It was last year I decided to take my life into my own hands. After 18 years of languishing in Pennsylvania suburbia waiting to get out, I discovered college wasn’t the opportunity I thought it was. I was just repeating all the same patterns in a new place. I hated what I was studying, I hated the people around me, I was definitely sick and tired of the food.
At the end of the year, faced with picking a major I’d be locked into for the next three years, I stood at the psychology administration office door and made a choice. I used the 3,000 dollars I got from working in the school mailroom and bought a shitty rundown car, then drove 1000 miles North until I found a spot I liked. Gallagher, Minnesota, population 230. Known for its walleye fishing in the summer and for the debilitating cold in the winter. I didn’t tell my friends, didn’t tell my parents, nothing. I told my older brother Casey just in case, but he knows the couch-surfing lifestyle and promised to not tell anyone.
It was as simple as that. I got a job working the graveyard shift at the Gallagher Diner and found cheap rent along a local fishing pond. Suddenly, I liked what I was seeing around me. I could look in the mirror and be proud. I definitely didn’t find myself integrated into the community – I was just another fisherman looking for his next catch to the people who lived there their whole lives – but I loved it. I loved working, taking home scraps from the diner, growing food out back. I texted Casey my address and then through my phone in the lake. It felt so good to live for myself, not on anyone else’s schedule.
I spent a lot of time out there doing nothing. Sitting out by the lake, watching people wring walleyes out from the water, feeling it against my toes. Teenagers would drive their parents’ motor boats around and drag their friends on inner tubes. They’d always wave at me when they’d pass. I liked waving back.
I wouldn’t call it lonely, although I guess you could. It was solitary. Except when the landlord would come around to fix my pipes or canoers would get lodged on the shore, there would be no one around for miles. I loved it. I loved being out of the rat race, not having to think about what other people were doing or what they thought of me. And the only other person out there, I came to like.
On one of my daily swims, I spotted my neighbor on the porch of his house. I always knew there was a house about a quarter mile from me, but I never saw anyone coming out of it. He was a rabbit in his 40s, heavier set but in a strong way. He looked like he could have been the most popular guy in school 20 years ago and still had a bit of that charm. His fur was black with the tips starting to gray. His forearms were big. He gave a little wave to me and I smiled back.
After that, I kept seeing him. He’d be fishing, mostly. Sometimes doing the crossword. Sometimes writing. Sometimes just enjoying the view. He’d always give me a warm wave and I’d always smile back.
One day, I came back from the diner to my apartment to see a note on the door. It was a piece of looseleaf paper tacked up with duct tape. I thought it might just be a note from the landlord saying my pipes burst or something, but it was from my neighbor.
“Hey there,” it said. “I thought you might have been a tourist, but I’ve seen you enough that I’m pretty sure you’re my neighbor. You should come over for dinner someday and we can properly introduce ourselves. Give me a wave if that sounds nice. Your neighbor, Bobby.”
The next day, I swam out into the lake and gave him a wave. He looked up from his crossword and smiled.
“Fried catfish?” he called out, his voice low but booming.
“Sounds great!”
“Be over at 6!”
I was really nervous to go over. I spent an hour going through my closet, sifting through shitty clothing I thrifted in college and the outdoors wear I’d picked up since moving to Gallagher.
Sure, people at the diner had a certain brand of small town politeness. They’d squint through my glasses and peer at my nametag, they’d say please and thank you, welcome me to the town. They were polite but they weren’t nice. No one invited me over, told me good fishing spots, shared stories. Bobby was the first man to do that.
I couldn’t deny my attraction to him, and it wasn’t just because I hadn’t been touched by another human being in months. I loved the relaxed way he sat in his deck chair, the way his weight settled, his reading glasses. I always felt limited by my options in college, found myself hoping for a more refined kind of man. Bobby was exactly the kind of guy I’d daydream about, and I was going over to his house for dinner.
I made the trek through the woods over to his house and stood at his door. He opened the door dressed in swim trunks and a tank top. “Hey!” he said. “Thanks for coming over!”
“I’m Aras, by the way.”
“Aras,” he repeated. “Nice to meet you, son. I’m just finishing the catfish, come in, come in.”
His house was nice. Upstairs was a kitchen and dining room space with a nice big ceiling and real wood walls. The house seemed to be powered by a generator that was currently off, heated in the winter by a big fireplace. I stepped over to his grill on the back porch where he was taking breaded catfish out of a pan with big tongs and placing it onto plates.
“When’d you move in?” he asked. “That house was empty all winter. I was delighted to see you over there.”
“Early summer. I moved from Pennsylvania.”
“That so? Is it just you over there?”
“Just me.”
“That’s pretty brave for a young man like you. What are you, 20? Living by yourself in the woods?”
“Yeah, 20.”
He let out a belly laugh. “It’s a good place to be. I moved out here the summer before you to work on my writing.”
“Are you a writer?”
“I’d say so.” He went to his fridge and pulled out tartar sauce he made earlier, and slathered it on our plates. “You familiar with Sci-fi at all?”
“Sanderson, a little.”
“Good, good. I’m a few books into a series called A Sea of Truth? Might have seen it around?”
“Oh, so you’re like an author-author.”
“Enough to buy me a little house. Find a little plot of land to call my own.”
“It’s beautiful out here. I love it.”
“Yeah? What do you like about it?”
“The woods. The water. The sky. All of it. There’s so much time and space to just be.”
He nods. “Couldn’t have said it better myself. People could be a little friendlier, though.”
“Do they still give you weird looks?”
“It’s as if I’m taking it from them, like it’s this secret they share that I’m not allowed to be a part of, that I’m infringing on.”
“Thank you. Exactly. I live here too! I’m not just here to go fishing for walleyes!”
“Well, the walleyes are a nice part of it, but…” He laughs. “Don’t worry. I’m your friend.”
“Thank you. I’m your friend too.”
“Let’s eat up?”
“Yes!”
The catfish was delicious and the company was even better. I didn’t realize how much I missed talking about something that wasn’t what the special of the day is. He went around and showed me all of his books, showed me the birds nests he could see from the porch, stepped into the water with me. We talked about the failures of higher education and the small town gossip we’d heard and stories about his time carrying mail in New York City and working on cargo planes. He sent me home with some bait and tackle and his phone number scribbled on a piece of paper. I admitted I didn’t have a phone and he told me I could just holler through the woods and he’d hear me.
He drove me home since it was so dark. He spent the ride talking about the woods and the things he found in them, but I was in my head, thinking about shooting my shot with him. I had no proof he was gay, I guess, but there was something a little cosmopolitan about him that left me with that impression.
He parked in my driveway and gave me a smile. “Thanks again for dinner, kid. I’m glad someone here is neighborly.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Um. We should fish sometime.”
“We should fish sometime!”
I tried to find the words in me, the courage, anything. Instead, I climbed out of his truck and waved at him from my porch. He backed away and drove off into the woods.
I spent the rest of the night jerking off, imagining him there with me.
Maybe someday.
