It was a good fishing trip ... I mean it
I was standing in my front yard, staring at the shreds of what had once been a tire on our fifth-wheel camper, when an elderly gentleman walking a Chihuahua stopped to chat. His nervous little dog yipped at me, danced in a frantic circle and lifted his leg on the backpack at my feet.
"Perfect ending to a perfect trip," I said.
The gentleman nodded toward the wheel of our 13,000-pound trailer. Something about his voice made it sound like he'd misunderstood my statement for sarcasm.
"Looks like you drove on that thing for a while."
"A little longer than I should have," I said, smelling burned rubber.
"I'd have stopped when I saw it was getting flat."
"I would have, too. I didn't know it was gone until I got home after midnight last night."
"Didn't feel it? Didn't hear it blow?"
"If I'd heard or felt it, I'd have stopped," I answered.
He pondered my response while the little dog strained at the hawser attached to his collar. I wondered why someone would need such a huge rope to anchor a dog weighing mere ounces. I stepped aside, just in case it somehow morphed into a pit bull or a werewolf.
"Other than that, how was your trip?" he asked, obviously steering the conversation away from dangerous waters.
The question reminded me of a saying the Cap'n uses a lot. When things are going badly and he's trying to put on a good front, he'll say, "And other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?"
I pondered the strut and electric cable the flapping tire had broken. "Well, I wanted to leave on Friday, but ...."
"We can't leave until 10," the War Department told me as I rolled out of bed early Saturday morning.
"But ...."
"Might be 10:30 if we have to stand here and debate the issue."
"Ten will be fine," I said and went out to load gear in the trailer. Sure enough, right on schedule at 11, we pulled onto the highway.
The seven-hour trip to Rockport was fairly uneventful, except for $4 diesel. The only excitement came in Austin, when we topped a hill to find all the traffic at a dead stop. I showered down on the brake pedal and felt the trailer brakes take hold. The small egg-shaped car directly in front of us appeared to be big as a Greyhound bus before we finally stopped, inches away from its bumper.
Our hearts re-started somewhere around San Marcos. After that brief but intense moment, the trip was surprisingly relaxing. We found our campsite at Goose Island State Park in Fulton and opened the trailer to air out the smell of a dead mouse that had taken one last opportunity to create problems by dying somewhere near the heater.
"It'll air out pretty good in this gulf air," I said as the War Department lit candles and sniffed her way around the trailer like a bloodhound.
I opened all the windows to let the fresh north wind carry the scent away. Unfortunately, the wind was actually from North Country, and before I could get the trailer hooked up to the utilities, the temperature dropped 15 degrees. Instead of putting out lines in the nearby gulf, we simply buttoned up the trailer and visited friends.
Being older and more mature, we left their cabin at 10 that night and tried to get back into the state park. Unfortunately, I hadn't gotten the combination to the gate's lock. I waited for a few minutes, thinking about how long it would take to remove the gate with the chain under the back seat, when the rangers arrived and let us in.
The scent of deceased mouse was still strong in the trailer, and after the heat kicked in I was afraid it would be worse. Luckily, the heater must have incinerated the carcass, because after a brief period in which smells reminded me of branding calves then barbecue, the smell burned off and we slept peacefully.
The next day we met my good friend and Rockport fishing guide Brad Smythe for a day on the water. I use his name here because he always begs me not to associate him with any fishing endeavor whatsoever. He's afraid it'll ruin his reputation as a guide.
I don't understand what he's talking about, because it's usually the weather or some strange alignment of the stars, not his experience as a guide, that keeps us from catching fish.
"The fishing was great yesterday," he told Special Ed. He pointed at me as we approached the boat that morning. "But I think they just shut down for a few days."
He's such a kidder.
After seven hours of serious casting while wearing our ski clothes, he announced that it was so cold that they wouldn't bite until the evening. We managed to hang enough fish to make ceviche, and with the north wind pushing the water out of the bays, we told everyone goodbye and struck camp.
At four in the evening, the War Department and I pulled the trailer out of the park and drove eight hours straight to get home. We pulled into the driveway at midnight, exhausted and wanting nothing more than sleep.
On the way in, I glanced at the trailer and saw that somewhere between downtown Dallas and our house, the rear passenger tire on the trailer had turned to shreds.
"Must've been a pretty miserable trip," the old man told me while his little dog shivered, strained and deposited a pellet the size of a rat dropping on the sidewalk behind us. The old man put on what appeared to be an examination glove used for checking cattle. It went nearly to his shoulder. He picked up the dry pellet. "Good boy, Narcissus."
"No, it was a wonderful trip," I told him and wondered why people are always misunderstanding my statements.
• Reavis Wortham's e-mail address is r.wortham@tx.rr.com.
Share this story:
Google
Yahoo
digg
del.icio.us
facebook
Slashdot
