Thomas McGuane: The Longest Silence

I climbed out, eyes locked on the fish.

“Dad!” came my son’s voice. “I’ve got to try for these fish too!”

“Thomas, damn it, it’s my shot!”

“Let me give it a try!”

“They’re not going to take that bonefish fly anyway.”

How could I concentrate? But now I was nearly in casting position, then heard something behind me. Thomas had bailed out of the boat and was stripping line from his reel. He was defying his father! Pedro was celebrating three thousand years of Maya family life on this bay by holding his sides and laughing. For all I knew, he had suggested my son dive into the fray.

Once in casting range, I was able to make a decent presentation and the crab landed without disturbance in front of the school. They swam right over the top of it. They ignored it. Another cast, I moved the fly one good strip. They inspected it and again refused. A third cast and a gingerly retrieve. One fish peeled off, tipped up on the fly and ate. I hooked him and he seared down the flat a short distance, then shot back into the school. Now the whole bunch was running down the flat with my fish in their midst. Thomas waded to cut them off and began to false-cast. I saw disaster staring at me as his loop turned over in front of the school and his fly dropped quietly.

“Got one!” he said amiably as his permit burned its way toward open water. Palming my whirling reel miserably, I realized why he had never been interested in a literary career. Not sick enough to issue slim volumes from the interior dark, he instead would content himself with life. He seemed to be enjoying the long runs his fish made; mine made me ill. He was still in diapers when I caught my first permit but my anxiety over a hookup had never abated.

Pedro netted my son’s fish, his first permit, and waited, holding it underwater until mine was landed. Thomas came over with the net. When the fish was close, I began to issue a stream of last-minute instructions about the correct landing of a permit. He just ignored them and scooped it up.

This was unbelievable, a doubleheader on fly-caught permit. I was stunned. We had to have a picture. I asked Pedro to look in my kit for the camera. Pedro admitted that he had only had this happen once before. He groped deeper in my kit.

But I had forgotten the camera, and when Thomas saw my disappointment he grabbed my shoulders. He was grinning at me. All my children grin at me, as if I was crazy in an amusing sort of way.

“Dad,” he said, “it’s a classic. Don’t you get it?” He watched for it to sink in. “It’s better without a picture.”

The permit swam away like they’d known all along that we weren’t going to keep them.

Later, I stewed over his use of the word “classic.” It was like the day he buried a bonefish fly in the calf of my leg. My expression then was “timeless,” he had said. I would have to think about that.