Proper respect
Those who knew him called him Mr. Cole and never anything else.
They knew he was old, weathered, alert, stumpy, blue-eyed and vinegary. He wore faded jeans and a blue cotton shirt with a darker blue bandana tucked in at the neck.
Those who didn’t know him would be strangers in these parts, tourists come to fish the Davidson River or the Mills. Today, Mr. Cole was at the Upper Mills, standing at a bridge railing and gazing impassively at the water. He had been hailed six times already, and it was only noon.
“Hey, Mister.” “Say, Old-Timer.” “Hi there, Fella.” He was not fond of these names and was a little vexed anyhow. The heat was oppressive, even along the streams now in mid-August. The river was low, lazy and oily, and the trout were not stirring. Gray rocks showed a clay-red margin where the surface had ebbed. Mr. Cole’s reliable willow-leaf spinner held no attraction, so he stashed his gear in his beat-up Dodge pickup and gave over to spectating. His hand-rolled Prince Albert cigarette was his present solace.
But now at the end of the bridge appeared a youngun of about twelve years or so. He wore read sneakers, denim shorts, and a green T-shirt that read BassAckwards. His manner suggested hours of disappointment as he scuffed the gravel and looked about the landscape as if its existence were a punishment imposed by an insufferable schoolteacher. He inquired incuriously when he said, “Hey, Mister, have you caught anything?”
“Caught rabies one time, but the dog made up to me, and I didn’t press charges.”
“What?”
“I said, I was brought up proper and always addressed my elders as ‘Sir’ and ‘Ma’am.’”
The youngster’s gaze freshened into a stare. “That wasn’t what you said the first time.”
“I’m getting up in years,” Mr. Cole said. “Sometimes I forget what I said a long time ago.”
The boy appeared confused. He started to speak but didn’t. Then he did. “You didn’t, did you?”
“Didn’t what?”
“Catch anything.”
“You mean, fish?”
“Yes. Fish.”
“If you was to call me ‘Sir,’ I might tell you.”
“Sir.”
“Twenty-three.”
“You caught twenty-three fish? Can I see them?”
“Thirteen you can’t. I throwed ‘em back. You can only keep ten.” His tone stiffened, and he looked sternly upon the boy. “That’s the law of the land. You want to remember that.”
“All right.”
“Yes sir.”
“Yes sir, but what about the others?”
“You’d’ve had to look quick to see the ones I throwed back before they was et. They was just little old six-inch speckles, and as soon as they hit the water Old Bruin snapped them up. He follers me around when I’m fishing because he knows he’ll eat hearty.”
“Who’s Old Bruin?”
“He’s the big brown trout that’s lived in the river since anybody can recall. They’s generations of fishermen passed away trying to catch him. Where are you from you never heard of Old Bruin?”
“We’re from Lakeland, Florida.”
“That’s what I figured. I don’t care much for Florida people. What’s your name?”
“Bert.”
“That don’t much sound like a Florida name. It ain’t short for Bertram, is it?”
“No sir.”
“Bertram might could be a Florida name that traveled down from New York City and got stuck. It’s a good thing you ain’t no Bertram. Ever since Adam woke up in the garden, there ain’t no Bertram ever caught a trout.”
“Who’s Adam?”
“He’s somebody in the Bible. You ever read the Bible?”
“A little bit.”
“You ought to read your Bible. It’s got some big fish in it.”
“What happened to your other fish, the ones that didn’t get...et?”
“They died,” Mr. Cole said mournfully. “Ever last one of ‘em. I had to bury them all myself, without no help from anybody. I wish you would’ve been around to give me a hand.”
“You buried your fish?”
“Said a few words over them and set up a stone and laid them to rest in peace.”
“Where?”
He dropped his ragged cigarette into the road dust and obliterated it with the toe of his frayed, damp, high-topped sneaker. “Up that way.” He indicated with his head, pointing the crown of his dilapidated fedora to the mountain slope to his right.
Young Bert looked slightly cross-eyed. “Well,” he said, “can I go see their graves?”
He’s confused, Mr. Cole thought. If something ain’t on the television, he can’t figure it. “Nothing to see,” said Mr. Cole. “Since you come along too late to help me out, I only dug one grave for the bunch of them. And I didn’t have nothing to carve their names with. So I just set up a little white flint rock and that’s it. Nothing to see.”
“Their names?”
And now a portly man came walking from the bridgehead to the left. He was dressed in a Hawaiian shirt that looked to Mr. Cole like a drunk housepainter’s dropcloth. He sported waist-high waders and a dinky canvas hat verminous with dry flies. A briar pipe was tucked stem-first into his shirt pocket. He carried a heavy tackle box and an unfamiliar, expensive-looking style of fly rod.
This is him, Mr. Cole thought. This here is Mr. Florida in the flesh. He spoke to Bert: “Jackson, Maude, Perkin, Malkin, Welkin, Buster, Slow John, Quicksilver, Ketchup and Hashbrown.”
Mr. Florida gave Mr. Cole a suspicious once-over. “Excuse me?” he said.
“Those are the names, Dad.” Bert looked at his father with what Mr. Cole regarded as unearned trustfulness.
“The names?”
“The names of the fish he buried.”
Mr. Florida looked at Mr. Cole as he might regard an entity disembarking from a flying saucer. “You buried some fish?”
Mr. Cole explained with an air of weary patience that the trout had died, but the traveler from Lakeland was unsatisfied. “I never heard of anybody burying fish he caught. Why would you do something like that, Old-Timer?”
“Ain’t you got no respect for them that has passed on to their reward? That’s the trouble these days. People don’t have no proper respect.”
The portly man gave him a long gaze, evidently weighing a thousand mortal possibilities. “You must have read a burial service. Out of respect.”
“Just said one single Bible verse,” Mr. Cole said. “They was only fish, and think two of them was Republicans.”
“Which Bible verse did you say?”
“Ananias, Chapter 13, Verse 41: Let them as has any business of their own be mindful unto it.”
“I don’t think I know that one.”
“That’s another thing wrong. People don’t read their Bible no more. I already told your boy here he ought to start reading his Bible.”
“He says there’s fish in it, Dad,” Bert said.
“You know, Old-Timer,” the man said, “I believe it’s against the law to bury fish in a national park.”
“Ain’t nothing against it in the Bible,” Mr. Cole said. “Other’n that, I don’t care about no law.”
“You were talking about respect. Don’t you respect the law?”
“As long as it leaves me alone, I do.”
The father placed a reassuring hand on his son’s shoulder. “I have taught my boy to respect the law. That’s something you ought to learn too, a man of your years.”
“The law don’t mean dog dooky to me.”
Mr. Cole pulled his blue bandanna up over his mouth and nose to look like a stagecoach robber. Then he pulled it down and tucked it into his shirt.
“Well,” said Mr. Florida, “I happened to run into the game warden on the road back here, and he’s headed this way. What if I told him about you burying those fish?”
“I don’t care for no game warden,” Mr. Cole said. “He messes with me, and I’ll wrench his gizzard out. I bet Old Bruin would relish it mighty well.”
“You’d assault an officer of the law?”
“Not unless he sassed me.”
“Well, Old Fella, here’s your chance to do your worst. He’s coming to us.”
The game warden was a solidly built man of about fifty years. A fringe of silver-orange hair poked beneath his Great Smoky Mountains National Park hat, and he was multitudinously freckled. He approached with a businesslike saunter, taking stock of the three males with a sweeping glance. “Hello boys,” he said.
“Officer,” said Daddy Florida, “I’d like to report what I think might be a crime. This old man has been burying trout on government property.”
Grasshoppers and crows enlivened the silence that followed.
“What makes you think so,” the warden said.
“He confessed. I heard him say it.”
“Any other witnesses?”
“My son Osbert here heard him too.”
“Osbert?” said Mr. Cole. “Now I know what’s wrong with this youngun.”
“What do you mean?” Daddy Florida snapped.
“The reason he don’t show no respect is because he ain’t never been given any. Not him, nor any other Osbert.”
“I don’t see what’s wrong—”
“That’s enough,” the warden said. He took a slow, careful estimate, eyeing Mr. Cole from sneaker-sole to hatband. “Now, Sir, is this gentleman telling the truth?”
“That’s possible,” Mr. Cole said. “He seems too weak-minded to overcome it.”
“And I’ll tell you something else,” said Father Florida. “He said he’d tear your gizzard out and feed it to a bear.”
The warden’s face grew grave. “Did you say that?” He rested his hand lightly on the butt of his holstered .45.
“Nope.”
“He’s lying,” said Mr. Hawaiian Shirt. “I heard him say so and Osbert did too—didn’t you son?”
“Old Bruin is not a bear,” Osbert said. “He’s a big fish. I think he’s in the Bible.”
“Did you threaten violence against a national park officer?” the warden asked.
“I don’t much care for game wardens,” Mr. Cole stated.
“How about the fish? Did you bury them on park land?”
Mr. Cole’s tone was weary but forgiving. “I don’t see why I can’t get nobody to understand they was dead.”
“Well, Mr. Trout Undertaker, I think you’d better step along with me.”
“Don’t much care to,” Mr. Cole said.
“I’m afraid it’s not up to you.” The warden unsnapped the guard on his holster and slid out his weapon. “I don’t think you want to tangle with this Old Bruin.”
Mr. Cole appeared to reconsider. He spat into the dust. “Well, if you’re gonna be like that. But it ain’t fair. I was only paying my last respects.”
The warden motioned with his pistol. “Sir, come with me to my car. I’ll need to see your fishing license and your driving license.”
“I don’t much hold with licenses.”
“We’ll see about that. Come on, let’s go.”
They trudged almost to the end of the bridge before the warden turned around to address Osbert, Jr. His tone was so officious his words could have been printed on official Park stationery: “Let this be a lesson to you, young fellow. Don’t you ever bury a trout—rainbow, brook or speckle—on federal property. This old gentleman is going to need a quality lawyer.”
They marched up the road and turned left behind a line of laurel bushes.
“I don’t much care for lawyers,” Mr. Cole said.
“Neither do I,” the warden said, reholstering his weapon and snapping the guard.
“How’s your wife doing? I heard she’s been down sick.”
“A lot better. She was up for about an hour yesterday. Doctor says she ought to be steady on her feet in about a week.”
“That’s good. Tell her I said, hello and to get well real soon.”
“I’ll do that. You want a lift to your truck?”
“Naw, I’ll just hoof it. The fish won’t start biting for a while, so I’ve got some time to kill.”
“Say, Mr. Cole...” the warden said. He stopped walking along and Mr. Cole stopped too. “Don’t you ever get tired of funning those tourists? You know, if you want to do it up right, you ought to get you an outfit—big, black slouch hat, bib overalls, corncob pipe. Maybe carry a whiskey jug.”
“Dress up like one of them funny-book hillbillies? That would be too god-awful a sight, me dressed up like that and with the Florida feller already dressed up like a funny-book tourist. It’s hard enough to keep a straight face now.”
“I can see that,” the warden said, turning loose a grin.
Mr. Cole lifted his hat and palmed sweat from his forehead. “Jimbo,” he said, “next time how about letting me point the pistol?”
The warden shook his head. “I don’t think so. You might take a notion to plug one of those flatlanders.”
“Shoot a tourist? What for? I like tourists. If it wasn’t for them, I wouldn’t have nothing to occupy me when the fish ain’t biting.”
“I never thought... Well, when do you think they will start biting?”
Mr. Cole replaced his hat and turned to survey the hill-studded horizon. He took a turnip watch from his jeans pocket and consulted it. He shaded his eyes with his left hand and squinted at the position of the sun. “Seventeen minutes after six,” he said.
About the author
Fred Chappell is the author of more than a dozen books of poetry, two short story collections and eight novels. He served as North Carolina’s Poet Laureate and has won a number of literary awards, including Yale University’s Bollingen Prize, the Aiken Taylor Award, the T.S. Eliot Prize, the French Prix de Meilleur des Livres Etrangers, and the North Carolina Literature Award. A native of the mountain town of Canton, N.C., Chappell taught English at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro for 40 years. Before retiring in 2004, he received the O. Max Gardner Award for excellence in teaching. He and his wife, Susan, recently celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary.