Cranberry Red: A Novel

1. Fred and Oscar

3 Oscar . . . Oscar . . . I’ve hooked a big one . . . hooked a big one. Oscar, you hearin’ me? I need help,” Fred Russo yelled. Fred, Oscar Anderson’s lifelong friend and constant fishing companion since both of them quit farming twenty-five years ago, was on the front side of eighty-five. Oscar was a few years older. They both fished the Tamarack River from shore, as they had done once or twice a week every summer since they retired. “Dammit, Oscar, I need help. Where the hell are ya?” Both men had spent too many years around loud farm machinery such as silo fillers and threshing machines and tractors that needed new mufflers. On a good day they could hear one another if they stood a couple of feet apart. Most of the time they talked outside this range, so conversations resulted in exchanges such as: “You thirsty, Fred?” “Nah, today’s Wednesday; tomorrow is Thursday.” Fred yelled again, this time louder. “Oscar, dammit, where the hell you at?” Fred’s fiberglass spinning rod bent in an arch as he cranked on the reel. The fifteen-pound test line kept tearing off the reel—even with the drag on near full, Fred couldn’t turn around whatever had taken his bait. Wearing an old Filson hat his kids had given him for his eightieth birthday, Oscar Anderson slowly appeared from around a bend in the river. He carried a spinning rod in one hand and a wooden walking stick in the other. Temperatures on that sunny May afternoon had climbed into the eighties with not a hint of a breeze. Fred and Oscar 1 “Hold your damn horses, will ya, Fred? I’m a comin’ as fast as I can.” “’Bout time you showed up,” Fred said. “I’ve hooked a big one. Helluva big one. He’s a real pole bender.” “You sure you ain’t snagged a stump or maybe an old tire somebody threw in the river?” Oscar said. He was near out of breath as he approached his friend, who was tugging on his spinning rod and twisting on the reel handle. Fred wore bib overalls and a straw hat, the same clothing he’d worn for years on the farm. He was tall and thin and sweat streamed down his tanned, deeply wrinkled face. “He ain’t broke water yet; figure he’s one of them big old northerns,” Fred said. “You sure you got a fish on?” “Dammit, Oscar. I got me a fish on this line and he’s a lunker.” The Big Tamarack River flowed lazily along the western boundary of Ames County before it dumped into the Wisconsin River to the west. It flowed through marshland, past several cranberry bogs, and through a nature preserve where sandhill cranes found a summer home along with beaver and muskrats and ducks and Canada geese too lazy to fly to their namesake country to nest and raise their goslings. The river twisted and turned and sometimes nearly came back on itself. Because of these characteristics it was a good fishing river, especially for those fishermen who baited their hooks for small and large mouth bass, and for northern pike. On this day Fred Russo used a big bucktail spinner with number two treble hooks, the kind that fluttered and caught the light and was supposed to attract fish from some distance away. He’d caught other northerns with this spinner, so he knew it worked. “I need a little help,” Fred said as he continued cranking on the reel. “So, what you want me to do?” “Let’s both grab hold my fish line and we’ll haul that big bastard in hand over hand, like we do when we’re ice fishin’.” “But this ain’t ice fishin’.” “I know it ain’t ice fishin’, . . . but I think it’ll work.” Oscar shoved his walking stick into the dirt so it stood up straight and grabbed the shaking fishing line. 4 Fred and Oscar 5 Fred and Oscar “Okay, I got the line. Damn, it’s a big something you got yourself hooked onto.” The two old men, not as strong as they once were, but both in good shape for their ages, slowly pulled on Fred’s line. The fish tugged so hard the line vibrated as the two men pulled on it hand over hand, the heavy line...