Trout Fishing in America (21 page)

One morning the tigers came in while we were eating breakfast and before my father could grab a weapon they killed him and they killed my mother. My parents didn't even have time to say anything before they were dead. I was still holding the spoon from the mush I was eating.

“Don't be afraid,” one of the tigers said. “We're not going to hurt you. We don't hurt children. Just sit there where you are and we'll tell you a story.”

One of the tigers started eating my mother. He bit her arm off and started chewing on it. “What kind of story would you like to hear? I know a good story about a rabbit.”

“I don't want to hear a story,” I said.

“OK,” the tiger said, and he took a bite out of my father. I sat there for a long time with the spoon in my hand, and then I put it down.

“Those were my folks,” I said, finally.

“We're sorry,” one of the tigers said. “We really are.”

“Yeah,” the other tiger said. “We wouldn't do this if we didn't have to, if we weren't absolutely forced to. But this is the only way we can keep alive.”

“We're just like you,” the other tiger said. “We speak the same language you do. We think the same thoughts, but we're tigers.”

“You could help me with my arithmetic,” I said.

“What's that?” one of the tigers said.

“My arithmetic.”

“Oh, your arithmetic.”

“Yeah.”

“What do you want to know?” one of the tigers said.

“What's nine times nine?”

“Eighty-one,” a tiger said.

“What's eight times eight?”

“Fifty-six,” a tiger said.

I asked them half a dozen other questions: six times six, seven times four, etc. I was having a lot of trouble with arithmetic. Finally the tigers got bored with my questions and told me to go away.

“OK,” I said. “I'll go outside.”

“Don't go too far,” one of the tigers said. “We don't want anyone to come up here and kill us.”

“OK.”

They both went back to eating my parents. I went outside and sat down by the river. “I'm an orphan,” I said.

I could see a trout in the river. He swam directly at me and then he stopped right where the river ends and the land begins. He stared at me.

“What do you know about anything?” I said to the trout.

That was before I went to live at i
DEATH
.

After about an hour or so the tigers came outside and stretched and yawned.

“It's a nice day,” one of the tigers said.

“Yeah,” the other tiger said. “Beautiful.”

“We're awfully sorry we had to kill your parents and eat them. Please try to understand. We tigers are not evil. This is just a thing we have to do.”

“All right,” I said. “And thanks for helping me with my arithmetic.”

“Think nothing of it.”

The tigers left.

I went over to i
DEATH
and told Charley that the tigers had eaten my parents.

“What a shame,” he said.

“The tigers are so nice. Why do they have to go and do things like that?” I said.

“They can't help themselves,” Charley said. “I like the tigers, too. I've had a lot of good conversations with them. They're very nice and have a good way of stating things, but we're going to have to get rid of them. Soon.”

“One of them helped me with my arithmetic.”

“They're very helpful,” Charley said. “But they're dangerous. What are you going to do now?”

“I don't know,” I said.

“How would you like to stay here at i
DEATH
?” Charley said.

“That sounds good,” I said.

“Fine. Then it's settled,” Charley said.

That night I went back to the shack and set fire to it. I didn't take anything with me and went to live at i
DEATH
. That was twenty years ago, though it seems like it was only yesterday: What's eight times eight?

F
INALLY
I
STOPPED THINKING
about the tigers and started back to Pauline's shack. I would think about the tigers another day. There would be many.

I wanted to stay the night with Pauline. I knew that she would be beautiful in her sleep, waiting for me to return. She was.

P
AULINE BEGAN TALKING
in her sleep at false dawn from under the watermelon covers. She told a little story about a lamb going for a walk.

“The lamb sat down in the flowers,” she said. “The lamb was all right,” and that was the end of the story.

Pauline often talks in her sleep. Last week she sang a little song. I forget how it went.

I put my hand on her breast. She stirred in her sleep. I took my hand off her breast and she was quiet again.

She felt very good in bed. There was a nice sleepy smell coming from her body. Perhaps that is where the lamb sat down.

I
WOKE UP
before Pauline and put on my overalls. A crack of gray sun shone through the window and lay quietly on the floor. I went over and put my foot in it, and then my foot was gray.

I looked out the window and across the fields and piney woods and the town to the Forgotten Works. Everything was touched with gray: Cattle grazing in the fields and the roofs of the shacks and the big Piles in the Forgotten Works all looked like dust. The very air itself was gray.

We have an interesting thing with the sun here. It shines a different color every day. No one knows why this is, not even Charley. We grow the watermelons in different colors the best we can.

This is how we do it: Seeds gathered from a gray watermelon picked on a gray day and then planted on a gray day will make more gray watermelons.

It is really very simple. The colors of the days and the watermelons go like this—

Monday: red watermelons.

Tuesday: golden watermelons.

Wednesday: gray watermelons.

Thursday: black, soundless watermelons.

Friday: white watermelons.

Saturday: blue watermelons.

Sunday: brown watermelons.

Today would be a day of gray watermelons. I like best tomorrow: the black, soundless watermelon days. When you cut them they make no noise, and taste very sweet.

They are very good for making things that have no sound. I remember there was a man who used to make clocks from the black, soundless watermelons and his clocks were silent.

The man made six or seven of these clocks and then he died.

There is one of the clocks hanging over his grave. It is hanging from the branches of an apple tree and sways in the winds that go up and down the river. It of course does not keep time any more.

Pauline woke up while I was putting my shoes on.

“Hello,” she said, rubbing her eyes. “You're up. I wonder what time it is.”

“It's about six.”

“I have to cook breakfast this morning at i
DEATH
,” she said. “Come over here and give me a kiss and then tell me what you would like for breakfast.”

W
E WALKED BACK
to i
DEATH
, holding hands. Hands are very nice things, especially after they have travelled back from making love.

I
SAT IN THE KITCHEN
at i
DEATH
, watching Pauline make the batter for hot cakes, my favorite food. She put a lot of flour and eggs and good things into a great blue bowl and stirred the batter with a big wooden spoon, almost too large for her hand.

She was wearing a real nice dress and her hair was combed on top of her head and I had stopped and picked some flowers for her hair when we walked down the road.

They were bluebells.

“I wonder if Margaret will be here today,” she said. “I'll be glad when we're talking again.”

“Don't worry about it,” I said. “Everything will be all right.”

“It's just—well, Margaret and I have been such good friends. I'd always liked you before, but I never thought we'd ever be anything but friends.

“You and Margaret were so close for years. I just hope everything works out, and Margaret finds someone new and will be my friend again.”

“Don't worry.”

Fred came into the kitchen just to say, “Ummmm—hot cakes,” and then left.

C
HARLEY MUST HAVE EATEN
a dozen hot cakes himself. I have never seen him eat so many hot cakes, and Fred ate a few more than Charley.

It was quite a sight.

There was also a big platter of bacon and lots of fresh milk and a big pot of strong coffee, and there was a bowl of fresh strawberries, too.

A girl came by from the town and left them off just before breakfast. She was a gentle girl.

Pauline said, “Thank you, and what a lovely dress you have on this morning. Did you make it yourself? You must have because it's so pretty.”

“Oh, thank you,” the girl said, blushing. “I just wanted to bring some strawberries to i
DEATH
for breakfast, so I got up very early and gathered them down by the river.”

Pauline ate one of the berries and gave one of them to me. “They are such fine berries,” Pauline said. “You must know a good place to get them, and you must show me where that place is.”

“It's right near that statue of a rutabaga by the ball park, just down from where that funny green bridge is,” the girl said. She was about fourteen years old and very pleased that her
strawberries were a big hit at i
DEATH
.

All of the strawberries were eaten at breakfast, and again as for the hot cakes: “These are really wonderful hot cakes,” Charley said.

“Would you like some more?” Pauline said.

“Maybe another one if there is any more batter.”

“There's plenty,” Pauline said. “How about you, Fred?”

“Well, maybe just one more.”

A
FTER BREAKFAST
I kissed Pauline while she was washing the dishes and went with Fred down to the Watermelon Works to see something he wanted to show me about the plank press.

We took a long leisurely stroll down there, through the morning of a gray sun. It looked like it might rain but of course it would not. The first rain of the year would not start until the 12th day of October.

“Margaret wasn't there this morning,” Fred said.

“No, she wasn't,” I said.

We stopped and talked to the schoolteacher who was taking his students for a walk in the woods. While we talked to him all the children sat down in the grass nearby, and were kind of gathered together like a ring of mushrooms or daisies.

“Well, how's the book coming?” the schoolteacher said.

“All right,” I said.

“I'll be very curious to see it,” the schoolteacher said. “You always had a way with words. I still remember that essay you wrote on weather when you were in the sixth grade. That was quite something.

“Your description of the winter clouds was very accurate and quite moving at the same time and contained a certain amount of poetic content. Yes, I am quite interested in reading your
book. Will you give any hints on what it is about?”

Fred meanwhile looked very bored. He went and sat down with the children. He started talking to a boy about something.

“Have you expanded your essay on weather or is the book about something else?”

The boy was very interested in what Fred was saying. A couple of other kids moved closer.

“Oh, it's just coming along,” I said. “It's pretty hard to talk about. But you'll be one of the first I'll show it to when it's done.”

“I've always had faith in you as a writer,” the schoolteacher said. “For a long time I thought about writing a book myself, but teaching absorbs just too much of my time.”

Fred took something out of his pocket. He showed it to the boy. He looked at it and passed it on to the other children.

“Yes, I thought that I would write a book about teaching, but so far I've been too busy teaching to write. But it is very inspiring to me to have one of my former star pupils carry the glorious banner for what I myself have been too busy to do. Good luck.”

“Thank you.”

Fred put the thing back in his pocket and the schoolteacher got all of his students back on their feet, and off they went to the woods.

He was talking to them about something very important. I could tell because he pointed back at me, and then he pointed at a cloud that was drifting low overhead.

A
S WE NEARED
the Watermelon Works the air was full of the sweet smell of the sugar being boiled in the vats. There were great layers and strips and shapes of sugar hardening out in the sun: red sugar, golden sugar, gray sugar, black, soundless sugar, white sugar, blue sugar, brown sugar.

“The sugar sure looks good,” Fred said.

“Yeah.”

I waved at Ed and Mike, whose job it is to keep the birds off the sugar. They waved back, and then one of them began chasing after a bird.

There are about a dozen people who work at the Watermelon Works, and we went inside. There were great fires going under the two vats, and Peter was feeding wood into them. He looked hot and sweaty, but that was his natural condition.

“How's the sugar coming?” I said.

“Fine,” he said. “Lot of sugar. How are things at i
DEATH
?”

“Good,” I said.

“What's this about you and Pauline?”

“Just gossip,” I said.

I like Pete. We've been friends for years. When I was a child I used to come down to the Watermelon Works and help him feed the fires.

“I'll bet Margaret's mad,” he said. “I hear she's really pining for you. That's what her brother says. She's just pining away.”