Free Into the Twilight, Endlessly Grousing by Patrick F. McManus

after the passing of eternity, Opening Day of Trout Season Eve finally arrived. I went to bed at eight, my plan requiring me to be on the creek no later than five. I set the alarm clock for four-thirty. But the clock was a treacherous and evil thing. It could be depended upon to awaken me for school without fail, but it had no regard for fishing. It couldn’t care less if I went fishing or not. I lay awake worrying about the treachery of the clock.
    Then it occurred to me that I may have talked too much about my dream fish. It would be just like Rancid orRetch to beat me to the hole, in the off chance my dream had correctly prophesied that the great fish would be there. Why had I been so stupid to tell them the dream! Yes, it was quite possible and even probable that they would try to beat me down to the hole and claim it for themselves. I reset the alarm for three-thirty. Still, that only gave me a margin of thirty minutes to secure the hole by four. Why take the chance? I reset the alarm for three. That would be cutting it close. Even then the alarm might not go off. I continued to lie awake worrying about the evil clock. Midnight came and went. One o’clock ticked by. Two o’clock. I was still wide awake. Well, better safe than sorry. I got up and went fishing.
    The weather had been unseasonably cold all during May, and the melt-off hadn’t come yet. The creek would still be running low and clear, just as the dream had predicted. So far, so good. I shivered as I walked through the starry night, not because of the cold or my ancient fear of the dark, but out of sheer anticipation. The grass was tall and wet, and soon my pants were soaked and dragging on me, my tennis shoes had gone all icy-squishy, and mosquitoes came up out of the grass like fierce squadrons of Luftwaffe. It was wonderful. This, after all, was Opening Day of Trout Season. What more could a kid ask for?
    For two hours, I hunkered on the high bank above the creek, waiting for the first hint of dawn, shivering so violently a passing observer would have seen only a blur. Gradually, reluctantly, night began to lose its grip on the valley. It was almost time. As the sun began its climb up the far side of the Cabinet Mountains, I slid down the steep bank to the creek. Ahhh! There was the island, the creek forking around it, but the log promised in the dream as a bridge to the island was missing. Was it possible, if the dream had deceived me about the log, that it had also deceived me about the greatfish? I waded through the icy water. Pain shot up my legs, which soon grew numb and comfortable, numbness serving as a kid’s insulated waders in those days. The gravel beach was there, still above water, offering me a straight shot at the hole. My hands were so cold I could barely hold the squirming Sir Lancelot. The hook finally baited, I set it adrift toward the hole beneath the stump. Had the great fish been only a malicious trick played upon me by the dream? A tiny doubt began to tug at me. But then, even as I had begun to question the dream, it happened, a strike so wild and powerful and savage it was almost terrifying!
    As I see it now in slow motion, perhaps even as I saw it then, the great fish came straight up out of the water, bursting into that bright spring morning of the Opening Day of Trout Season. Huge and magnificent and real at last, it rose high above the surface of the creek and then, slowly, slowly, majestically, rolled into a one-and-a-half gainer, all the while violently shaking its massive head. Then, still in slow motion—oh, the horror, the
horror
of it!—the fish broke free!
    I have since forgotten much bigger fish, fish I actually caught, but I have never forgotten the dream fish that, for one brief instant, became gloriously real. It survives today as brightly in my mind as it did when I was ten years old. So perhaps in a way I did catch the dream fish, inducting it as I have into the mythical legions of The Ones