and told parts, so Jason soon knew of the June morning in Georgia in l932 when a nineteen-year-old boy named George Perry caught the biggest bass on record.
That boy had cast a Fintail Shiner next to a cypress log. It was raining, and it didn’t seem there would be much chance of catching anything. Then bam! The great bass had hit George Perry’s line. As he started to reel it in, he realized he’d hooked something like a monster. “What a nice chunk of meat to take home to the family,” he was thinking. For it was during the Great Depression; a lot of people were out of work. Many worried about starving, and George Perry’s family was poor.
The bass on George Perry’s line fought harder than a Spanish bull. It bulled around until it was totally exhausted, and only then could Perry haul it into his boat. He looked wide-eyed at the monstrosity he’d caught. Right away, he drove it to a general store, where the owner weighed and measured it and wrote down the record. George Perry’s bass weighed twenty-two pounds and four-ounces. It was a record that was yet to be broken. It was the most famous bass of all time.
“And Elihu’s even bigger,” Wally called, sitting by the shrimp-bait live-well. Wally was known as a bassmaster fisherman who fished many tournaments. His coffee cup steamed up over his face. His eyes glinted with a playful look.
Jason shivered.
“No picture was taken of George Perry’s bass, either,” Bill said, touching Jason’s shoulder and laughing. “Because that young George Perry took it home and ate it. But the record stands for sure. Now come look at this.”
Bill’s red whisker stubble reminded Jason of a dusting of orange clay. Bill pointed to another piece of newspaper under glass near where the fish knives were kept. This was the picture of a bass so big that the man holding it was leaning back, straining. He had one hand in the bass’s giant mouth. “That ’un was in California.” Bill thumped the glass over the picture and looked at it in awe.
Grampy Luke leaned over Jason to read the article to him. So on Grampy Luke’s deep, soft voice, Jason heard how, over the years, Florida bass were transplanted to California. There, in March of 2006, the most enormous bass anyone had ever seen had been caught. It weighed twenty-five pounds and one ounce. But it had not broken George Perry’s record, for the fisherman had been using a small white jig and a fifteen-pound test line. He’d been fishing in only about twelve feet of water that was clear enough for sight-fishing. The giant bass had been foul-hooked in the side, which was against state law. So the catch did not count.
Photo of Mike Wynn by Mac Weakley
Gainesville Sun Newspaper Photo, March, 2006, article by Tim Tucker.
Bill pointed and whispered, leaning close to Jason’s face. “Any bass that big is rare as looking at an eight-foot human!”
“Sure ’nough.” A man in overalls, sitting against the wall added. He stood up and came close to Jason. “A bass gains ’bout a pound a year, so old Elihu must be well over twenty-five by now. Something else, boy, you best know. Each time Elihu’s been hooked, the old bass has whispered a secret.”
“Secret?” Jason stared. He almost had to read the old man’s lips to understand the word; it seemed so out of place. How could any fish whisper a secret?
“Umhumm,” Bill added.
“Secret,” someone else echoed.
The whole room buzzed, Umhumm. Several shook their heads. Wally whispered, “Whoever touches Elihu learns the secret.”
Jason turned in a circle, looking at each one of them. He laughed. “Aw, you all are just teasin’ me. A fish can’t talk.”
No one said a word, but it was a talking-silence. Then the men laughed. But it was a mocking laugh, the kind that said Jason was the joke. Jason turned another circle, looking at each, “So, just who all’s caught Elihu?”
“Me, most lately.” A tall skinny man stood up from near a bait tank. He had a chin of scruffy brown whiskers. Bill introduced him as Skeeter Nelson.
When Skeeter Nelson spoke, his nose flared. He shivered. “Beware of Old Snout.” He looked deep into Jason’s eyes. “Soon as I hooked the giant bass, that gator come to bump the side of my boat. Going to flip me for sure. Old Snout raised his great mouth to show his teeth. And hissed. His foul breath went up my nose with the stink of rotted fish. That gator was licking its lips. It was eyeing the meaty part of my thigh. It was smelling its breakfast–me! I cut my line to Elihu quicker than you can say ‘Stink Bait.’ No fish is worth being Old Snout’s dish.”
Now, lying in bed at the Orange Lake Fish Camp, Jason pictured Elihu in his mind and knew they were bound to meet. They would most likely meet in just the way his daydream showed him. Only in real life, he would catch Elihu. The great fish would be his.
In the twin bed beside him, Grampy Luke snored. His breath went in and out in a little whistle. Jason threw back the covers and stood up.
Now that he was eleven he thought he ought to be much taller. Slow-growing his mother called him. She said he was like her brother, who ended up six-feet and did all his growing after he turned twenty. Jason sure hoped his mother was right.
His hair–the reddish-brown color of his father’s–was just about the color of a new pencil’s eraser. More than a dozen times he’d been called Eraser Head. Pipsqueak and Squirt, too. At least, those were some of the names. There were more.
He ran his tongue over his front teeth where they overlapped like an X. His bare feet padded on the wood floor. He put his hands on the windowsill and leaned against the screen.
The moon shimmered on the lake like a ruffling bed sheet. A shiver ran up him as, in distant water, a gator bellowed, “Haummmpppppph.” Glancing back at Grampy Luke, Jason could see that his grandfather’s mouth was open to the size of a quarter. Grampy Luke’s chest rose up and down with each whistling breath. His ring of silver hair spread out on the pillow like the fuzz on a dandelion. His grandfather’s sleeping face against the pillow sported wrinkles like brush strokes.
Whenever Jason was with Grampy Luke, he felt happy. But Jason did not really know Grampy Luke very well. Only recently Grampy Luke had moved down from Michigan to live near Jason and his mother. Jason never knew what Grampy Luke would do or say.
But he did know that if Grampy Luke hadn’t moved from Michigan, he, Jason, might be locked away in a back room at Mrs. Hasturn’s—that is, if she had anything to say about it. Mrs. Hasturn had gotten Jason into so much trouble, he didn’t know how to get out.
Then, his grandfather had come, saying, “We’re going to learn how to fish that great Orange Lake, my boy. We’re going to have a grand time. Mrs. Hasturn can’t own every Saturday of your life.” And when he’d said it, Grampy Luke’s voice sounded like the bold low notes on a saxophone.
Yet so far, Mrs. Hasturn did own every Saturday of Jason’s life, and now after a Friday night at the lake, he had to rush back home in the morning to be once again her prisoner.
He pushed the window screen open. The October night was warm. Florida seasons
