1 The Stone Northern Nikolai Yasko I. Jimmy set the hook. After two hard taps and a powerful tug, he responded with just the right amount of pressure. How many big fish had he lost because of a late hook set, or an overly tentative one? Not this time. And the fish was big, probably a giant bass. It swerved toward the weeds, and Jimmy got it away from them but was obliged to let the fish run three times before it became docile enough to land. He maneuvered the bass, for indeed that s what it was, toward shore, and was at last able to grab its lower lip and hoist it aloft. Man, was it heavy. This was easily his biggest bass ever it weighed eight pounds if it weighed an ounce. Then, in the fullness of his pride, something strange happened. The fish squirmed and seemed to cough. It was such a strange thing that Jimmy dropped the fish, where it thrashed violently on the grass. Jimmy had never seen a bass cough, and he had never seen one disgorge anything but a lure. But out of this fish s mouth now came a stone in the shape of a fish, a beautiful northern pike. Jimmy once more picked up the fish, the real one. He had hoped to take it home and filet it, but now he let the big bass back in the current where it gulped air. Finally, it swished slowly away, although not before turning and looking once more at the boy. The stone figurine, however, remained. The thing had the cream, bean-shaped markings of a northern pike; only no one could ever paint them so realistically as this. There were tiny scales, and the fins were sharp. It would certainly catch fish if used as a lure, but the boy knew that nothing this beautiful should be risked losing in the murky water. Not even the ultra-expensive lures Jimmy saw in the catalogs were as
2 well made as this. But where were the hooks? As Jimmy ran his fingers over the slightly rough edges of the carved fish, he had the unpleasant sensation that it moved in his hand. This was magic. His breath came quick at the idea. Clutching his treasure, he turned and ran through the fields, back to the little gray house and his unkempt room behind the kitchen. Jimmy sat on his bed and stared at the lure. No, it couldn t be a lure, because there were no hooks, no internal weights. Was it a carving, this stone fish? Could human hands make something so lifelike? As he stared, the fish started to move again, and Jimmy dropped it, frightened. Too late. Something was happening. The greenish background of the fish spread out, filling the room like water. Silver specks appeared. Scales. Or planets in a star-spattered black void, or sunlight breaking through clouds and rippling over dark water. Jimmy was somewhere else. He knew it and called it a dream, for calling this experience a dream was the only way Jimmy could make sense of it. He floated over dark water in a way that he hadn t since dreams of early childhood. Eventually, the water parted to show a rocky island. Waves washed over a beach of black sand, where three monstrously large dogs sat calmly, just beyond the reach of the surf. Behind the dogs, moss-covered stone steps led to a wooden tower. In the tower, Jimmy saw a woman combing her hair in the window. Jimmy hovered close now, and, entranced, tried to touch the window. He felt nothing. The woman sang to herself in the spindly tower. The language was strange, and as the words washed over him, so did a wave of sleep. When Jimmy awoke, it was late afternoon and the sun was shining through the cracked glass of his dusty window. The stone fish lay on the floor. He looked at it again, but this time
3 nothing happened. He thought he heard something calling in the distance. He couldn t make out the words. In the days that followed, Jimmy stared many times at the stone northern. Often nothing happened. But sometimes the color spread, the water appeared and he found himself floating in a dream. The woman paced the island s rocky shore with the great dogs at her side. She gathered driftwood. Sometimes she picked up shells, examined them, and placed them gently back on the sand. She often petted the dogs, or threw sticks for them to chase. Sometimes she looked out at the water as if troubled by it, by something in it. There were men on the island, one of them hardly more than Jimmy s age, and they followed the woman and her dogs at a respectful distance. The men came and went in long, elegant rowboats. The men in the boats fished. One of them, a man with one arm, caught a northern pike once. Jimmy knew then that the island was not a sea but a lake, since northern were freshwater fish. Once Jimmy thought he saw a vaguely human shape emerge from the water, embroiled in a net. Excitement ensued. The dogs barked and pranced, and the men all came running. Even women, whom Jimmy had never seen before, came running out to the beach to see the thing in the net. They were all older, older than the woman in the tower. Then the dream ended. His mother nagged him about getting ready for the upcoming school year. Jimmy answered back, and the ensuing fight ended with Jimmy muttering and slamming the door to his room. He could not tell his mother that he hated the way she leaned her fat arms on the windowsill and looked out at the fields. He could not tell her that she looked old beyond her years. He decided to show her the stone northern. Maybe the magic would shake her out of her lethargy.
4 One afternoon he took the northern from his box of treasures, and tapped her on the shoulder. Look, Mom, he said, I found it in a fish. In a fish. Do you think it s an old lure? But if it s a lure, where are the hooks? His mother seemed not to hear. It s nice, she said, with barely a glance at the figurine. A stone that looks a little like one of them northerns you catch. Just a stone. Jimmy was indignant. Whatever the figurine was, it was not just a stone. The workmanship was exquisite, almost inhuman. But it was clear that the little northern held no attraction for his mother. She looked past it and into her son s face. Isn t it time to mow the lawn? Later, Jimmy showed the stone to his friend Carl. Surely his friend would recognize its magic. And Carl had great respect for northerns, having battled many of them on the river. Um, Carl had said, looking at the thing Jimmy pulled from his tackle box. I see a lump of rock that looks a little like a northern. I bought a baby northern lure last week only mine had hooks on it. Am I supposed to be excited by this? Once more, the fish elicited no interest. How can this be? Jimmy thought. I am telling them something crazy, and they react if I were talking about the weather. And the northern it s so beautiful. It can t be a lure because there are no hooks, no marks to show that hooks had once been attached. What is it? A few days later, Jimmy tried again with Carl. Come on, man, I found it in a bass. Look at it. We can make it into a lure. His friend finally deigned to look carefully. His eyes glazed. He was very far away.
5 Jimmy was excited for a moment, believing that his friend was experiencing the visions he had been unable to speak of. But Carl s face turn ashen gray. He dropped the northern to the ground. It s just a stone, he said, and walked away. Jimmy wondered if he would have shown the stone to his father. Of course. His father would have been there to see the eight-pound bass. Jimmy remembered the thin, friendly man who taught him how to fish when Jimmy was small and happiness lived in the gray house. Jimmy s father was gone now, a misty shape in the boy s soul whose only legacy to the boy and his mother was an emptiness shared but never spoke of. Could the northern fill the emptiness? Jimmy didn t know. He felt different, that was for certain. But as the days went by, he began to question the rightness of letting the fish take him into its space. The woman in the tower, the guardian dogs, what were they to him? The northern took him to a world of dreams. When Jimmy held it in his hand, the stone seemed to expect something from the boy. But Jimmy had nothing to give. The boy put the stone deep in his tackle box, resolving to look no more. Yet it came swimming at night to the edges of his thoughts, demanding to be let in. One cool autumn day he biked to the lake to fish. He didn t often go there, preferring the changes of the river. He parked his bike and walked past two old men and smiled down at their bucket of pan fish. He opened his tackle box to get ready. It was time to grow up, Jimmy decided. His mother wanted him to concentrate on studies. He wanted a girlfriend someday, and girls thought he was weird enough even without a fish-shaped rock that induced visions. It just didn t fit into his world. He would do with this baby northern what he did with all his other unwanted fishing lures.
6 He threw it far out over the water. What was that, son? one of the fishermen called out. Just a stone. Jimmy said.