rolled halfway to his knees, and I could see he was barefoot. His shoes, however, were up in the bow of the boat out of the inch or so of water sloshing around in the bottom. Lives up here, I thought. Probably makes a little whisky and traps some during the winter. His hands were shaking badly and he was spilling some of the gasoline.
“How’s fishing?” I asked.
“All right.” He screwed the cap back on the gasoline can and set it up forward by his shoes. Then I noticed the tow sack in the bottom, under the seat, and wondered if it didn’t have whisky jars in it until I saw the dorsal fin of a catfish sticking through.
“Taking them down to the highway?” I asked. I knew the restaurant at the foot of the lake specialized in fried catfish and that they bought the fish from the swamp rats who lived up here in the sloughs.
He nodded.
“Here,” I said, glad to find somebody who could use the ones I had. “Take these along. I’ve got more than I can eat and they won’t stay alive until I go home.”
He glanced up briefly and shook his head. “Don’t need ‘em.” Then, as an afterthought, “Got all he’ll take. Thanks.”
I shrugged. “O.K.”
He was ready to go and was about to crank the motor when he paused. “Pretty far up the lake, ain’t you?”
“Yes,” I said. “Why?”
“Nothing. It’s easy to get lost up here, though.” The motor caught and he was gone.
I kept thinking about him as I cleaned the catfish for breakfast. His face was familiar somehow. I thought, but I knew I’d never seen him before around here. And there was something else I couldn’t get out of my mind. He looked like a swamp rat and dressed like one, but the speech didn’t ring true. He used the right words but he said them differently, the way they would sound if you were reading dialect out of a book.
I wondered how far up he lived, then suddenly remembered the odd way I had first noticed the sound of the boat. He must have just started it when I heard it, which meant he hadn’t come from much farther away than around the next bend, possibly half a mile.
Three
I probably would never have gone up to the cabin if it hadn’t been for the accident.
It was one of those stupid things that seem to happen only when you’re fishing alone. It was about midmorning and I was casting a white streamer fly for crappies near an old windfall at the edge of the lake along the other shore when I must have let my backcast drop too far and touch the water. At any rate, when I came forward with the rod I felt the line slap my back and then the sting of the hook.
I untangled the line from around my neck and tried to reach the fly. It was between my shoulder blades, and I could just touch it with my fingertips. Thinking it had only nicked me, I tried to shake it loose by jiggling the leader, but it stuck. I cursed myself for a clumsy fool, getting tangled up in a fly line like somebody who’d never had a rod in his hand before. After trying to dislodge it by poking at it with a small stick, I began to realize I was solidly hooked. It didn’t hurt much, but any movement of my arms irritated it, because the shirt would move and shift the hook.
I cut the leader with a knife so I wouldn’t have the fly line dangling from me, and sat there while I smoked a cigarette and thought about it. I hated the idea of starting back down the lake looking for somebody to get it out for me. On a weekday like this I’d probably have to go the full twenty miles to the highway before I met anyone. Then I thought of the man who had gone by early in the morning, but I knew that even if he went down and straight back he’d be another three or four hours at least, and might not be back until night. Suddenly I remembered again the way I had first heard his boat, as if he had started it up just around the bend. Maybe his cabin was nearby and there might be somebody there.
I went back to camp with the hook digging painfully into my back with every stroke of