THE SECOND FLY CASTER
A Story of Fatherhood, Recovery and an Unforgettable Tournament
by
Randy Kadish
author, The Fly Caster Who Tried to Make Peace with the World
Smashwords Edition Copyright © 2007 by Randy Kadish
https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/randyflycaster
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When I was a boy I thought my father was the greatest fly caster on earth, so I grew up dreaming of following in his way and not of becoming, as my mother wanted, an accountant.
Today, I am a man who often relives the important events in my life, but when I think back to the five state casting tournaments my father won, most of their images and sounds have melted and flowed into downstream memories, except for the images and sounds of one special tournament. Instead of fading over time, they ripened in my mind in more than just a visual way, and now they are almost as vivid as the moments of today.
I’ll start telling about the tournament this way: Our small, historic town was almost exactly in the middle of our state. On the outskirts of our town was a beautiful, banana-shaped lake. The lake and our town were in a valley, and therefore shielded from the biggest enemy of fly casting: gusty winds.
Those are the real reasons the annual casting championships were held in our town, though now I’ll admit there was some truth in the accusations of jealous people who said my father founded the Casting Association just so he could win tournaments in front of his friends, neighbors and me.
But there will always be even more truth in the fact that my father won the tournaments fair and square. You see, day after day, year after year, he loved practicing with his beautiful bamboo fly rod and trying new techniques, such as holding his rod hand at different levels and lengthening his casting stroke. He loved practicing so much so that I often wondered if he loved fly casting more than he loved me. In spite of my wondering, I, as well as he, often prayed that he would one day reach the cherished goal of casting as far as humanly possible, perhaps even as far as a hundred feet.
As for my mother: Did she mind that he spent so much time away from her? I guess she suspected that fly casting and fly fishing were what really kept my father sober; but then again she spent a lot of time reading romance novels, so looking back, I now know she craved the affection that my father couldn’t give her, or for that matter, give me. But I didn’t mind. Day after day, when he practiced on our lawn, I often watched him in awe, and told myself that, if he hadn’t hurt his elbow in minor league baseball, he would have become one of the best pitchers in the majors, instead of a carpenter.
And I told my friends. They were so impressed that some even asked me for his autograph.
I always gave it.
It was about a month months before the special tournament. My father said I could go with him to the Casting Association meeting as long as my mother said it was okay. Later, after dinner, as my mother cleared the dinner table, I asked her if I could go.
“You have homework tonight and school tomorrow,” she answered. “That’s what should be important to you if you want to become someone in this world and not end up wishing for things that will never come.”
“I’m twelve. I should be allowed to go, especially since I’ve already done my homework.”
“All of it?” she seemed to accuse.
“Well, most of it. I’ll finish the rest when I get back.”
“Then don’t listen to me. Just go.” she stated.
“Are you sure I can?”
She put away the bread, walked to the sink and turned on the water. “Do what you want.” Her words sounded as cold as ice. For a few seconds I felt as if I couldn’t move. Finally, I picked up my plate and glass, gently put them on the counter and ran to my father. He hugged me, and I told myself that I had the greatest father in the world.
The meeting was held in our old, white, wooden church. Six other men attended. They formed a small circle of folding chairs below the stained glass window of Mary holding baby Jesus. They didn’t put out a chair for me, so I sat in the front pew.
For the next few hours the men talked about changing some of the rules of the tournament, like how much time and how many casts a caster should be allowed. Before long, the talk bored me. Because I was worried that my mother was still mad at me, I wished I hadn’t argued with her and had stayed home. If I had, my new radio would be on real low so she couldn’t hear it, and I’d be listening to the broadcast of the minor league baseball team I loved, the Fire Birds, and I’d be seeing them—in my mind, at least—hitting home run after home run.
I looked up at the image of Mary and Jesus, and I prayed that the Fire Birds finally would break their long losing streak.
I stood up, went to the back pew of the church and lay down. I closed my eyes and dreamed of becoming a great fly caster. When I tired of the dream, I simply changed the scenery in my mind and became a great pitcher. I threw blazing fastball after fastball and struck out batter after batter. The capacity crowd rose to their feet and cheered wildly.
The sound of the church door being flung opened knocked my daydream off its tracks. I bolted up.
A stranger stood in the doorway. He looked old, maybe because of his long, gray hair and beard. He chewed hard on something and wore a plaid shirt that wasn’t tucked in and old, dirty jeans. On his sleeve was what looked like a tobacco stain.
My father and the other men stared at him. A silence seemed to explode and fill the church, and though silence, I knew, didn’t weigh anything, this silence felt heavy and seemed to somehow stop time. Everyone in the church seemed frozen in place. I heard myself deeply breathe.
Finally, the stranger took two steps inside but didn’t close the door. He said, “I’m here to enter someone in your so-called tournament. That someone’s name is Shane Riley, and he’s the greatest distance caster in the country.” The stranger’s voice was deep and powerful and sounded too polished for his hobo-like appearance.
“Does he live in the state?” my father asked.
“Since six months ago.”
“Where did he live before?”
“That’s no concern of yours.”
Another silence. This one was even more uncomfortable than the first, at least for me.
My father held up a registration form. “Have him fill this out and mail it in with ten dollars.”
The stranger marched to the front of the church. His boot heels banged like a hammer on the wood floor. He took the form, looked it over, then, without saying thank you, stuffed it into his shirt pocket and grinned. He strolled back towards the door, then glanced right at me. His eyes were blue and deep-set. They seemed to shoot bullets. I didn’t duck. The stranger nodded slightly and then left, leaving the door open behind him. His bad manners angered me.
I got up and closed the door.
“The gall of that guy,” Bill Lambert said.
“That’s real chutzpah,” Steve Cohen said.
I looked at me father. He had a blank look on his face. I wondered if he, like me, was suddenly scared that this Shane Riley might win the next tournament.
My father grinned, suddenly. “Well, I guess things just got a little more interesting.”
A half-hour later the meeting finally ended. My father and I walked home. He didn’t say anything, so neither did I. The eerie silence from inside the church seemed to be following us.
Finally, we turned onto our street. I asked, “Do you think that this Shane Riley might be for real?”
“Son, I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.”
“His name sounds made-up. Maybe he’s like a ghost and just lives in the old man’s imagination.”
My father smiled.
I thought of asking: Are you scared that Shane Riley will beat you? But I guess I didn’t want to know my father’s answer or to show that, even if he wasn’t scared, I was.
For the next month I kept my question and fear all to myself, right up until the morning of the tournament, when I watched my father polish his fly rod. When he finished, he looked at me and said,
“Would you like to carry it for me?”
“Sure, dad.”
Together, we walked to the lake. I stared at his fly rod. For some reason I imagined it was a sword. I thought of Roman gladiators walking out for battle, and I wondered if they ever got scared. I was grateful that I wasn’t a gladiator.
The bleachers were almost full. People came up to my father, shook his hand and wished him luck. Bill Reems, our mayor, who had a body like a snowman’s, told him how the whole town was counting on him.
“Mayor, I’ll try not to let you down.”
“Maybe you’ll become the first caster in state history to break a hundred feet.”
“If God’s willing.”
The mayor smiled. “I don’t think God takes sides in a fly casting tournament.” He rubbed my head for good luck, he said. I didn’t like being treated like a rabbit’s foot.
I handed my father his fly rod. He turned away from me, walked down a line of people and shook more hands. Suddenly, I felt lost and alone and as if I didn’t know where to go, but then I reminded myself to walk to the bleachers. I did and looked for my mother. I didn’t see her and wondered, This year, will she come?
I sat down by myself and scanned the bleachers for the stranger with the long, gray beard and hair. I didn’t see him. Maybe Shane Riley chickened out.
I turned to the lake. A long, narrow fire burned on top of the water. The fire didn’t spread or weaken. It kept its shape as if it were a tree or an image in a photograph, but then I remembered that the fire wasn’t really a fire, but reflected sunlight that now hurt my eyes. I squinted, and for some reason I wondered if Moses really had talked to a burning bush. To me, it just didn’t seem possible.
I looked away from the sunlight. Stretching across the lake like the yard lines of a football field were six lines of ropes, the distance markers. The closest line, I knew, was fifty feet, the farthest was a hundred. I closed my eyes and whispered so no one could hear me, “God, even though I don’t always believe in you, please, please help my father break a hundred feet, but don’t, don’t let Shane Riley beat him. Because if Shane does, what will I say to my friends after I’ve boasted so much? Besides, if my father doesn’t win, maybe he’ll start drinking and again yell at my mother and smash things, the way he did when I started school.”
My father sat down with the other casters on the pew borrowed from the church.
I studied the faces of the three casters I didn’t know and wondered which face belonged to Shane Riley. I guessed the face of the young man with curly red hair and a square jaw. He was lean and looked athletic. Though he didn’t look at all evil, I hated him, but I didn’t care if my hate meant that I too could turn bad.
I looked at the officials’ table. On top of it was a small, golden statue of a fly caster. Though I knew the trophy was only gold-plated, to me it was worth a million dollars.
My friends, Mike and Bob, climbed down from the top row and sat next to me.
Joe Dingly, the tournament director, picked up his battery-powered megaphone and said, “Ladies and Gentlemen, let’s begin the distance competition. I’ll call the casters alphabetically. Tom Brolan will go first.”
I again looked for my mother. I didn’t see her, and became angry and then wondered if there was still something dark between my parents.
Tom Brolan’s best cast was eighty-seven feet. None of the next five casters beat him. Finally, it was my father’s turn. He stood up and looked at me. He smiled.
I yelled, “Show them, Dad!”
My father marched to the end of the short dock, pulled line off his reel. Shaping the line into large circles, he piled the circles on the dock. He cast the line back and forth, letting more and more line slide through his thumb and forefinger and making his casts longer and longer. (Fly casters call this shooting line.) My father stopped casting and let about fifty feet of line fall on the water. He bent his knees, crossed his heart and got into his casting stance. He cast his fly rod up and back and, with his line hand, pulled down on the line. (Fly casters call this hauling.) The line lifted up off the water like a jet taking off and formed a long, tight rolling loop that flew back and up like a missile. The top of the rolling loop got shorter and shorter. Just before the loop unrolled, my father rotated his shoulders and hips and cast his fly rod forward, slowly at first, then faster and faster, until he stopped it abruptly. The line formed another rolling loop. The front of this loop, however, tightened and formed a sideways V. My father shot about seven feet of line and then again cast back. He cast forward. When his casting arm was straight and all the way out, he stopped the rod abruptly and let go of the line. The front loop streaked over the eighty-foot marker.
I was proud.
The fly turned over perfectly and landed gently on the water.
“Ninety-seven feet!” Bill Smyth, the official sitting in a rowboat, yelled. It was my father’s all-time best tournament cast.
The spectators stood up and cheered. I was sure that I had the best father ever.
Now if only he could break a hundred feet!
My father again cast, this time only ninety-five feet. He had one more cast to go. Again I prayed to God, but praying didn’t help. My father’s third and last cast was ninety-six feet. Disappointed, I again was scared that Shane Riley would cast over a hundred feet and win the tournament.
Three casters were left. Two of them, I knew, were not as good as my father, but the one with red hair—yes, I was right—that was Shane Riley!
I crossed my fingers but then, not wanting my friends to see that I felt I needed luck, I stuffed my hands into my pockets. Suddenly, I was a little lightheaded. I seemed to be floating like a balloon and watching everything from high above. But things didn’t look any smaller.
Joe Dingly picked up the megaphone. He cleared his throat. “Shane Riley!” he called.
The red-haired man didn’t stand.
“Shane Riley,” Joe Dingly called again.
No one in the bleachers stood up.
I saw my mother sitting by herself on the top row of the bleachers. Thankful she was there, I smiled and waved to her.
She didn’t see me.
“Shane Riley forfeits his turn,” Joe Dingly said.
I fell like a stone, it seemed. I crashed back down on the bleachers and turned to my friends and said, “Shane Riley chickened out.”
Another name was called. The red-haired man stood up and walked onto the dock. Just to be safe, I kept my crossed fingers in my pockets.
The red-haired man’s first back cast formed a wide loop, and so did his first forward cast. I knew right then that my father was champion again! I uncrossed my fingers.
When the competition was over I ran to my father. He put his arm around me, and together we turned to the spectators. They rose to their feet and cheered, and I felt they were cheering for me.
I looked at my mother. She smiled and clapped her hands.
My father handed me his fly rod and walked to the officials’ table. He picked up the trophy and held it above his head. He smiled like a boy, and I saw the space where he had lost a tooth. I wished I could fill it. My father looked up at the sky and said, “Thanks, God.”
After the tournament, my father, mother and many of the spectators walked to the picnic area. The bleachers emptied, and again I found myself alone with my father’s fly rod. I walked onto the dock, pulled line off the reel and began casting. Even though my loops were wide, and I barely cast farther than fifty feet, in my mind each cast was over a hundred feet and brought the crowd to its feet.
“You’re pretty good,” someone said.
I turned. A tall young man stood behind me. His hair, drenched in sunlight, seemed to be made of gold.
He smiled. His teeth, I noticed, were perfectly straight. “That looks like a fine, fine fly rod,” he said. “May I try it?”
I didn’t like the idea of handing my father’s fly rod to a perfect stranger, but I saw trust in his face and heard it in his soft, warm voice. I looked around. Except for the stranger, I didn’t see anyone. I handed him the rod.
He stripped off more line, then made a perfect roll cast. He started his back cast. He hauled straight down—longer than my father did—and as I watched the line form a tight loop and shoot straight back, I knew the stranger was a very special fly caster.
As good as my father? I hope not.
Like my father, he made his second back cast lower than his first. The line almost unrolled. Unlike my father, the stranger pointed the fly rod a bit lower. The young man cast the fly rod forward. He hauled the line well behind his thigh, and then he let go. The front of the fly line took the shape of a sideways V. It arrowed across the lake and then unrolled. The fly landed just past the hundred-foot marker.
He handed me the rod. “If I were you, I’d take real good care of this rod. It will always be real special and more valuable, year after year.” He smiled, and in his deep-set blue eyes I saw the eyes of the old stranger who had walked in on the Association meeting. The stranger, I now knew, was the young man’s father.
I said, “You’re Shane Riley.”
“Yes, I am.”
“You’re real.”
He laughed. “Yes, I think so. And you are?”
“Erik, with a k.”
“Erik, maybe one day you’ll become a great fly caster, like your father, if you want.”
“I’m not real good in sports the way my father was. And I’m too small.”
“Some people, like some flowers, are late bloomers. I was small too. Besides, size has nothing to do with casting.”
“Then what does?”
“Erik, I believe there are ways out there. We just have to keep searching for them, and sooner or later we’ll find them.”
I wasn’t sure what he meant, but I was afraid to ask.
“Can you teach me?”
“I’m sure your father can. Maybe I’ll see you—here’s something that will help you cast farther: When you make your back cast try to keep your casting elbow closer to your body, and then, after your last back cast unrolls about three-quarters of the way, slowly lower the rod to about two o’clock. That way, you’ll increase the length, and therefore the power of your forward casting stroke. Does that make sense?”
“Perfect sense, Shane.”
He turned and walked away.
“Shane!”
He turned back towards me.
I asked, “How come you forfeited your turn?”
He looked up, stared into space and then back at me. Scared I had asked the wrong question, I wanted to run away, but a voice inside me told me not to, and then—I’m not certain whether it happened in my mind or in his face—his stare softened, reached out to me and pulled me close to him.
“I knew who your father was from a picture in last year’s newspaper,” he said. “When I watched you holding his hand—well, I guess the way you looked up at him told me to, to—your father is a great, great caster. You should always be proud of him. I don’t think I could’ve beaten him.”
He was lying, I knew. “Maybe you—”
“Erik,” he interrupted. “I wish I had a father who was a great caster.” Shane smiled again.
I thought of asking him if he had ever been ashamed of his father for drinking, but the words, like a fly hooked on a branch, somehow got stuck inside me, maybe because deep down I was really a coward. I promised myself I would ask Shane the question if I ever saw him again, but a voice inside me told me I never would.
The voice was right; my father never competed against Shane and won two more casting championships, but never cast farther than a hundred feet.
But then something I didn’t understand happened: My father started drinking again and soon lost his job. My mother had to go to work as a cook. Several times I found her sitting by herself in the kitchen and crying. I knew enough not to ask why, and she knew enough to tell me that my father’s drinking wasn’t her fault or mine. Still, I often wondered whether my father drank because I was small and not a great athlete who would one day erase his disappointment at not making it to the major leagues.
Night after night, instead of praying for the Fire Birds to win, I crossed my fingers and prayed for my father to stop drinking. My prayers, however, like a thinning mist, dissolved and went unanswered. Again I wondered if there was a God.
My parents fought more and more about my father’s drinking; and when they did I ran into my room, closed the door, turned on my TV real loud and dreamed that I too was a courageous hero, like the Fugitive or Sergeant Saunders.
I turned eighteen and saw a way to leave home. The Army offered me college tuition if I joined and completed a two-year enlistment. They also offered me a chance to fight for something good: defeating Communism.
I finished boot camp and was flown halfway across the world. As the plane jetted down, I looked out the window and thought, So, this beautiful, beautiful country is Vietnam.
Two weeks later, my regiment came under a surprise attack. As we tried to cross a rice field, deafening bombs exploded all around us, ripping apart the bodies of two of my friends. Suddenly, the bombing stopped. Everything got real quiet, and for a few seconds I wondered if I were really dead. I wasn’t, I realized, but I knew I was trapped in a hell that had fallen down, somehow, to earth. Lieutenant Barnes ordered us to run for the cover of the woods. We did, but then, from behind some trees, I saw what looked like miniature lightning. A split second later I heard the thunder of machine-fire and the thudding sound of bullets hitting flesh and bones. The living and the dead hit the ground. Some of the wounded cried. I covered my ears, but I still heard Billy Jenkins call for his mother, again and again. Then he was silent. Jenkins, I guessed, was dead. The machine gun fire continued, and I heard more thuds and screams. I was sure that I too was going to die. Then, in my mind, I saw my father holding up a fly casting trophy, and I heard him thank God. Though I still wasn’t sure if I believed in God, I prayed for him to save me.
Maybe, just maybe, he did, because finally, after what seemed like a billion moments, our bombs streaked right into enemy machine gunners and blew them to bits. Again there was silence, then laughter, the laughter, I knew, of my surviving friends. I stood up, looked at the blue sky and felt grateful to be alive.
But my real-life nightmare didn’t end. A few weeks later my regiment marched into a farming village that we suspected was being looted regularly by the Viet Cong. But as it turned out, looting was the least of it. We discovered about fifty dead bodies of men, women and children. One dead little girl had her arm around a dead little boy, her brother, I assumed. The people of the village, we were later told, had been slaughtered by the Viet Cong. Suddenly, the idea of fighting Communism didn’t seem like something completely good.
That night, I tried to get the images of the dead civilians out of my mind, but I couldn’t. I went into my tent. Some of my friends were drinking whiskey and laughing. Bob Collins asked me if I wanted a drink.
I thought of my father’s drinking and of how I had promised myself that I would never drink.
Bob again asked.
I took a drink, and then another and another, and from that day on I got drunk almost every night.
Luckily, I survived the war and was transferred to Fort Dix in New Jersey, but in reality I couldn’t leave the horror of the war behind.
I continued to drink.
I walked into my barrack. A yellow telegram was on my bed. The telegram was from my mother. It read: “Your father is very sick. Wants to see you.”
Feeling as if I had been hit by a punch, I immediately went to my commanding officer and got a pass. Less than an hour later I left Fort Dix and headed home.
The house was empty. A note was on the dining room table. I picked it up and then ran to the local hospital.
My father lay in bed. He was emaciated and pale. Long, thin tubes went into his arms and nose. I almost didn’t recognize him. My mother held his hand. She looked at me with eyes that seemed as heavy as lead.
“Cancer,” she said.
I cried.
“Thanks for coming,” my father whispered. “I never thought I could get cancer. Well, better me than you or mom. Erik, there’s something I should’ve told you years ago. I’m going to tell it to you now, while there’s still time. You know that old elbow injury of mine?”
“Yes.”
“It never happened. The truth was, the truth is, I wasn’t good enough to make it to the major leagues. I only wish I could have accepted that and not lived a lie.”
For some reason I heard Shane Riley’s words, You should always be proud of him. I stated, “That doesn’t matter anymore. Just because you lied to yourself about one thing it doesn’t mean you lived a lie. You lived to be the best fly caster in this state, and you were. Your casting championships are an eternal proof of it.”
He smiled.
I asked, “Do you remember that tournament when Shane Riley forfeited his—I mean, didn’t show up?”
“Yeah.”
“I was so scared that he would beat you.”
“You know, so was I.”
“Maybe Shane Riley was a figment of the old stranger’s imagination.”
My father’s eyes opened real wide. “Or maybe he wasn’t, and maybe if he had showed up—you see, the truth I’ve finally come to see is that fly casting isn’t about competing against others. It’s about finding ways of getting better and better and of competing against ourselves, and then it’s about one day accepting that, even though we’ve never made a perfect fly cast, we’ve made the best cast we can. I’m sorry if that sounds a little corny, but at least it isn’t a lie.”
“Dad, it doesn’t sound corny at all.”
He closed his eyes and squeezed my hand.
The next day he died.
One year later, after I had been honorably discharged from the Army and was attending a local junior college, one of my old friends called and asked if I wanted to play on his softball team. Because I had surprised myself by becoming a good softball player in the Fort Dix pick-up games, I told him I would. I went up to our attic and looked through cardboard boxes for my old baseball glove. I found my glove. Below it were newspaper stories about the fly-casting tournaments my father had won. I read the last story and then saw folded sheets of yellow writing paper on the bottom of the box. I unfolded the sheets. They were my father’s handwritten notes on the techniques of long-distance fly casting. For some reason it didn’t seem right for his techniques—the results of years and years of his casting experiments—to lie unseen in a worthless box. I went downstairs, sat at my desk spent hours and hours shaping my father’s techniques into an article. The next day I took the article to a calligrapher who beautifully wrote it out on parchment-like paper. I then mounted the article in a gold frame and hung it on our living room wall. Again I felt proud.
When mother came home from work, I showed her what I had done. She stared at my father’s techniques, and then she cried.
I asked her why.
“Erik, I—now for the first time I see so much good in what your father did. I just wish I could have seen it back then, but I guess I resented the time he spent fly casting instead of being with me. Maybe if I had he never would have gone back to drinking. Was I being selfish back then? Was I wrong?”
“Mother, we can’t blame ourselves for not seeing certain things back then.”
She smiled, stiffly, and then she hugged me. Together we cried.
And so, for a few days the good thoughts I had of my father and of myself cleansed my mind and my need to drink, but soon the good thoughts wore off, like a drug. The horrific sights and sounds of the war again and occupied my mind. I surrendered to drinking. Still, I often couldn’t sleep.
One sleepless night I got out of bed, poured myself a tall drink and sat in my father’s old chair. I lifted the glass to my lips and saw my father’s framed fly-casting techniques. Suddenly, as if he were right in front of me, I saw him making a perfect, tournament-winning cast. I smiled, and then I saw something for the very first time: My father’s casting techniques were really a set of ideals that, unlike the ideal of fighting Communism, could never be dragged through the mud. I wondered why a man who was such a great fly caster was also an alcoholic, and then I wondered why I was one too. In my case, I told myself, it was because I couldn’t escape the horror of the war. What horror could my father not escape? Certainly, it was something he never talked about, maybe because it was a horror that he had buried, or tried to, deep in his past.
I put my drink down. Sunlight, I noticed, shined though my window and brightened our living room. The night was in retreat. Grateful, I got dressed and then took my father’s handwritten notes out of my desk drawer and his fly rod out of the closet. I told myself I would study the notes, practice and win the next tournament for my father.
After a month of practicing, however, I couldn’t cast farther than ninety feet. Discouraged, I cursed myself for not being a great caster, and then—I guess I needed a good excuse—I told myself that the time I spent practicing fly casting ate away at the time I needed to study and maintain good grades, like the bright students I envied.
I put my father’s fly rod back in the closet and out of my view, but weeks later, as I again stared at my father’s fly-casting techniques, the vision of Shane Riley making that long, beautiful, hundred-foot cast came into my mind. That night, as I studied accounting in the college library, I wondered why Shane, after sacrificing so much to become a great fly caster, had forfeited his chance to compete in a tournament just so I, a boy he didn’t know, could hold on to an idealized image of my father. It just didn’t make sense. Suddenly, reasons crystallized in my mind, and I realized that maybe, in Shane’s eyes, forfeiting his turn wasn’t about a helping a boy hold on to an image of his father, but about helping a boy hold on to an image of himself, an image he would need to find a way through the often dangerous and whirling currents of life and of war. Then I remembered how my father—like Shane, probably—never gave up trying to find the techniques of making a perfect fly cast.
The next morning, I took my father’s fly rod out of the closet, walked outside and resumed practicing. But I didn’t just practice. I also experimented, like a scientist, and tried to discover new casting techniques.
A few months later, at that year’s tournament, I sat with other fly casters on a pew. I scanned the bleachers and saw my mother. She smiled. I smiled back, and then I looked to my left and then to my right, at the faces of the other casters. Suddenly, some answers became as visible as the event happening all around me, and I saw why imperfect men—me, my father, Shane Riley, perhaps—spent so much time and energy chasing something that would always be outside of them: a perfect fly cast.
My name was called on the megaphone. I walked down the short dock and, without looking at the people sitting in the bleachers, I started my first back cast the way my father taught me: slowly and straight back. I kept my casting elbow in and hauled down straight and hard. Just before the line unrolled, I cast forward, and then I cast back, this time turning my rod hand outward so that my palm faced straight ahead. As the line unrolled behind me, I broke my wrist backward and pointed the fly rod to two o’clock. I accelerated the rod forward, faster and faster, and then—the way I had experimented—I sharply twisted my wrist and then abruptly stopped the fly rod. On my first cast I became the second caster in our state to break a hundred feet. The crowd cheered wildly, just as I always dreamed they would.
And I never drank or cast in a tournament again. Instead, I devoted a lot of time to becoming the best accountant and then the best husband and father I could.