It was hot and they both sat at the side of a pond.

They were fishing but, like is often the

case when fishing, they weren’t talking. Sometimes, the best thing to do, in any situation, is to
just sit. Sit and not talk. Become and embrace the axiom about opening your mouth and
removing all doubt about your being a fool. Another axiom has to do with negotiation where, in
certain situations, the one who talks first will lose. To just sit, sitting and not talking, but thinking
is a priceless thing. Fishing is the easiest time to do this. Partly and under the auspices of because
you don’t want to scare the fish, but more importantly and instinctively because both individuals
know it’s better not to talk. They think and they know, and they are satisfied. And nothing needs
to be said. Questions are asked and answered in each one’s mind. Conversations had. Fishing
allows a man to think and ask and answer all by himself since that is where the answers for the
truly important questions always come from. And that is why men like to fish - the seductive,
sadistic and all too temporary allowance of being alone.

And so they sat. They sat and fished, not talking. Each to his own, never unaware of the
other - in fact, currently thinking about the other and answering the questions he would ask the
other, expounding upon the facts known to him presently, using logic and deductive reasoning
and speculation, speculation of the wildest form, rationing out and pondering various
probabilities of extremes on each end of the possibility spectrum.

Presently, one decided the reason the other divorced. He, the other, had had suspicions
since shortly after they met. She had told him that there weren’t any others and proclaimed an
undying love for him, but he knew better - or he thought he knew better. He suspected and
created wild scenarios with her and the others and thought about hiring someone, and thought
about taping somehow and doing some things on his own but never did, but it was always the
smile and proclamation that kept him from acting on his suspicions. Always that proclamation. It
was not the proclamation, but the thought of what it meant, or might mean, that was what kept
him coming home after the nights when he would leave. He hated to see the bruises and cuts of
his own unremembered doing. He hated to see the battered smile and the thought of her begging
for forgiveness. He hated how he felt inside. She deserved it, he thought, but that could never
alleviate nor justify the woman pain of the cuts and bruises. She was far more forgiving than he
was, but his stomach wrenched every time he saw her. But they likely divorced for that, the one
thought. Then he thought of his own thoughts back then. He thought of the drunken nights when
she looked at him. He thought about how that would be and how he could never face his friend
then. And he thought about the one night when she had clearly gone too far. She was drunk, he
thought, but then, so was I. He figured if it was him, he’d have to forgive her, but not his friend.
Or maybe he would. He studied that for an indeterminate time, then fished some more and
changed his bait.

The other was contemplating his own scenarios and questions and answers, mostly about
his friend, then said he thought it was time since there were no more bobber quivers like there
were to begin with, to change bait. He reeled in his line and found an empty hook. The fish had
taken the bait, piecemeal, and left the hook wanting for more, as even they as fish knew would be
coming. He went about the business of reweighting his line and adding fresh bait. And he sat. He
sat and thought about his friend some more. The other remembered. Did that really happen? She
was drunk, but so was I. I don’t remember. He thought he couldn’t remember but he knew he
wasn’t really trying. He didn’t want to remember. And after that, remembering or not
remembering, he never looked the other in the eye with the conviction he had the privilege of
doing before. He tried, and would smile and laugh and comment and reply but was always trying
to erase and ignore it though he knew he never could, even not fully remembering. So he kept on
with the charade, hoping time would erase it all, or rather, hoping that starting over - in his own
mind, since he did not know whether the other knew or not - would somehow alleviate the guilt
and pain and betrayal. Part of him had hoped that the other knew about them, and was willing to
forgive. And, again, he thought about who or if he would forgive were the roles reversed.

As fact, the other did know. And he sat and fished and made small talk as if he didn’t
know, but he knew. Part of him relished the fact that the other did not know that he knew. He
would not turn loose of that for all the world. It was the only card he had on the other and
instinctively could not and would not give it up. But still he fished. And even though he didn’t
know for sure, he knew. So he gambled a little on that presumption, and even thought about how
he could possibly be wrong, and the fairytale possibilities, because there were some who would
never do such things. He was pretty sure, however that she and he were not of that ilk. And the
other thought about that too, about he should not be of that, but was. He wrote it off, but
shamefully and hopefully chose to stow the entire full thought away, perhaps out of fear, or fear
of confrontation, but it was easier to stow it away. He knew. They knew. And as the other tried
not to remember, so, too, did this one. But neither could forget despite both pretending not to
know. So they fished. They sat in that turmoil of silence that becomes so unbearable that it must
be broken for all the tumultuous thoughts that pervade. They sat and fished and said nothing until
the silence required being broken by some small slice of insignificant reality.

Then as one was silently forgiving, the other was silently repenting. It was nothing either
had thought of as new, but rather became or evolved into or acquiesced to an instinctive mandate.
They simply sat and fished and accepted. A man will kill for who steals his food or bothers his
family, but when it is someone he knows, he must choose. And he usually chooses against
violence, but though he thinks and fantasizes about killing and torture and retribution in his own
manner which is justified by his own hypocritical morality - for he who is doing the killing or
retribution is yet just as void of morality in his vengeance than the victim of his justice is in his
guilty act - he does not realize this and casts out and says nothing.

One then said that it was getting late and they both agreed. Each pulled their lines from
the water without purchase and neatly tied their tackle and hooks. Finishing fishing is a
surrender, regardless of whether or not anything was caught. It is either a prideful or an
acceptable surrender, but there is that time when you must quit. Every fisherman knows this and
accepts this as one accepts most things people don’t want to accept, with sadness and
inevitability and some meager hope. Finishing without catching anything is a greater surrender.
Proverbially, one thinks about next time, but it cannot be immediately forgotten that there was no
luck today though he tries and thinks about why there were none today, attaching insignificant
things as if they were significant, offering reasons like the weather, or location. They both
realized though, as fishermen, that days without fish are just as likely as anything and so were not
completely disappointed and both had the patience of fishermen. It was that patience that comes
always, when learned from nothing other than fishing, where if there is no patience, there is not a
fisherman. Both had known, however remembered or learned or not, that patience is more than a
virtue, it is necessary and essential for everyone that is human and they both knew with some age
and perhaps even youthful wisdom, that time eventually cures everything that matters no matter
what pain.

They went fishing again. And they continued in the same fashion, not talking, but
answering their own questions about each other, forgiving and repenting, alternating and in
tandem and changing bait and casting together because they were friends, but they still did not
talk because that would most certainly scare the fish.
 The next time they fished, they tried a different bank. They sat down near enough to the
cooler, but struggled a little negotiating their gear and sitting place with one hand, while the other
hand clutched a 12 oz can. Once they settled and sat and cast, they popped. The momentary
silence born after they settled themselves melded with the lake’s placid topface and before the
popping and the casting was a God-flash of perfection, fleeting yet lasting noticeably and
unignorable like a pause. It was a snapshot of silence and a flat laketop that lasted no more than a
second or two, then was gone and like a polaroid developing, so the memory of its perfection
solidified in their minds and they knew this dimly. And though they also knew the perfect silence
would return, they would not forget this one as they would not have forgotten the past or the ones
to come.
The popping broke the silence first, followed shortly thereafter by the casting, but the
popping would always break the plane first. It was that unmistakable sound of the popping of a
can that is louder when fishing than anywhere else. Then comes the two plops - with a third, less
soundful - of the bait, weight, and bobber all disturbing the top of the lake creating the concentric
circles everyone always talks about in Hallmark, and beginning the declination and ebbing of
those circles like the beginning of the broken silence marks the fade back to quiet, and the
casting today broke both.
The circles and silence were equidistant from their beginning and end and the two sat into
their zone and began their thoughts, sipping pensively. Jad sat on an embankment that rose
sharply above the shore under a short crippled tree. The small and cementfirm dirt hills made it
difficult to find a natural coaster. Jad didn’t think much about the other today, except that he
figured he didn’t care whether he was postulating or prognosticating about him in the least. He
could care less today. Today Jad felt sorry. He felt sorry for the kid.

The kid was born into a miasma of felonious concentric circles. His dad was an old-time
felon that had finally mended his ways, mostly. His last arrest was just over ten years ago. His
mom was gone. He never knew her. But he knew his dad’s girlfriend as his mom and she was all
he knew for a mom. They struggled constantly with money and anything giving rise to conflict,
but they would always get drunk and make up faster than silence restored or minimal patience.
Contrition was quick from the diminution of intelligence and like those so inflicted are naturally
wont to forget anything traumatic. Mostly, the kid ended up with bruises as they kissed and
reassured him everything would be okay.
He came home one day in Winter and the heat was gone. The mom had worried about
him getting home and tried to figure a way to blame the kid, deflecting her own beating and not
wanting the kid to receive it, but figuring the kid would receive a lesser sentence than she.
Somehow, the kid knew this, though he did not know the intricacies, he knew with a childlike
epistome that he would get beat. Over and over. He wouldn’t kiss anyone and he wouldn’t make
up with anyone.
Jad knew this and pained like the others, though some did not pain because of their own
childhood pains and figured it to be a circle, like theirs, and certainly they had turned out alright.
But most pained silently as with Jad. Their true guilt being of omission, not doing or saying
anything and so was Jad’s. The small community survived like a combat war private living day to
day and hour by hour, not remembering one minute to the next and his life depending on making
it to the next minute of the day, and so more than caring they were all desperate to succeed by
mere existence not by choice but by some bizarre, primal, smalltown community instinct and so
they ignored though some silently wept.
Jad met the dad one day as the dad came out of the bar. It was daylight and dad kicked the
dust of the gravel parking lot as he walked towards the vehicle. Dad berated the mom and the kid
from the driver’s seat and the car did not move save for the dad moving around violently and
shaking its frame slowly and side to side in response. Jad thought. No others were close, but still
there was an aura of graveldust surrounding the car in the sun and air. Jad raged. He went to the
car and dragged the dad out of the vehicle. Jad beat the dad with his fists, as pure rage should
egress, and his thoughts were on the kid and the mom as he struck the dad, every bloody shot.
And the dad knew, though he still wondered, I DO deserve this, and so smiled a little as he got
assbeat, but never figured he ever did anything wrong, ever.
The mom kicked Jad and beat him with the tire iron. She figured her sentence might be
less, but also instinctively she beat and raged too, instinctively but realizing something was
wrong, not knowing who to beat but thinking beating someone was good. She and the dad left
him not for dead but for the inability to flee. Still, he was injured and bloody. And the
community slice who saw this fled as well and would not tell. And the kid had been interminably
impressed beyond what they had forgotten as kids and would never forget.
Jad remembered this and sipped. He would have wept, but figured this was all part of
some plan and so checked it into his mind’s recesses of probably should do or say something but
don’t want to get involved or don’t want to create a big to-do, or fear of selfness and pure fear,
but also fear of truth and guilt and mostly guilt but also rage. So he checked his bait from time to
time and said nothing. But the kid would not forget. And Jad knew this and pained a silent pain
of circles that could never get silent and even and placid and wept and fought against the figure
of waning of circles evening out. Silently, he cried out, of pain and guilt and justice, as loud as he
could, primal and reeled in and changed his bait.