The Bass Wore Scales (14 page)

“
You do.”

“
Who’s going to fire the one-legged organist?”

“
Bev is,” said Gaylen, with another smile.

“
Well, I’ll certainly mull it over,” I said, getting to my feet. “You’ve given me a lot to think about.”

“
I’ll be here on Sunday,” Gaylen said. “Tony will be celebrating, but I’ll be helping out. The Sunday after that, it’ll just be me. I hope you’ll be back by then. Also, if you put copies of your detective stories in the choir folders, I expect one in my Prayerbook as well.”

She stood and shook my hand. “It’s been a real pleasure talking to you, Hayden.”

* * *

“
So, what do you think?” asked Meg. “C’mon. What do you think?”

“
I think she’s very clever,” I said. “
Very
clever. Almost
too
clever.”

“
But you like her, right?”

“
Yeah, I like her.”

“
So, you’ll come back? I wouldn’t ask you if I didn’t think you’d enjoy yourself. And you just haven’t been happy since you quit.”

“
I know,” I said. “I do miss playing. I’ll tell you what. I’ll come back for a while, and we’ll see how it goes.”

* * *

I picked Moosey up at five-thirty in the morning. The sky was beginning to lighten, but the sun hadn’t yet made its appearance. As I drove up to the McCollough trailer, my headlights swept across the porch and illuminated Moosey, sitting cross-legged, chewing happily on a candy bar, the coffee can full of worms next to him. I pulled up, and Moosey was into the truck before I had a chance to come to a full stop.

“
Did you tell your Mom we were leaving?”

“
She saw you through the window,” Moosey said, pointing toward the living room. I looked over, but the curtains were drawn.”

“
You sure?”

“
Yeah. She saw you drive up. Then she waved goodbye and everything.”

I nodded. “Okay then. We’ll be back by eight anyway.”

We drove to the lake, carried our tackle down to Pete’s boat, arranged ourselves and pushed off into the quiet water. It was one of those mornings that was dead still. I heard a few birds in the distance, but other than the sound of the oars in the water, the lake was as silent as the grave. The breeze that had welcomed us the first morning was nowhere to be found, and the fog rested on the surface of the lake like one of Ardine’s quilts, making it tough to see the opposite shore even though it was a scant fifty yards away.

“
You think we’ll catch one today?” said Moosey. “I’ve never caught no fish before.”

“
Well, I hope so,” I said. “Here, stick a worm on the end of that hook.”

One thing I’ll say for Moosey—he’s never been squeamish when it comes to worms. We baited our hooks, clipped on the bobbers and dropped our lines into the water. True anglers worried about casting close to the weeds, which lures would be most likely to work on any given day and making the plastic frog jump to look like something a fish would actually like to eat—but for me, fishing was mostly about dropping a worm in the lake and enjoying the morning. If some fish was stupid enough to eat it and get caught, that was his own dumb fault. I couldn’t be blamed.

We’d sat there in silence for about thirty minutes, relaxing and switching worms when they either stopped wiggling, managed to escape, or were nibbled off our hooks by some smart fish. Then Moosey got a bite. And what a bite it was.

There was a big splash and a yell, and Moosey’s pole bent almost double, the spinner having been locked to prevent a snarl. I was expecting that we might catch a brim or a blue-gill or, at the very most, a small bass, and locking the reel wouldn’t have posed any problem. But what Moosey had was a monster.

“
WhatdoIdoWhatdoIdo?” hollered Moosey, standing in the boat and hanging on to the fishing rod for dear life. I put my own rod down and stood behind him, putting my hands over his, helping him to hang on. The rod was bending at about a ninety- degree angle. I unlocked the spinner and the line sailed off the reel as the fish made a dash toward the middle of the lake.

“
Wow!” I said. “Did you see him?”

“
Just for a second,” said Moosey excitedly. “When he came up for the worm.”

“
What did he look like?”

“
He was darkish green and white! With some spikey fins on his back!”

“
Not black? Like a catfish?”

“
He ain’t no catfish,” Moosey declared. “I’ll bet he’s a big ol’ bass.”

I had to agree. I’d caught catfish in this little lake before, and I’d never seen a catfish take off like this fellow.

“
Okay,” I said. “Let’s see if we can land him.”

We began the traditional fisherman’s dance, first pulling back on the pole, drawing the fish back toward the boat, then reeling in the excess line. We’d done this three times and were feeling pretty good about ourselves when the line went slack.

“
He’s heading back. Reel him in! Quick now!” I said.

Moosey reeled frantically and the spinner whirred, but just as almost all the line had been recovered, the fish changed direction again, bent the pole at another right angle and with a sickening ‘pop,’ the fishing line snapped.

“
Aw, man!” said Moosey, disappointment clouding his face. “The line busted.”

“
Wow,” I said. “That was a big one.”

“
He was as big as my arm,” said Moosey, holding up his arm to show me.

“
I don’t know if he was that big,” I said. “But I’ll tell you what. We’re going to get him before the summer’s out.”

“
All right!” yelped Moosey. “Wait till I tell the guys.”

“
Nope,” I said. “You can’t tell anyone.”

“
Why not?”

“
Because that’s
your
fish, Moosey. If you tell anyone, pretty soon everybody will be down here trying to catch him. And we don’t want that.”

Moosey nodded thoughtfully. “I won’t tell.”

“
That’s good. ‘Cause we’re going to catch that rascal,” I said with a smile. I was smiling because that fish snapped my twenty-five-pound-test fishing line like it was a piece of thread. If it
was
a bass, and I was pretty sure it was, he was one for the record books.

* * *

“
How was the fishing?” asked Pete when I walked into the Slab.

“
Well, we didn’t catch anything,” I said, truthfully.

“
Get any bites?”

“
Umm. Nope. Not a one.”

“
You’re lying,” said Pete with a grin. “You saw him, didn’t you?”

“
What are you talking about?”

Pete lowered his voice and leaned in close. “You saw Old Spiney. I can always tell.” He grinned again, studying my face. “Yep. You saw him all right.”

“
Come sit down with me, Pete,” I said gesturing to a booth, “and tell me all you know.”

“
I know two things,” said Pete as he slid across the red Naugahyde bench. “That fish ain’t never been caught, and he ain’t likely to be.”

“
He’s a largemouth?”

“
Oh, yeah. I’ve hooked him about a dozen times over the years, but he’s a cagey one. He’ll run for the middle, then right back at the boat. He’ll drag your line under a log, or throw it when he jumps up in the air. One time I had him look straight at me and just spit out the lure. How’d he get you?”

“
Busted the line. How big do you think he is?”

“
I wouldn’t be surprised if he was up around eighteen pounds by now. He was big when I first hooked him about eight years ago. What test were you using?”

“
Twenty-five.”

“
Did he snag it on something?”

Nope.” I said. “Snapped it straight away.”

“
Whoa,” said Pete. “Maybe he’s bigger than I thought. You know, the Fish and Wildlife guys dumped a whole bunch or troutlings in that lake last year. Probably about a thousand.”

“
I’ll bet they aren’t there anymore,” I said. “That fish probably went through those troutlings like a Sumo Wrestler at a Sushi Buffet and has graduated to eating the turtles. Moosey and I are going to get him, though.”

“
Well, good luck. If you get him, bring him on up here. We’ll have a good old-fashioned fish fry. By the way,” he said, changing the subject, “did you hear about Wormy? He’s going to open a cemetery on Kenny’s Frazier’s old farm. Noylene was telling me about it.”

“
We need a cemetery?”

“
Well, if you don’t already have a plot at Mountainview, you’re not likely to get one. It’s full up, and they’re not selling anymore.”

“
Well, it sure is pretty at the Old Frazier place,” I said. “And he has about fifty acres, doesn’t he?”

“
That’s about right,” said Pete. “Wormy’s going to demolish the house and the two barns. The house was a tear-down anyway.”

“
Has he sold any plots?” I asked.

“
I don’t think so, but he’s going to start this next week. Planting begins in the fall.”

I laughed. “Does this enterprise have a name yet?”

“
Woodrow DuPont’s Bellefontaine Cemetery.”

“
That’s quite a beautiful and elegant appellation,” I said in my best snooty accent, raising my cup of coffee in a mock-toast. “I shall look forward to being interred there, should the need arise.”

“
Well, ‘Bellefontaine Cemetery’ is the official name,” said Pete. “But I’m calling it
Wormy Acres.”

Chapter 8

“
How’s the story coming?” Meg asked. “Any bad sentences I can steal?”

“
Nope. And I have to get serious about this detective story, now that I’m going to have a choir again.”

Meg put her arms around me, bent down over my shoulder and put her face close to mine. “Listen,” she said, blowing softly into my ear. “Do you think I might be allowed to use your magic typewriter sometime when you’re not busy?”

My fingers hit seven keys at once. “Uh…I guess so.”

“
Really?” she whispered. “You wouldn’t mind?”

“
Yes…I mean no…I mean…umm…whatever you want.”

“
Thanks. And don’t be too long. Supper’s almost ready.” Her fingers trailed through my hair as she walked out of the den.

“
Hey, wait a minute,” I called after her. “I was momentarily addled. What did I just agree to?”

The only answer was lilting laughter.