The Last Cast

The sun’s been gone an hour and the river is the color of old pennies. You’d think a man would be done by now. Lines are up, the cooler’s empty, the boat has that settled, tired feel of a day finished. But there’s always one more. Always the last cast.

I learned the last cast from my father, who learned it from his, and I don’t suppose any of us ever caught a thing on it. That’s not the point. The point is you don’t leave the water until the water says you can leave. And the water, being water, never says anything at all. So you stay.

Fishing has a bad reputation for being boring, and I won’t argue with that. It is boring, the way church is boring, the way a good marriage is boring. Which is to say it isn’t boring at all. It’s quiet. There’s a difference. The world is so full of noise these days you have to pay to get away from it, and here’s this river, free as anything, offering an evening of your own thoughts if you’ll just sit still long enough to have them.

The old men knew. The old men on the dock with their cane poles and thermoses weren’t waiting on fish. They were waiting on the day to unspool at its own pace. My granddaddy used to say a man who can’t sit still with a line in the water is a man who can’t sit still with himself, and there’s no bait for that.

I think about that when the last cast goes out. The light’s nearly gone, the water’s gone glassy, the crickets are tuning up, and it’s just me and the rod and the small honest sound of the line leaving the reel. Whatever I was carrying all day — the hurry, the worry, the thousand little things — is back at the truck now. Out here there’s only the dark water and the question of what’s underneath it, and that’s enough. That’s always been enough.

There’s a ritual that goes with it, and rituals matter. When the rod’s back in the boat and the day’s officially over, the flask comes out. One pour, not for the cold, though it’s cool now, but for the close of it. For the day itself. The whiskey’s got a warmth that says the day happened, it counted, and tomorrow the tide comes back and the river will be right here waiting.

That’s the thing about water. It doesn’t hold a grudge. You can fish it badly, skunk yourself, lose a good lure, and it’ll still show up tomorrow morning like nothing happened. There’s a lesson in there somewhere, and I’ve been chewing on it for years and I’m still not done.

The last cast is a promise you make to yourself. That you’re not too busy to stay. That you can still sit quiet in the dark and be glad of it. That you remember the water always comes back, and so will you.

The truck’s up the bank, and there’s a porch light on at the house downriver, and somewhere a screen door slams, and I sit a minute longer with the empty rod in my hand.

Tomorrow’s a new day. But tonight, I’m still on the water.