Twelve-year-old Brandon had never been fishing before.  But Timmy had insisted.  Timmy was about his age and often spent summers with his grandmother, who happened to live next door to Brandon.  Between Timmy’s carefree, gung-ho attitude and the fact that he had a small, kid-sized spincast reel that looked like it had been manufactured by Fisher Price, the prospect didn’t seem that intimidating to Brandon, who usually shied away from outdoorsy activities–at least ones that involved other people.  In fact, the only source of unease for him was that Timmy’s older brother, Casey would be there.

Casey was several years older than they were and was a poster boy for moody teenagers everywhere.  He was tall, athletic, and the kind of kid that Brandon would steer clear of in the hallways at school.  He was usually either lifting weights in the basement or holed up in his room listening to music.  But on the rare occasion that he did make an appearance, it was usually at the backdoor–a hazy presence on the other side of the screen that taunted the two boys for their still childish backyard adventures and took swigs directly from the orange juice carton.

While Casey did not take much pleasure in serving as a chaperone for the boys to the nearby reservoir, he seemed to enjoy the chance to cast a rod himself—he was neither completely antisocial nor insufferable that afternoon.  Instead of feeling his usual insecurity in Casey’s presence, Brandon found himself oddly drawn to his blue sweatpants and shiny black calf-height rubber boots, which were set off with cream bands around the tops and the outsoles.  As Timmy interminably bragged about his many excursions that proved his infinite experience as a fisherman, Brandon stole glances at Casey.  He stood quietly and at complete ease at the water’s edge, his much more grown-up rod expertly resting against his waist, one shiny boot propped on a small bolder.  His calm focus was uncharacteristic, like he had donned some mantle of maturity that he usually kept stashed away.  Perhaps he kept them in the back of the closet with his rubber boots.  Brandon felt a confusing pull toward this unfamiliar version of the teenaged boy.  Perhaps he even wanted to be him.

When Brandon failed to properly bait a hook at Timmy’s less-than-adequate instruction, mutilating several innocent worms in the process, Casey set his rod down and walked over.  Bending down on one knee between the boys, he used his opposite thigh as a surface on which to stretch out the bobber and hook setup.  As he softly explained each part of the assembly, Brandon felt a quivery sensation at his patience.  His attention.  And he was distracted by how thick and spongy the sweatpants that swathed Casey’s thigh felt when his fingertips brushed them as he helped to snap the leader line onto the weight.  He felt his eyes wander into the top of Casey’s boot, where he could see the soft crescent of his white tube sock at the place where the boot’s shin sloped into the forefoot.  His eyes lingered on the smear the bait had left behind on Casey’s pant leg, which had either escaped Casey’s notice or care.   

By the time Brandon was ready to try casting, Casey had stalked back to his rock, the soft half-moon breaks of the reservoir’s edge pulsing over the ground between them.  Timmy led him up to an outcropping of blue stone and demonstrated bending the rod behind him and then launching it forward, like a sprung catapult, depressing the red button at the perfect moment to allow the weighted line to sail over the green-gray ripples in a graceful arc.  Brandon’s first attempts were dismal.  Acutely aware that he did not possess a drop of athleticism, he began to feel the burn of embarrassment over a lack of hand-eye coordination he had not even realized was required of fishing.  Much like how his efforts to throw a frisbee usually resulted in a wayward disk veering to its side and careening across the grass as if in escape, each cast of the rod either swung back at him or failed to enter the water more than a few feet in front of the rock.  The line’s end bobbed on the surface as though taunting him.  Even as Timmy tried again and again to explain the technique, he had the sinking feeling of Casey’s smirk from down the shore.

A childish sense of panic beginning to well up, Brandon tried one last time, swinging his arm overhead with a confidence and ferocity he was sure could only result in the same flawless launch Timmy had shown him.  But as he reached the critical point in the arc, his fingers fumbled for the red button and he felt the bulbous end of the plastic rod leave his palm.  Before he fully understood what had happened, he saw the rod hit the water with a wet smack where it drifted lazily some twenty feet from the rock on which the boys stood.  Timmy looked at him, horrorstruck.  Casey had bent over in laugher.  Brandon fought tears of shame as he helplessly watched his friend’s prized rod–like an eyelash on a mirror–slowly make a turn, the concentric rings from the landing still stretching out to the banks of the reservoir spreading a rumor of his ineptitude.

While Timmy was careful not to directly blame his friend, he protested loudly that he could never get his rod back if it wasn’t immediately rescued.  He appealed to Casey, whose mirth at the situation melted into annoyance as it became plain that he alone would be responsible for the rod’s salvation.  Brandon could hardly look at Casey for the expression of disgust he had assumed as he trudged toward them across the narrow rocky strip of a beach.  The stones clattered softly under the tread of his boots, which grew shiny with wet as he approached the foot of the outcropping and squinted up at Brandon.  He gave his head a shake of disapproval, then looked out toward the forlorn rod and heaved a gusty sigh.  

Casey stepped toward the water, the bottom cream band that rounded his boot disappearing as his weight pressed the rounded stones beneath him into the silt.  Brandon found his guilt began to dissolve in intrigue as Casey sloshed into the first few inches of water and great muddy clouds began to plume around his feet, the mirrored sky now sullied with swirling rusty stains.  As he moved closer toward the rod, the sloshing of his progress did not deepen as one would expect from legs moving farther from shore.  Brandon became aware that Casey walked with his arms outstretched, as if traversing an unseen tightrope, and that his boots sank slowly beneath the surface of the water.  With each belabored step, they came up again baptized with a coppery sheen.  Brandon began to understand that it wasn’t the water that grew deeper in this part of the reservoir.

Casey had closed about half of the distance to the drifting fishing rod when his right boot pushed beneath the water and a ring of shiny yellow clay erupted from the surface just an inch or two from the top cream band that encircled his blue sweatpants.  The short shaft of the boot clamped around his calf like a pair of rubbery lips.  When he lifted his leg for another step, Casey found that this time the boot was unwilling to come along.  Brandon watched in fascination as his white tube sock emerged into the sunlight and Casey stood, frozen with his heel in the air and his arms waving for balance.  He tried to point his toes back into the boot but found that its mouth had closed without his leg to hold it open against the pressing mud.

His left leg began to quiver under the strain as he swiveled and twisted his right foot, trying to force it into the recalcitrant boot.  Instead, the shaft crumpled and a surge of silty soup rushed to fill the void.  Timmy giggled hysterically at Brandon’s side as Casey’s foot reemerged, the sock no longer white, but now a glistening yellow to match the cloudy water that eddied around him.  Casey glanced up at them and swore as he planted his foot directly into the muck and bent to yank at the foundering boot.  Brandon recognized the sensation of heat tingling through him as he watched leg of Casey’s blue sweatpants getting swallowed deeper into the mire.  They crumpled and pulled taut with every tug on the boot as if they were huffing in exhaustion along with him.  By the time Casey had extricated his right boot, the force of his efforts had driven him deep enough that he had now also topped the left.  Brandon could hear the glissando of liquid pouring into a vessel as the reservoir rose inside the boot to meet the surface.  

Casey swore again, this time intentionally pulling out his foot and plunging it under the murky surface to dig out the second boot, which he threw unceremoniously to the bank with its mate.  They wetly splatted on the rocks below the outcropping.  What had started as a reclamation mission had turned into a mudlarking venture as Casey continued toward the fishing rod in his socks, the slimy clay painting itself further up the once-blue sweatpants until they clung slickly to his legs up to his knees.  By the time he returned to the shore to deliver the rod to Timmy’s eagerly outstretched hands, he had to use one hand to keep the sweatpants in place, the weight of the sodden cotton threatening to collapse them to his ankles.  Timmy had been grateful, but in hysterics.  Brandon had stood silently by, overwhelmed by what he had caused to happen.

He replayed the scenario that night as he ground against the bottom of the bathtub, feeling the texture of the anti-slip floor gliding beneath him in the soapy warm water.  He thought about how patient Casey had been earlier that morning and how irritable he had become, caught in a sticky, messy situation because of him.  He dwelled on those springy, thick blue sweatpants and the white tube socks becoming saturated by the ooze, and the misshapen rubber boots drying on the stones at the water’s edge.  And after the images of the morning and the pebbled fiberglass tub had worked in concert to bring him to a breathtaking crescendo, Brandon shakily sat back on his heels and surveyed the bathwater, perplexed.  He had done this dozens of times–but this time was different.  He stared curiously at the milky strands that now drifted and curled around him in the suds.