| "Vintage Reading® Stories Heard Over the Back Fence"
What To Do About Uncle Will
Adapted from an 1899 Short Story
By Rita and Victor Buday
DECEMBER 2007 ::: © 2007 Buday Books / Vintage Reading®
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"Lying is lying, whether it's about
fishing or anything else!" remarked the Deacon. "Will can't be
Saved or freed from sin until he stops lying--that's all there is
to it!--no sir! Will Matison's got to give up his fish-lying, or
he won't ever get into The Kingdom."
"I guess you're right, Deacon," said Ephraim, "but
it should be some excuse for Will that he doesn't hurt anybody.
Is a lie really a sin if it's no harm to anybody? If I tell you a
bald-faced lie about a horse I'm trying to sell--it's a sin because I'm
selling you a bill of goods. But Will's lying never fools
anybody, or costs them anything. Besides, you ought to go easy on
him, seeing as how he's been lying about fish--off and on--for
near sixty years, Summer and Winter alike. I leave it to you,
Deacon--it's not easy to quit, just like that, after all his years of
practicing."
So it went as they sat on the porch in front of the grocery store, all
good members of the Church. Will was a member too, but his sin of
fish-lying cast a serious doubt in his friends' minds about his
Eternal Salvation.
~
His
only occupation, now that he was retired, was fishing off of that new steel
bridge crossing the creek above town. There he sat, day after
day, catching nothing--or at least very little. But in the
evening, among his cronies on the porch in front of the grocery, he told marvelous tales of the fish he'd come this close to landing, and of the h-u-g-e bass
he felt obliged to throw back into the creek. When Winter froze the
creek, it was too cold to stay on the porch of the grocery so
Will re-told his triumphs to his friends as they sat around the
cheery pot-bellied stove at the back of the store. He was such a
genial story-teller, they never had the heart to let on they knew he
was lying, though someone once did remark how those fish had grown in size
since Summer.
~
Trouble came calling when their preacher ran a revival; Will's
friends confronted not only their own sins, but his sin of fish-lying
as well. That's when the Deacon resolved Will must be Saved in
spite of himself. "I admit," said the Deacon, "it's not easy to
quit fish-lying after so many years of doing it, but it's got to be done! If we claim to be his friends, we have to help Save him. We know his sin; us knowing his sin without doing our best to stop it is the same as if it was our sin. I don't see why we should go to the Everlasting Fire
just because he always lies about fish he doesn't catch! He's
getting along in years, you know; no telling when he might drop
off. He's got to mend his ways--and at once!
"It's a shame," said Ephraim, "that we can't work
him off it gradually. When you think how long he's been doing it, and
how natural it comes to him, the shock of quitting--just like
that--might be too much for him; might make him sick, even kill
him. Now, if we could get him to taper off . . . catch--say--one
less fish a day, or drop off a half-inch from the size each day . . .
it'd let him down easy; be not so tough on his constitution."
"Mighty hard on Will," said Amos; "he won't know what to do in
Winter if he can't tell fishing-lies.
"It's all he's got to get him
through Winters since Amanda went to see her folks in Heaven--her
passing took the starch right out of him. But boys, it's got to be done!--it's for his own good.
One thing, though--we all know he's touchy; we can't
let on he's lying, or he's apt to storm off; never
come near us again. The way to do it is--when he lies that he
caught a big one, we'll have to--in a gentle way--make him tell the
truth, so if--."
~
The conversation stopped as Will came around the corner,
his fishing pole on one shoulder, a fish creel over the other. He was
a pale-eyed grizzled old man who'd worked hard all his life
until five years ago when Mandy died; now he looked like the
tired-out seventy-four-year-old that he was. He came on the porch with
effort, laid the pole & creel on the floor, then plopped on the
plank bench with a sigh.
"Deacon," he said, "I just caught the biggest, fearsome-est bass I ever saw; it'll go ten pounds for sure!"
Amos glanced at the Deacon with pity in his eyes; of
all Will's lies, this ten-pound bass was the lying-est.
Deacon sat beside Will to put an arm around his shoulder. "Will," he
said, "you and I've known each other over sixty years; we've been
good friends, haven't we?"
"That's so, Deacon."
"Remember how I helped you get that bank loan so you and Mandy could
rebuild, after your house was hit by lightning and burned?"
Will Matison couldn't imagine the point to all this, or where it was going, but he said "I remember, Deacon."
"Will, I'm going to ask a favor of you. Won't you say for our friendship's sake that maybe that
bass weighed only five pounds?"
The old man struggled with himself; he felt his temper rising as he started to say, "That bass--" but calmed himself enough to say that yes, maybe the bass weighed only five pounds.
The reduction strategy was working!
Deacon continued, "do you remember the night
you and Mandy were frantic because your boy Jimmy was lost in the
woods; do you remember how Amos, Hiram and I walked those
woods all night until we found him and brought him home safe?
Can you make the bass two pounds for that?"
The words came hard: "All---right---Deacon---two---pounds."
"Will, remember when your and Mandy's daughter, Mary Anne,
ran off with the traveling circus that year, and then how she stayed with Sarah and me until you
cooled down enough to take her back? For the memory of that, won't
you make it no bass at all? Won't you say you didn't catch a bass today at all--for Mary Anne?"
Will stood up; tears rolled down his cheeks.
"Deacon," he said, "I wouldn't do this for no one except you. For you and Mary Anne--I didn't catch a big bass or any fish today!"
Each man--Deacon, Amos, Ephraim,
Hiram--grasped Will's hand firmly as they walked off the porch. Hiram
whispered to the Deacon, "His redemption's started; it's the least we
can do for him."
~
Will
watched them go. He knew what they'd been up to; they knew he told
fish-lies and they were trying to save him from the Everlasting
Fire. In his younger days he'd stretched the truth about fishing
to avoid being teased for how he wasted time with nothing to show for
it. Then it sort of became a habit that stayed, even after Amanda married him fifty-five years ago.
~
He and
Mandy lived in that town since they were born;
went to school together; she'd been the very best friend he ever had, a
clear-eyed moral guide, talented business partner, always good-natured wife
& mother of their
children; married just shy of fifty
years when she passed away five years ago. Times had been changing;
town
changed--more like died.
Young people all grew up, moved away to get decent jobs, leaving the place
to old-timers like him. Hiram closed his hardware store when
people started going to the big stores down the road. Amos sold his
wagon-making business, and the Deacon was inquiring about Olds'
new gasoline-powered "auto-mo-bile" that would make traveling away from the town even easier.
Will sold his sawmill and lumber business for a good
price--plenty enough to retire, but without Mandy there was nothing
worth retiring to. So he went fishing every warm, dry day.
He improved
his fish-lying to cheer himself and his friends. In warm
weather, they all landed the big ones his imagination brought forth; on
bitter cold Winter days they all sat round the warm stove,
imagined basking in the Sun with Will on the new steel bridge over the creek
above
town--each man dropping his baited hook in the creek, waiting to jerk the
phantom line when that fearsome h-u-g-e bass took the bait. For a
while,
they forgot their aches and pains; how many of their best days were
behind them.
"Oh, I know Deacon's right when he says lying's a sin,"
Will thought as he "talked" to Amanda in his mind, "but is it really so terrible, Mandy, telling a few fish-lies to feel alive again, just for a little while?"
~
With a deep sigh, he
painfully bent to pick up the fish creel, mounted two steps into the
grocery, and put the basket on the counter near the scale.
"Zeke," he said to the man behind the
counter, "I caught the fearsome-est big bass today. Will you
weigh it for me?" Zeke took the fish from the creel, dropped it
on the tin pan of the scale. He pushed the sliding weight along
until the beam balanced.
"Sure is a big one, Will. Ten pounds, four ounces."
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