bass were transplanted to California. There, in March of 2006, the most enormous bass anyone had ever seen had been caught. It weighed twenty-five pounds and one ounce. But it had not broken George Perry’s record, for the fisherman had been using a small white jig and a fifteen-pound test line. He’d been fishing in only about twelve feet of water that was clear enough for sight-fishing. The giant bass had been foul-hooked in the side, which was against state law. So the catch did not count.

Photo of Mike Wynn by Mac Weakley

Gainesville Sun Newspaper Photo, March, 2006, article by Tim Tucker.

Bill pointed and whispered, leaning close to Jason’s face. Any bass that big is rare as looking at an eight-foot human!

Sure ’nough. A man in overalls, sitting against the wall added. He stood up and came close to Jason. A bass gains ’bout a pound a year, so old Elihu must be well over twenty-five by now. Something else, boy, you best know. Each time Elihu’s been hooked, the old bass has whispered a secret.

Secret? Jason stared. He almost had to read the old man’s lips to understand the word; it seemed so out of place. How could any fish whisper a secret?

Umhumm, Bill added.

Secret, someone else echoed.

The whole room buzzed, Umhumm. Several shook their heads. Wally whispered, Whoever touches Elihu learns the secret.

Jason turned in a circle, looking at each one of them. He laughed. Aw, you all are just teasin’ me. A fish can’t talk.

No one said a word, but it was a talking-silence. Then the men laughed. But it was a mocking laugh, the kind that said Jason was the joke. Jason turned another circle, looking at each, So, just who all’s caught Elihu?

Me, most lately. A tall skinny man stood up from near a bait tank. He had a chin of scruffy brown whiskers. Bill introduced him as Skeeter Nelson.

When Skeeter Nelson spoke, his nose flared. He shivered. Beware of Old Snout. He looked deep into Jason’s eyes. "Soon as I hooked the giant bass, that gator come to bump the side of my boat. Going to flip me for sure. Old Snout raised his great mouth to show his teeth. And hissed. His foul breath went up my nose with the stink of rotted fish. That gator was licking its lips. It was eyeing the meaty part of my thigh. It was smelling its breakfast–me! I cut my line to Elihu quicker than you can say ‘Stink Bait.’ No fish is worth being Old Snout’s dish."

Now, lying in bed at the Orange Lake Fish Camp, Jason pictured Elihu in his mind and knew they were bound to meet. They would most likely meet in just the way his daydream showed him. Only in real life, he would catch Elihu. The great fish would be his.

In the twin bed beside him, Grampy Luke snored. His breath went in and out in a little whistle. Jason threw back the covers and stood up.

Now that he was eleven he thought he ought to be much taller. Slow-growing his mother called him. She said he was like her brother, who ended up six-feet and did all his growing after he turned twenty. Jason sure hoped his mother was right.

His hair–the reddish-brown color of his father’s–was just about the color of a new pencil’s eraser. More than a dozen times he’d been called Eraser Head. Pipsqueak and Squirt, too. At least, those were some of the names. There were more.

He ran his tongue over his front teeth where they overlapped like an X. His bare feet padded on the wood floor. He put his hands on the windowsill and leaned against the screen.

The moon shimmered on the lake like a ruffling bed sheet. A shiver ran up him as, in distant water, a gator bellowed, Haummmpppppph. Glancing back at Grampy Luke, Jason could see that his grandfather’s mouth was open to the size of a quarter. Grampy Luke’s chest rose up and down with each whistling breath. His ring of silver hair spread out on the pillow like the fuzz on a dandelion. His grandfather’s sleeping face against the pillow sported wrinkles like brush strokes.

Whenever Jason was with Grampy Luke, he felt happy. But Jason did not really know Grampy Luke very well. Only recently Grampy Luke had moved down from Michigan to live near Jason and his mother. Jason never knew what Grampy Luke would do or say.

But he did know that if Grampy Luke hadn’t moved from Michigan, he, Jason, might be locked