Scott Davis Hendrix’s “The Breakout” was a runner-up in the 2025 Great American Fiction Contest. Are you a writer with a great short story? You can enter our annual short story contest online!
I met Chief in my tenth year, when I finally mustered the courage to meander up to his barn on a cool June afternoon, interrupting him as he split a culm of bamboo.
“You need something,” he asked, not sounding friendly.
“What ya’ doin’?” I said, genuinely interested.
“Who are you?” he said, sounding annoyed.
“Henry Mason,” I answered, walking into his barn uninvited and mesmerized by the museum inside.
“You like to fish?” he asked, seeming to accept the intrusion into his rustic sanctuary.
“Ain’t never been.”
The cracking from the splitting bamboo stopped, and Chief stood with an insulted frown.
“You’ve never been fishing … ever?” Chief asked, unbelieving that any young boy could reach the tender age of ten and never catch a fish.
“Ain’t never had nobody to take me.”
“You be back here early in the morning before the sun rises and we’ll fish, you hear?”
My eyes got big and I agreed. The next morning, I was waiting in the dark before the two large barn doors. He smiled slightly as he found me sitting Indian style, legs crossed, waiting for him.
“How long have you been here, boy?”
“About thirty minutes,” I said as I watched the smile broaden across Chief’s face. A thin stream of brown juice thrust from his lips.
Under his direction, we lowered one of the canoes using his elaborate pulley system and each took an end and walked it down to the edge of the lake. He returned to the barn and retrieved a fly rod from the wall. Soon we both stood along the edge of the lake, and, for an hour, Chief instructed me on the proper way to hold and cast a fly rod. He kept time rhythmically clapping his hands, and soon my casts were in time with his clapping.
He was able to rein in my need to use my entire arm as if I were throwing a baseball and focus that energy into the flick of my wrist. I practiced with a fly rod daily until I could place a popping bug into a mason jar lid.
Satisfied that I was ready, we climbed into the canoe, and Chief sculled the paddle smoothly, moving the canoe into the center of the lake. We quietly anchored both ends and situated ourselves perpendicular to a branch that grew from the water in a ragged, arthritic form.
“Smell that?” Chief asked as he inhaled long and deeply but quietly through his nose. I closed my eyes and mimicked him, unsure what I was supposed to be smelling.
“I smell stink,” I said as I opened my eyes. “Musty, rotting, stink!”
“That’s it.”
“What’s it?”
“You smell bedding bluegill,” Chief said, his eyes coming alive and jumping around, surveying the oily water before him.
“See,” Chief said as he pointed with the tip of his fly rod. “See them yonder, breaking the surface, rolling.”
And I did see. The rolling forms churned the water as if it were boiling in a pot. Suddenly, Chief lost fifty years, and he and I were the same age. Anticipation grew as he hastily tied on a yellow and orange popping bug, white rubbery legs protruding from the sides. Black dots covering the whole of the bug.
As instructed, I held the flyrod in my hand and watched Chief rhythmically extend the line forward and backward, lightly placing the bug in the middle of the boiling water in front of us. As soon as it hit the water, the soft rolls turned into a small explosion, and I heard what would become the familiar “plop.” The fight was on! Chief’s rod bent, the tip following the direction of the spastic escape.
“When you hook ’em, you want to be sure to try and ease them away from the bed so that they don’t disturb the other fish,” he said as he lifted the rod above his head, pulling the line toward his lap. He brought the fish to the side of the canoe and into his hand, raising it flat as if he were offering me something to eat. The bluegill glistened in the morning sun. Flashes of purples, rusts, and greens shone on the fish as it flexed and flopped back into the murky black water.
“Your turn. Remember what I told you,” Chief said as he quietly kept rhythm with his hands.
My heart was beating wildly as I began to work the rod. I soon landed my bug close to the same spot where Chief hooked his fish, and the water erupted again. Excitedly, I jerked my line, peeling the bug behind me clear into the next zip code.
“Have to hesitate, one Mississippi … lift smoothly, don’t jerk it,” Chief counted patiently.
I immediately put the bug back into action, and as soon as it hit the water, there was a slight break on the surface followed by a “kerplop” … “one Mississippi,” and the fish was on. A feeling of euphoria enveloped my entire being, and adrenaline pushed through my body. After several seconds, the bluegill was pulled into the canoe and was now in my hand. I surveyed it like a rare treasure, marveling at the coloring. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.
I took it off the hook and pulled in several more just like it before I noticed that Chief was no longer fishing but just watching, guiding, and patiently teaching me. By the end of the morning, I was a bream fisherman. I was hooked.
* * *
Chief and I fished every chance we got for several years after that. I went away to college and finally came home for spring break during my second year. Forgoing a trip to one of Florida’s beaches, all I had on my mind was spending the entire week with Chief.
My first stop was the barn, which was closed up tight. Cobwebs extended in spots on the doors, creating a bridge between them. I went up to Chief’s house and tried his back door. It was locked as well, and there were no lights on inside.
As I walked to the front of the house, Chief’s neighbor, Ms. Livingston, was in his yard cutting tulips.
“He’s in the nursing home,” she said, almost proud that he was and she wasn’t.
She never looked up and kept cutting tulips, unfazed that she was trespassing and caught doing so.
“Which one?” I asked, hollering so she could hear.
“The one connected to the hospital,” she said, a decibel higher than my own voice, mocking me as if she could hear just fine and there was no need for me to speak so loudly.
“Thank you,” I said even louder.
“You’re welcome!” she screamed, winning the vocal battle.
I stood impatiently at the nurse’s station, waiting for his room number, when I spotted him. He was standing before a large picture window, cane in hand, staring over a small pond.
“Think there’s any fish in there?” I asked.
He slowly turned his whole body to see me.
“Boy!” he said. His eyes danced as he brought a shaking hand to my cheek, cupping it before slowly moving in to hug me.
“How did you know where I was?” he asked.
“Your neighbor … went by your house.”
“That old nag! Was she stealing my tulips?” he asked, his voice sounding stronger, almost defiant.
We visited for an hour. I told him about my trip to Montana. He wanted to know every cast, every change of fly, and every tug on the line. He was anxious to know what it felt like to catch wild rainbow trout.
He asked if I had fished dry flies only. I lied and told him I had. I showed him photos of me holding a trout in one hand and the flyrod rod he and I built in the other. I wish now I had taken him, so we could share those memories.
“I wish I could have been with you,” he said with a mixture of pride and sadness. “I miss fishing with you, boy.”
My heart sank to the pit of my stomach.
He had me follow him to his room. We walked slowly. He sat in his recliner and instructed me to pull a box from under his bed. As he prompted me to open it, I saw a framed photo of Chief and me. We stood beside each other, each holding an end to a stringer full of bluegill and chinquapins. A handmade rough-hewn frame surrounded the photo. Carved into the bottom were two words:
“For Henry.”
I often wondered if he remembered my real name because he only called me “boy.” He did know. I imagine he called me “boy” because he never had one of his own. I was his boy.
“Chief,” I asked. “What is the one thing you want to do before you become one day older?”
“You mean before I die,” he said as a sly smile tilted one corner of his mouth stained with Red Man tobacco juice.
He quickly answered, saving me from having to reply.
“Go fishin’… with you, boy,” his voice breaking.
We sat in silence, both unable to speak. His crooked finger rubbed his top lip, trying to stop the tears.
I stood and immediately went to the nurses station. I told the nurse I wanted to take Chief outside for some sun. She soon arrived with a wheelchair and walked us to the door. She punched in the code, opening the front doors into the warm spring day.
“You smell that,” Chief asked, slightly turning toward the small pond. “Those bastards are bedded up.”
After sitting a short while, I told Chief to stay put.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
I bent down and whispered in his ear, “Get ready to leave this joint; when I pull up, we’re going fishing!”
A smile flooded his face as he set the brake on the wheelchair and folded up the footrests, preparing for his escape. I pulled the car in front of him and slung open the door. With the help of his cane, Chief stood and fell into my car’s front seat.
“Let’s go,” he screamed as twelve-year-old Bobby Mack Spencer rode shotgun, pounding on my dash from sheer excitement. The joy of breaking out of prison and the prospect of holding a fly rod again had the old man giddy.
“Is anyone following us?” I asked as adrenaline pushed through me.
“Don’t see anybody!” he said without looking, unable to twist his body to look behind us.
We arrived at his house and immediately drove through the backyard to his barn, bouncing across the rows of his neglected and overgrown garden.
“There she is,” he said proudly, smiling.
Before I could fully stop the car, Chief opened the door as if he thought he could jump out. The door swung open with a force so strong it swung back toward Chief, and he stopped its momentum with the tip of his cane, swinging his legs out simultaneously. I met him and helped him stand. We both felt above the barn door, eventually finding the key.
Except for dust and cobwebs, everything was as he last left it. No family was available to pilfer. No one else knew what treasures lay hidden within the rustic walls. There were two fly rods on the rack that once held a dozen at a time.
“I left these two here because I hoped we would fish together again one day,” he said.
I moved the canoe to the lake’s edge and set Chief up in the back. After replacing his leader, I rigged up his favorite orange and yellow popping bug and placed the rod in his weak, shaking hand. I watched as his grip tightened on the supple cork.
I sculled the canoe into the center of the lake. We quietly anchored both ends, situating ourselves horizontally to the same ragged, arthritic branch that grew from the water. I watched as he moved a shaking thumb to his mouth, sticking his tongue out, placing moisture on the end of it. He rubbed the grime off the bamboo rod, cleaning his handwritten label.
Chief Rods “Bluegill special”
Pride shone across his face as he read it, and his familiar crooked smile returned.
“Smell that?” he asked again as he cast his line before him. The bug was quickly and softly sucked into the black depths. A rooster’s tail of water trailed from his line as he raised his rod. The rod immediately bent, and the fight was on once again.
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Comments
Such a wonderful story. I smiled and cried. Thank you.
Wonderful story, Scott. You truly have a gift in making a story come alive. I could even see that arthritic branch and smell the fish just as I did when I was a boy being taught to fish by an old black man who lived near my house. Before throwing out his line he would spit on the bait and say his fisherman’s prayer. “Make gravy, fish. Make gravy.”
Although I enjoyed “Magic Bus very much, this is my favorite short story so far.
Mr. Hendrix I can see why this story was a runner up in the short essay contest. I was hooked from the beginning as I have always wanted to learn how to fly fish. I thought the use of smell was cleverly used to set the atmosphere on the fishing pond. Both Henry and Chief were memorable characters thus endearing themselves to the reader. Best of luck on your future works. I’m sure we will be reading them soon.