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The Fishing Hole

Amos graduated from Lansing high school in early June 1969, along with John Macias. He was not aware until graduation day that a cute brunette with expressive dark brown eyes, one that he and John had taken notice of these past couple of years, was a same year classmate. The girl and he had little in common other than a smile in passing, save for a brief stint on the debate team. Amos, having grown up in a much smaller community, found it odd he wouldn’t have even known her name; then again, the graduating class in Lansing was larger than the entire community he came from in the U.P. and he hadn’t known everyone’s name back there either.
     Jokes were exchanged the few times they were in the same brief gatherings before school and between classes, but never names; not that he could recall anyway. He noticed her nearly every morning as he lighted from the city bus. It was nothing unusual for girls to stand in one group watching for guys to arrive, or for guys to huddle and watch the girls arrive.
     She stood one position before him in the line up waiting for commencement ceremonies to begin. They struck up a pleasant conversation. It was quite a revelation to find out that she not only knew his name, but that she had her eye on him for the past three years, fancying his manner, walk, his long hair, dark complexion and how well he wore his jeans with heavy rivets added to re-enforce points of stress. Mostly, she admitted, she liked his quick, cute smile.
     His tongue caught behind his lower teeth dumbfounded on how to say he felt the same about what he saw in her.
     She seemed so at ease while he shook inside, not just because of what she said and the strange timing of such revelations at the graduation ceremony and being on stage. He quit the debate team a week after signing up in his junior year because of his nervousness to stand before an audience.
     She remembered his brief stint in the debate club. He split the back of his jeans bending over to pick up his outline. Apparently, not all points of stress could be shored up by rivets.
     “I quit because you quit,” she smiled to his embarrassment. “In fact, I signed up because you did.”
     It turned out she was the one that cajoled another guy to give up his sweater so Amos could tie the arms around his waist and let the body of the sweater shield his gaping embarrassment. The other guy may have thought he was loaning it to her because she was cold. She described the look on the other guy’s face when he realized her sole interest was in Amos, not the gallant owner of the gray and white striped sweater.
     He never knew, due to his humiliated state of mind, who to return the sweater to the next day. His younger brother owned it now.
     She wished he would have gotten the sweater back to the rightful owner if he hadn’t been so shy and avoided her.
     “I wasn’t avoiding you.”
     “No?” she teased. “Why did you always look away when ever I looked at you in the halls if you weren’t avoiding me?”
     Amos wasn’t all that aware of his behavior, but realized now how right she was. “I was, . . . ah . . . I don’t know.” He felt foolish, almost upset she that she pressed for a response, totally confounded as to what should be said or done at this point.
     “You’re shy,” her head tipped and she rolled her eyes upwards to play with his eyes.
     “Guess so,” Amos admitted.
     “I told my dad about you.”
     “Eh? What he say?”
     “Not much. I’m his little girl. You know how dads are about their little girls; they’re not to anxious to have guys come calling for their daughters.”
     “What’d you say about me?”
     “’Didn’t have much to tell him seeing as you avoided me ever since you split your jeans.”
     “Come on,” Amos’s voice rising a bit, “you didn’t tell him about that?”
     Her emphatic nod confirmed that she most certainly did tell him of that. “Daddy thought you had it coming. He don’t understand why us kids wear such tight jeans. He said that those who get too big for their britches will be exposed in the end.”
     Amos stopped short of asking her if it should be worded “we kids” instead of “us kids.” For that matter, she probably should have used the word “doesn’t” in place of “don’t,” but right then and there would have been terrible timing. It wasn’t that he could give a hoot about such minute points of grammar, but that he didn’t know what to do next.
     She unabashedly studied the jeans he wore under his open graduation gown complimenting him for their splendid fit.
     Those, along with two other pairs, were purchased two waist sizes down back in late August 1967 for the start of his junior year, with an inseam an inch or two longer than needed hoping he could hang on to them as long as possible as he grew and they shrank. The leg hems now rested where they should just teasing the bow of his shoe laces, though the back of the cuffs were a bit frayed from having been walked on back when they were too long. They were soft, though still quite durable; faded and trendily worn to the point they looked as if they were paper thin by the way they drew attention to his sinewy muscles.
     She knew, from what must obviously be her own experience, that he had to work at getting those jeans on, maybe laying on his back after squirming them up as far as he could get them, some more tugging and pulling and then suck in his gut to pull the zipper close and fasten the copper fly button. His belt, indenting his narrow waist and firm six-pack abs, appeared to be pulled in an extra notch to stop the heavy duty fly button from popping out of its button hole.
     She liked guys in tight jeans, but never imagined one could wear them like he did, and that other cutie that moved in from East Tawas, John Macias. She wished either one of those two would have asked her out, but it never happened. Her hints with John were pretty obvious, she thought; but he either didn’t catch one, or his interests went to someone else.
     Amos assured her that John would probably have asked if he thought he had a chance she’d say yes. She learned as of late, he was headed for seminary to be a priest, so that canceled him out.
     “What about you?” She could be rather direct.
     “Oh I’m doing fine.” Amos could have kicked himself a few seconds later when he realized what her question really meant. “I mean, well . . . oh never mind.”
     She let out a laugh. It was almost as if to say she enjoyed the polite nervousness of a shy guy. It also might have been a means to get him to lighten up and get with it. There wasn’t that much time left for him to ask her out or at least ask for a phone number.
     Amos knew that John and she shared a table in two art classes. He had a picture he drew of her in a bikini one semester, and a drawing she did of him in a pair of scant Speedo racing trunks the next semester as proof. If only he could remember if John mentioned her name. He must have, but he couldn’t recall what it was if he did say.
     He smiled at John’s humor over the art class drawings, “Both of us have hairless chests.”
     Busy, bustling office staffers called her attention away from him, but only for a moment. All the graduates were to pay attention. Some sort of directions were given that went in one ear and instantly out the other. Amos’s mind was on conjuring up the nerve to find out if she had a boyfriend and if not, what his chances were of seeing her, and frustrated that he never picked up on any clues, if there were any, that he might have had a chance to date her these past two or three years. The chance would slip away in a mater of minutes and be gone forever if he didn’t act fast. Get an address, a phone number, something!
     She turned away for a moment to fix her top blouse button that slipped out of its hole. Her movements were dainty, he thought, delightful!
     “Sorry about that,” she offered for having turned away from him. “I’m not,” he almost spilled out. His face simply flushed. It was time to zip their graduation robes closed.
     It was also the first time he ever asked a girl for a phone number. It wasn’t until after they parted for the day that he realized the blunder he made, though she never let on, if in fact she caught it. He forgot to ask what her name was.
     He toyed with the awkwardness of dialing her house, her dad answering, and he (Amos) asking, “Hi, you probably don’t know me, but I’d like to speak to your daughter who just graduated; you know, and like maybe take her out sometime?”
     At best, he’d get a dial tone after the old man hung up.
     She was headed on a vacation with her family the day after graduation and his family had vacation plans were to begin about four days after graduation. She told him she looked forward to hearing from him when they got back at the end of the month.
     Well, he could ask John Macias for her name. That would be easy enough so long as he didn’t have to explain why. John would probably comply, but not after having a good laugh and giving him a hard time due to his blunder. He also toyed with the idea of letting John know the girl revealed in those final minutes of the senior year that she had fancied him as well.

     “Not to worry,” Amos added the next day after he literally wrestled her name from John, “I let her know that you were hot about her also, but decided to join a monastery instead.”
     “Seminary,” John jovially corrected while pinned to the ground; “Why’d you tell her a monastery?”
     “It sounded more sensational,” Amos said as he got up and extended a helping hand to his friend, “and secures my chances with her.”

     Amos’s family went to Northern Michigan to stay with relatives near Ingalls. That’s roughly eighteen miles north and a bit west of Birch Clump, located along US-41 between Stephenson and Wallace.
     Amos faced his second afternoon up North with no one to call. The summers of free afternoons running about with friends were over. They were young men now; maybe some of those who worked weekends would have time for him later if they had a weekday off. Enlistment into Service or enrolment in college busied many graduates facing military conscription and Viet Nam.
     The adults, happy to see him as he was to see them, didn’t quite cut it for an energetic eighteen year old, so he headed out to his Granddad’s private shop in the barn to grab an old bamboo fly fishing rod the two of them put together ten years ago. Amos never caught on to fly fishing. His preference was a simple hook and worm on a line, and sometimes fancying that up with a bobber. He wasn’t really all that interested to catch any fish, though that would be nice and he brought along a tobacco offering.
     Granddad walked on when Amos was fifteen; than is, in their ’Shinabe way of talking, died.
     The girl Gret Johnson, curious about his attractive dark features and the shape of his eyes, asked what a Shinabe was when she asked about family heritage.
     “Sort of a folksy way to say Anishinabe,” but they were ushered onto the foot ball field for graduation before that word could be explained.
     Hardly anyone outside the relations used either word, Shinabe or Anishinabe. Many had adopted the French mispronunciation of Chippewa. Granddad and a few others kindly insisted that Amos use their own words: Anishinabe, the Spontaneous People, or First People.
     Amos was mixed, and so sometimes he was called Métis. Granddad said that was a right word, but seeing as Amos had Tribal enrolment, he should tell people he was Anishinabe or Ojibwe.
     “You don’t have to give them a class on this,” the Elder cautioned, “Most White folks won’t remember or don’t care. They just call us Indians. You say you're Ojibwe. If they insist on more, then say Indian. They usually don’t want to hear much more, except to ask if you live in a tea pea. And, if they cut you off to tell you they have a little bit of Indian in them, maybe through an Indian Princess, then they definitely don’t give a diddly darn about you or your family.”
     Granddad would pantomime sipping from a tea cup with one hand, and flicking a tiny pea from his thumb with the index finger of his other hand when he pronounced tee-pee. Everyone understood the sarcasm; that is all the Shinabe did.
     Amos followed the narrow river between the Grandparent’s property and a Great Uncle’s land, grabbed a kayak and headed upriver at what he figured was another three or four miles to one of the secluded, shaded fishing holes Granddad had shown him. They used metal canoes then, but the Great Uncle picked up a couple of kayak kits when Amos expressed an interest to build one.

     “Don’t grow your hair long like those Hippies,” he recalled the Old Guy’s humorous manner of teaching the old ways, “Wear it like an Indian.”
     “Ojibwe,” Amos would respectfully correct him.
     “Excuse yourself before speaking before an Elder, and don’t sass them or mock them,” the Grandfather scolded in jest.
     Amos lived simultaneously in two worlds where some adults saw his hair as rebellious, his friends thought he was cool, jocks called him a sissy, and his family saw it as tradition. At that, the Chippewa and the Indians thought he should give it up and get with the modern world, while the Anishinabeg commend him for honoring the Traditional Ways.
     His name, spelled like the Biblical name, was actually a means to give him an Anishinabe name on birth and baptismal certificates. The Anishinabe name, Amoose, means Little Bee. His grandparents were instrumental in naming him.
     Naming ceremonies, they explained to him, usually did not take place at birth, but seeing as how the government required all newborns to have a name right away for the birth certificate they came up with that name right away. His mother was watching a bee near her belly the day she and Amos’ father talked with the grandparents about names a few weeks before he was born.
     Well, Amos contemplated, make it five worlds he lived in. He accepted all interpretations and definitions others gave him in balance except for the athletes that called him sissy because of his long hair. He didn’t fare well when he invited one of the jocks outside, but they dropped the name “sissy” after that.
     He was always given a gift of traditional food when he left his Grandparent’s house. His mom made certain all her guests left with some food as well, or his dad did. Sometimes, when Amos was small, he was told to carry the food out to the car for the older guests that were leaving. It was a way to teach him this custom. The poor always gave food to departing guests as well. Amos’s family was well off by comparison in so far as having a low paying steady job was better than not knowing from season to season if you had a job like so many around here faced.
     The family brought cases of maple sugar and syrup back to Lansing if they were up north in spring, or baskets of manoomin, wild rice, if they returned in August. Everyone, especially the Potawatomi, had relations in the cities, in part due to the American Indian Termination and Relocation orders, and these things were generously distributed.

     The spot Amos chose to beach his kayak that day was surrounded by Lady Slipper orchids, also knows as Moccasin flowers or Jewel Weed. These plants were called niimi`idii-makizin in the Ojibwe language, and were known as a cure for poison ivy. The two plants naturally grew near each other, but when Europeans cleared the land, the delicate niimi`idii-makizin suffered, while poison ivy (omakakiibag) proliferated as a result of the careless manner the new comers tried to rid themselves of it by chopping and hacking away at the tough old vines and roots. Any stray segment of poison ivy could re-root.
     Morning, noon or near evening time, there was always decent shade to be found on the hot days, brush to scoot behind if he didn’t want passing boaters to see him, and a cold, clear spring of the finest fresh water to drink. Various berries and other wilderness treats abounded close at hand.
     The sound of creek water trickling near by enhanced the meditation and daydreams on a quiet day by one’s self. It was also the place Amos first received a dream or vision as they sometimes call it. His Elders prepared him to go on a vision quest in 1965 at age 14. He had slipped into a trance at this spot a couple weeks ahead of the time planned out by the Elders. He told them nothing of the first experience; at least not that summer. But when the same inner feelings, voices and dreams came during the time and in the place the elders had prepared for his dreaming, then he knew both experiences were the genuine thing.
     Now, at eighteen yeas of age, he no more knew all what the vision meant than he did at age 14, but that is the nature of the vision quest. It is not to find hard core answers to the meaning of life or to learn one’s destiny with any exacting clarity.
     The fishing line was already in the water, though he hardly recalled preparing the rod and bait; he must have done so, but the trance had already come over him. He could feel that his Guardian Spirits had waited for his return to this spot each of the last three years since the dreaming, and they were here again this year.
     Their being there was good. There seemed to be exceptionally loud spiriting that summer of ’69. Not noise as we think of it that resounds from the vibrations of creation, but something that occupies the whole inner self and that which makes up the spirit being of who we are, that is active and pushes away the natural noises and yet not totally separate from the physical either.
     The vision or locution evaporated with hardly any notice, like a morning mist over a small still pond might vanish without much notice. Still a memory of the mysterious sounds remained, not terribly unlike the tingling noise or sensation that followed after a chain saw was shut off.
     Amos realized by chance, while removing his watch on the clear but sticky day that the dream had lasted not less than an hour.
     He let the fishing rod lazily sway right, then left and back again. Its weighted balance lulled his mental meanderings as the red and white plastic bobber out in the water was pulled around with a baited hook suspended into the depth in hopes to tease and tantalize a fish. The rippled reflection of a cloud passing by held his gaze. The fluffy cloud’s reflection elongated and for a moment shaped itself like Gret, the girl who stood in front of him in the graduation line a week ago.

This story is continued on page two.
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