If you ever want to learn how much a man can talk without knowin’ a lick of what he is speakin’ on, I suggest you spend an afternoon with my Uncle Cliff on the banks of Terrapin Creek. That man could hold forth on any subject with such confidence that strangers believed him, friends doubted themselves, and children walked away feelin’ like they had been instructed by a prophet who was only occasionally struck by lightning inside the brain.

Now, Uncle Cliff prided himself on bein’ a master fisherman. He said it often enough to make it true in his own head. Every tale he told began with the words, “Now listen here. I been fishin’ these waters since before I could walk.” This was provably false on several fronts, not the least of which was the fact that he lived in Gadsden until he was nine and had been terrified of water until he was twelve.

But truth never stood in the way of one of his stories.

When I was a boy of maybe eight or nine, he invited me to join him for a fishin’ trip. It was early spring on Terrapin Creek. The honeysuckle was tryin’ its best to wake up, turtles were slidin’ off logs with a gentle plop, and the water moved slow and easy, as if it too had just rolled out of bed.

We crossed the pasture behind the old disused barn and found a little sandy bank beneath a sycamore tree. Uncle Cliff set down a cooler that clanked suspiciously and handed me a cane pole so old it looked like Moses himself had once leaned on it durin’ a break between miracles.

“Now pay attention,” he said as though I were about to witness something historic.

He tied my hook to the line with a knot that resembled a small bird’s nest that had been stepped on. Then he stuffed the hook into a glob of cold biscuit dough that he claimed was the most irresistible bait known to fish, man, or beast. I do not know what sort of underwater creatures he thought lived in Terrapin Creek, but I had my doubts that even a starving crawdad would put his reputation on the line for a bite of yesterday’s biscuits.

“There,” he said proudly. “Good as gold.”

I cast my line into the water, where it drifted aimlessly like a bored leaf.

Uncle Cliff planted his own pole in the mud, cracked his knuckles, and launched into a lecture that lasted a full fifteen minutes. It covered topics ranging from proper worm etiquette to fish psychology, then meandered into a long rebuttal of a rumor that he had once fallen asleep in a boat and drifted all the way to the Highway 9 bridge at Ellisville.

Halfway through this sermon, his float bobbled.

Uncle Cliff jumped to his feet, hollerin’ as if he had been struck by revelation.
“There it is. Feel that? That is the signature tug of an Appalachian river bass. Now don’t look too close. You might scare him off.”

I stared hard at the float because I was a child, and excitement made me disobedient.

And right then, I discovered the truth.

There was no fish.
Uncle Cliff’s line had drifted into a patch of weeds.

He jerked his pole and tangled himself so badly that even the cattails seemed embarrassed on his behalf. He fought, he cussed softly, he made promises to the Almighty that were unlikely to be honored.

Finally, after a minute of struggle, he hauled the prize out of the creek.

A stick.

A long, unimpressed stick.

Uncle Cliff froze, stared at it, then straightened his posture like a man reclaiming his dignity from the jaws of defeat.

“Well now,” he said. “This here is what we call a decoy. The big fish send these out to test your skills. They saw I was ready, so they skedaddled. Smart creatures.”

I tried to believe him. I really did. But even at eight, I had developed a sense for disaster dressed up as confidence.

Still, I will say this.
We never caught a single fish that whole afternoon.
Not a nibble.
Not a tug.
Not so much as a ripple caused by anything livin’.

But I remember that day clearer than most of the days when we did catch fish.

The way the sunlight shivered on the creek.
The way Uncle Cliff’s voice carried up and down the bank like he hoped the turtles would applaud him.
The way he kept talkin’, encouragin’, teachin’, bluffin’, grandstandin’, and fillin’ the day with the kind of foolhearted joy that settles into a boy’s chest and never quite leaves.

He never admitted the truth.
Not then.
Not later.
Not ever.

He died claimin’ he was the finest fisherman Calhoun County ever produced.

And if you want the full truth, Lord help me, I think part of me believes him.

For there is a special kind of genius in a man who knows nothin’, claims everything, and still manages to give a child one of the best memories he ever carried in his pocket.

*****

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