Lilly, John

"I Told You So"
by John Lilly

Grade 11
Mode: Reflective-Narrative
IST: Melanie Sherman
Evaluator: Alexa
(read the Evaluator's Comment and Connections)

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             I was convinced I had a jinx when it came to fishing. No matter how many times my dad dragged me along with him to go fishing, we were always skunked. No bites, unless you count the bug bites, just hours of staring at that stupid fishing pole. So when Dad came in all excited because he had been told by a friend of a secret fishing hole on the Santa Ynez river that only a few of the locals knew about, and announced we were going camping and fishing that coming weekend, I was less than enthusiastic.
            But Dad was determined to teach me the joys of fishing, and Saturday morning I found myself helping set up camp at the Los Prietos campground on Paradise road, which winds along the Santa Ynez River. After we had the tents set up, air beds inflated, and sleeping bags stored in the tents, I helped Dad carry the large ice chest to the picnic table and set it on the bench. Having learned the hard way from camping there in the past that a gang of raccoons prowled the area, we lugged a boulder the size of a basketball and placed it on top of the ice chest. Dad threw a few sodas in the small ice chest, and after eating ham sandwiches and Doritos for lunch, we got in the car and set off to find the secret fishing Shangri-La.
            I can’t tell you exactly how to get there because my old man would have a fit. But I can tell you about the river during the summer, and how it looked as we hiked there, and maybe you can figure it out from that. During the heat of summer time, long stretches of the river look completely dried up, but actually it trickles along underground, popping up here and there against the cliff faces which feed into deep blue pools that survive until the rains come back in the fall. Many are easy to get to, or see from the main road, and are the targets of swarms of tourists during summer looking to swim or catch a trout or two left over from the spring plant.
            Dad turned the car off on a dirt trail and drove from the main road for about a hundred yards, parking under the shade of a large oak tree. Grabbing the poles, fishing tackle, and small ice chest, we started down a faint trail in to what looked like another stretch of dried river bottom. The trail continued across the river bed, then climbed back up to a flat jumble of smaller boulders almost even with where we had parked the car. Ahead of us was a towering cliff face that was part of the northern boundary of the river valley. Crossing the narrow plateau, we came to where it dipped back down, and there below us were two beautiful blue pools connected by a narrow band of shallow water.
            “Jackpot!” Dad grinned, as we carefully worked our way down the rocky slope. At the bottom, we passed a small brackish puddle causing dozens of small frogs to panic and dive into the muck to hide. “Maybe I can catch some of those for bait,” Dad said. “The bigger fish love those little frogs.”
            The upper lagoon was about the size of a football field, clear enough to see the fish darting in and out of the moss and weeds growing on the bottom, about eight feet deep below the water. The lower pond was a bit larger, and nestled right up against the mountain where it cupped out to catch the water in a deep, almost black bowl. The river then spilled around the rocky tip of the mountain to a shallow strip of water before sliding back under the ground. Several large fish swam lazily in and out of the shadows of the deeper water, ignoring us completely, and I almost began to believe I might actually catch something.
            But, as I had suspected, we spent the next few hours fruitlessly tempting the fish with all the different baits we had. Small bees swarmed all around the waters edge, causing me to continually jump and dodge to stay out of their way.
            “Just swat them away,” my dad grumped. “If one lands on you, just brush him off. Don’t try and squash him though. That’ll get you stung.”
            “But what if that gets them mad, and they go and get a bunch of other bees?” I asked, only half-joking.
            “Aww, they’re not that kind of bee,” he replied, lazily swatting one away that had gotten too curious. “At least I don’t think so . . .” he trailed off.
            I glanced over to see if he had his pulling-my-leg smirk. He did. Still, just to be safe, I decided to keep a little distance between us, in case a bee jihad swarmed after him for slapping their fellow bees around. Hopefully, they would remember me as the good guy who stayed out of their way.
            Finally, I had enough. It was hot; I was sweaty and bored to death. I had brought a book with me, so I found a little shade from a scrubby bush and left Dad to waste his time. While I read, he decided to try and catch a frog for bait, and proceeded to cover himself in mud and muck to no avail. Then he noticed the crawdads.
            They looked like miniature lobsters, bright red with big claws. They were a bit cockier than the frogs, probably because of the big claws they waved around. Armed with the fish net, he managed to catch three of them in fairly short order.
            “Come on!” he said excitedly. “You get the first try. I’ll put him on the hook for you.”
            Not convinced this was going to work, but not wanting to miss seeing if one of the crawdads managed to get their claws on the old man’s fingers, I put my book down and walked over to watch him gingerly put the hook through the thrashing tail.
            “I’ll cast it for you,” Dad said. “You have to be real careful not to cast too hard or you’ll throw him off.” With that, he gently flicked the miniature lobster in a high arc, landing squarely in the heart of the deepest black water. He had barely set the reel when the line went tight and the pole bent almost in half.
            “Here take it!” he shouted, handing me the pole. “It feels huge!”
            The pole was like a live thing; I could feel every thrash and wiggle as the fish swam back and forth trying to throw the hook. I scrambled in the loose gravel and sand to get a firm stance as I slowly pulled the desperate fish towards the shore. As he came into the shallower water, we could see it was a bigger fish than any we had spied yet. Finally, I got him up close enough that Dad could scoop him up with the net, and bring him on shore. I had caught my first fish, and a whopper at that!
            “It’s a small-mouthed bass. Must be about 3 ½ pounds at least!” Dad exclaimed. “Nice fish!”
            In quick succession, I caught another smaller bass, and then Dad caught an ugly looking black catfish with the last crawdad. The sun by then was going down, and somewhere the dinner bell rang for the mosquitoes. Even though we had sprayed ourselves down with repellant, they seemed to enjoy the challenge, buzzing around us looking for spots we missed. They found them.
            Finally, getting back to camp as it began to turn dark, Dad decided he didn’t want to mess with cleaning the fish by flashlight. He took the small ice chest, filled it with water, and dropped the stringer of fish inside. He then placed the ice chest on the driver’s seat of the car, folded down the locking handle, and closed the car door.
            A few weeks earlier, he had locked the keys and his cell phone in the car while up in the mountains checking out another place to go camping. Not wanting to wait for someone to come along, he broke out the rear wing window on the driver’s side, to reach in and unlock the door. He still had not replaced it.
            “Uh, Dad? Aren’t you worried the raccoons will just crawl through the back window to get to the fish?”
            “Naw,” he replied. “It’s too high up for them. Besides, I don’t think they can figure out how to unlock the ice chest anyway.”
            The next morning, we got up and had breakfast, bacon and eggs cooked over the camp stove, and Dad had his coffee. After cleaning everything up, Dad decided to clean the fish before we packed up and went home.
            His next words after opening the car door I can’t repeat, except for the “raccoons” sprinkled in here and there. The driver’s seat of the car was soaked; the empty, opened ice chest rested on the floorboard. All that was left of the fish were a few scales and the picked-clean skull of the catfish still on the stringer lying on the front passenger seat. Two oily little paw prints were on the passenger side dash board, like some sort of raccoon “Mark of Zorro.”
            Walking around the car, we could see the dusty paw prints where the raccoon had simply crawled up the trunk of the car, scrambled up the rear window onto the roof, then lowered himself down through the missing wing window. I was having a hard time not laughing as my dad continued to swear. He finally got it out of his system, and began to see the humor in what had happened, grinning sheepishly as he looked at the paw print souvenirs the raccoon had left him.
            “Alright, spit it out. You know you want to say it,” he said, looking sideways at me.
            “I told you so!” I chuckled, before breaking in to a good laugh.
            “Yeah, you were right. Got myself outsmarted by a raccoon,” he replied remorsefully.
            After we cleaned up the mess the best we could, we left the car doors open to let the driver’s seat dry out. Dad decided not to clean the paw prints off, smiling every time he glanced at them. While we waited for the seat to dry, we broke camp and stored all our gear in the trunk and back seat.
            On the way home in the car reeking of fish, I decided that while it was cool that my fishing jinx had finally been broken, and by a nice big fish at that, fishing was never going to be a passion for me like it is for my Dad. But being able for the first time to tell the old man "I told you so"? That was sweet.

Writing Program Evaluator Alexa comments:

John’s narrative uses vivid descriptions and warm touches of humor to recount this comical fishing experience. Immediately in his opening, John is able to set the tone and describe the father-son relationship in the process of projecting the plot onward. Instead of using straightforward exposition, he saves time by using humor, realistic dialogue and small seemingly insignificant details to subtly create effective characterization. (See, for example, his line where the narrator states, “I can’t tell you exactly how to get there because my old man would have a fit,” or later when he describes that he left his father to “waste his time” looking for bait. These lines are able to illustrate the tone and relationship without simply stating it.) John is then able to create additional depth through his use of a wide range of vocabulary and references such as the “secret fishing Shangri-La” and “bee jihad.” However, one of the strongest aspects of this piece is John’s ability to carefully anticipate his twist at the end in such a way that keeps the narrative’s continuity while still adding suspense. By alluding to troublesome raccoons near the beginning, the characters’ later misfortune is surprising but not out of place.

Connections:

*After reading this story, review the description of the reflective-narrative mode in the Student Guidelines.

*There are a number of excellent high school pieces in the reflective-narrative mode in Illuminations, the 2005-2006 Gorman Anthology. Read through these pieces paying special attention to the balance of narration and reflection in them. Consider this balance in John Lilly's piece and in the pieces in the anthology. Do some have more reflection than others? How do different balances of narration and reflection affect you as a reader?

*What do you think is the controlling idea or thesis of this essay? Is the essay more about the fishing trip, or more about the relationship between the father and son? Why?