The Yellow Medicine River is not just a creek.  Though its banks are a stone's throw apart, and its water 
is crowded with cattails, there is more to see there than mud and weeds, if you are a person who looks.  
Scented chamomile and sweet clover grow in the soggy ground, and wild grape vines trail from the low 
bridges that shade the river's bronze surface.  Deer come to eat the plums which dangle from shrubby trees, 
and outside of their stamping, the only sounds to be heard are the sounds of peace: the low hum of bees, and 
the occasional plops of sleepy amphibians who disappear in muddy swirls to cooler depths having grown too 
warm in the Minnesotan sun.

One still morning in midsummer, an old pickup truck approached the Yellow Medicine's east bank, stirring 
up the dust on the side of a modest farm road when it slowed to a halt.  The occupants of the truck emerged.  
Three moved quickly, hopping from the truck's sideboards with ease and blinking in the light of the uninterrupted 
plain.  The fourth was resigned and patient, a grandfather.

The old man stepped from the truck and straightened his back.  Though the morning was far from fresh--the 
humidity that day would reach 100--he was somewhat formally dressed in a button-down madras shirt and belted 
carpenter slacks.  After studying the river for a moment from under a white ball cap, he strode to the back of the 
rusty vehicle where he retrieved a fishing pole, a brown paper sack, and a lawn chair.

Two of the youngsters were adolescent girls dressed in bright colors.  They scuffled about, poking each other 
with blades of grass and shrieking.  The other child, a boy, gathered his gear with dignity, squaring his thin, brown 
shoulders and admonishing the girls with a lofty whisper, "Be quiet, youÕll scare the fish."  When the girls poked
out their candy-stained tongues and giggled, he turned to his grandpa for support, but discovered that the old man
had already descended the low bank and was following a trail in the grass which led to the river.

"The Yellow Medicine River."  The Grandfather pronounced medicine as "madison" and saluted the sluggish 
water with his lawn chair.  "Where are the fish hiding today, Jamie?"

"Maybe under the bridge?  Or in the shade by those bushes?"  Jamie scurried up and pointed.

"Well, then, bring out the bait."

The girls flopped in the grass nearby and began plucking weeds for making flower chains.  Jamie rummaged
through the paper sack and brought out an old Calumet can.  It was filled with a ball of pinkish-grey flesh, 
night crawlers that stretched longer and thinner when his shaking fingers grabbed them out one at a time.  He 
separated a worm from its companions and threaded its body on a hook.  The night crawler recoiled and shrunk 
as the barb pierced through.  Jamie shuddered, and the girls snickered.  After wiping his hands on his shorts, he 
narrowed his eyes and swung the baited hook in their direction.  They erupted like a pair of startled hens 
scrambling off the ground.

The grandfather chuckled as the girls retreated down river.  "Be careful then, you girls," he called.

Soon the fishermen were settled, eyes searching for their descending lines in the murky water.  The grandfather
glanced at his grandson from time to time, even from his chair seeming to hover over the boy's small frame 
standing so sturdily by the water, tennis shoes properly laced and white socks pulled up to just under knobby knees. 
Jamie could not keep his bait in the water longer than five minutes before checking to see if the worm was still there.  
The man said nothing about it.  He merely whistled a little tune from time to time and kept his own line still, holding 
the rod loosely in his gnarled hands.  Once or twice he commented on a bird, or a frog, or some other inhabitant of the
area, but mostly he was quiet.

The air was warm and sleepy.  Jamie grew impatient, and, while he didn't say anything, his hunched posture and the 
way he slapped uselessly at the marauding mosquitoes while refusing the offer of bug spray told the man he was growing 
irritable as well.  When the fish suddenly struck, he was scratching the back of his knee.  The violent energy of the fish
snatched the pole out of his hand.  

The grandfather yelled.  The boy slip-scrambled across the bank to grab up his pole.  His thin arms bent at right angles
as he tried to land the fish.  The line zigzagged viciously across the water's surface as the fish tried to rid itself of the hook.

"Step back, Jamie.  Step back, now," the man soothed.

Jamie placed one shaky leg behind the other, arms taut, gradually bringing the fish closer to the bank.  When it sensed 
the edge of the creek looming, the fish panicked and broke the surface of the water for the first time.  Its side gleamed 
and its tail swished through the mud and grass.  It glared at the sky with one eye.

The girls hurried up to watch.

A carp, the grandfather said after they had landed it.  It was an awful, scaly fish.  It looked waxy and out of place on 
the grass.  Jamie jumped when it twisted its fat torso of a body and rolled onto his foot.

Muttering, the grandfather pinned the carp between his knees and worked the hook out of its mouth.  Then he strung a
slim stick through one of its gills.  Though he did the job gently, blood seeped.  The fish lay on its side, mouth working,
its eye growing dim.

Jamie's face was pale beneath his tan.  "I want to throw him back," he announced flatly.

A light breeze blew over the plain, ruffling the children's hair and cooling their faces.  For a moment the smell of carp
was replaced by the scent of wild clover.

"A carp's no good for eating.  Your Grandma wouldn't let it in her kitchen anyway.  We'll take him up to the house,
let everyone have a look at him before we throw him back."

"We can do that?"

"Yah. This old bugger will live long enough for a trip to town."

And so it was that the fish rode home on the floor boards of the truck and lived.  They filled an old wheelbarrow 
with water from the garden house and parked it in the shade.  Freed from the stringer, the carp lay unmoving in the 
water for a few hours, but after a time the feelers around its mouth wavered, and it recovered enough to startle whenever 
Jamie's shadow fell across its body.

It lived in the wheelbarrow for the remainder of the weekend while Jamie received praise and backslaps from the 
uncles and kisses from the aunts when they all came out into the yard to fuss over his fish.  Twice it jumped out 
onto the lawn.  Nobody saw it happen the first time, they just happened by and saw it laying under the spruce tree.
It was gasping in the grass six feet away from its temporary home.  The second time, Jamie saw it escape and was
brave enough to return it himself to the wheelbarrow.  He left three night crawlers as an offering, but the carp only
glared at them, tail twitching.

Once everyone had a chance to admire Jamie's catch, the Grandfather drained most of the water away, tipping the
wheelbarrow with a grunt, and drove the fish back to the Yellow Medicine River.  For the return trip, the carp rode
curled up in a bucket, gills wavering, eyes still gaping.

"Back to the river," the man said as he poured the fish into the water at dusk on Sunday.  The carp slid to the quiet 
depths without a fuss, and, for a moment, the man stood still, gazing out over the river, past the scrub plum trees and
to the horizon beyond, listening to the mourning doves call.  Then he drove the short distance home to the darkening
yard where his grandchildren were calling out to each other in the warm, thick night.  They were playing hide-and-go
-seek in the dark, and, since there was an empty lawn chair waiting for him on the back porch, he sat down to listen for
a time.  Soon Jamie joined him, and the two sat in silence together until the women called them in.

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Copyright © 2005 by Calaveras Station and the CSUS English Department.