Fishing Trip_(0)

I woke up to the sounds of my father having a bad dream, he was huffing and grunting as if he were fighting or working hard; it scared me because I never heard it before. I listened as he moved around on his bed for a few minutes, restless with the dream then he groaned a long sigh and fell silent. I laid awake on my side of the thin wall for a few minutes until I decided his dream was done then slowly the worry ebbed and I drifted back to sleep.

The next morning as I poured his coffee I asked him “Did you have a bad dream last night? You were banging around on the bed and making hard noises.”

My father snapped his eyes up to my face from the cup then his cheeks started to glow under his week old beard “Yeah, I was dreaming” he muttered hesitantly.

“What about, it sounded bad?”

He stood up abruptly “Doesn’t matter, it’s done and over.” He left the cabin to work on the boat.

My father and I were living, existing more like it, in a small hunters cabin on the edge of a lake in northern Manitoba. We had gone up there for a four day stay to fish for lake trout. This was a trip for me, I am an avid fisher and I wanted to try to catch the Canadian record Lake Trout for women and the lake was rumored to have the biggest fish in the Province. Very few people ventured so far north unless they were after records. We drove, towing our boat for three days to a small village then ran the boat up a couple of rivers to the lake. We’d heard tell of three cabins that could be used by hunters or fishers as long as we left them in good condition when we were done. We took a cabin on the northern end of the lake where the fishing was rumored to be the best.

That was seven days ago. The third day on the lake we hit a submerged log and sheared a blade off the propeller. The big outboard began to shake violently and twisted on it’s mount before dad hit the kill switch. After a five minute inspection and a volley of embarrassingly foul language he announced that we were fucked, if we wanted to use the boat it would be with oars. We rowed back to the beach and yelled for help. After a 40 minute conversation over our emergency radio with the nearest Mountie office my father dropped the mike and looked at me. “They can’t find what I need, they have to find out where to order the right prop. This may take a day or two. Whose goddamn idea was it anyway to buy a super secret, super quiet, uber expensive foreign motor anyway?”

I smiled into his irritation “Yours.”

Four days later I celebrated my nineteenth birthday. We were supposed to be back home but the busted boat kept us grounded in northern Canada. The planned party with my friends became a kiss on the cheek and a murmured “happy birthday sweetheart”. The news on the propeller wasn’t good; it was going to have to be ordered directly from the manufacturer, some place on the other side of the world.

My mother was gone, died two years earlier, so there was no one at home waiting, it was summer so I didn’t have to be in college. Dad had a girlfriend and I was dating Chris but we weren’t so entangled with them to cause undue stress. If I could open up my thoughts and examine them carefully, I would say I was enjoying my time alone with my father.

Dad was in the cabin getting more bad news on the motor part, the day was unusually hot, the lake looked cool, clear and inviting. I didn’t have a suit with me but I wanted desperately to go swimming so I stripped my shoes, pants and shirt off then splashed into the water wearing just my bra and panties.

I was shoulder deep in the water when I pushed up with my feet, curved my back and rolled over and down, diving to the bottom to look around. I felt my back and ass roll through the surface then I straightened my legs into the air as I dove. I swam along the bottom for a few yards then popped up for a breath. I twisted my head toward the cabin and saw my dad leaning on the door frame watching me. I smiled hugely then waved an arm at him “This feels really good, better than a bath!”

My father grinned back “See any record trout in there?”

I frog stroked back to the shore then grabbed my towel to dab the water off me. As I started patting the drops off my face I remembered that I didn’t have a suit on, just my flowery decorated bra and panties. For about a microsecond I thought I should be embarrassed but that fleeting idea evaporated as mist under the sun. It didn’t bother me that dad was watching me rub my body down while only in my delicate wear. “How long do we have to wait?”

He started with surprise then turned red, cautiously he asked “wait for what?”

I answered “The prop.”

Dad colored even more as he hesitated, “Oh, yeah.