The Big One: a novel

By Ed Moses

Twelve-year-old Eddie has always lived for fishing trips with his grandfather, idyllic day-long floats on the sweet waters of their home river. But now Gramps, the charismatic owner of a local sporting goods store, has himself been hooked by dementia: he's obsessed with catching the biggest fish in the river, and he's scaring everyone in Eddie's life half to death.

This earthquake spawns numerous aftershocks, some comic: the unfortunate incident of the deceased carp; how it comes about that Eddie's dad throws up at his mom's wedding. And some dark: the climactic 60-mile river journey--one voyager perhaps mad, the other perhaps kidnapped--launches deep in the night, carrying Eddie and his grandfather inexorably to a final, fateful encounter with the Big One.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Daniel & Daniel Publishers
• Release date: Feb 10, 2020
• ISBN: 9781564748270

Book preview

Copyright © 2020 by Ed Moses

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

The interior design and the cover design of this book are intended for and limited to the publisher’s first print edition of the book and related marketing display purposes. All other use of those designs without the publisher’s permission is prohibited.

Published by Daniel and Daniel, Publishers, Inc.

Post Office Box 2790

McKinleyville, CA 95519

www.danielpublishing.com

Distributed by SCB Distributors [phone]

library of congress cataloging-in-publication data

Names: Moses, Ed, [date] author.

Title: The big one : a novel / by Ed Moses.

Description: McKinleyville, California : John Daniel & Company, 2019. | Summary: Twelve-year-old Eddie has always lived for fishing trips with his grandfather, idyllic day-long floats on the sweet waters of their home river. But now Gramps, the charismatic owner of a local sporting goods store, has himself been hooked by dementia: he’s obsessed with catching the biggest fish in the river, and he’s scaring everyone in Eddie’s life half to death. This earthquake spawns numerous aftershocks, some comic: the unfortunate incident of the deceased carp; how it comes about that Eddie’s dad throws up at his mom’s wedding. And some dark: the climactic 60-mile river journey—one voyager perhaps mad, the other perhaps kidnapped—launches deep in the night, carrying Eddie and his grandfather inexorably to a final, fateful encounter with the Big One—Provided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019029464 (print) | LCCN 2019029465 (ebook) | ISBN 9781564746160 (paperback) | ISBN 9781564748270 (ebook)

Classification: LCC PS3563.O88433 B54 2019 (print) | LCC PS3563.O88433 (ebook) | DDC 813/.54—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019029464

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019029465

for Joanna Higgins,

without whose inspiration this novel would never have been written

Many men go fishing all their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.

—Henry David Thoreau

Contents

summer

one

two

three

four

five

six

seven

eight

nine

ten

eleven

twelve

thirteen

fourteen

fourteen

fifteen

sixteen

seventeen

eighteen

nineteen

christmas

twenty

twenty-one

twenty-two

twenty-three

summer

twenty-four

twenty-five

twenty-six

twenty-seven

twenty-eight

twenty-nine

thirty

thirty-one

About the Author

summer

one

At three o’clock on the last day of sixth grade, I learn once again that I can fly. The way I can run faster and swim farther than any kid in my class and the next two up, and sail with Gramps on the river at first light when you can’t tell air from water. With the weight of the school year lifted away into the wind, the other kids hanging out by the lockers, milling and hollering and wasting the first minutes of summer, I’m out the door into the June sunshine. Down to the bike rack at a light-speed sprint, hands flying on the lock like Data the Android’s hands; Giant Food Market bags with all that’s left of school on the handlebars, and then: mount the twelve-speed Schwinn Pioneer named Enterprise, Warp 9.5 and Engage, Mr. Data, and I am gone.

Flying. Sailing down Oak Hill Road I dip into the right-hand bag, snatch a handful of school and flip, and there goes Eddie, your spelling is hopeless. The wind that lifts those spelling papers away to the tops of the trees, what does it care for how to spell receive? Left-hand bag, how do you divide up seven apple pies to serve forty-three kids, and let the other forty-two eat them all. Sit in front of their screens and get heavy and slow and old, and I’m flying like those math papers all the way to the store.

It looks like the other double houses up and down the block, except for the walled-over door from when Gram died five years ago, Gramps moved in with us, and they remodeled it; the sign, eckley’s sporting goods, across the front; and the bait machine that Gramps bought from the airport. Plastic sandwiches then, live nightcrawlers now. I chain my bike to the rack and walk in, and there’s Dad behind the counter with his arms folded, everything about him saying, In two more minutes I’m going to die of boredom—but don’t mind me; Ollie Carroll across from him, talking trout—I don’t have to have been here to know—probably for the last half hour.

And I maybe could rescue Dad if I stopped, but I don’t stop, just walk right on by into the heart of it. Past the stacked boxes of Sims and Orvis waders; the magic forest of rods, fly and spin; the card catalog cabinet that Gramps bought cheap when the library went digital, now holding two hundred varieties of trout flies; the racks of lures, Mepps and Blue Fox spinners, Jitterbugs, Spooks, Torpedoes, Redeyes and Rapalas and Rebels; and so to the alcove tucked into the back wall, formerly a breakfast nook, which holds the minnow tank.

And stand there just breathing—steel and water and fish, rubber, floor polish, gun oil, and sweat. Lean on the tank, trailing my hand in the water; easy in the drone and soft air of the ceiling fans, enclosed in a shivery private space. Tomorrow morning at first light, Gramps and I will be on the river. The thought draws me back to the tank, to water. Minnows drift in silvery shoals, not knowing where they’ll be going in just a few hours now. What’s lying down there, waiting for them.

Eddie.

My hand jerks out of the tank, spraying droplets. Dad standing there, smiling that smile which sooner or later is going to give him lockjaw. So you made it, he says. Another year. Six down, six to go.

You sell Ollie some flies?

Sure. He throws them into the trees, his knots pull out, the man is good for cash flow. Eddie, that sweeping job is still open. By August you could be rich.

I lean against the tank, the steel cold through my teeshirt. I’m going to spend my summer pushing a broom and listening to Dad bullshit the customers. After a moment he turns away. Then over his shoulder he says, You haven’t seen your grandfather?

No, why?

He wandered off somewhere before lunch. I just wondered.

He’s the owner. He can do what he wants.

Listen, Eddie. You own a small business, you work. What you sure as hell don’t do is make people you’re paying half what you pay yourself cover for you.

He’s taking me fishing tomorrow.

Is he. On the busiest day of the week. Jesus, why doesn’t he sweat it out here for once and I’ll take you.

I’ll take you. Mom’s words in Dad’s mouth. Wayne, you need to spend some quality time with Eddie. Amazing what you can hear from behind the sofa. From behind the trout fly cabinet, too, her words again—

Brian, I need more time off, weekends. Time for my kid.

Really. Boy to do a man’s job? Raising a son.

I guess you’d know. Considering the job you did with your own son.

We don’t speak of him. I have no son.

You could be right about that. Because say what you will about him, Dave’s got that PhD in physics, and that took brains, and where’d he have gotten them from?

It got quiet.

And then the door opened and somebody came in—Ollie Carroll, yet again. Good old Ollie.

I turn back to the tank. Make a pass with the net, bring up a dozen flopping shiners. How long can they live out of water? I hold the net higher, waving it back and forth to dry it out. The minnows wiggle and flip. Some will hold out longer than others, that’s for sure, the same way I can run faster and farther than anybody. I will hold out, no matter what. I.…

Eddie! Are you out of things to do already?

No, I am not out of things to do. I’m determining the life expectancy of minnows out of water.

Because if you want to make yourself useful, why don’t you try and track down your grandfather?

So where would I look?

He wasn’t at Rick’s an hour ago. Nobody’s been answering the phone at the house, but you better start there anyway. Try the garage.

What if I don’t find him?

Then don’t sweat it. He’ll turn up when he’s ready to. And he puts his hand on my shoulder.

Customer, I say.

Dad turns around and walks back up the aisle to the front. I follow along.

And what can we do for you this fine day? The man, tall, thin, balding with thick glasses, sets a rod case down on the counter. He’s a stranger, a rare bird around here. Smiles pleasantly and says, Fly fishing gear to go with the rod?

Whatever you might need. Where were you thinking of going?

I was looking for advice on that too. Name’s Harmon Willoughby. From eastern Ohio.

He sticks his hand out and Dad takes it. Wayne Welshans. Prepared to ignore the fact that there’s somebody else standing right there, except this guy’s looking at me now, smiling with his hand out, I take it too, and now Dad can’t help but say, My son Eddie.

Pleased to meet you. Thought I saw the resemblance. Which, that last bit, I could have done without. But others have said the same, and I guess who you are is what you’re stuck with.

So let’s see the rod. What weight?

Not quite sure.

He pulls the rod out of its case, and Holy cow! Dad says. Look at that thing—it’s an antique. Where’d you get it?

Inherited it from my father, Willoughby says. Split bamboo, Battenkill built by Orvis, vintage roughly 1950. He puts it together and hands it to me. What do you think?

What do I think. Oh Jesus, I think that rod makes my spinning rod look and feel like a chunk of firewood.

Easy to see you’re a fisherman. You two get out together?

Now and again, Dad says. Now and again.

I mostly go with my grandfather, I say.

Whom I believe I met a little while ago—tell you in a minute. Trout?

No. Because I’m not old enough to fly-fish, which happens to be nobody’s business. Bass on the river.

You’ll love it once you get into it. Anyway I met him in that tavern down the street, has the muskellunge mounted over the bar?

Yeah, Dad says. Rick’s.

Tall white-haired gent, blue eyes, warm manner? Right, and he had a big black dog with him. Told me all about this great store.

But at that point he’s lost us. We look at each other, and I guess you’d have to call that a father-son moment. Gramps with a dog? A big dog? A big black dog in Mom’s white living room, chasing Snowball up the curtains? You’re sure it was his?

Had it on a rope. I take it that dog is news to you?

Crazy news. God, though, if only…

Must have been minding it for somebody else, Dad says. Anyway, line to go with that? He takes it and weighs it in his hand, the original expert on antique fly rods. A four or a five for sure.

Better go with both, Willoughby says, and a spare spool for the reel. Which pretty much sets the tone. In fifteen minutes Dad sells him, or rather he buys, twelve hundred dollars’-worth of high-end trout gear. Dad tells him some places to fish. I help him carry his stuff out to his car, which is big and black and looks like an antique also. He shakes my hand again, and off he goes.

And I practically run back in. Dad, how much do you think a rod like that would cost?

Now, new? Let’s find out. He boots up the old iMac that sits next to the gun cabinet, opens Safari, types in Orvis. Bamboo fly rods. Oh my God. Two thousand…three hundred…ninety-five dollars?

Well, Dad says, guess we won’t be fishing with one of those for a while. But we’ve got perfectly good rods right here in the store, fifty bucks wholesale. Eddie, look—Brian’s saying you’re too young to fish flies? Seriously?

I can’t say no. I won’t say yes.

Because that’s, excuse me, bullshit. He just doesn’t want to be bothered. There’s this guy Keith Vanderlin comes in here, maybe you’ve seen him? With his grandson no older than your cousin Arthur, takes him steelhead fishing on the Salmon River. He sends pictures, think I kept a few, yeah…here.

Right there on the screen, little kid standing in the edge of the water in waders, sunglasses, fly rod, grinning all over his stupid face, holding up this fish that must weigh ten pounds. I want to die.

That could be you, Eddie. They go with a guide, anyone can do it. And you’re the most coordinated guy I know, you could be casting like a pro in half an hour. So look, okay, you’re going with Brian tomorrow. But what do you say we open up the store after breakfast Sunday, set you up with an outfit, head out to Willow Creek? Pack a lunch, make a day of it?

And suddenly I want so bad to trust him. And when I’ve learned you’ll take me to this Salmon River?

Steelhead aren’t in again till fall, but then, certainly.

I must be a slow learner, because I say Okay, deal, and even stick my hand out, and he takes it, and now it’s sworn to.

I’m getting worried about Brian, he says. He’s been acting a little weird lately. Guess I’ll go see if I can’t track him down. You going home or hanging here with Matt?

Hanging here for a while maybe.

Okay, I’ll go tell him.

He leads the way back to the workroom, where Matt’s sitting at the bench with a reel in pieces in front of him. Matt the Simp, Feeb, Retard, because why? Because if he happens to be doing some simple job, like counting mealworms fifty to a carton for the bait machine, he’ll be moving his lips, and if somebody purely by accident interrupts him when he gets to forty-six, he’ll dump them out and start over. Only none of that today; Dad just tells him he’s got the floor and walks on out.

And also, Matt the Retard can repair any reel, rod, or gun ever made. There are months, Gramps says, January through March sometimes, when guys aren’t buying tackle yet but still have spring on their minds, when he brings in over half the store’s income. Oh—and can be trusted to run the whole place by himself. We go back out front and he does that for a while, waits on some guys. Then when there’s a lull he gives me a hey, guy to guy, not better than me just because he’s older. What’s happening? River tomorrow, Brian said?

Yeah, and then Sunday, Dad’s taking me out to learn fly-casting. Is it hard?

For you, easy. To get plenty good enough to catch fish, nothing.

How old were you when you learned?

I was twenty, the year I came to work for Brian. Never held a rod before then, and the second time he took me out, on Willow Creek, I caught an eighteen-inch brown on a dry fly. Hooked, ever since.

That’s where Dad and I are going, I think. Course, I know I could fish for a long time and never catch one like that.

Yeah, but just being out there. Trust me, you’ll love it.

So what’d you do with the fish?

Put it back, actually. We had some smaller ones to cook up, and when they get that big, they get a little strong and weedy.

And if you kill a fish, you eat it.

Kill a fish you eat it.

Just about the first thing Gramps taught me about fishing. But jeez, Matt, your first big fish. Was it hard?

With Brian standing right there looking at me? Not so hard. And I felt happy about it, after—watching it swim away free.

The way it came up, anyway, us going out? Guy came in here with this amazing rod. Over two thousand dollars, can you believe it? And I just had to.

Matt nods. Waits on a few more customers. When he’s done he says, Good thing nobody needs a rod like that. Your dad bringing you in here to gear up?

Yeah, on the way out to the creek Sunday morning.

Let’s look at some rods right now, then. Save you some time.

two

I shove through the forsythias beside the garage and, on tiptoe, peer in through the window. Mom’s car is gone, meaning she’s out showing houses—she said she’d be late. Next to the wall sits the lawnmower, and I promised to cut the grass nearly a week ago, didn’t I? It’s ragged by now, well over the tops of my sneakers, with dandelions poking up high.

I open the door and enter that dim and oily space. On the workbench, a wide shelf against the back wall, tools are strewn—crosscut saw, augur, plane, screwdrivers—along with bits and pieces of plywood, a couple of eight-inch pine boards, and a four-foot two-by-four. Those are the makings of a wood duck house, if Gramps can ever find the time to help me build it. Ranged along the side wall, a nineteen-inch television, a kerosene space heater, an old refrigerator, a stack of folded lawn chairs.

I wheel the mower out onto the lawn, then return for the gas can and funnel and top up the tank, breathing in the fuel smell. The engine sputters, catches, settles into a strong, steady beat. On its trailer behind the garage, Queen Anne’s lace growing high around it, sits Gramps’s johnboat—a fourteen-foot, flat-bottomed aluminum rowboat. As I come up beside it, completing my first circuit of the yard, I release the safety handle and, in sudden silence as the engine dies, clamber aboard. I sit in the stern seat, my seat, and look around. Grass-green turns river-green.

Using a #4 Eagle Claw fishhook, I hook a crayfish through the third joint of the tail, holding it by the back to avoid the wildly waving claws, and flip it into the water. The river’s deep and quiet here, Gramps in the middle seat hunched over the oars but holding them up and out like narrow wings; the boat freely drifting. I let the line run out, trailing back upstream a little, going slack as the bait hits bottom. Now I close the bail on my reel and jig the rod up and down—slow, smooth strokes, marking the angle of the line, for the bait has to stay down where crayfish live and the big bass that feed on them. The bottom is free of snags, clean sandstone over which the bait skips in slow-motion arcs. Then it stops. The movement of the boat, sliding along in the current, draws the line up tight; against the pressure I lower the rod tip, open the bail.…

Got one?

Don’t know yet.

The crayfish could have wedged itself into a crack in the rocks. Gramps eases the oars into the water, using them as sea anchors to slow the boat. Now the line swings sideways, against the current. Yes! I point the rod at the fish and count to ten slowly as the line spools out. Close the bail. Wait for the line to tighten. Now! I sweep the rod up, the jolt running up my arms as it bends double; for a moment nothing moves, only my racing heart; then, against the drag, line buzzes off the reel as the great fish swims away up the river. The line rises. It’s going to jump!

I land on the lawn, launch into a forward roll, come up on my feet. On a fat, juicy dog turd, hidden in the high grass.

Stupid dog. I go for the hose, aim the nozzle at my sneakers. Water the color of the river in spring flood sprays off into the grass. Gramps with a dog? Did Dad ever find him or even look for him? Where is he anyway?

I climb the four stone steps to the patio, a Romulan Neutral Zone between the Mom-controlled house and Dad-and-Gramps territory outside. Here, Mom cuts the flower heads off the potted plants the day they fade, but she’ll let an empty lemonade glass or even a beer bottle or two on the wrought iron table go. I stick my key in the back door and turn. But the knob won’t move. I’ve locked an unlocked door.

So that means Gramps is here, or has been at least. Maybe just stopped in for a bite to eat and went away again. I open the door and step into the laundry room. All quiet. Drag off my wet sneakers and ease on into the kitchen. It looks as it did this morning—counter clear, sink scrubbed and dry.

Gramps?

My voice is dry in my throat. No answer. In his basement apartment then, the only place where he can put his feet up and smoke in peace. A better female repellent than a Marlboro has never been made, Gramps always says. I walk down the stairs and knock. Try the knob and stick my head in. Gramps? No answer, the tobacco smell stale and old.

No point in searching the rest of the house. He won’t be in the living room, a white-carpeted plush-furnished space fit only for department store dummies. So now what?

In the living room the phone rings. I run up the stairs and wait through the four rings; through Mom’s boring greeting—and what’s wrong with This is the bridge of the Starship Enterprise anyway?—and hear a stiff soprano voice: Does Eddie Welshans live at your house? If so, would you kindly tell him to come to 434 Grant Avenue and remove his school papers from my yard?

Crazy stupid bitch. I sprint for the living room to erase it, skidding in my sock feet on the slick linoleum as I turn the corner, and oh my God. Holy shit but Gramps did it this time, all right. Dog. Big dog. Big, black, shaggy dog curled up on Mom’s white sofa.

It raises its head and stares at me. I stare back. Gramps’s dog in Mom’s living room. Where is Snowball?

Oh. At the vet, which is where Mom’s going after the showings, making her even later. Are you friendly?

It stands up, I can see now that it is he, stretches, revolves, flops back down.

I step closer and reach out a hand to be sniffed. The dog sniffs. Thumps his tail on the sofa. Wait right there, I say. In the refrigerator I find some slices of roast beef in a plastic bag—will that be enough? If he was lost until Gramps found him and maybe hasn’t eaten for days? Fresh round loaf in the breadbox, sourdough from Wegman’s, but then if the dog’s hungry enough to eat it, I won’t have to. Back to the living room. The dog has not moved. I wad up a slice of beef, hold it out in the palm of my hand. A long pink tongue flicks out and it’s gone.

On the white carpet three feet from the sofa I drop a second piece of meat, rip off a chunk of bread and drop that farther on, toward the kitchen door. The dog hops off the sofa, tail wagging, and vacuums everything in his path. Out the back door, across the patio, across the yard, and into the garage. There he sits and I stand, and I’m the one panting a little.

"You are my dog.

"You are my dog, because…if Mom can have Snowball, I can have you.

"And your name is…Gowron, Chancellor of the Klingon Empire.

And I can keep you because…because Gramps gave you to me!

He had to have. Otherwise, why leave Gowron in my and Mom’s part of the house? I kneel, rub Gowron’s ears, inhale his breath. Hug my dog tight, bury my face in his fur.

Only what’s Mom going to say when she gets home? What about Snowball? But Snowball’s very sick, Mom’s afraid she’s going to die, and God but I hope she dies, the thought makes me feel small and mean but I think it anyway. But she’s not going to die today, in time to do any good, so what I need is Gramps home before Mom—maybe Gowron can stay in his apartment. Or Dad at worst, not that he gives a shit about dogs, but whatever Mom says, he’s sure to say the opposite. What time is it? Not quite seven, and the store’s open till seven on Fridays. Gowron’s flopped on the cool floor by this time, good dog, Gowron, stay! Back in the house, blinking message light, delete the bitch. Right. Next message:

Hey,