This is another piece I wrote my junior year at Pickens High School in 2010. This was centered around Gerald Brown, my father’s first-cousin. Brown unexpectedly passed away in September 2009 at the age of 45. I was moved by the biggest interaction I ever had with him, so I wrote about it.

It is late July 2009. School is still out, so there’s not a whole lot to do. My cousin is spending the week with me, and just two days have already passed and we are running out of things to do. However, one option is still open: bass fishing. Both of us love to fish, and it’s seemingly perfect for going out on the lake. Even though this sounds like a great plan, we have an issue. Neither one of us is old enough to drive, my dad has to work, and my granddad says we will just get rained on all day.

We are lucky enough to have another option: James Fitzgerald Brown, or Gerald, as everyone calls him. Gerald is an avid fisherman, and he acted as though the loss of his job last year just meant more free time for fishing. Gerald is my father’s first cousin, and my dad has been trying for almost three years to get him to come up from Loganville and fish the lakes in north Georgia. Finally, it seems like it’s going to happen, as Gerald calls and tells us to be up at 5 and ready to go to Salacooa Creek in Gordon County. Just like any fishing trip we plan, everyone involved is ready for anything.

Things start out alright, as Gerald pulls up to my house right on time. As we step out to head to the truck, he asks us about our gear. Uh oh. We forgot that our granddad wasn’t coming, so we would have to fix our own gear to take with us. I turn around to get back in the house. Another issue arises: the door is locked, and I don’t have a key. I check both garage doors, but they’re locked too. With no other option, I grab my cell phone, call my house, and ask my grandmother to get up and unlock the door. “She’s gonna kill us,” Gerald says. She lets us back in the house, and we scramble to the garage for the supplies. Forty-five minutes behind schedule, we finally leave for the lake. Pretty much the definition of a “Hill Fishing Trip.”

The actual fishing goes smoothly for a while. We get the boat in the water without incident, and it looks like we don’t have any malfunctioning equipment. Gerald is at the bow of the boat, running the trolling motor, while my cousin and I are on each side, throwing out towards the same direction. Both of us are using plastic worms, while Gerald uses what looks exactly like a little bass, except for the treble hooks hanging below it. “You won’t get many bites with this,” he explains, “but the ones you do get will be big”. It’s slow goings for a while, until we finally get some excitement. However, this isn’t from the fish, but from the weather. It starts lightning heavily around the lake, forcing us to get back on land and wait out the weather.

 I wonder aloud why Gerald didn’t consider just staying on the lake, which is something I know he has done plenty of times. “If it wasn’t you two with me, I would have,” he says. “I was with a friend out on the lake on time, and it started storming, and I said, ‘We’re not leaving’. It got so bad out there that he called his wife and let her know how much he loved her.” He tells us that he doesn’t want to get cussed at by our moms if we stayed out and came down with pneumonia, which I see as smart thinking. As the lightning begins to pick up, one of our phones begin to ring. It’s my granddad, checking in on our trip. “The weather’s perfect here,” we tell him, “not a rain cloud in sight.” “We’ll I’ll be…,” he says, and hangs up.

After almost an hour of nonstop rain, the clouds finally part and we get back on the lake. We fish for three more hours and then call it quits. Gerald ends the day with three fish, my cousin with two, and I with the same number I had before I left the house. Gerald then drives us back to the house, and we all sit at the table, eat pizza, and talk about the family. Gerald says he was impressed with the lake, and that he would go there again sometime soon. “This was fun,” I said, “We need to do this again.” “Yeah,” he replies, “We sure do”.

*                                                                      *                                                                    *

A little over a month has passed when my dad receives a call from my grandmother. “Gerald’s in the hospital,” he says. From the tone of my father’s voice, it sounds like my grandmother acted like this was no big deal. However, about an hour passes when my cousin calls. “Granny lied to us,” he calmly states, “Gerald’s in a coma.” I finally hear the truth: Gerald had been outside cutting grass all day, and once he finished he started feeling sick. He then apparently had a stroke and collapsed, leaving him in an unconscious state.

My family would talk to him as he lay still in the hospital room, and his heartbeat would pick up. However, five days soon passed with him in the same state, and the news just got grimmer and grimmer. I try to keep a grip on my emotions, keeping hope that there would be another fishing trip like the one I had experienced only a month ago.

No matter how much I fight to hide the pain, I just can’t anymore after church on Sunday. My sister starts begging to go out to eat for lunch, and I decline, saying that I just don’t feel like going out. I begin walking towards my room when she yells “you never want to do anything!” There, standing in front of my door, I can’t hold back anymore. As my dad walks up to me, I stammer “she just…doesn’t get it…” and begin to cry, the first time I have done so openly in God only knows how long. He gets me in a bear hug and says “I know…I know.” We both know that Gerald is gone.

I don’t blame God for what has happened; I just know that it is just another case of the cold hard facts of life. I see it as not the premature death of a good man, but the early entrance of that man to Heaven. While death in most cases leaves more questions than answers, I know one thing for certain: many bass were left uncaught in this world once James Fitzgerald Brown left it.