Back then, when I was a kid, there were rules so important they went unspoken; I learned them just by living. And watching. Once Mom tried a shortcut; she spent some summer evenings creeping around the back yard with a flashlight, catching nightcrawlers to keep on hand for fishing bait. She put them in an old washtub with some dirt. Daytimes she fed them potato peels (Dad was Irish, so we ate lots of potatoes) and coffee grounds. But she left them outside, and the first time it rained, they all drowned.

This made a disgusting mess, and Mom did not try to raise nightcrawlers anymore.

Rule Of Fishing #1: Dig Your Own Worms

Other people bought worms at bait shops, but our family did not spend good money on nonsense. Dad knew where to find proper worms: at the edge of the woods, under the dead leaves. He handled the shovel and I handled the worms. He turned up a big clump of dark earth as I crouched beside it, watching for that glint of worm, that moist squirm. Then, after a tussle, I held in my dirt-caked palm the worm smelling richly of loam and its own secretions. Coiling, in spasms, its tubular flesh flashed dusky, pale, long, short, rigid, slack. It was horrifying and lovely. I was glad to drop it into the Maxwell House coffee can but just as eager to grab the next worm. I could have kept pouncing on worms for hours, but soon Dad said we had enough.

So then I packed the can of worms along with the dented aluminum tackle box and the fishing rods in the back of the station wagon, Mom put the picnic basket in there too, and we all headed for the lake.

First I had to help gather wood. But then, while Dad built the fire and Mom started lunch, I could go fishing. Running down to the boat dock with a rod in one hand and a can of worms in the other, I selected a spot, then crouched to poke at the contents of Maxwell House with one forefinger.

Rule of Fishing #2: Bait Your Own Hook

When I was little my mother or brother would do it for me, but not anymore. I had to bait my hook myself.

Fumbling one worm free of the others, I lifted it, clenched my teeth, closed my eyes, and pinched it in half with my grimy fingernails. Then I had to open my eyes to drop half of it, writhing, back into Maxwell House. The other half writhed, too, and oozed rust-colored fluid, wriggling all over my hands as I struggled to thread it onto my fishhook.

This was not my favorite part, but I did it.

Then I could toss my hook into the lake.

I fished, not in the clear, sunlit water, but in the shadow of the dock. Mystery water I couldn’t see into.

Dad knew where the worms lived, but I knew where the fish lived.

Rule of Fishing #3: Wait

I waited.

I stood very still with my end of the fishing line, just beyond the reel, pinched between my worm-slimed thumb and forefinger. Most people used a bobber on their fishing lines so they could just relax and watch, but my mother did not approve of bobbers. She considered them a form of cheating.

I stood on the dock, and I never thought about whether I was happy or not happy; I just was where I was. Sunshine warmed my skinny shoulders. Across the water came the creak of a rowboat’s rusty oar-locks. At the lake’s edge a swallowtail butterfly sipped moisture from the mud, fanning its yellow-zebra wings. I heard the rowboat, saw the butterfly, smelled wood smoke from Dad’s fire.

And sometime, maybe as I watched a heron stalking along the far shore, sooner or later between my thumb and forefinger I felt a tiny tug, a hint, barely a quiver. Only because I kept hold of my line did I know that, hidden in watery shadows, a fish of some sort was nibbling at my bait.

It could have been anything. A sunfish, a bluegill, a green-and-yellow perch with scarlet belly fins, even an appaloosa-spotted rock bass. But I mustn’t make my move too soon.

Rule of Fishing #4: Wait Some More

I waited.

From the other end of the lake I heard the heron’s choking cry.

I felt another hint of a nibble, then another, then an ever-so-slightly harder tug.

I tugged back.

Peace exploded into excitement. Stretched tight, my line zoomed off at an angle to disappear under the dock. I fought back, because if the fish got to a piling, I’d be left with nothing but a snagged line. Yet I remembered not to pull too hard, or the line would break. I fought the fish the way Mom and Dad sometimes fought, carefully, not wanting to lose but not wanting to hurt anything either. Out from under the dock at last, my line cut the surface of the lake in wild circles, and in the sunlit water I glimpsed my catch -- some sort of sunfish or bluegill, I couldn’t tell exactly which.

I loved not knowing. I played the fish a while longer before I raised my rod to lift it from the water.

Swinging and spiraling at the end of the line, it was a “pumpkinseed” sunny so perfect that the dandelion yellow of its belly brightened its fins too, and wormlines of sky blue ran through the peachy pearl pink greeny orange sunset of its sides.

But now that I had taken the fish was out of the water, there was only a fleeting moment of bliss before responsibility loomed again.

Rule of Fishing #5: Take Care of What You Catch

I had to get that fish off the hook.

By myself.

I was afraid, because the sunfish had raised its back fin into a palisade of spines. But there was no time to be afraid, because there is nothing blissfully lovely about a dead fish. So as my pumpkinseed sunny dangled, I held the fishing line with one hand while I dipped my other hand in the lake water so as not to do harm, then slipped it over the fish from the nose down. I smelled its odor and I felt its slime. I felt its spines flatten under my fingers. I felt the rubbery pop as I muscled the hook out of its lip.

For just another moment I looked at it.

Glassy-black eyes ringed with gold. Silver gill covers pumping. The tiny fingernail-fingernail-fingernail scalloping of its scales. Cinnamon-and-cream colored spots from which it took its name. Yellow yellow yellow on its belly and fins. No butterfly was ever so beautiful as the pumpkinseed sunny I held alive and wet and shining in my hand.

I bent to place it gently back into the water.

**************

Soon we moved away from the lake, and then I was too old to go fishing. My parents followed all the rules: after I turned fifteen, I was supposed to buy the state’s permission to fish, and my family did not spend money on nonsense. While not one of the important, unspoken, and unwritten rules, there it was: No Fishing Without a License.

I began to write.

Same thing, really.

I had to dig up my own worms. I had to capture the squirmy stuff beneath my surface: kindness, meanness, promises, regrets, hopes, grudges, dreams. In my mind I turned over the dark earth of myself to find story bait.

Slippery things are hard to hold. There was always a struggle that took some time.

But then I could toss my line into the mystery.

And this is the line: “Once upon a time in a hidden world strange creatures lurked, foul in a way and sometimes dangerous -- but oh, so beautiful.”