Deleted Opening Paragraphs to the Story About Sticking a Fishing Lure in My Stepfather’s Forehead

When I was 14 I got a fishing lure stuck in my stepfather’s forehead. We were fishing in a tiny flatbottom boat and I wasn’t watching my backswing so I snagged my stepfather. The reel unspooled, and when I looked back, my lure was dangling from his forehead. “You caught a big one,” he said, not even an inkling of irony in his voice.

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When I was 14 I stuck a fishing lure in my stepfather’s forehead. We were fishing in a tiny flatbottom boat and when I went to cast I caught my stepfather instead. I’ll remember the story the morning my stepfather is admitted to the hospital. I’ll recall it again when the diagnosis comes down, and still again when my mother tells me she has contacted hospice for end-of-life care. I’ll keep recalling it, again and again, as the cancer kills him.

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On the morning my stepfather is diagnosed with terminal cancer I’ll think of the time I stuck a fishing lure in his forehead. I’ll wonder how he felt, both when the fishing lure got stuck and when the diagnosis came down. I’ll think of how everything happened so quickly: diagnosis, hospice, death only days later. I’ll think of the guitar he bought sitting unplayed in the back bedroom and something in me will stir like guitar strings.

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The first time I ever got drunk I stuck a fishing lure in my stepfather’s forehead. I was 14. My stepfather gave me the beer. I think he was trying to get me to love him.

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My stepfather was a strong man—he never flinched the day I stuck a fishing lure in his forehead. Didn’t moan. Didn’t say “Ouch” or “You got me” or “Fuck my nosehole that hurt.” He didn’t wince later when my mother tried to pull the hook out with needle-nose pliers. He hold her to keep going. Said it didn’t hurt, and I know now it was because he didn’t want to worry her. We could see how bad it hurt. The skin was red and stretched. “Just keep going,” he said.

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“I was drunk the night I stuck a fishing lure in my stepfather’s forehead,” is how I started the fishing lure story once, but it sounds too much like a country song, possibly written by David Allan Coe, possibly to the tune of “You Never Even Called Me By My Name.” But no matter how many times you and your drunken friends belt out the chorus while laughing at the absurdity of the lyrics, let me remind you that song is all about the pain of missing someone you have lost.

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On the morning my mother calls hospice for my stepfather, I think about the time I accidentally stuck a fishing lure in his forehead. I’d only drank half a beer, but I was also 14. I weighed maybe 90 pounds, shivering wet, and the alcohol had gone to my head so quickly I didn’t know I was drunk until the fishing lure was stuck in his forehead. The funny thing is he never told my mother about the half-beer I drank. He gave me gum on the ride home. I used to think it was because he thought he would get in trouble with my mother for giving me beer. But on the morning my mother calls hospice for my stepfather, I think he was protecting me, if only from the kind of embarrassment a 14 year old boy would feel when he has fucked up in front of the older men in his life.

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On the day my stepfather is diagnosed with terminal cancer I’ll think of all the hardship he has suffered—the Gulf War, the loss of a grandchild, the time I stuck a fishing lure in his forehead.

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On the day my mother tells me my stepfather has stopped eating, I think about the time I stuck a fishing lure in his forehead. I’m at work when she calls. Outside it’s the first warm day in forever. When I hang up the phone, before I go in to tell my boss I’m leaving early, before the drive home and then the long drive a day later to Arkansas, I’ll remember how he looked right after I hooked him, in the split-second before he regained his composure, like something had happened so quickly he didn’t quite understand it.

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On the day after the doctors give my stepfather a few weeks to live, I’ll have a dream about him. I’ll still be thinking about it the next morning when I climb in my car and aim it east. I’ll drive toward toward Kansas City, the rising sun turning the city skyline to fire. Past Kansas City I’ll turn south toward Arkansas through a long stretch of Missouri. My stepfather has died in the night, but for the six hours of the drive south, I’ll still expect to see him when I arrive. In the dream he was smiling. Sitting up in bed. Still very much alive. Remember when you stuck that fishing lure in my head? he asks.

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The day after my stepfather dies I’ll share the fishing lure story in the living room of my mother’s house. My stepbrother and stepsister are there. I haven’t seen them in ages and we all look aged, as if time has crept along while we weren’t looking. I’ll tell the part that I was drunk when I stuck the fishing lure in my stepfather’s forehead and my mother will tell how she tried to pull the hook out but couldn’t. She could see the barb stuck in the skin and he was groaning while she pulled. He said to keep going but she couldn’t. She started crying, afraid she was hurting him, so he just clipped off what he could and went to work the next day with part of the hook still in his forehead. While teaching a class on self-defense at the institute where he worked, he got the hook snagged on a woman’s sweater and was forced to tell her he had part of a fishing lure stuck in his forehead, and sitting in the living room beside the empty hospice bed, stripped down now to nothing, we all laughed until we cried.

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When a loved one is diagnosed with a life-ending disease. . . .

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When your mother calls you at work to tell you. . .

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When the cancer begins killing your stepfather. . .

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When the doctors finally find what’s been bothering your stepfather for the last year. . .

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My stepfather survived Desert Storm but he couldn’t survive the ugliness of the world. . .

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The day after my stepfather dies, I try to write him back to life by recalling. . .

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This is the fishing lure story, but I need you to know it isn’t about the lure. Or the alcohol my stepfather gave me. It isn’t about me being a teenager. Or the divorce or how hard it is for teenagers to love again after being betrayed. It’s about him. Don’t forget that in all this clutter, all this throat-clearing, all the mourning I’m doing here. Forget about me. I’ll be ok, eventually. This story is about my stepfather, and his strength.

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My family has always told stories. The fishing lure story. The Christmas story, when the plumbing stopped. It’s how we grieve. We gather together and remember. That’s all I’m doing here.

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“I was drunk the night I stuck a fishing lure in my stepfather’s forehead,” is how I started the fishing lure story in grad school. But grad school was a long time ago, and I’ve forgotten how that essay ended. I don’t even know where it is anymore. You get a new computer, then a new computer after that. Some files are bound to get lost in the process. Names, addresses, phone numbers. Maybe that’s why the last few years I only called my stepfather every once in a while. Or maybe it’s because he seemed a little weaker each time I called, and I wanted to remember him how he really was.

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On the morning my stepfather is diagnosed with terminal cancer I’ll think of the fishing lure story. I’ll still be thinking about it when I arrive the next day to find him gone. The hospital bed empty in the living room. The pill bottles swept away. I don’t yet know how many times I’ll tell the fishing lure story over the next few days. How many chances I’ll get to relive it once again: how my stepfather handed me a beer like we were old friends, not two men trying to learn how to live with one another; the way the sun set over the water, as if the world could be beautiful if we would just let it; my stepfather smiling, still alive, not a worry in the world eating at his insides.

My mother and stepfather at their wedding, 1980.