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27 The Wake AS I TRY TO ACCOUNT for how I got here, how I became the sort of person who would venture into both commercial fishing and academia, and how I came to write this book, I imagine being on the boat. It’s flat calm with no land in sight. I’m on the flying bridge and look over my shoulder. The wake churns violently right behind the boat, soon settles, meanders, then diminishes into a faint and invisible track. Looking back, I always see my grandpa on my mother’s side, Grandpa Stroud. He was Charles Stroud, born in 1880 somewhere in southern Missouri or Oklahoma to a Cherokee woman from what he called “the Indian nation,” and a man of Scottish and English descent. In an old photograph he stands with a crew of loggers next to a wagon loaded with huge logs. Grandpa is a tall young man with high cheekbones and he leans against the wagon. By the time he married my grandma, he had become a railroad man. I remember him from his last years as a conductor on the little Frisco railroad line (the Saint Louis and San Francisco Railroad). He and the family lived in the little town of Chaffee, Missouri, which was perfectly situated for his run from Memphis to Saint Louis. An imposing figure in his conductor’s uniform at six feet and two hundred pounds, he would stand by the train, take the watch from his vest pocket, and command, “All aboard!” When he signaled the engineer the steam engine would puff, the wheels would shudder and jerk with a screech of steel grinding on steel, and the train would pull steadily ahead. Grandpa would put his watch back into his vest pocket, walk and then begin to jog alongside the moving train, catch hold of a handle, and swing aboard. I would wave and stand in awe as Grandpa’s train disappeared down the track. When I accompanied him on short runs, Grandpa took me forward to meet the engineer, and I walked with him through the passenger cars as he took tickets. I bathed in the glow of his congenial authority, for the passengers and black porters all seemed to know and admire “Charlie.” 28 The Wake As a boy I was vaguely aware of the dark side of life in this little southern town,where no black people have lived for nearly a hundred years. I heard the story that the last black person to spend a night in Chaffee was lynched. This would have been around 1910, shortly before the Strouds moved there. The Strouds were divided in the Civil War, some fighting for the South and some for the Union, and my roots there seem to implicate me in the ongoing American tragedy that resurfaces as I write this—in the Emmet Till autopsy and the new trial of the Mississippi Klansman for the murder of three civil rights workers in 1964. I know that Grandpa shared the predominant racist views of his time and place, and I am embarrassed to recall how innocently I partook in the family’s traditional way of ending a meal. Grandpa would see the one remaining piece of fried chicken, a last biscuit or dab of mashed potatoes and gravy, and remark that food left on the plates would bring a cloudy day. When no one took the last bits, he’d finally say, “Well, I’ll just eat it m’self, then.” And turning to Grandma, he’d almost always say, “Mama, that sure was a good meal. Few white folks and no niggers at all can have a dinner like that.” I believe that Grandpa’s good nature would have led him to more enlightened views. He was a wise, loving, and playful man who took me on his knee, gave me sips from his hot toddies, and held me in countless bear hugs that showed me how to breathe. He taught me how to skip, and also how to hunt. I long ago lost interest in that way of being in the outdoors, but I trace my love of the hunt in commercial fishing to what I learned from him. Although he never told me anything about the ocean or showed any interest in the watery world of the nearby Mississippi River, I did acquire a distinct early impression of the ocean world in my grandparents’ kitchen. During the year when my brother and...

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