#Buck definitely had a New Moon era of care seeking. you feel?

[bidean-byedean]

fanfic friday; sad baby buck. 2.1k.

Listened to Aisle 6 by Sadie Jean and got feels about Buck being alone for the first time

When I was six, I dreamed of this In a rosier light, now it's fluorescent white Stuck in between myself and me What I'm feeling right now, I think it's lettin' her down Won't somebody tell me it's time to come back home 'Cause it's too late at night to be alone? Oh Why is nobody angry or asking, "Where'd she go?" No one's waiting for me by the phone Won't somebody tell me to come home?

Teen. pre-canon ramblings.

Five weeks. That's how long it takes for Evan to stumble, not counting that first night.

Once he'd stopped driving for long enough to actually take a breath, he panicked. Hungry. Tired. Scared. He had never really imagined doing this without someone by his side. In his head, the open road was filled with laughter, fighting over the radio, and the silence of someone sleeping beside you.

In the short time that Maddie's yes meant something, he'd already planned it out, so close he could taste it.

But Maddie wasn't there. She wouldn't even see him. What kind of goodbye was that? What kind of sister did that? The anger fuelled the first miles, racing down highways, unsteady behind the wheel of the Jeep that he'd never been allowed to drive. Now it was all he had.

That and a duffle bag that looked over-stuffed when he left but now he can't think of a single useful thing in it. After a full cycle of his clothes, Evan missed a hundred things he'd been forced to leave behind. And he still doesn't understand how to not run out of underwear alarmingly fast. And yes, he's considered giving it up entirely.

"Man, I'm telling you! Underwear is part of governmental overreach."

"I don't think Obama gives a shit if you wear briefs," Evan laughs, but Bryan looks livid.

"Of course, you don't get it, rich kid from the white suburbs. Mommy probably bought all your undies."

Evan wants to argue but he doesn't know how without stepping in some weird trap. So he bites his tongue and goes back to scrolling on his phone. Without Bryan's ranting, the TV comes into focus. Some gameshow is on, the one his parents always watch.

If he folds in on himself, Evan can almost imagine he's back home. The soft sounds of canned laughter and cha-ching! when someone wins float by as if coming from downstairs, his parents contentedly not paying attention to him. The blessing and curse that plagued his existence in that house.

"I know a guy who got the clap from not wearing underwear to the gym."

Both of their heads snap toward the new voice. It belongs to a girl Evan's noticed around; she has big sun-kissed curls and her face is covered in freckles. Other than the fact she's hot, Evan wonders what an Australian could possibly find interesting about North Carolina. Coming from a landlocked state, Evan thinks the concept of a coastline is pretty cool, but he imagines that the muddy, estuary-riddled beaches here don't live up to her home.

"That's disgusting," Bryan says as if this whole conversation isn't gross. "Commercial gyms are exploitative anyway."

She shrugs. "You know what they say, if you're gonna get fucked, wear protection. Same thing here."

Evan snorts and she winks at him, which Bryan really doesn't like. Something about alpha males and privileged fuckboys, and who cares because she's got a smile that makes him forget about the hollow feeling in his chest.

About four pints, half a hip flask, three sticky cocktails, and an indeterminate number of shots later, Evan finds himself stuffed into her bunk bed. Thankfully, it's the bottom, so he doesn't have to risk smashing his head open for a lay. She's under him making tiny noises like a kitten mewling, which is more distracting than he anticipated.

He has no idea if there is someone above them but he does his best not to rock the bed too much, fucking into her tightly, her arms around his shoulders. Every time he closes his eyes the world spins and his stomach churns, so he stares at the light on someone's charger, the little green light his anchor as he tries to finish. But every time he thinks he's getting there, his attention slips and he has to start again.

"Hey, can we just sleep?" She asks with a hand on his sweaty chest.

"Oh, yeah, sure."

Surprisingly, she pulls him into her back, his arm draped over her waist. It's nice. He listens to the snoring, the tapping of fingers on phones, the laughter coming up from the street, and holds onto her tighter. Against her warm body, he falls asleep faster than he has in weeks.

The next night, he picks up a bar shift, desperate for cash to put more distance between him and Pennsylvania. In five weeks, he hasn't got nearly as far as he wants.

His venture up into Maine ate up a lot of his momentum before he realised he was just backing himself into a corner, literally, and then he came back down the coast. Enjoying the scenic drive but not stopping for much, even New York. Margaret and Phillip Buckley enjoyed the city, they took Maddie all the time when she was still at home, but Evan only got a few trips before they decided he wasn't worth the effort. So when the sign for NYC comes up, he speeds past it with his jaw tight.

Leaning across his bar is a familiar head of curls and he grins up at her.

"What brings a nice girl like you to a place like this?"

She scrunches her nose and laughs at him. "Cheese on cheese, mate. Vodka soda, please."

Maybe he gives her a few drinks on the house, each with a wink and his best pretty-boy smile, which is fun as long as his manager doesn't clock on. But as the night wears on, the gaps between her drinks become longer and longer, until it's been hours since he caught sight of her. The disappointment is weird. They're strangers, just a drunken fumble between them, but he likes her freckles and her big vowels and the fact she's seen so much of the world he hasn't.

When he clocks out, the manager shoves an envelope of cash in his hand, he goes to the hostel, packs up his shit, and drives south until he stops crying.

Somewhere around sunrise, he pulls into a gas station. He eats an energy bar he can't taste and uses a bathroom that will haunt his nightmares. And calls Maddie. It's not the first or fiftieth time, he's stopped counting. But he keeps calling. It used to ring out.

"The number you have dialled is no longer in service. Please try another."

There is no other number. This is the one in his phone under Mads. It even has a picture of her, an unflattering picture that he screenshotted from the background of some other shot, but it's still her. He's got the scar on his forearm from where she tried to grab his phone from him, screaming at him to delete it.

Okay, they fought a lot. He annoyed her, mostly on purpose and sometimes just by virtue of being her little brother, but they loved each other. There's a reason he begged her to come with him. If she turned up today, he'd forgive her in a second, ready for the real adventure to begin. But all he gets is automated messages and silence.

There's a lot of silence in Evan's life now. Not real silence, of course, he sleeps in dorms that resemble barracks and works in bars and clubs loud enough to leave his head ringing and the Jeep is loud, especially on the wide, endless freeways. But sometimes he finds himself going days without talking to anyone apart from niceties and it leaves him feeling something sickly.

A few of his friends followed up on him when he left, seeming genuinely interested in his great escape. But they have lives, college and actual jobs that take up their time, so the conversations become more and more sporadic.

Honestly, he can't remember the last time someone asked him how he was or where he was.

Did anyone know? Did anyone give a shit?

For a while, he posted on Instagram pretty regularly, updating everyone on his life. But then his aunt commented on something and he got spooked - it wasn't really running away if your parents could spy on your every move - so he stopped. That made things lonelier. He scrolls through everyone else's lives and feels sick when he sees everyone living. His friends grab drinks together at a bar he doesn't know, the girl he liked from his humanities class has a new boyfriend, someone from his high school is in Italy…

He should be in Italy, but he's not. He's in the middle of nowhere on the border of Georgia and Florida, nothing but pine trees and potholes. And no one fucking cares.

No one cares when he has beer for dinner. No one cares when he doesn't come home until the morning. No one cares when he doesn't show up to a shift or skips out on the rest of his dorm booking. No one cares when he keeps driving deep into the night. No one cares what he does or where he is or anything.

And this is how Evan Buckley ends up having a panic attack sitting on the ground at 6:23am.

Because truthfully, he knows that it’s not that no one cares, it's that certain people don't. It's that deep down, he knows the reason Maddie isn't picking up his calls is the same she never let him visit her in Boston and why she gave him the Jeep but couldn't give him her. The guilt is almost too much so it’s easier to be angry at her. It's that the only people who should be blowing up his phone aren't.

Growing up, Evan had limits. Sometimes it felt like he was livestock, surrounded by an electric fence but not quite understanding where the lines were or what the punishment would be. His parents were distant until they weren't. They didn't want him around but he still had a curfew, still couldn't just disappear with his friends for hours on end, eventually the Buckleys would recall him like a farm dog to be locked up for the night.

He gnawed at the bars for years until he figured out the lock. A grazed knee. A chipped tooth. A broken arm. A broken leg. A broken arm and leg. Concussion. Letting the backdoor slam when he snuck in at 2am. Joining the football team; bruised ribs, black eyes, torn ligaments. If he slammed his head against the bars hard enough, someone would let him lie on their lap until he stopped bleeding.

There was no softness for his pain now.

All the bars he should never have been in, too late, too sketchy even for locals, all the alleys he took as shortcuts, all the sofas he crashed on too drunk to keep his eyes open. There were so many pretty words and ready mouths and greedy hands, and Evan fell into all of them. Disregarding the fact that any hurts he collected now were not going to be met with a loving hand, there was no one waiting to pick him up again.

He heaves for breath against the hot metal of the Jeep, his heart too big for his chest or his throat too small for air, or something. Evan has had a panic attack before, many. The world falling away from under his feet, everything too close and too far away, his spiralling thoughts pulling him under like a rip tide. Every wave breaks over his head before he can take a breath, his mouth full of water and salt and regret.

Would his parents ever call?

Would they ever care?

Did he make a mistake?

Is he the mistake?

Can he ever make up for being him?

How far does he need to go before he feels something new?

Is it all a delusion?

Should he turn back?

Would he be allowed?

It's so fucking stupid. All he's ever wanted is to be free, to put as much distance between him and that house, and now he's here, he hates it.

There he said it.

He hates the wandering. The aimlessness. The constantly being new and on the back foot. Evan likes people, he's good with people but for the past few weeks, it feels like everyone is in on a joke that he just doesn't get. Maybe it's him. Maybe everyone knows that deep down he wants his mom to call and ask him if he's coming home.

Suddenly, he thinks of Maddie. The Maddie who always told him there was a world out there waiting for him. The Maddie who said yes to this trip The Maddie who no longer has a way to leave, even if she wanted to. The Maddie his parents didn’t show up for. The Maddie they let drift away from them until she was lost in the fog of Doug. The Maddie who still did her best to show up for him.

Maybe she can't be here, maybe she can't tell him she's worried, but maybe she's still waiting for him to tell her he's okay somehow. He made it out. For the both of them.

Eventually, he can breathe again.

Eventually, he can drive again.

"Welcome to Jacksonville! Where are you joining us from?"

"Hershey."

"Like the chocolate?"

Evan looks at the desk guy blankly and then back at the stack of postcards on the rack. They're kinda silly, very kitschy; beaches, high rises, oranges, all the stereotypes. Maddie would love them.

"Dime a card. We're trying to get rid of them."

"Can I borrow a pen?"

[sokalenko]

What I Wish My Father Had Taught Me About Fishing

Forty-odd years ago, while aboard a fishing boat with my father on Long Island Sound, I felt a pull on my line like none I’d ever felt before. And then another. And another still. The wild world had hit my line with all its abundance. I reeled hard and with a crazy swing I swept my multi-hooked rig loaded with five big mackerel in a wide arc over the rail until the whole bloody mess landed with a chaotic thud. I had no care about what I would do with all these fish that I had killed in one haul. Whether I would eat them or bury them in the garden or feed them to my mother’s cat. What mattered was that I had caught them and they were all mine. Except for one, which had gone missing.

“Wait,” I said kneeling down and searching the deck. “Where’s the fifth mackerel?”

“It’s right here,” my father replied from a crouching position he’d assumed in vain to avoid the bombardier-mackerel in my wild swing. “It’s here in my back.”

I followed my line to its end and saw that the fifth mackerel, along with a large silver lure, was indeed impaled in my father’s shoulder. He’d ducked, but I’d nailed him all the same.

“Sorry, Dad.”

“Just tell the mate to come over and take the hook out.”

This Father’s Day I find myself thinking of this scene because it pretty much sums up the haphazard way dads taught their kids to fish back when the natural world seemed rich, no matter how poor it was fast becoming. In my case it was my parents’ divorce that started the process. My father was a hard-working doctor of the late Mad Men era who logged long hours away from home. Many of the details of how to keep children productively occupied were alien to him. When he suddenly found himself with court-allotted divorced dad weekends on his hands and hours of child time to fill, he fell upon fishing like a thirsty man on an oasis. And in his little red Dodge Omni we would range the coast of Long Island, his one-piece surfcasting pole lashed to the luggage rack like a knight errant’s lance.

During these times I learned from him the basics: how to cast that mighty fishing rod of his, tie a lure to a line, jam a hook down the gullet of a sandworm. But learning to fish is not so much about one person teaching another a set of skills. Rather, it is the directing of a child to observe the ways in which nature works.

After each divorced dad weekend, when I returned to my more permanent home with my single mom in her little Connecticut rental cottage, I would seek out fish-filled water at every opportunity. Like some kind of latter-day Huck Finn, I’d hop fences to trespass on various backwoods estates and to follow rivers as they braided and splayed out on their way to the sea. I came to understand how trout take cover in the slack water behind boulders, saving their energy for the critical moment of the hunt. At the seaside, I learned that the first blooming of forsythia in springtime signaled the right temperature for winter flounder to rouse themselves from the mud. Standing chest deep in summer surf, I figured out that a brighter Moon hid the fish-spooking effects of the luminescent plankton bouncing against my line. And in the fall, I mimicked nature; tempting striped bass with the eels they naturally encountered on their migration from saltwater to fresh. Eventually, I acquired my own boat and began feeling my way around Long Island Sound’s shores alone, coming to understand the bottom topography and the flow of species in and out of that great embayment.

This was how I came to learn the scientific method. I formulated a hypothesis about a fish and its hunting behavior. I tested out my hypothesis with an experiment—a choice of anchorage, a retrieve speed for my lure, the calculation of a given depth. I then published my results in the form of fillets for the freezer. No small wonder that E. O. Wilson, Carl Safina, and many of the world’s greatest naturalists have told me of similar experiences. Through fishing, a child learns the way the world works, fish-by-fish. A more serious study of biology and ecology are natural next steps. And I can thank my father from the bottom of my heart for setting me on a course that led to a global study of fish and fisheries that is now the center of my career.

There was, however, one serious flaw in my fishing methods, something I could have discussed with my father, a psychiatrist by profession, had I thought to ask. It is, in a word, denial: the pernicious tendency of men and women (and boys and girls) to downplay or dismiss the effect “sport fishing” might have upon the greater world.

For in the modern era, when boys and girls go fishing they are not Huck Finn on a raft dipping a knotty string and a rusty hook into the water in hopes of a random bite. Today, even the smallest child can fish with technology the likes of which Huck Finn could only dream: fluorocarbon fishing lines made of polymers that render the line invisible to even the keenest of fish eyes, graphite rods capable of whipping a lure farther than rods of previous generations, sonar that plumbs every cranny of the seafloor for fishy habitat.

That I did real damage with all this newly emergent angling technology is undeniable. I can remember an evening in Martha’s Vineyard when my father dropped me off at a beach where the weakfish were so thick I could hear them rumbling, making croaking noises with their swim bladders. By the end of the night I had beached six fish—lilac and yellow on capture, dull and gray upon death. We ate, maybe, one. The rest I sold to a fishmonger for five bucks. This spectacular run of weakfish occurred for three years. Then it stopped. The same fishmonger who’d paid me a pittance for my catch later told me that weakfish had been spotted off western Africa and that clearly they had migrated to the other side of the Atlantic. No such thing had occurred. Weakfish don’t cross oceans—my fellow fishermen and I had brought about a local extirpation.

This would also happen to the mackerel in Long Island Sound. Catching one at a time rarely happens in those waters now, let alone five. And when the forsythia bloom in April, very few flounder come out of the mud. They’re so scarce in Long Island waters that scientists at Stony Brook University have found evidence of inbreeding—flounders are clinging to existence by breeding with their cousins. And lest the sport fishermen blame fish declines on rampages of the commercial sector, they need only look at the numbers. Today, the sport take of striped bass, arguably the most popular recreational fishing quarry in the United States, is more than double the commercial take, a situation that seriously imperils the fish’s future survival.

This weighs heavily on me as Father’s Day comes around and I debate whether or not to teach my own son how to fish. What I learned about nature from killing fish was profound and immeasurable. But there is not enough slack left in the world for such behavior. No room for figuring things out at the expense of other lives. And so anyone contemplating bringing another angler into the world must, by definition, consider the state of the world beyond the tip of the child’s pole.

The child you teach to fish must come to the pastime knowing the consequences of killing. The unknowing child may want to kill, for example, a really big fish, a so-called “trophy.” But trophy fish are the most reproductively important fish and, in spite of every instinct screaming to the contrary, more often than not, the big ones need to get away. Indeed, some progressive states have responded to this very sound scientific principle and established “slot limits” for fish that are big enough to have bred once, but not so big that they are critical to the endurance of the species.

Once again, letting a big fish go is a practice that must be taught and not simply learned. And it goes strongly against instinct. Yet, even if adopted, catch and release itself can cause problems. Holding a fish up for a trophy photo before it is released could have consequences we’re unaware of, but we do know something as simple as touching a fish’s skin while letting it go abrades its disease-resisting mucous making it prone to infection. These and other factors contribute to the truly shocking fact that, depending on the species and fishing gear employed, as many as one-third of all fish caught and released on traditional fishing tackle may die and not live to “fight another day” as many fishermen implausibly claimed in my youth. Yes, there are new technologies that mitigate death. There are now barbless hooks as well as “circle hooks” that lodge in a fish’s jaw rather than its gut. Both greatly improve a fish’s chances of survival. And there are “descending devices” that help return deep water fish to the correct depth thus reversing potentially fatal barotrauma that distends a fish’s organs when it is hauled up from great depth.

But even with proper release techniques, slot limits, circle hooks, and descending devices, we will still need to change our behavior by limiting what the commercial fishing sector calls “fishing effort.” In fishing, like in life, there are good days and there are bad days. And because of the increasing number of bad days in the present era, fishermen tend to keep on fishing if they happen upon a run of good luck. Even those who practice catch-and-release angling are guilty of this habit. “If I’m not killing anything,” they reason, “why should I stop?” But as the marine conservationist Carl Safina wrote me recently, “Fish are not made to have hooks in their mouths. So if we hurt these animals, we need to have a better reason than ‘just because.’” To catch something from the wild and use it for our food is, to my mind, justifiable. To torture it for amusement is not.

So perhaps it’s time to rethink fishing. No one says that a fishing trip need only be about fishing; there are other things to learn while bobbing in a boat with your kids. We can teach our children to learn the lexicon of seabirds that still plunge into the ocean’s depths, or wonder at the whales and dolphins and seals that are much more common off American shores now than when I was a child—thanks to laws that prevent their destruction. Quiet observation is a good skill to learn. And, if all else fails to amuse them, a fishing trip could wrap up after the evening’s meal has been procured. In the end, it might be better to kill and go home rather than endlessly catch and release.