The Testimonium by Lewis Ben Smith Read Free Book Online

headed off to bed, still feeling wide awake.
    Surprisingly, though, the excitement of the day had left both of them drained and ready for slumber. Within a half hour of climbing onto their separate cots, the two archeologists were sound asleep, and did not wake until the first rays of the sun began to illuminate the eastern sky beyond the ruins of the ancient villa.
    * * *
    Josh Parker cast his line out with an ease born of long practice, watching the lead sinker and the hook with a half-frozen shrimp on it go arcing out over the gently rippling waters of Lake Hugo before hitting the surface and sinking straight for the bottom about fifty feet from his father’s boat. He fed the line out until he felt the sinker hit the bottom, then flipped the bar of his reel over and turned the crank until he felt the line tighten. His dad already had two rods cast out by the time he got his own fully set—but then, Ben Parker had been fishing for about thirty years longer than his son. Josh kept one finger on the line, feeling the drift of the boat slowly pull the sinker across the clay and rock twenty feet below them. Before long, the channel catfish that loved this big, muddy lake in southeastern Oklahoma would smell the shrimp being dragged through their watery home and come out to investigate. He hoped.
    “Well, Dad, that was a real stem-winder you preached yesterday,” he said.
    “And how many times have you heard me go on about that passage?” his dad asked with a smile.
    “Oh, just a few,” Josh said. “But it’s an important truth, and too many people forget how foundational it is to our faith. That message drives it home in a way that few of them will forget anytime soon.”
    “You must need help paying off your student loan or something,” his father said with a laugh. “You normally are picking my sermons apart, verse by verse and illustration by illustration!”
    “I’m doing fine, Dad,” said Josh. “I guess it’s just that—well, I’ve missed you. It was good to listen to you preach again.” His voice caught a bit—he was incredibly fond of his dad, but it was hard for him to express it in words sometimes.
    “It is good to have you home again, son,” his father said. “Now, did you hear the one about the small-town preacher who looked just like Conway Twitty?” His father was about halfway through the joke—which Josh had heard before, but he would never admit it because he loved his dad’s lively comic nature—when he felt a tug on the line. Two light taps at first, then a hard jerk as the hungry fish grabbed the shrimp and ran with it. He jerked back on the rod hard and clean, and felt the hook set. Then it was off to the races. The panicked fish lunged and swam as Josh slowly reeled him toward the top. His rod bent nearly double as the fish tried to return to the deep water, but each time it gave up as he kept a steady pressure on the line, taking up a few feet of slack every time the fish changed direction.
    “Stay with him, bud!” his father shouted, reaching for the dip net. After a struggle of nearly ten minutes, Josh caught his first glimpse of his aquatic quarry—a flash of white belly reflecting the morning sun as the fish rolled in about four feet of water and dove for the bottom again. It was a big one, all right. He played it a moment or two longer, then his quarry ran for the surface and breached the ripples, scattering spray in all directions. No channel cat was this! It had the unmistakable color and high dorsal fin of a blue catfish, or a “high fin blue” as the local anglers called them. He let it run one more time, and then began cranking the reel to bring it to the surface. Ben Parker held the dip net ready. But the wily fish was not out of tricks yet—it shot straight out of the water, spinning in midair, and as it dove again, snapped the fifteen-pound test line it had wrapped around its body. A single flash of its white belly, and it was off to the depths to digest its