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I’m writing from Crooked Creek.
The water is cool and clear. I’m up to my hips in it. It’s a bluebird summer day. Barely a cloud in sight. Dad’s ahead of me in his kayak. Mine’s tied to my waist as I wade through the current and make looping casts upstream. Always upstream, that way the bait floats back down and hopefully into a hungry smallie’s mouth.
I learned how to creek fish when I was in elementary school. We started off fishing water much closer to home. The Piney and the Illinois Bayou. Over the years, we ventured farther and farther north, until we ended up in Yellville, Arkansas, a tiny town with a BBQ joint, a motel, a pizza place, and the best smallmouth fishing in the state.
I didn’t always love the whole thing. Matter of fact, I didn’t even really like it much at all. I was too young and the days were too long. We’d leave the house around sunrise and get back long after dark. We dragged our boats through the chutes when the shallows dried up. We ate Vienna Sausages from the can. I wasn’t a big fan of those, either.
Sometimes, I’d sing to pass the time. If I wasn't singing, I was talking, asking a myriad of probing questions that mostly went unanswered. This grated on Dad’s nerves. Just like my ineptitude with a rod and a reel. I’d cast into trees and break my line. I’d gut hook a beautiful brownie, which meant Dad would have to take out the pliers and go digging around inside the fish’s mouth.
It was always something.
As a result, Dad didn’t get to fish much, but he kept asking me to go. I thought it was weird. I didn’t think he was enjoying those trips. I knew I wasn’t. Yet, still, we went.
A father myself, I now understand the paradox Dad was up against. My kids are six and three. We live on a lake. We go fishing almost every day. It’s not what I’d call “enjoyable,” but when they ask me to thread a worm on their hooks, I do it. Heck, sometimes I even ask them if they want to go fishing, just like my dad kept asking me.
As the years wore on, Dad's and my trips changed. I learned how to tie my own knots and take a fish off the line. I got to where I could make a proper cast. We started catching more fish. We drank beer. And strangely enough, we began doing the one thing Dad never wanted to do when I was younger — we talked.
I’ve learned more about my father while fishing than at any other time. There’s something about the water and the Coors Light that opens up doors to a history that he kept hidden from me for so long.
One of my favorite lines in all literature comes from Bernard Malamud’s great novel The Natural. “We have two lives, Roy, the life we learn with and the life we live with after that. Suffering is what brings us toward happiness.”
Maybe all that suffering we did in the early years, all those long hot days and hooked thumbs and lost fish, served as a penance of sorts. Maybe we had to endure those outings to truly experience the joy we now feel when we take to the water.
Maybe the same will be true of my kids. Maybe, one day, when they’ve learned how to cast a spinning reel and paddle a kayak, they’ll join us as we set off for Crooked Creek.
Don't Know Tough
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In Denton, Arkansas, the fate of the high school football team rests on the shoulders of Billy Lowe, a volatile but talented running back. Billy comes from an extremely troubled home: a trailer park where he is terrorized by his mother’s abusive boyfriend. Billy takes out his anger on the field, but when his savagery crosses a line, he faces suspension.
Without Billy Lowe, the Denton Pirates can kiss their playoff bid goodbye. But the head coach, Trent Powers, who just moved from California with his wife and two children for this job, has more than just his paycheck riding on Billy’s bad behavior. As a born-again Christian, Trent feels a divine calling to save Billy—save him from his circumstances, and save his soul.
Then Billy’s abuser is found murdered in the Lowe family trailer, and all evidence points toward Billy. Now nothing can stop an explosive chain of violence that could tear the whole town apart on the eve of the playoffs. |
Ozark Dogs
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In this Southern thriller, two families grapple with the aftermath of a murder in their small Arkansas town.
After his son is convicted of capital murder, Vietnam War veteran Jeremiah Fitzjurls takes over the care of his granddaughter, Joanna, raising her with as much warmth as can be found in an Ozark junkyard outfitted to be an armory. He teaches her how to shoot and fight, but there is not enough training in the world to protect her when the dreaded Ledfords, notorious meth dealers and fanatical white supremacists, come to collect on Joanna as payment for a long-overdue blood debt.
Headed by rancorous patriarch Bunn and smooth-talking, erudite Evail, the Ledfords have never forgotten what the Fitzjurls family did to them, and they will not be satisfied until they have taken an eye for an eye. As they seek revenge, and as Jeremiah desperately searches for his granddaughter, their narratives collide in this immersive story about family and how far some will go to honor, defend—or in some cases, destroy it. |
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