I rewrote a few lines (like 2) of this story and entered it in the Traver Awards. I did this because although the original story, published as a page under “You Didn’t Know Me Then,” my collection of “other” stories) only mentioned fishing in the last line, I realized it was as much about fishing as any story I’d ever written. Or, with the new lines it is. The original is about love, and never knowing what you have until it’s gone. In searching for this story, I came upon Amber’s gushing comments on the original, which is what made me think it deserved a wider audience (and frankly, teared me up a bit), although I knew it broke the formula for the competition. I repost it here to a new audience.
If you like the original theme better, may I suggest “Night Train,” also in that collection. BTW, it turns out I can’t categorize pages, only posts so to put it in the correct category required reposting.
The Other America
Tom, not Trent, or Trevor, or God forbid Trey, but good old plain American Tom, stood on the overpass and looked down at the cars below. “What I can’t get over is how they change,” he said.
Billy, not Chauncey, Brice, Preston, or River, had his feet on the lower rail, leaning further over the highway below than physics would deem prudent, had just discovered that Orange Crush and Hershey’s chocolate made tremendous, stringy saliva that he could drool out over two feet and suck back in, unbroken. He was commencing what promised to be a prolonged experiment in the tensile strength of this wonderful new elixir.
“Slurp.”
“I mean, they’re always so new, every time I look at them it’s like I’ve never seen them before. Where do you ’spose all the old cars go?”
At this, the loogey reached its critical length, an epic length, and detached from Billy’s lips to land on a passing semi.
“Good one.”
“There’s probably a big pile of them right over there,” Billy pointed at the horizon before lying back on the cracked and grass-sutured concrete to reload.
“Doncha ever wanna go down there, get on the highway and see where it goes?”
Billy looked up at him, blues eyes and a buzz of strawberry hair visible from under the shade of his ball cap. “I know where it goes. My dad calls it ‘The Other America.’ Says you can leave, but it’s like an infection in the blood. Can’t never come back or you’ll infect the whole town.”
Tom kicked a rock and started walking back to town. Billy watched him take a few steps, grabbed his bottle of Crush and jumped up to follow.
“I’ve heard stories; before the freeway, the whole world was like this.”
Off the bridge, the two boys walked into a cool green esophagus of trees, swallowing them whole and moving them along without volition. “My dad says we don’t need it much, neither.” Tom was concentrating on kicking his rock. He’d never kicked one so far without it leaving the road.
“Yeah, last summer, we drove clear to Maine without ever leaving the old country.” Billy said. “You can still do that, you know,” he added with an air of authority, as if Tom might not believe him.
They were at Tom’s house, white picket fence, gloss white oil paint, it sat as new and crisp as a dollhouse. “I gotta mow, catch ya later for the fair?”
“The fair!” Billy was gone before his words fell out of the air.
Tom got out the reel mower that his dad sharpened sharp as new every spring. It whirred and clicked and cut perfect as some maniac clock: “Whrrrr. Clack. Clack. Clack. Whrrrrrrrrr.” Like Tom’s thoughts going around without stop.
Tom’s dad ambled up with his old cane rod and a creel of fish. He waved to Tom, leaned the rod against the wall and took the fish into the house. His grandmother came out on the porch with fresh lemonade in a sweating glass. He waved up at her, distracted. “Thanks, ’Ma, I’ll get it when I finish.”
“The ice will be all melted then, Tom!” But he was gone. “Whrrrrrr.” She went back into the kitchen, and started to clean the fish.
“I swear, that boy thinks too much. His forehead is creased up like a new-plowed field.”
Tom’s father peered over his bifocals. With his paper poised between his hands, he looked like Kilroy. “He’s a boy, Ma, he’s just trying to figure the world out now.”
“What a danged fool thing. He could think forever and not get it done. You mark him, Henry, he’s spending a lot of time on the overpass, too.”
Henry’s father smiled and ran his hand through his salt-and-pepper crew cut. It looked as if he might speak, but Tom came in.
“Lawn’s done, can I go to the fair now?”
Henry winked as his mother. “Well, I suppose, but first…” he teased Tom, who was halfway out the door, turning back to protest some forgotten chore. “Don’t you need some money?” He smiled and handed his son a five, and Tom was on the lawn before the spring banged the door home. His lemonade sat warm on the porch railing, the rod listed against a window frame.
Tom loved the fair. It was the one time of year when the town got a whole influx of strangers, instead of just the occasional relative. He ran by Billy’s house without even stopping, shouting “Billy!” He heard another screen door slam and Billy vaulted over the hedge to his side.
The boys smelled the fair first. Fried dough, onion rings, hot dogs, diesel, and sugar. Then they heard it: the calliope, the screams, the bell on the sledgehammer strength tester.
Tom’s mind whirled like the old-fashioned carousel he was too old for now, but still liked to go by it so the music could rev up warm tinkling feelings deep in his tummy. Calliope-music-cotton-candy-strongman dreams, ball-throwing–jug-knocking–ring-tossing–shaved-ice fantasies. The fair was a world within a world.
The fair set up every year at the town square seemingly since time immemorial. Even Billy’s grandmother couldn’t remember a time before the fair. Breathless, the boys bought tickets from a woman whose calves stuck out below her faded calico dress, fat and pink as babies. Billy was almost gone through the turnstile when Tom looked down at an especially shiny coin in his hand. “What’s this?” He turned it over, not recognizing one of the new quarters. The ticket lady snatched it from him quick as a conjurer, replacing it with a familiar coin.
“That coin was from outside!” Tom looked straight at her. She bent down and spoke low and close so only he could here it: “We ain’t been out there, but you gotta know that sometimes there’s a little bleed through, sometimes one of them stumbles in, ’sall. Everybody loves a fair. Now you get along and have fun.” She stood abruptly, dismissing him.
Billy missed the interchange and danced with impatience. He grabbed Tom and ran to the Ferris wheel, which magically had no line. They gave their tickets and got on. Tom felt something different. Always before, the fair seemed to expand the square, filling it with an infinite, inexhaustible world. Now Tom realized he could see almost the whole fair from where he was, instead of just from the top of the wheel. Instead of being magical and new, it was cacophonous, tawdry, and old. It was the same, had always been the same. The paint was chipped and peeling, as old and worn as the carnies in the booths. Once on the ride, he wondered if all of the new cars went to new places that had new fairs every year.
He imagined green houses (green!) cool and crisp as the inside of a melon. Cars as round and smooth as bars of soap. Whole histories written in shiny new coins. The ideas and images flashing through his mind were a mad Ferris wheel that showed him glimpses over the horizon, again and again whirring like the lawnmower reel, faster and faster; at first making him afraid he would fly off, but then waiting, hoping, praying it would launch him in a clear pure mathematical trajectory over the town, over the trees, straight as the freeway into the maddening half-heard, thought, seen, and smelled future. No one or no thing strong enough to stop the trebuchet swing: not Grandma, nor Dad, nor Billy reaching for him as he arced away.
The ride was over and he stood there reeling, turning in a circle. The cliched old overlaid with modern promises. He saw his mom and dad strolling hand-in-hand, now bowing heads to share a thought. Smiling, laughing in a love as pure and sweet and gentle as their first after school kiss. Their grasp told of hours spent in porch swings, on summer picnics, curled under blankets on sleigh rides; rocking, swimming, fishing, sliding, skating, sledding through the past and the future with gravy smiles and peach cobbler affection.
His dad saw him, smiled, winked, laughed. His mom looked over and waved. Billy was tugging on him to move on. All he needed was a pink tongue, Tom thought, and he would be any golden puppy.
“Come on.”
“I don’t feel so good. Probably the ride,” he lied. “Why don’t you hit some more rides and I’ll catch up?”
Billy’s disappointment was obvious. What fun a lonely whirling dervish ride? “Aw, I’ll stay with you.”
“No really, you go.” Tom was almost angry. Billy looked hurt, but he shrugged it off and shouted over his shoulder. “At the arcade, ten o’clock.”
Once alone Tom stalked; he hunted; he sulked. He went up and down the aisles looking, looking everywhere, at every tent, at every face. He ended up behind the tents, noticing for the first time the mundane details of rope and canvas, diesel generators, and electrical cords. Somewhere, everywhere, nowhere the magic was. The crowds thinned, the shrieks and laughter went home to be brought back tomorrow. Lights were going out, and still he hadn’t found it. Still couldn’t figure out where they stored the magic he remembered.
He stood there suddenly exhausted, slumped by himself on an exposed corner of grass, not quite swallowed by the fair.
“Maybe it’s not here, Tom.” Tom looked up and saw his father leaning against an old-fashioned street lamp, a solo artist in its mercury glow. “But it’s not out there, either.”
The night seemed suddenly cold and alien; foreign stars raced across the sky.
“Billy couldn’t find you. Thought you might be here. Or there.” Tom’s father cocked his head generally towards the shadows.
“What, Dad? What am I looking for?” Tom asked.
“You’re looking for you, son. For what makes you happy. The thing is, you can’t find it outside of you. You have to make it inside.” He uncrossed his arms and took a step closer.
“Maybe you have to go places to find it. Maybe things have to be new to recognize the difference.” Tom was defiant.
“All of a sudden what you have out there isn’t good enough. You thought that back here you’d find the answers–backstage answers from outside. But outside you’ll just find all those people spending all of those hours in their cars, never time to think about the here, always about the over there. The answer is never where they are but only where they are going, so they are never anywhere, they just keep going and going. Those people don’t fish, or fly kites, or sit so quiet so long in the woods the squirrels nibble on their lunch. When they’re with their families, they think of everything else. Then they do everything else to be with their families. They don’t live. If you leave here and get on that road, you’ll never be able to find this place again, and if you do, you won’t be able to stay. That’s what ‘here’ is, Tom. It’s people who decided to stay put, and find happiness inside. People who decided that what they have is better than chasing and chasing and chasing. In fifty years, not one person has ever pulled over, parked his car, walked up that bank and taken the road into town. Not one ever wondered what was right beside them, instead of in front or behind.”
“Maybe I’m not like you and Billy and Ma, Dad. Maybe I gotta go.”
“Maybe you do son, but not tonight. Tonight is late. There will be two dozen and twenty thousand other nights to decide, but not tonight. Tomorrow, why don’t you and Billy take the cane rod down to the stream? They were on fire today. You’d spend a long time out there looking for water that good, if you ever could.”
Tom lay awake in his bed that night, long after the fair was shut, long after everybody had been tucked in and kissed to sleep, long after, even, the frogs had gone to sleep and taken the fireflies with them. If he listened very hard he was quite sure he could here the susurrations of the highway in the distance.
The next morning, there was a tapping at the pane. Even if you stayed up all night, you couldn’t get up earlier than Billy. Tom poked his head out the window.
“Hey, sleepyhead, want to go to the overpass?”
“Nah,” Tom said, “let’s go fishing.” He could already feel the light-dappled stream, like dancing dandelions, icing his toes.
gointothelight 
Posted on October 11, 2023
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