Conversion by Maynard Freemole

CONVERSION
By Maynard Freemole
Fish was penance, the watery, pallid flesh that hid its taste in the jab and threat of bones, hateful. And that gloppy, lumpy white sauce—was supposed to help? The deep-fried and breaded disguises didn't clear the palate either. When life gives you lemons, don't put it on fish. I learned the joys of abstinence and the blessings of hunger over fish.

Through decades of cautious nibbling and subtle fork-play, I scattered the insult around the plate, bits hidden like frightened minnows under garnishes or in debris of baked potato. I eschewed seafood with the fervor with which other people drooled at mere mention of the mess (another reason to avoid the whole kettle when I could).

When compelled, though, I held fishing poles along watery shores with the best of them, for the sake of companionship mostly, as if letting friends fish alone was like letting them drink alone, which I was loathe to do. The two sports often conflated, a sort of fish-spawned biathlon testing who could really drink like one. But I practiced knottiness and snarls so much more than wetting lines or whistles that comrades caught me casting aspersions and gradually cut me loose. Catch and release.

Then came October. Sapphire skies and crimson sunsets. Light rains as mountains shed the lassitude of Indian summer. Last shot of the season, a friend said, so up we went, following the grumble of gravel up several roads less traveled, until their switchbacks elbowed out mushrooms, a hatful of wild shaggy manes fresh from the depths of damp dirt and shadowy sun. The lake proved harder to find, deeper in cloud and rumor. Anything living there would be deeper yet, down where roots winter dark and safe.

But the outlet still flowed, still sang an invitation that caught two cut-throat by surprise at the end of our lines. Enough, my friend drooled, and we buried them in campfire coals after gutting their fat, finny innards for the finer stuff of mushrooms. We sang loud to warn away bears, and fanned the coals star-white.

Now give me fish. Even those with stares glassy as the mad moon's glare bait my appetite. My mouth waters. A tide has turned. It was not the perfection of pink flesh alone, though, the willowy yield of graceful bones that unlocked my land-bound buds. The stars swam their old rivers of light overhead, and wilderness danced at our fire's edge all night. And more: that instant when the silvered energy shuddered through my arms like thunder where the depth of its pulse plunged toward lightning.