George was in one of those moods that might only come upon a grown man once in a lifetime, or not at all. Sure, some men lived their whole lives ruled by such moments, but those men weren’t successful, didn’t hold respectable jobs, or provide for a family.

George didn’t actually have a family. He just had Martha. When they were first married they tried for children, but it didn’t work out. Martha lost interest in the process before they figured out where the problem lay. Of course, she said it was his fault, both counts, but secretly he always thought they should’ve tried a little harder.

That left him free to work on his career. Like his dad, he joined the army, and did a tour in Europe. That’s when he met Martha, she was a USO girl he met at a good-bye dance. After the army, she insisted he join “daddy’s” firm.

Martha’s dad was the kind of iron furnace that consumed raw materials and lesser men, turning them into his own wealth. He was always sure Martha married below her station, and did his best to prove it. After twenty years he still made George call him “Mr. Purdy” and promoted legions of jovial hard-drinking good ol’ boys past George.

Even after all this time, not a day went by without Martha giving George some pep talk about how he just needed to apply himself to please daddy, layering nacre over the grit of his frustration to build a perfect pearl of shame.

Today George was on the outskirts of his territory, in the foothills near where he lived as a boy. It was a scorcher. He had his coat folded inside out on the seat beside him, but sweat was still running off of him. He daren’t open the window more than a crack, lest the road dust settle into his wool business suit. Martha had them cleaned twice a year, and he would catch hell if she had to do it more.

At any rate, George suddenly felt the urge not to work. He hadn’t had a single sick day in twenty-two and one half years. It earned him a twenty-dollar bonus every year, and as Martha said, those little things add up. But suddenly today, George didn’t feel like making any more calls. He was ahead of schedule and over quota anyway, of course.

He found himself driving deeper into the foothills. The open fields gave way to the cool evergreen forest, and the temperature dropped like he had just entered a cold cellar.

George came up to an old log bridge and braked his car. He sat there a moment, hands on the wheel, staring straight ahead as his dust cloud wafted by. Suddenly, he reversed to the side of the road under the shade of a big fir, and got out of the car. He looked both ways and then walked up to the bridge, pulling at the knot of his company tie. Halfway across, he stopped and looked downstream, running his hands through his brush cut. Below the bridge was a little fall, and then downstream the brook widened to a little pool, almost hidden around the bend.

George stared thoughtlessly for a while, his brow creasing with some half-remembered thought. Suddenly, he stepped forward, putting both hands on the log rail and leaning against it. He laughed. He remembered this spot, his dad took him here as a boy. He hadn’t thought about it in years but suddenly it came back to him.

When he was about eight, his dad took him here to go fishing. Just down there out of site, a massive tree fell across the stream, creating a natural dam and a pool below the falls. His dad walked him through the cool forest to this secret spot and George watched in earnest the ritual of selecting and tying on the perfect fly.

“See George how steep the banks are upstream, above the falls?” George nodded his head solemnly. “All kinds of things fall in there, then come down over the falls, there’s a big fish under those falls, eats everything that comes down, like a garbage disposal.” George was afraid of the garbage disposal, living like a voracious beast in the dark cavern under the sink. He imagined a creature more beast than fish, with great, large, geared teeth lurking in the depthless pool.

“So we don’t have to be too picky. Something big and leggy, make him think he got himself a real meal.” He pulled a large black hairy fly out of the box. “This would do, but we really want to get his attention. I tied this one myself. I call it ‘Hot Lunch’,” and he pulled out another fly, again with black but this time there was lots of gold and silver in it too. “Don’t look like nothing, but he sure seems to like it.”

Then he showed George how to tie it on, wetting the knot so friction wouldn’t weaken it, and snipping off the extra, careful to put it in his pocket otherwise it would sit here “a million years” showing how sloppy they were.

In George’s eyes, his father’s cast was as mighty as Casey’s swing. It arced twice back and forth through the air until he judged the distance right, and then landed right at the base of the falls, just up from a pile of foam. He looked at George and winked, just as quick, he looked back as the line and the fly disappeared in an explosion of water. At seeing the monster, George grabbed his father’s leg.

“Lunch!” exclaimed his dad, and waded into the pool. George watched in fascination as his dad played the fish for hours, using the rod like a first seat violinist wields her bow. He explained every nuance of the battle to George.

“See how he’s heading for the falls? Lost him there once, and he remembers.”

“Can’t let the line get too tight, see how I let it go?” And he took his palm off the reel while the fish ran downstream. But when the fish turned and came back, he reeled furiously, “But you never let him have any slack either, got to wear him down.”

And so it went upstream and down, both the man and the fish working that little pool for hours, neither of them showing signs of quarter. Lunch came and went, George wasn’t even hungry. Finally, as the sun dipped into the forest, casting the pool into plum shadows, George’s dad waded into the water next to the fish. “Come here Georgey, this is what I wanted to show you.” George waded in next to his dad. The fish was leviathan. Easily over three feet long, it was bigger than George. “This here is Max. Short for Maximus Fishus. Long for Big. He’s a world record fish George. The biggest brown trout anybody has ever seen. A man brings home a fish like this, he’s going to be a hero to other men.”

“Dad, wait ‘til moms sees him! They’ll go gaga at the store!” George imagined it all standing next to his dad, everybody looking at them.

George’s dad just smiled. He’d been a hero, after the war they put him in a Cadillac convertible and drove him through town on the Fourth of July, medals on his uniform. “No, George, not today. This fish is here for you. This is your inheritance, someday, you’ll come down here and you’ll catch Max and everybody will admire you. Until then, he’s just money in the bank, and you can’t ever tell anybody about him, even mom.”

George never kept a secret with his dad before. He watched while his father reached down and lovingly stroked the fish’s side. “Promise?”

The fish looked like a bronze statue lying in the water. “I do. I swear it.” His dad smiled, then laughed, and then taking the hook out of Max’s mouth, let him go. George looked at the empty water, not sure the fish had ever been there.

His dad died soon after that. Got caught in the bight of a logging cable, cut him clean in half. Only later did George find out he had cancer. Today was the first time George realized that he probably knew he was sick for a long time before he went. That’s why he took him to the hole that day. George had completely forgotten about the fish with the funeral, and working the farm, the army, his career and everything else that came with his father’s death. He smiled. Since then, he didn’t think of his dad much. Seemed like life kind of got in the way. But he was always a hero to George. He shook his head to clear the past and saw gold flicker in the pool below, then a hole opened in the water as if someone had just pulled a bath plug out of the pool.

He pursed his lips, then turned and hurried back to the car. Could it be? After all these years? He opened the trunk. He always carried the rod and gear he inherited from his dad. He hadn’t used it in what, twenty-five years now?

The trunk only held a spare and a couple of road flares. Dammit, Martha must have taken his gear out. Damn that woman, why couldn’t she just leave his things alone? Maybe he hadn’t used it in a long time, but at least he knew where it was. Just once in twenty-five years he’d decided to have some fun, and she’d denied him even that.

He futilely ran his hands into the dark recesses around the wheel wells and was surprised to come up with an old reel, with the remains of a fly still tied on it.

George looked at it in disgust, dropped it back and slammed the trunk down. Might as well call it a day. He turned to get behind the wheel, and stopped, a look of reserve on his face. No, dammit, this was his place. His afternoon. He could feel it in his bones. He re-opened the trunk and took out the reel, turning it over in his hands. There on the back were his father’s initials. AH. Alston Hammond. All machined out of a solid block by his dad. They didn’t make reels like that any more, or men, George thought. Alston never worked for another man a day in his life, and he went fishing when he damned pleased.

George remembered what the doctor said to his mom. Told her that it was a grisly way to go, but less so than the cancer. Besides, the accident paid double on the insurance, so Georgey would get to go to college after all. The doctor and his mom shared a long silence after that that took George years to understand. After that George’s mom wouldn’t hear of anything but business school for George. But he felt compelled to go into the army when war broke out, and met Martha at a going away party for the local boys. She wasn’t the prettiest girl there and she wouldn’t dance with him, but she promised George she would if he came back, and that’s just what happened. He made it most of the way through his tour before his mom died of pneumonia. He came back to settle up the farm and bury her, and true to her word, Martha was there for him. The army let him out early and he went to work for her dad, finishing his degree in night school.

George opened the trunk again and grabbed the reel, inspecting the fly. The feathers were dust except for the quills, but there was a hook. He shut the trunk and crossed the road to a stand of alder. It took a while, but he managed to cut and limb one with his pocket knife, came back to the car, put the reel in his pocket and started searching for the path.

Just as he remembered, it started behind the fir and wound across the thick duff under the trees where it was as tall, dark, cool, and holy as the cathedrals he had seen in Europe. George paralleled the stream for a while until he came to the fallen tree. Lying in state all these years, it was still taller than he was.

He walked along it to the stream and carefully took off his shoes and socks and rolled up his pants. No way he could explain muddy cuffs to Martha.

The tree still blocked the stream, and the pool was just as he remembered it. George took a shoelace out and carefully bound the reel to his switch. Then he took a paper clip out of his pocket, bent it into a loop, and fastened it to the tip with the other lace. It was a bit Izaak Walton, he thought, but people had caught fish on cruder apparatus.

He stripped a bunch of line off of the reel and threaded it up the rod, then gave it a few practice flicks, using his hand as a kind of stripping guide. It was the crudest thing he’d ever seen, but he could put about twenty feet of line out. The big problem would be what to use for a lure. His dad always called his flies “gee-haws” and said he could catch fish all day on red yarn tied to the hook, but then what would he do with the rest of his time? George patted himself down looking for something he could tie on. Remembering the “hot lunch’’ fly he took off his silver tie tack and affixed it just above the hook.

It looked dubious at best, but a big eight-year old boy smile got stuck on George’s face and wouldn’t leave. He walked up the bank keeping to the soft needles. He honestly couldn’t remember the last time he was barefoot – even at the house he always kept his socks and slippers on.

Trees hemmed the pool in and overhung the water, so he carefully edged his way in. There was little room to false cast, but with the weight of the tack, he just held a bunch of line and shot it. Plonk! The lure hit at the base of the falls. The current quickly pulled it downstream. George began stripping with nervous twitches, unaware of holding his breath. At the downstream swing, he picked it up and reshot it, right to the base of a big boulder. He could see the tack trailing its little chain in the transparent water. It looked surprisingly lively.

So intent was he, it took him a minute to see the trout nosing after it like a dog with a ball. As he watched, more and more of the beast came into sight in the sunlight. He couldn’t believe it, it was Maximus. How could that monster still be alive? The trout was as long as his leg and as thick around. George slowly stripped as the fish bumped the makeshift lure with his nose.

Just at the end of the swing the fish turned and shot back to his hole so quickly that George just froze, wondering if he had only imagined him.

Carefully, so carefully, he lifted his line and cast it again. He jumped at the splash it made, but again the fish followed nosing its prey almost as if herding it out of his territory. Again, the fish disappeared at the end of the swing. George pondered the leviathan’s behavior, but could think of nothing else but to entice the fish again.

And so it went, the splash and chase, splash and chase. George and the fish whiled away the afternoon, the blue fir shadows were creeping across the pool when George finally stripped in his line, at a loss as to how to get the fish to bite. If only he had his proper gear!

George held his rod under his arm, and out of old habit, turned his wedding band on his finger while he thought. Suddenly he stopped and looked down. Frantically in the glowing gloom, he stripped it off. Too short on time to rig it properly, he formed a bight in the tippet above the tack, ran it through the ring twice and tied it back to the line. He tugged quickly to test it and, shrugging, let it go.

Continue to part 2 of Heromaker.