Don’t Fish When Mama Says Don’t

“Y’all better not fish today,” Mama warned. “Mean-lookin’ front’s comin’ ’cross.” Pouncing on the scrambled eggs, sausage, grits and cathead biscuits she had placed before us, we replied, “Stripes runnin’ in the upper lake — nobody knows but us.”

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Shrugging, Mama yawned and padded back to bed around four o’clock that July morning, mumbling, “Humph … stripes runnin’. Y’all’ll be runnin’ ’fore the day’s done.” Knowing stripes are ravenous at daybreak, we parked Dean’s antique Ford on the levee’s steep slope well before sunup. While unloading the boat, lightning turned night to day, and we jumped in the car. As I muttered, “Just a shower — be over in a minute,” a lightning bolt zapped so close the hood ornament glowed fluorescent blue and the engine sputtered. Like terrified girls at a horror movie, Dean and I grabbed each other. Another bolt exploded, the engine sputtered to life, and the car lurched down the levee. “Turn the wheel! Stomp the brakes! We’re going in!” I shrieked, as Dean howled heavenward, “O-o-oh, Lord, we promise never to disobey our parents again if you’ll just let us live!” We lived, but it was a long time before we could talk. Soon, daylight arrived, and we maneuvered the car from the water’s edge back to the top of the levee. As sinners are wont to do once the threat of imminent annihilation has passed, we forgot our promise to Providence and launched forth in pursuit of stripes. Disaster followed disaster. Dean limbered up his new graphite rod, a genuine Shakespeare. On his first cast, the lure snagged a stump. As he lowered the rod to the water and jerked upward, trying to free the lure, I reeled in a stripe. Hearing an ominous thwack, I turned to see if he was loose. Gaping like a harpooned hippopotamus, he was staring at Shakespeare’s remains — two feet of graphite stump! Reluctantly, I shared my rod with him and soon we had a nice string of stripes. At noon, the scorching sun was emulsifying us, and since hardly anyone ever came to the upper lake, we paddled to a sandbar, stripped, and went skinny-dipping. As we lay soaking in the cool water two hundred yards from our clothes, we suddenly heard the faint drone of an outboard motor. In an instant, Mr. Tharp’s houseboat, packed with kids like animals on Noah’s ark, appeared around a point of willow trees. “I’ll swunnee, lookee yonder … them boys is nekkid,” Mr. Tharp’s trumpet voice wafted across the water, as girls focused binoculars. Sprinting down the sandbar, I recalled Mama’s predawn prediction: “Y’all’ll be runnin’ ’fore the day’s done.” Finally, our motor’s roar drowned out the howls of laughter behind us. “At least we caught a good mess of fish,” Dean sighed, pulling up the stringer. We gawked in bug-eyed disbelief — while we swam, gars stripped our stripes! Staring at the bodiless fish heads, Dean moaned, “We sure learned a lesson the hard way today: Don’t fish when Mama says don’t.”