Selina Marcille

A short story of lost love, rediscovery, and the value of never giving up hope.

            “Youth is wasted on the young, you know.”  Old Man Bower repeats the same trite phrase every week when Lila stops in to buy worms for the weekend.  His lips pucker like an overripe prune as he rings her up at the till.  The cash register is original to the General Store when his grandfather’s Pa bought it in 1884.  With careful maintenance, the machine still runs good as new thirteen decades later.

            He cranks the lever three times to open the cash drawer with the square-shaped compartments, built for a time when a small handful of coins could buy you the hopes and dreams of tomorrow.

            “You know, Mr. Bower, you say that every time like you’re too old to live your life.”  Lila slides the $2.50 across the counter, all in quarters, and cocks her head to the side as she waits for him to respond.

            Mr. Bower’s gnarled fingers slip as he picks up the coins. “I’m 86 years old, girl. What sort of life is there left to live except through watching what you and your lot do?”

            Lila’s smile falters.  It was just two years before that she and her friends walked across the graduation stage together and made the promise to always have summer together.  Even when her friends went off to college and Lila stayed home to try and earn enough money to take night classes, the thought of summer kept her going.  She thought she knew what to expect.

Viv would come back from New York with some ridiculous outfits and call it Fashion with a capital “F”.  Adam would have somehow bulked up even more from playing football in Michigan and still be able to eat a whole pizza in a single sitting.  Jamie would go on and on about their many college hookups with every exact detail and Conor would roll his eyes while devouring every precise measurement to the millimeter.  Lila was excited to see all of them, but the person she most wanted to see was Miles.  This boy held a lot of titles in Lila’s life- cousin, rival, confidante, fishing partner, messy roommate, scapegoat… but the most important was best friend.

            Miles moved in with her family when he was 8 years old.  His father had shot his mother, Lila’s Aunt Joey, twice in the head before marching out of their house towards the local park loaded with an M-16 rifle, a flare gun, and a gallon of kerosene. 

            Lila shakes her head to clear the thoughts of her friends.  It didn’t do her any good to dwell on things that couldn’t be changed.  It was too late. 

            “Well, I’m afraid you’re out of luck.  It’s just me this summer.”

            Mr. Bower’s eyes crinkle in the corner as he frowns at her.  “None of them are coming home?  Not even that cousin of yours?”

            Lila’s breath catches.  “Not even him,” she says with more bravado than she feels.  She picks up the package of red wrigglers.  “Guess I’ll have to be out fishing all on my own today.  Unless you might be up for some youthful living?”

*

            It was surprisingly easy to convince Mr. Bower to go fishing.  He settled into the canoe with a confident gait as if 20 years had been shaved off compressed spinal column and he cast the lines out whip-fast, the likes of which Lila had never seen.

            They sit in comfortable silence as they drift to a spot Mr. Bower suggested.  Lila is in her happy place.  The no-see-ums flit around her face, but the mosquitos haven’t come out yet and the soothing buzz of the 17-year cicadas could almost lull her to sleep.  Almost.  

            A cicada flies by and Mr. Bower snatches it out of the air with surprising dexterity.  He had just let the latest bass back into the water and they were almost out of worms.

            “I’ve lived here long enough to see these guys emerge four times.”  He pinches the head of the insect and it goes still before he threads his fishing needle through its carapace.  “And that first summer was one I’ll never forget.”

            Lila reeled in her line, eager to hear more.  Mr. Bower had been a staple in their hometown since long before Lila was born, but no one seemed to know much about him.  Lila could have bought her bait at the grocery store- it was closer and she could use her credit card- but something about Mr. Bower had always fascinated her.

            He clears his throat and tosses the line into the water.  “I had just turned 17 and the town was in an uproar.  The cicadas emerged that summer and destroyed Nell Richardson’s 87-acre apple orchard and the crop of every berry farmer from capital to coast.  We had the store and those fruits were what set us apart from the big supermarkets that were popping up everywhere.  We sold real food, none of that processed garbage.

            “We knew that without those crops, we were going to be hurting just like the farmers.  It didn’t take long for the bugs to start to die, but the damage was done.  I was out in the lot just over there scooping up the dead husks when she showed up.”

            Lila is rapt with attention.  Mr. Bower’s eyes are glassy as he pulls up on the line trying to draw a nibble.  As he speaks, his brows relax and his shoulders widen, looking something like the young man he had once been.

            “She was covered in pink pastel and was foolish enough to wear a pair of dainty white sneakers as she walked up the drive.  Her steps were quiet, but the bodies of the bugs coated the ground so thick that every step forward squished dozens of the things.  Her hair was the color of sunshine and she walked right up to me, bold as brass, and said she heard I was the best fisher all around and she had a hypothesis she wanted to test.”

            Mr. Bower’s hand goes to his neck as a flush rises up his chest. 

            “Mr. Bower- are you blushing?” Lila can’t help but ask, bringing the man back to the present.

            He frowns and reels his line back in, spluttering in defense about how he isn’t as young as he used to be and that the heat causes him to flush more easily.  The line comes up empty, with the cicada gone too.  Mr. Bower sighs as he waits for another to fly by. 

            “So what was her hypothesis?”

            He clears his throat.  “She wasn’t from here.  Her father had just been named regional manager of the big grocery chain the next town over so she was just passing through.  She was looking for something to occupy her time and our town fishing derby was it.  She was certain that the cicadas were the key to nabbing the title.  She reached down to the ground in all her clean clothes and came up with a fistful of cicada parts and marched straight over to me.

            “She had this glint in her eye and she said, ‘My name is Flora Hardin and I intend to win that fishing derby and you’re gonna help me do it.’  Being a gentlemen, how could I refuse?”

            Lila laughed out loud.  “You didn’t even know her and you just agreed like that?”

            Mr. Bower snapped his fingers and winked.  “Just like that.  Her being the most beautiful creature I’d ever laid eyes on may have left me a tad befuddled.”

            Lila laughed again as she pictured the scene.  The last time the cicadas had come, she had been three years old and remembered very little from that time.  She couldn’t believe that this only happened here every 17 years and her friends were going to miss it.  It was small, but the pang cut deep.  She hadn’t expected that she and her friends would drift apart so quickly.  It was like everyone was on a train moving forward, but she had been late and they kept going without her.

              Fishing with Mr. Bower was a good distraction.  It helped her forget how lonely and untethered she felt with so much uncertainty.  She had finally saved up enough to start night classes in the fall, but where would she go from there?  Her friends already had their lives all figured out and she couldn’t even decide on a major.

            She clears her throat.  “So what happened next?”

            Mr. Bower, who had managed to snatch many more bugs out of the air, had a funeral pyre of fish bait he strung onto his hook as he cast out again.  “Wouldn’t you know it, but her idea worked.  We spent every waking moment together and practiced at Giant Oak Island for nearly a month until the day of the tournament rolled around. 

“The sky was cloudless, and the water as smooth as a sheet of ice.  There was electricity in the air as we set out on the boat to our spot.  Partway there, we realized the Loggins boys were using our spot for themselves.  We rowed around but all the good fishing spots were taken. Plus, with that many people dropping lines, you know the fish would be skittish.”

Lila could only imagine it.  This cove is fed by a river that runs from Canada and through four other states, so there are plenty of fish that pass through.  But all the fish in the world don’t help when there are only so many good fishing spots.

Mr. Bower suddenly pulls up on his line.  Something big- something VERY big- runs his line out.  He yanks it upwards and cranks the reel.  It’s a battle of wills.  Then Mr. Bower does something very unusual.  He sits back down, stops reeling, and lets some of the line run out and continues his story.

 “Flora and me are watching the clock and worrying about where to drop lines.  We’re in the middle of the lake here and we had nothing to show for it.  Finally, Flora grabs the paddle and brings us right to this very spot.  We’d never fished here- there were no weeds, it’s too close to the mouth of the river, and the drop-off is deeper than anywhere else.  But she had this look about her- she strung no less than a dozen cicadas onto her line and dropped it right into the darkest part there.” He points to the spot known locally as “the abyss” where the depth changes from a reasonable 12 feet to 30. 

Lila and Miles had spent the better part of a summer trying desperately to dive to the bottom of the abyss to touch the ground, but the pressure was always too much.  Now, Lila avoided this spot.   

Mr. Bower is cranking on the line again.  His words are strained, but he continues the story.  “The clock is winding down and we have less than 15 minutes to catch a fish and get back to shore.  Most of the others are already heading in with their large-mouths and a few trout, but we hadn’t gotten a single nibble.  Flora is all but stomping her foot when something catches.  She nearly tumbles from the boat, but I catch her waist and we’re moving.  Whatever has her line is strong enough, but Flora knew what she was doing.  She let the line run out, then reeled it back, again and again until there’s less than 5 minutes left. 

“With the strength of a grown man, she manages to bring the thing to the boat.  When I looked down in the water, I wasn’t sure what I was seeing.  It was like a giant white submarine rising from the depths and putting up one hell of a fight.  She’d be disqualified if I helped her reel it, but I was able to grab a net and pull the thing onto the boat.  It was something out of a nightmare with snouted face like a gator and a diamond pattern trailing over its back.

“I don’t know how, but we made it back and Flora won without a question.  She managed to bag a sturgeon, and a huge one at that.”  Mr. Bower’s eyes lit up with pride as he spoke of the accomplishment.  “It was over 30 pounds, and the fish and game warden said it was still young.”

Once Lila and Viv had gone down an internet wormhole trying to find evidence that the Loch Ness Monster in Scotland was really a sturgeon. She could only imagine how frightening it would be to pull one of those from the lake.

Mr. Bower sweats as he leans forward on the canoe seat, using all his leverage to pull the catch in.  Lila is transfixed as something large and white starts to take shape in the water below.  Mr. Bower stands, his creaky old knees firm and steady as he plants his feet.

The old fishing pole creaks as it curves into the water from the weight of the fish.  Lila grabs the net, ready to help pull the fish in.  Mr. Bower huffs and lets out a grunt as he cranks it one last time, and the fish breeches the water.  Lila shoves the net beneath it and working together, they pull the fish to the side of the boat.

Lila gasps.  The fish- a sturgeon- is longer than her canoe.  Mr. Bower sits down heavily and reaches into the water.  He strokes the side of the fish and it stills at his touch.

“Hi there, old friend,” he whispers.  “It’s been a while.”

Lila holds her breath as Mr. Bower runs his hand down its back, stopping as he reaches the dorsal fin with three prominent scars. 

The first is a poorly rendered heart with the letters F and W faintly visible.  The next is a broad “X” and the third is a large question mark. 

Mr. Bower takes out his pocketknife and Lila realizes what she is seeing.  This is Mr. Bower’s life in three simple symbols.

“Have you caught this fish before?”

He didn’t respond.  The answer was obvious.  Instead, he holds the creature steady and begins to lightly carve a new symbol onto its dorsal fin.  When he leans back, a neatly carved forget-me-not remains. 

He keeps stroking the back of the sturgeon, lapping water over the fresh cut until it runs clear.  “You know, Lila, I won’t be seeing him again.  Another seventeen years and I’ll be dead in the ground.  But you won’t be.”

Tears prick her eyes and she looks to the sun.  “You don’t know that.  Besides- youth is wasted on the young, right?  This fish has to be the same age as you, maybe even older, and look at the fight he just put up.  It’s never too late to try, right?”

Mr. Bower sighs.  The fish’s big mournful eye watches as Mr. Bower uses the pliers to release the hook from its jaw.  The net keeps the fish pinned, so it can’t escape.

“Then what happened?” Lila asks quietly.  “To you and Flora?”

He lets out a bark of a laugh.  “That silly girl.  She left after that summer and I never heard from her again.  We made promises- she said I’d always find her in the leaves at giant oak island, but I never could figure out what she meant by that.  We wrote a few letters back and forth, but then the draft came and I was off in Korea and that was it.  You know the rest.  You’ve lived here long enough.”

The story of the Bower family was well-known in town.  The eldest son married young and had a family before moving out of state.  The second son, Old Man Bower, fought in Korea, then Vietnam, then came back and stayed.  No wife or kids.  Only the store as his anchor tethering him to this place. 

Mr. Bower looks wistfully at the fish.  Taking the net from Lila, he releases the hold on the sturgeon.  It doesn’t swim off right away.  It must not realize that the only thing keeping it trapped is itself.  

The fish begins to sink, and it finally realizes it is no longer contained.  It whips around, it’s serpentine back reflecting the sunlight like a diamondback reeling to strike.  It breeches the water once, then dives down into the abyss, it’s lithe body fading like mist on a summer morning. 

Lila keeps looking down into the darkness, wondering how the fish had managed to survive in this lake for decades without people hunting it. She had been fishing in this lake since diapers and had never heard a single person mention the possibility of sturgeon.  Then she looks at Mr. Bower and she thinks she knows why.

She grabs the paddle and cuts a straight line to Giant Oak Island, determined to take Mr. Bower to the place where his story both started and stalled.

“I’m getting tired.  Take me back to shore.  You can’t keep the elderly out in the sun too much.  We already shrivel like raisins.” 

He’s back to his grumpy old man persona and reaches for the paddle to stop their progress, but Lila is too quick for him.  She can J-stroke and C-stroke like nobody’s business, so she pushes them onto the shore of the small island in record time.

The cicadas clinging to the trees buzz louder as she steps onto the sand, noting many of the dead bug bodies littering the ground. 

“Walk me through it again,” she commands.  “Where did you practice?”

            Groaning, Mr. Bower removes himself from the canoe and limps over towards the tree.  “I haven’t been out here since that summer.”  He points to the spot where they’d cast, the long fallen lean-to they’d built to protect them from rain, and the hollow underneath the giant oak where they’d kept their supplies hidden. 

            All the times she had been out here treasure hunting with Adam and Miles, she had never thought to look under the tree.  She’d assumed a family of skunks or angry possums would leap out and attack.  Now, without thinking about what she might be reaching into, Lila sticks her hand into the spot and yelps in surprise.

            “What’d you do that for?” Mr. Bower shouts, nearly tripping in his rush to her side.

            Lila grins as she maneuvers her wrist and is able to clamp down on the object she’s found.  It takes some doing, but she manages to extract it from its root prison and holds it out to Mr. Bower. 

            “Did you forget something?”

            She’s joking.  If he hadn’t been out to this island in 70 years, it seems unlikely that anything from their summer together would remain. 

            Mr. Bower is white.  His face has paled and his legs tremble.  Lila drops the metal tin as she reaches for the old man.  She leads him back to the canoe and guides him gently to the bench seat.

            “Do you need something?  Should I call for help?”

            Mr. Bower shakes his head vehemently and points back at the object she dropped.  Lila fetches it and brushes off years of caked on dirt.  The writing has faded, but the tin retains some of the yellow backing on the brushed metal.  Red writing spells out “Lipton’s Finest Tea.”  She tries to pry the lid loose, but it is on too tightly.  

            She recalls summer lemonade stands at her house with Miles where they’d mix Lipton’s Iced Tea with lemonade and were convinced they’d invented the greatest drink on the planet.  After far too many cups and the subsequent caffeine overdose and sugar crash, Lila’s mom started keeping the Lipton Tea in the highest cabinet in the kitchen. 

            She passes the tin to Mr. Bower and sits opposite him in the canoe.  His hands shake as he looks at it.

            “This was always Flora’s favorite brand.  She would mix it with lemon sweet and swear she’d make a killing someday when she sold the idea.”  His eyes widen in awe as he weighs the tin in his hand.  He reaches for his pocketknife and slides the tip between the seam where the lid meets the box.

            Lila can’t imagine what Mr. Bower must be feeling.  She and her friends had only been apart for a year.  And sure, they didn’t have the summer together and they didn’t talk as much as they used to, but they all did still find time for each other.  When Lila’s 20^th birthday came around, Jamie sent everyone a care package with a board game and tons of candy so they could all play together over video message.  Whenever Conor found a good smut book, she was always the first person he told.  Viv had invited her to New York so many times, but Lila was always the one making the excuse why she couldn’t go.  And Adam made good on a lost bet from years earlier- when he caught his first touchdown as a D1 athlete, he did the Beyonce Single Ladies dance in the endzone.  It became a meme and even made it on to ESPN’s Top 10 Plays of the week.  And Miles wrote whenever he could.  The letters didn’t come frequently, but when they did, the envelope was stuffed full of so many sheets of paper, they almost always needed two stamps.

            The scrape of the knife on metal pulls Lila back to the present as Mr. Bower manages to open the tin.  The lid crashes to the ground and the tin almost topples over before Mr. Bower manages to right it and clutch it to his chest like a precious treasure. 

            Moving slowly in case the contents are fragile, he lays them out on his lap.  There are three typed sheets of paper, each yellowed with age.  They are unsigned, but each bears a date- October 1953, June 1956, and August 1958.  He raises his hand to his mouth as he takes in the words he never knew were there. 

            Lila watches in awe as he carefully folds the letters away, returns the lid to the tin, and tucks them under his feet.  She can see a vein thrumming in his neck and a frantic edge to his expression.

            “Could we head back please?”  His voice is calm, but almost too calm.  He clears his throat and asks, “Do you know how to use the internet to search for someone?”

            Lila grins and gives a hard shove of the canoe and starts stroking their way back to the dock.  “I thought youth is wasted on the young.”

            Mr. Bower holds both his arms out in the wind as they race back to their shore.  “Young or old… sometimes, it’s never too late.”