The Secret

"You may call me Mike, that's what all my friends do. You may not, however, call me Michael. Only my Mother can call me that, and that's usually when I did something wrong." The little boy precociously stated with a slight Southern drawl, standing at the front door of the bed and breakfast, greeted my brother John and I. His front teeth were still growing in, and he had a cute plaid pair of pants and a solid green shirt on. His Mom obviously had good taste dressing him.

"Mike, can you tell us if we can bring our luggage in from our car? We want to wash up before dinner," I said. "Your mom said she would be back from the store, and you were to let us in. Is that OK?"

Mike, sensing that I had really indeed talked to his Mom, opened the door wider, and turned sideways to let us in. He probably had seen an adult do that; like a doorman on Upper Manhattan, he let us in with our luggage.
I just had a single overnight bag with a pair of jeans and an extra pair of underwear. I also had brought my running shoes, just in case there was time to check out the local roads. I had been trying to train for a road race at the end of the summer for about 3 weeks already.

"John, can I have the keys? I forgot my camera case." I kept my camera case locked up most of the time, because I had an expensive Canon 5D, that I used almost daily for work. I was a photojournalist for the local papers in Atlanta. John had flown in from Southern Illinois University to Atlanta to meet me. We had rented the car because it was cheaper on gas than using my old Chevrolet Suburban to get to this small stretch of paradise. Besides, I don't think the "Beast" would have made it up those Northern Georgia "mountains." Part of my trip to this part of Georgia was for a piece I was doing for the Weekend section of the paper, "Leisurely Escapes on One Tank of Gas." This part of Georgia was known for its bed and breakfasts with the best catfish fishing in the country, so I was mixing business with pleasure.
John handed me the keys. "Kid, don't forget the snacks in the back seat. I claim the Root Beer." He grinned at me. He always did that, claimed things before I got a chance to get to them. He also always called me "Kid." I guess it grew out of our age difference. I was 23, and he was going on 30. Our mom had married early, nearly right out of high school, when she got pregnant with John. After she realized John's dad was going to be on the road nearly 364 days out of the year, she decided to divorce him. She finally met my dad, a real estate agent from Stone Mountain, Georgia.  We had always gotten along, I guess because we had such a cool mom. He had been a mentor growing up on the finer points of picking up a girl at the local hangout  and fishing the local ponds.

Our Mom was a child of the seventies. She still listened to her Shawn Cassidy records, LP of course. She also occasionally flew out to Vegas to meet her girlfriends from College for a "Girl's week out." We knew she liked to play the nickel slots, but we never realized that she was really lucky. I realized when I saw an AP article on her when I was doing my homework on the dangers of gambling for a photojournalism assignment. I had just started using the AP indexes to do research on the subject, and I came across her name, Shelly McCree. It didn't hit me for nearly two seconds that it was my Mom. There her picture was, on the cover of the local daily newspaper there in Las Vegas.  She had won nearly 3 million dollars playing the slots. Of course, she flew back home and never told us anything. We just never guessed she had won anything. We all knew she liked to get pampered at the spa there with her girlfriends, so we figured she just flew out there for that. We never asked her about the money, even after I told John. We figured we would inherit if she wanted us to have it.

John and I settled in for the night, meeting the host of the bed and breakfast, Mike's mother Susan. She was a single Mom, and she had opened up the bed and breakfast to help her pay the rent. She definitely had the Southern Charm and graces. She cooked up some fried catfish and hush puppies for dinner with a side of turnip greens that melted in the mouth. John, a huge fan of Southern cuisine, ate second helpings of everything. He had started to gain weight from the last time I had seen him. He still looked good. I think his current girlfriend would have come with him if I hadn't insisted on just him and I being together on this trip.
We hadn't talked in a while, and I think the last letter from Mom had upset him a little. She had written me about 3 months ago, telling me she had just found out she had pancreatic cancer. She had started to plan out the funeral arrangements, but she didn't want to interfere with her sons' busy lives. She finally acknowledged that she still had a "substantial" amount of money tucked away for a rainy day, so she didn't need any financial help. We hadn't talked about the 3 million dollars, only how we were going to help her live her last days on earth.  We had both made the promise to keep her secret, even though she hadn't asked us to. She probably had a charity in mind she wanted to give it to, she always was like that.
John and I hit the sack pretty early, knowing the catfish were going to be up at the crack of dawn with hungry appetites. Susan had a plate of fresh blueberry muffins and French Toast waiting on us as we came down from the upstairs.  We could see a field behind the house with a dense forest behind it. She told us there was a National Park up the road toward the forest, but the best fishing was on the way down the mountain...it was off a private lake. The name of it was John's Fish Camp.  I thought it was funny, and so did John.

"Let's get going, Kid," he said, grabbing his fishing pole and tackle box. We had tied a few spinner rigs in case there were some bass worth catching last night. I used a Carolina rig, but John preferred the Texas style. We were going to find out which one the fish preferred. I was already ready, way ahead of the game. This was the kind of photojournalism I enjoyed.