Liar, Liar, Pants On Fire! - A Short Piece Of Fiction (?)

[Bobwhite]

This short story is a bit irreverent... but I enjoy having a little fun with life and my writing. I hope you'll enjoy it.

Liar, Liar, Pants On Fire!

"A thing worth having is a thing worth cheating for."

W. C. Fields (1880 - 1946)

"I just don't get it." My son, Jake, said in an utterly discouraged tone. "I listen to everything in class, take notes, and when I get home to do the assignments, it's all gone. Can you help me, Dad?"

I'd been quietly painting, and secretly hoping that he'd figure it out on his own; math was never my strong suit. "I'll try," I said, and then as a disclaimer, "But it's been a long time."

Lisa looked over her desk, and saw my distress. I'm sure I looked like a deer in the headlights. "Why don't you keep working, Honey," she said. "And, let me try to help."

"I should just cheat, like the other guys do." Jake said, as Lisa sat down next to him.

"I was failing college algebra," Lisa said. "And the only reason I passed the course was because a friend of mine, who worked in the shop where the tests were printed, got me a copy of it. I worked out all of the problems and carved the answers into my pencil with an exacto knife."

"Really?" Jake asked.

"No dung?" I said, looking at my lovely wife in a whole new light, before I continued. "I hate to admit it, but I did something even worse."

It's a rare event for a fourteen-year-old boy to hear his parents confess, so freely, the sins of their youth, and Jake put his pencil down to listen. "I was failing trigonometry in my senior year of high school. " I said. "My best friend was in the same boat." Do I really want to tell my son about this? I thought... oh hell, why not? "So one night we broke into the school's testing center and went through all of the filing cabinets until we found the final trig exam. It was like an episode from 'Mission Impossible'."

"Holy shhh... wow!" Jake said.

"You're kidding. Right?" Lisa asked, and a worried look crossed her face that actually said, Tell him you're really just kidding... please!

"Didn't they know which test was taken? They could have just changed the test." My son pressed.

"We made sure to take at least one of every test in the cabinet." I answered. They would have had to replace them all."

"Cool!" He said, with just a little too much enthusiasm.

"Don't ever let me hear of you even thinking about something like that." I said. "I could have... probably should have... ended up in jail. A thing like that will change your life. Besides, now I feel really bad about it."

"Yeah." Lisa said, trying to spin some damage control. "I still feel bad about cheating on the algebra test. I was relieved to have passed, but it felt icky; like I'd let myself down."

"Lisa's right." I said. "It seems to me that there are two kinds of cheating." And, after a few seconds of thought, I added, "Most cheating is about being lazy and taking the easy way out, that's the worst form of deception; when you cheat yourself. Cheating is always dishonest, but sometimes it can serve a seemingly noble purpose, and no one loses anything because of it. Cheating is nothing to feel good about, but it might be justifiable."

"What do ya mean?" Jake asked.

"Well, I've heard of certain guides that have bent the rules a little to help their clients catch a few fish." I said. "The fish were all going to be released anyway, and it only happened when the fishing was really tough, or because the fishermen would have been unable to do it on their own, so..."

Today's painting is a watercolor titled, "One Last Look – Dolly Varden". Few fish are as stunningly beautiful as a male Dolly Varden in it's spawning colors. To admire a fish such as this, one might be tempted to bend a rule or two...I'll leave it up to you.

"So how did you... err... those other guys cheat?" Jake asked.

"Sometimes what's called cheating is really just a new and unconventional way around the established methods of the day." I began. "In the old days. a little before my time, in certain streams in England it was thought improper to fish with anything but a dry fly. Even though most of what a trout eats is below the surface, it was considered cheating to fish a wet fly or a nymph. Interestingly enough, it was a guide and river keeper, Frank Sawyer, who developed the pheasant tail, and popularized the method of fishing with a nymph.

Today, nymph fishing is a perfectly acceptable way to fish, but it wasn't too long ago that fishing one with an indicator was considered cheating by 'traditional' nymph fishermen.

In New Zealand, there are certain rivers where you can't use lead shot to take your fly down, so the guides there tie a fly that has lead dumb-bell eyes and a body of wrapped copper wire. They tie another nymph to it, and guess what? It goes right to the bottom. Cheating, or an innovation?"

"How'd you and your friend break into your high school?" Jake asked, getting back on track.

"Just a few years ago, in Alaska," I said, ignoring him. "Some of the guides started to use plastic beads instead of yarn glo-bugs to imitate salmon eggs. Everyone thought it was cheating, until they got their hands on some of them too."

"Sometimes what people call cheating is really just a way of making things a bit easier, or being more efficient." Lisa added. "Remember how upset some of the guides in Argentina were when you showed up there with your little stomach pump?"

"A stomach pump?" Jake asked.

"Sure. You catch a small fish and pump his stomach with a bulb syringe, squirt it into the palm of your hand, and find out what they're eating. In the old days, people would kill and gut the first fish they caught to find out what was being eaten; the pump seems a bit more humane to me."

"What else have you done?"

"I used to go out after lunch, while all of the other guides and fishermen slept siesta, and fish the water that I planned on taking my clients to that evening."

"That doesn't seem fair to you guests. Why'd you do that?"

"To find out where all of the big fish were."

"But, they'd have a sore mouth and not bite."

"Not if the hook had been cut off of the fly, they wouldn't." I answered. "I used to cover the water with a big hopper, let the fish take it and then just spit it out. It was a great way to locate big fish. The fishermen thought it was magic.

Sometimes, if I had one fisherman who needed a bit more help than the other, I'd tie a few threads of my red bandana to the willow branches over where the big fish held. Then I could turn the better fisherman loose while I worked with the other."

"What else?"

"In Alaska, I used to make jalapeno corn bread in my Dutch oven for lunch. There'd always be a bit left over, and when I cleaned up and tossed the scraps into the river, the trout would go nuts to eat it. A piece of it wouldn't float ten, maybe fifteen feet before it was inhaled in what looked like a toilet flush!"

"Cool!"

"darn.. darned right!" I said, correcting myself. "So, I tied up a 'Corn Bread' fly. It was just a dirty-yellow bunny pattern. That fly caught fish after lunch 'til heck wouldn't have it. The guests used to take turns with my rod while we did dishes and cleaned up the wind-knots."

"Wasn't that cheating?"

"I suppose it was, but it wasn't a deception. We didn't really call it 'fishing'. It was just a fun thing to do, play with the 'trained fish' for a few minutes while lunch was cleaned-up.

"So when does it become cheating?"

"I don't know, maybe when you trail a nymph off of the back of a sculpin pattern."

"Which fly do they hit?"

"You usually take them on the nymph."

"Why is that cheating?"

"Well, I don't think the fish are actually hitting the smaller fly... they're short striking the sculpin and getting snagged on the trailer. It doesn't seem fair to me."

"What else?"

A lot of guys used to do 'the blind guide shuffle' on the Agulukpak. Every time they'd kick over a rock, or turn up some moss, dozens of nymphs would trail off down stream. Before you knew it... there'd be a bunch of big fish working behind the boat."

"Did you ever..."

"If it was a tough day, or my fishermen couldn't cast very well... yeah, I'd kick a few rocks. I just wanted them to have a good day."

"What are some of the worst things that you... err... those other guys did?"

I knew that eventually the conversation would come to this; every kid wants to know all about the worst things his father has ever done. Maybe it makes us seem more human. It was time to step off of the pedestal.

"Once, we had a really bad spell of weather at the lodge. It was too foggy to fly and too windy to take a boat out on the lake. After two days of constant pounding from twenty frustrated fishermen, all of the fish in front of the lodge were plenty tired of being caught."

"What'd you do?"

"Late that night, a bunch of five gallon buckets with holes drilled in them were filled with salmon eggs, tied to an anchor and dropped off in various and key locations in front of the lodge. The fishing was pretty good the next day."

"And?"

"Well, that was a problem, it was so effective that it got a lot of the guides thinking, and that can be a very dangerous thing for fishing guides. It creates a lot of mischief, and gets them into all kinds of trouble. One of them took to crushing salmon eggs in his fly boxes so that all of the flies were soaked in egg goo."

"And?"

"It worked great, except that this guide, who we'd named 'Pig Pen' had enough trouble just remembering to brush his teeth once or twice between paydays. After a week or so, those boxes began to smell so bad that no one wanted to fish with him, even if they could catch every fish in the river. Have you ever smelled rotting salmon eggs? Remember when the dog found that road kill a few years ago?"

"Whoa, and?"

"Then one of the guys decided to make, what he called, 'egg depth charges'. These were little sacks of moline, filled with salmon eggs, with a little rock in the middle. As he ran up river in the morning, he'd toss them out in every likely hole, giggling and calling out, 'Egg a 'muffin'!" as he did so. Then he'd drift his fishermen back down the river, paying particular attention to the spots he'd salted with his bombs."

"And?"

"It worked like a dream for almost a week. He was a regular grand-slam-hero with all of the guests, until every sea gull in southwest Alaska figured out that he was the 'candy man', and started to follow him in droves where ever he went. They were relentless in their pursuit. Even if he fished a different river they seemed to find him. It was a small flock at first, but the numbers grew daily until he was forced to change rivers. Eventually, no one wanted to go out with him because they'd all come back to the lodge at the end of the day covered in sea gull poop. Have you ever smelled sea gull poop? It's worse than a dog fart! We called him 'Big Bird'."

"Wow, and?"

I remember one guy who was guiding the 'Pak' with me; we'd fly over early, and before the guests got there, he'd slip a skein of salmon eggs in each of his wading boots. As he walked the boat down the river, the goo would squirt out with each step he took, and the fish would flock to his boat. He was smart too. He always worked the worst, least productive water in the river, water that every other guide avoided like a plague. For weeks he was the envy of every guide working the river. This guy was catching fish, hand over fist, and in places where no one else even dared to drift! That was a true stroke of genius."

"And?"

"By then it was late September, and the big char began to filter into the river to feed on the sockeye spawn. Have you ever seen the teeth on those big guys? They'll rip a pair of neoprene waders apart like they're made of wet tissue paper. This guy had a real pained look on his face all one afternoon. We just thought it was his rhoids acting up again. At the end of the day, he stayed in the water, loading the Beaver, until all of the guests and their gear were aboard, and taxiing out into the lake. Only then did he hobble painfully to shore and sit down. His waders were torn to shreds from the knees down... and his boots were completely gone! He'd been guiding barefoot for the better part of the day. He looked like a worn-out Robinson Caruso, so we painted a skull and Jolly Roger on his boat and started calling him, 'The Pirate'."

"Golly! And?"

"And, I think it's time that you wrapped up your homework and headed down to your mother's." I said. I was quickly running out of stories about other people, and would soon have to resort to those about me.

"See you tomorrow, Jake!" Lisa called from the window as he walked down the drive. As she closed the window I asked her, "So, did you really cheat on that college algebra test? Or, was that all for Jake's benefit?"

"Yup." She said. "It happened just the way I told him. How 'bout your stories?"

"I'll leave that up to you."

Thanks for visiting!

I named that Dutch oven, "Lucile", because I always wanted to be a blues musician... but it was the only thing I could make magic with.

The red threads from my bandana worked really well for a while... until the other guides on the river caught on to it and started moving them on me.

I never minded doing whatever it took to get my clients into fish... but the very best friends were those who didn't need me to.