When he was 32 years old John Lennon said that if he had it to do all over again, he’d rather have been a fisherman. At 26, Lewie Faustino would like to have been John Lennon. He tried to get in touch with Paul McCartney once, the last time the tour came to Chicago; he wasn’t shy, he didn’t get discouraged, but it didn’t work out. He’s had some luck as a fisherman, though. In his lifelong quest for the big bass at Gravel Lake, the one that’s older than the boats bobbing above the waterline, the bass as big as a shoe box, the one that never nibbles, Lewie has a partner. Mr. Black.
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Mr. Black runs a bait shop out of a two-room shed next to his house, a neat cottage on the corner where the dirt road meets the gravel road. It’s across the road from Gravel Lake, which is in Porter township, near the village of Decatur, in Michigan. Mr. Black has been living by the lake for 21 years. He’s 83 years old, and he’s Lewie’s best friend. Lewie has known Mr. Black for most of his life. Mr. Black was a friend of his grandfather’s before him, years of walking down the road and talking over the crickets in the night, yells echoing across the frozen lake in winter, pinochle, bait talk, and cold morning dips when the ice melted. Lewie’s grandfather was a natural builder, he’d transform a couple of slabs of driftwood into a bedroom chest in a single night without thought, without plans, almost, seemingly, without work. Mr. Black used to labor over the wooden shanty he built annually for ice fishing, and that increased the admiration he had for Peter Barr, how easily he constructed his surroundings, his chairs, his cabinets, the two floors of additions to what was once a small cottage. Mr. Black was not envious, he’d also found a natural calling, and he found it late in life. At a time when most men reluctantly begin to search for a hobby, he had found an avocation, something he could touch through his heart and feel with his fingers.
He’d fished all his life, of course, when he could find the time. He grew up near the banks of the Muskegon River, where childhood demanded that he find a stick and some line and cast it in the water. Orphaned at five, his mother dead and father disappeared into some wilderness (still plenty of wilderness in the U.S. in 1913, even in the cities), he was raised by his aunt and uncle. In his 20s he was a housepainter. Later he worked at Inland Steel and helped organize the union there; in the process he met John Kennedy and Nelson Rockefeller and admired both. “They never took a dime. Sure, they didn’t have to.” All other politicians he has no use for. Calling someone a “politician” is the worst epithet he can apply, worse even than “asshole.” There’s a few of both around, and sometimes they cross over; in the union he met some of each, but mostly there were good people about, and through the union he had helped to set up the benefits program that enabled him to get the bait shop. He knew the area, knew Gravel Lake. When his pension came he bought the property.
Lewie’s mostly estranged from the family. They’re a nice, well-groomed family of blue-collar origin and upper-middle-class aspirations. Each generation has bettered itself. At the turn of the century his mother’s family bounced from one place to the next, living in borrowed garage apartments. His parents were born in the Depression and both grew up in the same neighborhood, at 55th and Normal, not quite in the middle of the road. His father is a supermarket manager and has worked 12 hours a day, seven days a week, for most of his life. His mother is generally acknowledged as the mom everyone wants to have had, understanding, fun, forgiving, better than a saint. Five brothers and sisters are all solid, living lives of quiet achievement, and they view Lewie’s struggles–with life, with his father, and with them–with detachment and some amusement. He’d almost be the family joke if there weren’t so much sadness about his separation.
Both men believe that Lewie will get the big bass that lives in Gravel Lake. They say its home is in the deep hole at the cove on the eastern end, or maybe under the reeds slightly off the center. It’s two or three feet long, 25 to 30 pounds, big as a pike, it’s 40 years old. It’s avoided speedboats, water-skiers, kids with spear guns, weekend fishermen with nets and thousands of dollars worth of equipment, and all the other fishermen who believe they’ve spotted it off and on over the years. It’s avoided Mr. Black and many of his friends who have long since passed on. They say you can’t catch it unawares, neither in winter with the one living night crawler that would make its last meal, nor in spring when two dozen lines dangle in the water offering it a smorgasbord of worms and minnows. Lewie will catch it when it’s ready for him to catch it, and when he gets it he’s going to take it right over to Mr. Black’s house, across the dirt road from the lake. Mr. Black will clean it, stick it in the pan, and this time the two of them will eat it together, with butter and a Pepsi.
