Trout Fishing in America (22 page)

“I don't know about that,” I said.

“What are you down here for?” he said.

“I just came down here to chuck a piece of wood in the fire,” I said. I reached over and picked up a large pine knot and put it in the fire under a vat.

“Just like old times,” he said.

The foreman came out of his office and joined us. He looked kind of tired.

“Hi, Edgar,” I said.

“Hello,” he said. “How are you? Good morning, Fred.”

“Good morning, boss.”

“What brings you down here?” Edgar said.

“Fred wants to show me something.”

“What's that, Fred?” Edgar said.

“It's a private thing, boss.”

“Oh. Well, show away, then.”

“Will do, boss.”

“It's always good to see you down here,” Edgar said to me.

“You look kind of tired,” I said.

“Yeah, I stayed up late last night.”

“Well, get some sleep tonight,” I said.

“That's what I'm planning on. As soon as I get off work I'm going straight home to bed. Don't even think I'll eat any dinner, just grab a snack.”

“Sleep's good for you,” Fred said.

“I guess I'd better get back to the office,” Edgar said. “I've got some paper work to do. See you later.”

“Yeah, good-bye, Edgar.”

The foreman went back to his office, and I went with Fred to the plank press. That's where we make watermelon planks. Today they were making golden planks.

Fred is the straw boss and the rest of his crew was already there, turning out planks.

“Good morning,” the crew said.

“Good morning,” Fred said. “Let's stop this thing here for a minute.”

One of the crew turned off the switch and Fred had me come over very close and get down on my hands and knees and crawl under the press until we came to a very dark place and then he lit a match and showed me a bat hanging upside down from a housing.

“What do you think of that?” Fred said.

“Yeah,” I said, staring at the bat.

“I found him there a couple of days ago. Doesn't that beat everything?” he said.

“It's got a head start,” I said.

A
FTER HAVING ADMIRED
Fred's bat and crawled out from underneath the plank press, I told him that I had to go up to my shack and do some work: plant some flowers and things.

“Are you going to have lunch at i
DEATH
?” he said.

“No, I think I'll just have a snack downtown at the cafe later on. Why don't you join me, Fred?”

“OK,” he said. “I think they're serving frankfurters and sauerkraut today.”

“That was yesterday,” one of his crew volunteered.

“You're right,” Fred said. “Today's meat loaf. How does that sound?”

“All right,” I said. “I'll see you for lunch, then. About twelve.”

I left Fred supervising the plank press with big golden planks of watermelon sugar coming down the chain. The Watermelon Works was bubbling and drying away, sweet and gentle in the warm gray sun.

And Ed and Mike were chasing after birds. Mike was running a robin off.

O
N MY WAY
to the shack, I decided to go down to the river where they were putting in a new tomb and look at the trout that always gather out of a great curiosity when the tombs are put in.

I passed through the town. It was kind of quiet with just a few people on the streets. I saw Doc Edwards going somewhere carrying his bag, and I waved at him.

He waved back and made a motion to show that he was on a very important errand. Somebody was probably sick in the town. I waved him on.

There were a couple of old people sitting in rocking chairs on the front porch of the hotel. One of them was rocking and the other one was asleep. The one that was asleep had a newspaper in his lap.

I could smell bread baking in the bakery and there were two horses tied up in front of the general store. I recognized one of the horses as being from i
DEATH
.

I walked out of the town and passed by some trees that were at the edge of a little watermelon patch. The trees had moss hanging from them.

A squirrel ran up into the branches of a tree. His tail was missing. I wondered what had happened to his tail. I guess he lost it someplace.

I sat down on a couch by the river. There was a statue of grass beside the couch. The blades were made from copper and had been turned to their natural color by the rain weight of years.

There were four or five guys putting in the tomb. They were the Tomb Crew. The tomb was being put into the bottom of the river. That's how we bury our dead here. Of course we used a lot less tombs when the tigers were in bloom.

But now we bury them all in glass coffins at the bottoms of rivers and put foxfire in the tombs, so they glow at night and we can appreciate what comes next.

I saw a bunch of trout gathered together to watch the tomb being put in. They were nice-looking rainbow trout. There were perhaps a hundred of them in a very small space in the river. The trout have a great curiosity about this activity, and many of them gather to watch.

The Tomb Crew had sunk the Shaft into the river and the pump was going away. They were doing the glass inlay work now. Soon the tomb would be complete and the door would be opened when it was needed and someone would go inside to stay there for the ages.

I
SAW A TROUT
that I have known for a long time watching the tomb being put in. It was The Grand Old Trout, raised as a fingerling in the trout hatchery at i
DEATH
. I knew this because he had the little i
DEATH
bell fastened to his jaw. He is many years old and weighs many pounds and moves slowly with wisdom.

The Grand Old Trout usually spends all of its time upstream by the Statue of Mirrors. I had spent many hours in the past watching this trout in the deep pool there. I guess he had been curious about this particular tomb and had come down to watch it being put in.

I wondered about this because The Grand Old Trout usually shows very little interest in watching the tombs being put in. I guess because he has seen so many before.

I remember once they were putting in a tomb just a little ways down from the Statue of Mirrors and he didn't move an inch in all the days that it took because it was such a hard tomb to put in.

The tomb collapsed just before completion. Charley came down and shook his head sadly, and the tomb had to be done all over again.

But now the trout was watching very intently this tomb being
put in. He was hovering just a few inches above the bottom and ten feet away from the Shaft.

I went down and crouched by the river. The trout were not scared at all by the closeness of my appearance. The Grand Old Trout looked over at me.

I believe he recognized me, for he stared at me for a couple of minutes, and then he turned back to watching the tomb being put in, the final inlay work being done.

I stayed there for a little while by the river and when I left to go to my shack, The Grand Old Trout turned and stared at me. He was still staring at me when I was gone from sight, I thought.

 

 

 

 

BOOK TWO: inBOIL

I
T WAS GOOD
to be back at my shack, but there was a note on the door from Margaret. I read the note and it did not please me and I threw it away, so not even time could find it.

I sat down at my table and looked out the window, down to i
DEATH
. I had a few things to do with pen and ink and did them rapidly and without mistake, and put them away written in watermelonseed ink upon these sheets of sweet smelling wood made by Bill down at the shingle factory.

Then I thought that I would plant some flowers out by the potato statue, a bunch of them in a circle around that seven-foot potato would look nice.

I went and got some seeds from the chest that I keep my things in and noticed that everything was ajar, and so before planting the seeds, I put everything back in order.

I have nine things, more or less: a child's ball (I can't remember which child), a present given me nine years ago by Fred, my essay on weather, some numbers (1-24), an extra pair of overalls, a piece of blue metal, something from the Forgotten Works, a lock of hair that needs washing.

I kept the seeds out because I was going to put them in the ground around the potato. I have a few other things that I keep in my room at i
DEATH
. I have a nice room there off toward the trout hatchery.

I went outside and planted the seeds around the potato and wondered again who liked vegetables so much, and where were they buried, under what river or had a tiger eaten them a long time ago when the tiger's beautiful voice had said, “I like your statues very much, especially that rutabaga by the ball park, but alas . . .”

I
SPENT A HALF AN HOUR
or so pacing back and forth on the bridge, but I did not once find that board that Margaret always steps on, that board she could not miss if all the bridges in the world were put together, formed into one single bridge, she'd step on that board.

S
UDDENLY
I
FELT
very tired and decided to take a nap before lunch and went into the shack and lay down in my bed. I looked up at the ceiling, at the beams of watermelon sugar. I stared at the grain and was soon fast asleep.

I had a couple of small dreams. One of them was about a moth. The moth was balanced on an apple.

Then I had a long dream, which was again the history of in
BOIL
and that gang of his and the terrible things that happened just a few short months ago.

In
BOIL
and that gang of his lived in a little bunch of lousy shacks with leaky roofs near the Forgotten Works. They lived there until they were dead. I think there were about twenty of them. All men, like in
BOIL
, that were no good.

First there was just in
BOIL
. who lived there. He got in a big fight one night with Charley and told him to go to hell and said he would sooner live by the Forgotten Works than in i
DEATH
.

“To hell with i
DEATH
,” he said, and went and built himself a lousy shack by the Forgotten Works. He spent his time digging around in there and making whiskey from things.

Then a couple of other men went and joined up with him and from time to time, every once in a while, a new man would join them. You could always tell who they would be.

Before they joined in
BOIL
's gang, they would always be unhappy and nervous and shifty or have “light fingers” and talk a lot about things that good people did not understand nor wanted to.

They would grow more and more nervous and no account and then finally you would hear about them having joined in
BOIL
's gang and now they were working with him in the Forgotten Works, and being paid in whiskey that in
BOIL
made from forgotten things.

In
BOIL
was about fifty years old, I guess, and was born and raised at i
DEATH
. I remember sitting upon his knee as a child and having him tell me stories. He knew some pretty good ones, too . . . and Margaret was there.

Then he turned bad. It happened over a couple of years. He kept getting mad at things that were of no importance and going off by himself to the trout hatchery at i
DEATH
.

He began spending a lot of time at the Forgotten Works, and Charley would ask him what he was doing and in
BOIL
. would say, “Oh, nothing. Just off by myself.”

“What kind of things do you find when you're digging down there?”

“Oh, nothing,” in
BOIL
lied.

He became very removed from people and then his speech would be strange, slurred and his movements became jerky and his temper bad, and he spent a lot of time at night in the trout hatchery and sometimes he would laugh out loud and you could hear this enormous laugh that had now become his, echoing through the rooms and halls, and into the very changing of i
DEATH
: the indescribable way it changes that we like so much, that suits us.

T
HE BIG FIGHT
between in
BOIL
and Charley occurred at dinner one night. Fred was passing some mashed potatoes to me when it happened.

The fight had been building up for weeks. in
BOIL
's laughter had grown louder and louder until it was almost impossible to sleep at night.

in
BOIL
was drunk all the time, and he would listen to no one about anything, not even Charley. He wouldn't even listen to Charley. He told Charley to mind his own business. “Mind your own business.”

One afternoon Pauline, who was just a child, found him passed out in the bathtub, singing dirty songs. She was frightened and he had a bottle of that stuff he brewed down at the Forgotten Works. He smelled horrible and it took three men to lift him out of the bathtub and get him to bed.

“Here are the mashed potatoes,” Fred said.

I was just putting a big scoop of them on my plate to soak up the rest of the gravy when in
BOIL
, who had not touched a single bite of his fried chicken and it was growing cold in front of him, turned to Charley and said, “Do you know what's wrong with this place?”

“No, what's wrong, in
BOIL
You seem to have all the answers these days. Tell me.”

“I
will
tell you. This place stinks. This isn't i
DEATH
at all. This is just a figment of your imagination. All of you guys here are just a bunch of clucks, doing ducky things at your clucky i
DEATH
.