Forked Tongues
I could spot his changes at baggage claim. My father sported a stained red polo and wrinkled khakis and walked a slight slouch. He looked rougher, but also calmer. Maybe that’s why my father left my mother and I while he transferred back ‘home’ to Jacksonville, Florida—maybe there was some sense of calm down here that he didn’t have access to up north. When he was with my mom and I in Virginia my father was uptight, always alert, ready to please and joke like a court jester on final notice. He was always the first to crack a joke and the first to laugh at it, causing everyone to join in regardless of the quality of the punchline. But here, now that I had joined him in Florida for the summer, I could tell that all that time in Virginia he may have been my father, but he wasn’t really himself. Here he felt less like a parent, but also more like a real person.
One of the first things I noticed in those few weeks: his smile was gone but it didn’t feel missed on his part—he breathed deeper and spoke less. My father was always like this before: he never spoke to me about his work, his thoughts, or anything. But here the silence seemed deeper, more charged and tense, there was no relief behind it outside the occasional angry vent full of racial epitaphs or confusing commentary about tax code. In fact, he’d gone mostly silent, like somehow the humidity stuck each word in his throat, making it impossible for the syllables to escape. Instead he’d grunt and nod and answer monosyllabically. He’d ask about how my days were spent while he was at work: I mostly spent time by watching TV, going to the public library, and reading comics. He’d put on Law and Order every night, and when Dick Wolf flashed across the screen we’d get ready for bed. On the weekends or occasional weeknight, we’d stop by some elderly family who proved to be a fun time for a hand of Rummy or two, but truth be told our summer had heated into a bare bore. The only subject that would inspire any kind of hope or happiness in my father was getting things ready to go fishing. This was the only line of conversation that my father would openly introduce, the mere mention revved his mouth.
“Now I can’t wait to take you, show you where I learned. Our kin have been going there for generations. It’ll be something else, I tell ya! This is essential stuff you’re gonna learn. Boating, hooking, casting, knotting, you just wait. It’ll toughen you up, get you out in the world where your people come from —where you come from.”
It seemed fishing was going to be the silver lining of my twelve-year-old summer, if not the entire divorce. I wasn’t entirely sure how excited I was by the prospect of fishing. While I enjoyed nature, I never really hiked outside of a neighborhood park. The thought made me nervous, it seemed so important, but it also made my father so happy, so I decided to just go with it. My father took a couple more weeks to get everything straight: buy the boat, get it registered, get his fishing license, buy the equipment, throw out the old boat motor, buy a trolling motor, test it, fix the holes in the hull, get it painted, then get the fishing gear.
* * * * *
We left under the still of pre-dawn. In the truck my father turned and smiled toward me from time to time; his teeth stained a deeper shade of yellow. I was surprised less by the teeth and more by the smile. Since being down there we didn’t smile much—not many people did. I tried appraising him again, he was all around a little rougher—still fit, still regulation, but rougher. That roughness was aided by a kind of smoothness in his personality; he was less jittery, more even. For some reason this made me believe his smile was genuine, and for a moment I felt like my dad was back, but we would hit a pothole and he would let out a “Goddamn!” and the frown would return.
We pulled off the side of a small country bridge and my father backed the boat trailer down the small off-road dirt dock. Wide white trunks of Bald Cypress lined the road while the dawn had begun stripping its darkness, leaking lightening gradients of purple and blue. I was entranced by how still and calm the water was, a black mirror occasionally disturbed by the upshot of bright white and yellow flora.
“That is a Swamp Lotus.” My father pointed to a white flower blooming with thirteen alternating, narrow petals, brushed with a light foil of gold extending to their tips from a conical bright yellow seed pod, crowned with a burst of thin yellow tendrils thrusting upward. “You see people think that there ain’t nothin’ down here but heat and bugs and sweat and gators – not true.”
He stopped, tied off the boat now beating back and forth finding its balance, and lifted his finger to center in on the Swamp Lotus and then, following the movement of his hand, I saw the creamy yellow petals of Swamp Sunflowers pop out of the darkness and near their base, closer to the water and shore, small clusters of white drooping petals that signified Swamp Lilies.
The water lapped against the side of the creek boat, lathering its six-foot side with tiny brackish bubbles while the sun had begun cresting in the East, burning the dark blue of night with shades of bright pink and burnt orange. As we set out on the creek the trolling motor left more ripple and my father pointed towards a group of large white boats ahead. Groups of men were carrying buoys and laying netting across the creek. I stared at the boats, then my father’s face, already shadowed with spike-sharp stubble and forming a firm, disappointed frown.
“Is that where we’re supposed to be going?” I asked.
“Yup. Let’s have a look.” He pulled out two sun-bleached yellow safety vests from the stow space under his and threw one my way, offering an efficient explainer, “Appearances.”
We pulled up closer to see a singular marine police boat with two official-looking twelve-foot white boats inscribed with too large words, placed too tight together, ‘NorthFloridaWildlifeResearchandRescue’. The men in the research boats had indeed stretched out a black anchored net across a massive section of entryway towards what looked like a more remote section of the creek. The buoys holding the net afloat sported a sign reading, “DANGER: SNAKE SANCTUARY. DO NOT ENTER” one side and, “VIOLATORS WILL BE FINED $500” on the other.
My father pulled up near the police boat and waved over, wishing the men a good morning. The only weird thing was that he didn’t really sound like himself—he sounded like halfway between who he is now, down here, and who he was up north. He cracked a joke about the humidity and waved his shirt exaggeratedly saying he should have brought another. A particularly rotund officer chimed in that he agreed, and that his wife actually packed him a second in his bag, he held it up as if we had needed proof. My father bore his yellow grin and blessed the man’s wife and even dared to wonder aloud, what was going on back there today officers? The officer had taken kindly to my father’s kind manner and let us in on the secret.
“Apparently the Water Moccasin population had moved south and were congregating in one area a few hundred yards up the creek. Ya know, scientists and global warming and all that. So now part of the creek had since been declared a sanctuary; no fishing, sporting, or wildlife activities were meant to take place back there.”
“Ah now that, my family’s been fishing here for generations. I ain’t never seen no snakes back there.”
My father sounded dejected, like he wanted to make the officer feel a bit of a guilt trip, but the officer wasn’t having any of it.
“I know what ya mean. My family too! Creek’s been good to us… but trust me, especially with your little boy there. Been called out here one too many times for a bad scene over snakes. Don’t need another bad scene.”
My father’s face contorted—hurt and sincere. He averted his gaze sideways and when he spoke it was softer, more familiar, “Guess there’s no exceptions, huh? Not even for a boy learning to fish? Come-on, don’t you remember your Daddy taking you fishing for the first time?”
“Sorry, sir. No exceptions. Plenty of good water out here today and the fish are already jumpin’. Y’all should have a good day out here, just not back there. And you—”
The officer pointed to me with a stern look on his face.
“You make sure you tell them that the one that got away was about—” the officer’s flat mouth turned up into a grin. He stretched hands apart just broader than his shoulders mimicking the size of this imaginary fish, “—this big!” He then patted his bulging stomach, “and this round!”
The two other officers on the boat stopped and laughed, the researchers stopped and laughed, and for a moment the entire world– the crickets and birds and water and wind –went silent and the only sound in the world was their laughter while my father’s gaze never averted. My father broke his concentration and joined in with a hearty laughter that I recognized and missed.
“Now I don’t know what you’re talking about officer, ‘bout every fish I catch is that big!” My father cracked back. The officers smiled, the researchers smiled, they said their ‘I’m sorry-s’ and ‘good day-s’ and ‘be safe-s’. But instead of going back to the docks, or fishing somewhere else, I got a lecture on how the law’s good, but sometimes it gets in the way of things.
“See,” my father said to me, gesturing for me to take off my life jacket, “you gotta know that the law is meant to serve everyone, but it forgets how important some things are.”
Now he presented too sternly, too serious, compared to the jovial man that had just inhabited his body. I figured I’d borrow a tool from his box.
“Like learning how to fish?” I joked, punching him on his free arm.
My father turned his head to the river and smiled, letting his teeth shine highlighter yellow. I smiled but couldn’t shake the sense that maybe, just maybe, this father—the one I wanted to please and understand—was the same one who made the choice to leave me: for this. I frowned for a second. I didn’t mean to, honestly, I didn’t even mean to think it, it was just a slip of the mask; but my father saw it, and he saw me, and in that moment, we were both ashamed of ourselves.
* * * * *
My father informed me that our family knew these waters better than any damn cop could, and that the snakes, if they were there, were never that much of a bother. He knew of another way. The droning of cicadas swarmed as we trolled into a shallow inlet under a young willow whose longest, thinnest branch tickled the floorboards of the boat with its lightest leaf. My father tossed me the rope; pointing for me to tie the boat off to a nearby tree. He observed patiently for my first two tries before grabbing it out of my hand, more gently this time. My father praised me for the effort but not the product, he redid the knot while explaining its folds and turns once again. Afterwards we loaded up our gear, just rods and an ice box for bait and whatever we caught, as it would be a short quarter mile hike to where we could sit on the shore and angle our lines into the hole.
“And the snakes?” I asked.
“Like I said—Snakes are snakes, they don’t want to eat anything too big and they ain’t gonna hurt things they ain’t gonna eat or ain’t trying to eat them. Water Moccasin is their government name though, down here we call ‘em Cottonmouths.”
“Why’s that?” I asked.
“When they open their mouths, it looks like a ball of cotton: pure white. Back in the day those hard of sight might try and pick ‘em on accident, get bit, and die. You see some bright white circle like that, even if it’s in the middle of some pitch-black spot, you get up and move away—you don’t startle them, they won’t startle you.”
We hiked through tangled roots as thick as my thighs and at one spot the peat was so soft my left leg sank two feet straight down. I felt helpless, I had suddenly sunk, dropped my rod, and lost all my footing, but my father grabbed my arm to hold me steady.
“It’s still early in the season yet, most of this soil ain’t been dry in a few months, step where I step, keep to roots and rocks. Just watch and learn.”
I watched, and I learned. I also caught sight of a few snakes, lounging in trees, or coiled on the ground, but they didn’t mess with us, and we didn’t mess with them. It wasn’t too long before we got to the fishing hole: a small, horseshoe shaded by four old growth Spanish Moss which formed the ruddy shoreline. Near the shallows you could see clear through—a translucent green—to where some smaller fish darted in and out while a few larger fish lazily swam across the surface, apparently oblivious to us hunters above.
“I can see why we’d fish here, look at all of them!”
I hadn’t even noticed the excitement in my own voice. Apparently, the fish had noticed—my volume had caused the larger of the group to scatter from the shallows into darker, deeper waters.
“Sorry.” I hushed.
“Don’t worry.” My father let out a loose sigh of laughter to show that he wasn’t mad at all, “See what you saw there: those fish? Ain’t never gonna catch them. They know there ain’t nothing up here but hooks to be cleaned—these are the pros, the real asshole fish that get to be four feet long and become local legends. Naw, we don’t fish right here—real holes over there.”
My father pointed to the base of one of the Spanish Moss that bordered the shoreline while he set our hooks and sinkers. With a quick wave for me to keep my head down followed by a smooth flick of his wrist, my father cast his rod and his line landed directly in the hole he had pointed towards, whizzing pleasingly, sinking down further than I expected. He then anchored the handle of his rod between two strong roots—running his finger along the tight line before pulling at the tension leading out to the hole briefly, in demonstration.
“You see that start to bend, you know you’ve got one on the line you gotta pick it up but when you do – don’t be gentle, you gotta snag ‘em!”
It took me a few good tries, but I was eventually able to land in the hole about two-thirds of the time. My father took note, “There ya go, boy! Knew you had it in you.”
While my father offered praise, he didn’t look at me but instead kept his eyes on our taught lines, but it didn’t feel like he was paying attention to them. I was watching them too, but not really paying attention. I hardly registered it at first when my father moved his hand to my shoulder, and he squeezed. I understood then, in the pressure on my shoulder blade, that maybe my father was trying to communicate all the things he didn’t, maybe couldn’t, tell me. Maybe he wanted to apologize for how things were, how they got that way. Maybe he didn’t want me to think bad of him for leaving mom and asking to be transferred home; not to think bad of my mother for not wanting to come—that he had already seen the writing on the wall for the two of them. I think he wanted me to know that he was proud of me, that I was now like him a little bit more in the parts he admired about himself. Then the arc of my father’s rod started to bow at the tip, the line pulling slowly at first, then pulling with greater tension. In one movement the pressure left my shoulder—the spot somehow colder in the swelter—my father got up and whispered.
“This could be it, watch here!”
My father kept track of the line, bowing until—in one long, slow motion—the rod began to form a deep curve. My father grabbed the rod, and whipped it back, while reeling the line in, pulling the fish to shore. Its shimmering green body flailed in the shallows fighting the unnatural pull to the surface. They fought a bit, each giving ground where necessary, but my father brought the sucker up to the surface. I was mesmerized but had no time to revel. My father held the fish to the black earth. It looked horrific as the shiny white belly inflated, as if out of nowhere, struck a loud, low, vibrato filled croak. I jumped back but my father just smiled at me, “You did well, son. I think there may be hope for you yet!”
* * * * *
As we made our way back through the swamp, there were more snakes out than earlier, or maybe the noontime light just made them more visible. We got hissed at a couple of times but, like my father said, we paused, stepped back, and the snakes backed down themselves. The boat was there: still red, still anchored to the shore, the long branch of the willow hanging a bit higher off the boat. We loaded the boat and set back up the creek.
The sun cast a harsh glare on the water that put our eyes toward the treeline. It was peaceful enough, but the heat was growing violent. Even the insects quieted down, I imagine they chose to save their mating calls for when it was a little less hot; nothing pleasurable happened this time of day. Even the flowers which struck alight in the darkness with their pre-dawn splendor were now obscured by a low heat mirage rising off the water’s surface. A pathetic croak struggled to gain prominence against the humidity’s thick blanket from the ice chest. This caused my father and I to chuckle, so it was strange when I looked back at my father and his face was stiff with one hand out as if to say “DON’T. MOVE.”
But I didn’t listen, I don’t suppose I could. It’s like when someone tells you not to laugh or how you can’t hold your breath when you’re hiding in the closet from the serial killer. Something instinctual in me told me I had to look. When I did, at the base of my feet, right next to the ice chest, I saw a snake. It was a dark black mess, with muddy alternating brown and gray stripes across its thick body. The snake was all coiled up, mean looking and ready for war with two black beads for eyes set right on top of its flat head, both fixed at me. The snake opened its jaw gently bisecting its black jaw to reveal a soft cotton-white mouth. I looked back to my father now holding a wooden oar in one hand—I began inching back towards him. When I was within reach my father grabbed my shoulder and threw me back where I crumpled into the fetal position to hide from the snake. The snake spat at my father and he struck the snake down, pinning its patterned body back into the boat, but a board gave and some water started trickling in, then the snake got loose and coiled up on the dry part of the boat.
“Quick, it’s about to jump!”
Jump it did—but not quick enough to stop my father from taking one great step and striking the snake mid-air, perpendicular to its jump angle. The snake flailed, hissing, before wrapping itself up around the oar. My father pulled his hands back and swung the oar over my head as I crouched, and he released it sometime before I looked up. He had tossed the oar into the creek—snake attached. The snake and the oar broke the calm surface with a satisfying splash; the oar bobbed, and the snake swam to shore.
My father turned around, his face whiter and redder than I’d ever seen.
“You all right?”
The entire encounter left me with no physical injury, just some shock—but the shock stirred doubt, and then the doubt stirred a thought—Now? He’s asking me if I’m all right—now? Before I could pursue the thought any further my father began panicking.
“The leak! Oh shit, oh shit, oh fuck!”
My father quickly threw me a couple of towels to try and plug up the hole in the boat before muttering, “Fuck it.”
My father pulled a flare gun from his under-seat storage, loaded a flare, and fired one off into the harsh high sun. I wondered if anyone would even see it. I was able to get the hole mostly plugged, but we were still taking on water slowly. As I held the plug my father looked for anything he could to scoop out water or help reinforce my plug. All the time he was cursing, but also complimenting me. I tried to not listen, tried to not lose distraction, tried to be good at my job: filling the hole and stopping the leak.
“Good job there, just keep it up. We’ll be out of this in no time. Promise.”
* * * * *
Panting, sweating, and panicking in the noontime sun, what was most likely minutes felt like hours of work, but it was seamless and for once there it felt like there was no tension between us. Our goals and our wants were completely aligned – getting out of this current mess, and the only thing we could do was keep the boat afloat. Our actual salvation approached from the sound of large motors tearing through the water in our direction. My father shouted our location loud into the creek and within a minute the research boats were on the horizon. Soon thereafter my father hoisted up the anchoring rope, asked the police if they thought they could tow the boat to the shore. They didn’t mind but asked us what happened.
“Shit, we went about 30 minutes up the creek and found a good hole, but would you believe it a goddamned cottonmouth fell right outta a tree into our boat—cracked the hull trying to get the sucker out!”
My father turned away from the officers as he anchored the rope and motioned for the driver to pull off back towards the dock. Our half-capsizing boat was left bouncing in the wake. The two police officers and one researcher all considered each other and grunted, trading judgmental glances. My father looked indignant that they wouldn’t accept his story.
“What? You don’t believe me?”
“No,” one researcher piped up, “We’re not saying that, not necessarily. It’s just that Water Moccasins aren’t known for climbing trees, they usually climb in boats anchored along the shore.”
“You PhDs think you can come out here and just know the land, but we’re from here and we don’t tell no lies. Hell, you can ask the boy, he’ll tell ya’ the same thing!”
My father slapped me on the back, I didn’t know what to say. In the moment I felt like the dumbest person in the world, but I also knew what my father wanted me to do. I didn’t speak, I nodded seriously as if to assert that he was correct—that me, a child, was certainly trustworthy even if the adult was not.
“I know you’re not calling the boy a liar. Are ya’?”
My father stepped towards the researcher, arms back, chest out, and head thrust forward like a cock about to spur. The larger of the police officers placed a hand on my fathers’ shoulder.
“Hey look, sir—” My father wouldn’t move his head, still staring at the researcher. “Sir, please calm down. Everyone’s fine —no one’s in trouble—we believe you and your boy here. Let’s just get you back to your dock.”
“Thank you very much, officer.” My father said, backing down, “I apologize, I just get personal about my kin.” He shot a smile back to his rotund friend, “You know how it is.”
“Certainly, sir. We all got to look out for our own.” The officer said, winking at me, and walking with my father to sit down as we made our way to the dock.
* * * * *
While we rode back my father and I watched our boat trailing behind—its cavity would fill and empty with water as it was pulled in the wake. It was damaged – I hoped beyond repair. But the boat never sank on its journey to the shore, it simply filled and emptied with the wake, over and over, as we headed back to shore. The water would fill slowly, reaching a maximum before tipping just the right angle and draining off enough excess to keep it afloat—the inertia from the boat doing most of the life support.
It filled and emptied; my own emotions had come down—confusion and frustration melding as they settled in my mind. It filled and emptied; was it all worth it? Did my father get what he wanted out of taking me fishing? It filled and emptied; this didn’t seem worth the stress, the damage. He didn’t give anything freely and I didn’t care to offer much by this point. We both sat looking at pretty much anything but each other. I couldn’t think of anything worth saying—it was too much. I just wanted the day to be done.
Once we were dockside my father hopped out to grab the truck and back the boat trailer down to grab our carcass of a boat. While he was away the hull sank further, capsizing just a few inches under the surface in the shallows. Any buoyant gear began to float while the rest dipped under the surface with the boat. One item was shaking: the chest cooler rose and bobbed up once, twice, three times before the lid cracked open and water rushed in. You could almost hear the croaker breathe deep as it thrashed and screamed against that thin seam now slowly sinking itself. Not even a second after the last lip of plastic kissed the surface a Croaker sprang blood oozing from its cheek and lip, bright and shining in the sun before landing with a smooth splash, and the croaker swam off. It may have been wounded, dejected, but at least it was going home.
“Hey, kid. It’s time to go.” The officer helped me up the ladder and onto the dock, “You catch anything out there besides snakes?”
I did my part: I smiled, I laughed. By this point in the day I’d learned well enough that if you must lie, and everyone knows it’s a lie, then you might as well go along with it. I stretched my hands out as far as they could go, “About his wide.” He smiled. The other officer smiled. The researcher smiled. “And about as big as you!” They all joined in; it was a hearty time as far as any of us would say aloud.
“Sounds like you’re a natural!” said the officer.
The two officers untied the boat rope and heaved it over to help crank our capsized boat onto the trailer. They made quick work of their salutations and the two of us got back in the truck. My father kept his eyes on the road ahead.
* * * * *
Back on the road we were silent. We were heading home, at least back to my father’s home, with nothing tangible to show for the day.
“Sorry to say we can’t go fishing for a while. Least not till we patch up the boat. You get a good story out of it at least?”
I didn’t want to respond because I didn’t know how to. I stared out the window and tried to count the white lines on the road, but they all sped by too fast, it was useless to try and quantify or understand. A gentle punch landed on my arm paired with a grunt that was very ‘huh’-like. I didn’t realize I was smiling when I turned to look towards him, I didn’t intend to smile—it was like my mind just took over my body, knowing what it had to do to get by.
“Yeah, plenty of stories!”
My father smiled and relaxed one hand off the wheel, letting his body untense and his elbow rest on the car door. He ran his free hand through his hair.
“The real story, getting out there to the old fishing spot, that’s just for us. It’s natural for a boy and his father to share things that’s just for them, it’s a southern thing. Maybe later, when you’re older, we can tell it. But not now.”
I didn’t let the mask slip this time. He still noticed.
“The best stories need time, ok? So just me and you on this one, bub. What are you gonna tell your grandparents when we go see them tonight?”
I repeated the story my father told the officers.
“Good,” my father replied, “And your mother?”
“The same.”
“Good, that’s good.” My father relaxed his face and put on a smile.
I pulled down the visor to examine myself, trace any difference the day may have made. I felt rougher: my cheeks firmer, lips downturned a bit. My reflection through the mirror offered no advice, just a hollow friend. I understood that what he had wanted to instill in me wasn’t fishing knowledge, but the experience of it all. He wanted me to feel where he was from and love it, learn a language down there we could communicate in through secrets and stories. He wanted to show me his true tongue, to be able to speak to him on his terms. To create a language only we could speak. And now he had, he created a language of secrets between us, a world which if one of us violated meant that we would lose something sacred with the other. Not valuable perhaps, but sacred—we had a trust now when before we only had blood. Maybe that’s what makes it run thicker in the south, all that extra pressure in the atmosphere from those pushing down around you. I could understand now, this pressure, this warmth, to him it was home, and to me it was getting to be a bit uncomfortable—and that revelation caused me to shut the visor with more force than I had intended. My father jerked the car, having not expected the sudden thud, but quickly regained composure and slowed the truck for a second.
“You okay there?”
“Yeah,” I smiled back at him, knowing what I needed to say,
“I’m going to be fine.”
“See, I told you this trip would toughen you up. Yup—you’re gonna be alright.”
*
Timothy Norton is a writer and teacher of Creative Writing, Composition, and Literature at Old Dominion University, and leads a fiction workshop and craft classes at The Muse Writers’ Center in Norfolk, Virginia. Their creative work primarily focuses on depictions of life and art as they are presented in the real world; with brutalist prose grounded in emotional empathy. Timothy’s prose, poetry, and non-fiction can all be found online. As a professor Timothy is currently administering an international translation of an influential 1920’s Japanese Literary Journal and conducting advocacy for fellow University Professors. You can follow Timothy on Twitter/X/Insta/whatever platform pops up in the future at: @Tim_Lives_Here.