John Langan - The Fisherman

Herman’s was off to the right-hand side of the road, the last building in a sequence that included a combination gas station/car wash, a furniture warehouse, and an ice cream stand. The diner sat at the center of an otherwise empty lot, one of those silver boxcars that you associate with the nineteen-fifties. It’s empty now, out of business for the last several years, which I can’t understand, because, while Herman’s was small, most times I went in, it was jumping. You never saw Herman. In fact, I’m not sure there was a Herman any more. There were Caitlin and Liz, who worked the counter and the single row of booths, and there was Howard, who did the lion’s share of the cooking, helped out by a pair of Mexican cousins named Esteban and Pedro. What I like about the place, what had kept me coming back after I first discovered it the second summer I fished, even more than the food, was the décor. The diner’s inside had been done up in early fisherman. There were rods and nets hung on the walls among what must have been thousands of snapshots of guys with fish. There were a few of those fish, too, stuffed and mounted in places of pride. As you walked in, a bulletin board tacked full of fishing cartoons greeted you, some of them freshly clipped from the paper, others yellow and brittle with age. The one I liked best was several years old, and showed a pair of man-sized cartoon salmon standing beside a stream, one smoking a cigar, the other holding a beer. Both fish have lines out and in the water, which is full of tiny people, dozens of them heading upstream, arms against their sides, faces pointed straight ahead. That was all: no witty caption, only that simple reversal that tickled my funny bone. Every time I strolled into that diner, I chuckled, and despite what happened later that day, thinking about that drawing now brings a smile to my face. Dan didn’t find it especially amusing.

The strangest thing in the diner, and it’s worth remarking if for no other reason than that I studied it each time I ate there, was a large oil painting that hung above and to the left of the order window as you sat at the counter. This painting was so old, so begrimed with the smoke of a thousand omelets and hamburgers, that only by diligent and careful study could you begin to develop an idea of its subject. The canvas was such a mess of masses of shades and shadows that I half-suspected it was some kind of giant Rorschach Test. Where it hung wasn’t especially well-lit, which didn’t help matters any. You could make out a long, curving, black blotch of something hovering in the middle of the picture over a pale patch, with a wavy white line in the upper right-hand corner. You might think I would’ve looked at the painting, seen that I couldn’t make head or tail of it, and let that be that. But there was something about it, this quality, that I don’t know if I have the words for. The picture fascinated me; I guess because it was so close to showing you what it was, so close to revealing its meaning. Maybe it was a big Rorschach Test. I saw a different scene each time I sat down at the counter. Once, it must have been the first time I stopped at Herman’s, I saw a bird swooping down out of the sky, a crow, maybe. Another time, I thought it might be a bat. Then, since the rest of the diner was done up in fishing memorabilia, I decided the painting must be a fishing scene. Throughout these deliberations, I received absolutely no help from the diner’s staff, who told me they weren’t sure where the painting had come from. Howard had an idea it had been purchased from an inn somewhere in New England — out Mystic way, he seemed to recall — but didn’t know any more than that, except that nobody could tell what the hell it showed. Liz and Caitlin refused to be drawn into discussing it, despite my best efforts.

That morning, when Dan and I sat down at the counter and ordered our coffees, with no help from anyone else I saw a fish in the black blotch at the painting’s center, something long, serpentine, a pike, say. The fish had been hooked, and was twisting as it fought its fate. The more I looked at the painting as I sat there drinking my coffee, the more sure I was that, at long last and after much cogitation, I had solved its mystery. In my solution, I saw a good omen for the day of fishing ahead. I was seized by the momentary impulse to tell somebody my discovery, share my success, but Dan had just stood to visit the facilities, and the rest of the diner was empty. By the time Dan returned, the impulse had released me.

As I glanced around the diner, looking for someone to decode the painting to, I noticed the air outside, which had been lightening with the first traces of a weak dawn, dimming; the first drops of rain spattered the windows a moment later. I didn’t groan, but I felt like it. I’ll fish in the rain — Hell, I’d fish in the snow — but that doesn’t mean I especially care to. I suppose a light drizzle isn’t so bad, but the kind of rain that was crackling on the diner’s roof, the hard, driving kind that soaks you through in under a minute and then keeps on going, that is not my idea of fun. Maybe it would turn out to be a passing squall. But by the time Liz set my corned beef hash and scrambled eggs down in front of me, if anything, the rain had strengthened into a wall of water.

While we were sitting over our breakfasts, Howard emerged from the kitchen to pour himself a cup of coffee and chat with us. I’d seen him do this from time to time: I’m pretty sure that he owned the diner, and I think this was his version of customer relations. I’d had a brief conversation with him two or three years prior, though I wasn’t sure he remembered. We hadn’t done more than exchange pleasantries about the weather, which was warm and sunny, and how the fish were biting, which they were. After that, he’d nodded whenever he saw me, but I noticed that he nodded at pretty much everyone who walked into the diner. He was a tall fellow, Howard, with long arms that ended in oversized hands. His face was what my ma would have called unhandsome. It wasn’t that he was ugly, exactly, more sort of homely. He had a lantern jaw that made him look as if he were perpetually holding something in his mouth that was too hot to swallow. His skin was pale and had that worn look you see on someone who’s been a steady smoker for most of their life. His voice was low and rumbling, and from conversations I’d overheard him having with other guys, I knew he was reasonably sharp, enough so for me to wonder what he was doing cooking in a diner. I never did find out the answer to that one.

Anyway, Howard stood there, the chunky white coffee cup swallowed in one of his enormous hands, the dingy white chef’s hat he favored tilted back on his head, and wished us both a good morning. When we returned the greeting, he went on, “Some weather we’ve been having.”

Dan grunted from his cup. I said, “You can say that again. Streams’ll be running pretty high, I imagine.”

“Lot of flooding,” Howard said. “Pretty bad in places. You fellows planning on fishing?”

“We are,” I said.

Howard grimaced. “Can’t say it’s the day for it. Where you headed?”

“Dutchman’s Creek,” I answered. On impulse, I added, “Ever hear of it?”

Probably, I could count on one hand the number of times something I’ve said has caused a person to turn pale. Most of those cases would hail from my childhood, when I told one or both of my folks a particularly worrisome piece of news: that I had stepped on a nail in the basement; that kind of thing. Well, add that Saturday morning in early June to the list. Howard’s pale skin went paler, as if you’d poured a glass of milk over a bowl of oatmeal. His eyed widened, and his mouth opened, as if whatever he kept in there couldn’t believe its ears, either. He raised his coffee cup to his mouth, finished its contents, and went for a refill. I looked at Dan, who was staring straight ahead as he chewed a mouthful of Belgian waffle, his face formed to an expression I couldn’t get a purchase on.