WhatFinger


Fishing

The Nut



My boyhood best friend and mentor, Jaybird, had a gift for storytelling that no one could match, especially when he spun yarns about what he loved most: fishing. Following is my remembrance of the old black man’s story about a monster fish that he could not catch.

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Deep down in his mute, cool, dimly lit domain, the monarch of the Mississippi Delta swamp hole lay in patient ambush, while the terrified shiner just inches above him swam round and round in frantic arcs, desperately struggling to break free from the bobber floating on the surface. 

 Jaybird relaxed, mopped his sweaty brow, and set his pole aside for a while. Sighing deeply, he reflected on the many trips he had made to this quiet, oxbow lake, covered with lily pads, ringed by cypress trees, and changed little if any in the eons since its formation. Occasionally, Jaybird had seen the moss-colored ambusher cruising effortlessly, his spade-sized tailfin oscillating in rhythmic strokes, his baleful eyes staring, unblinking, and his huge mouth ever ready to clamp down on a victim. Never once had this swamp leviathan shown any interest in Jaybird’s bait. The man was a legendary angler, and many a time his fishing skills had determined whether or not his and Thelma’s nine head of children were fed or went to bed hungry. Perplexed, he sat motionless and sweating in the cloying, humid silence, staring into the tea-colored water. A squirrel’s appearance broke his reverie. Inching down a slanting limb, the animal’s beady, jet-black eyes flitted nervously, his bushy red tail a vibrating question mark. Stealthily, he crept along the limb, downward … down … down … toward the nut. Then another movement … a mere surface ripple, drawing Jaybird’s eyes from the bobber, no longer even twitched by the moribund shiner. The ripples spread, forming undulating chevrons, and at their apex Jaybird saw his nemesis swimming unerringly as a torpedo, straight for the limb. The strike was explosive — a geyser of water and debris. Jaybird recoiled in shock to this primeval, hunter-hunted thunderclap. He gaped in breathless awe as the questioning squirrel tail disappeared down the bass’ cavernous maw. Instantly, the squirrel was snatched from arboreal freedom into an underwater gullet prison where cracking bones and death screams were heard only by the unpitying omnivore. 

 Stunned, Jaybird stared in disbelief. Then he rolled the line around his fishing cane, took a long slug from his pint of bourbon, lit a Camel, and fumbled nervously for the boat paddle. Just as he raised it to retreat, his eyes bulged at the sight of the monstrous fish head just breaking the surface, its murderous, hateful eyes framed by blood-gorged gills. The fish’s powerful jaws held something the man could not identify, and he watched in amazement as the blood brute of the deep gently placed the mysterious object just above the waterline on the same slanting limb, and then sank slowly from view into the murky deep. It was the nut.


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Jimmy Reed -- Bio and Archives

Jimmy Reed is an Oxford, Mississippi resident, Ole Miss and Delta State University alumnus, Vietnam Era Army Veteran, former Mississippi Delta cotton farmer and ginner, author, and retired college teacher.

This story is a selection from Jimmy Reed’s latest book, entitled The Jaybird Tales.

Copies, including personalized autographs, can be reserved by notifying the author via email (.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)).


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