Trout Fishing in America (24 page)

I asked in
BOIL
what was up. He was drunk as usual, and his gang of bums was gathered around.

“You guys don't know anything about i
DEATH
. I'm going to
show you something about it soon. What real i
DEATH
is like,” in
BOIL
said.

“You guys are a bunch of sissies. Only the tigers had any guts. I'm going to show you. We're going to show you all.” He addressed this last thing to his gang.They cheered and held their bottles of whiskey up high, reaching toward the red sun.

“W
HY DO YOU
go down there?” I said.

“I just like forgotten things. I'm collecting them. I want a collection of them. I think they're cute. What's wrong with that?”

“What do you mean, what's wrong with that? Didn't you hear what that drunken bum said about us?”

“What does that have to do with forgotten things?” she said.

“They drink the stuff,” I said.

D
INNER THAT NIGHT
was troubled at i
DEATH
. Everybody played with their food. Al had cooked up a mess of carrots. They were good, mixed with honey and spices, but nobody cared.

Everybody was worried about in
BOIL
. Pauline didn't touch her food. Neither did Charley. Strange thing, though: Margaret ate like a horse.

There had been a longish period of silence when Charley finally said, “I don't know what's going to happen. It looks serious. I've been afraid something like this was going to happen for a long time, ever since in
BOIL
got involved with the Forgotten Works, and took to making that whiskey of his, and getting men to go down there and live his kind of life.

“I've known something was going to happen. It's been due for a long time, and now it looks like it's here or will be shortly. Perhaps tomorrow. Who knows?”

“What are we going to do?” Pauline said. “What can we do?”

“Just wait,” Charley said. “That's about all. We can't threaten them or defend ourselves until they've done something, and who knows what they are going to do. They won't tell us.

“I went down there myself yesterday morning, and I asked in
BOIL
what was up and he said, we'd see soon enough. They'd show us what i
DEATH
really was, none of the false stuff we have.
What do you know about this, Margaret? You've spent a lot of time down there lately.”

Everybody looked at her.

“I don't know anything. I just get forgotten things down there. They don't tell me anything. They're always very nice to me.”

Everybody tried hard not to look away from Margaret, but they couldn't help themselves, and looked away.

“We can take care of anything that happens,” Fred said, breaking the silence. “Those drunken bums can't do anything we can't handle.”

“You bet,” Old Chuck said, though he was very old.

“You're right,” Pauline said. “We can handle them. We live at i
DEATH
.”

Margaret went right back to eating her carrots as if nothing had happened.

I
WAS VERY ANGRY
with Margaret. She wanted to sleep with me at i
DEATH
, but I said, “NO, I want to go up to my shack and be alone.”

She was very hurt by this and went off to the trout hatchery. I didn't care. Her performance at dinner had really disgusted me.

On my way out of i
DEATH
, I met Pauline in the living room. She was carrying a painting that she was going to put up on the wall.

“Hello,” I said. “That's a lovely painting you have there. Did you paint that yourself?”

“Yes, I did.”

“It looks very good.”

The painting was of i
DEATH
a long time ago during one of its many changes. The painting looked like i
DEATH
used to look.

“I didn't know you painted,” I said.

“Just in my spare time.”

“It's really a nice painting.”

“Thank you.”

Pauline kind of blushed. I had never seen her blush before or perhaps I had not remembered so. It became her.

“You think everything is going to be all right, don't you?” she said, changing the subject.

“Yes,” I said. “Don't worry.”

I
LEFT
i
DEATH
and started up the road to my shack. It was suddenly a very cold night and the stars shone like ice. I wished I had brought my Mackinaw. I walked up the road until I saw the lanterns on the bridges.

They were the lanterns of a beautiful child and a trout on the real bridge, and the tiger lanterns on the abandoned bridge.

I could barely see the statue of somebody who had been killed by the tigers, but nobody knows who it was. So many were killed by the tigers until we killed the last tiger and burned its body at i
DEATH
and built the trout hatchery right over the spot.

The statue was standing in the river by the bridges. It looked sad as if it did not want to be a statue of somebody killed by the tigers a long time ago.

I stopped and stared at a distance. A little while passed and then I went to the bridge. I crossed through the dark tunnel of the covered real bridge, past the glowing faces, and up into the piney woods toward my shack.

I
STOPPED ON THE BRIDGE
to my shack. It felt good under my feet, made from all the things that I like, the things that suit me. I stared at my mother. She was only another shadow now against the night, but once she had been a good woman.

I went inside the shack and lit my lantern with a six-inch match. The watermelontrout oil burned with a beautiful light. It is a fine oil.

We mix watermelon sugar and trout juice and special herbs all together and in their proper time to make this fine oil that we use to light our world.

I was very sleepy but I didn't feel like sleeping. The sleepier I got, the less I felt like sleeping. I lay on my bed for a long time without taking off my clothes, and I left the lantern on and stared at the shadows in the room.

They were rather nice shadows for a time that was so ominous, that drew so near and all enclosing. I was so sleepy now that my eyes refused to close. The lids would not budge down. They were statues of eyes.

A
T LAST
I couldn't stand lying there in bed any longer without sleeping. I went for one of my walks at night. I put on my red Mackinaw, so I wouldn't be cold. I guess it is this trouble that I have with sleeping that causes me to walk.

I went walking down by the aqueduct. That's a good place to walk. The aqueduct is about five miles long, but we don't know why because there is already water every place. There must be two or three hundred rivers here.

Charley himself hasn't the slightest idea why they built the aqueduct. “Maybe they were short of water a long time ago, and that's why they built the thing. I don't know. Don't ask me.”

I once had a dream about the aqueduct being a musical instrument filled with water and bells hanging by small watermelon chains right at the top of the water and the water making the bells ring.

I told the dream to Fred and he said that it sounded all right to him. “That would really make beautiful music,” he said.

I walked along the aqueduct for a while and then just stood there motionless for a long time where the aqueduct crosses the river by the Statue of Mirrors. I could see the light coming from all the tombs in the river down there. It's a favorite spot to be buried.

I climbed up a ladder on one of the columns and sat on the edge of the aqueduct, up about twenty feet, with my legs dangling over the edge.

I sat there for a long time without thinking about anything or noticing anything any more. I didn't want to. The night was passing with me sitting on the aqueduct.

Then I saw a lantern faraway and moving out of the piney woods. The lantern came down a road and then crossed over bridges and went through watermelon patches and stopped sometimes by the road, first this road and then that road.

I knew who the lantern belonged to. It was in the hand of a girl. I had seen her many times before walking at night, over the years.

But I had never seen the girl up close and I didn't know who she was. I knew she was sort of like me. Sometimes she had trouble sleeping at night.

It always comforted me when I saw her out there. I had never tried to find out who she was by going after her or even telling anyone about seeing her at night.

She was in a strange way mine and it comforted me to see her. I thought she was very pretty, but I didn't know what color hair she had.

T
HE GIRL WITH THE LANTERN
had left hours ago. I climbed down from the aqueduct and stretched my legs. I walked back to i
DEATH
in the dawn of a golden sun which would bring I knew not what from in
BOIL
and that gang of his. We could only wait and see.

The countryside was beginning to stir. I saw a farmer going out to milk his cows. He waved when he saw me. He had on a funny hat.

The roosters were beginning to crow. Their beak trumpets travelled a loud and great distance. I arrived at i
DEATH
just before sunrise.

There were a couple of white chickens that had escaped from a farmer someplace out in front of i
DEATH
pecking at the ground. They looked at me and then they flew away. They were freshly escaped. You could tell because their wings did not work like real birds.

A
FTER A GOOD BREAKFAST
of hot cakes and scrambled eggs and bacon, in
BOIL
and that gang of his arrived drunk at i
DEATH
, and it all began, then.

“This is really a good breakfast,” Fred said to Pauline.

“Thank you.”

Margaret was not there. I don't know where she was at. Pauline was there, though. She looked good, wearing a pretty dress.

Then we heard the front door bell ring. Old Chuck said he heard voices but it was impossible to hear voices from that distance.

“I'll get the door,” Al said. He got up and left the kitchen and walked through the hall that led under the river to the living room.

“I wonder who it is,” Charley said. I think Charley already knew who it was because he put down his fork and pushed his plate away.

Breakfast was over.

Al came back a few minutes later. He looked strange and worried. “It's in
BOIL
,” he said. “He wants to see you, Charley. He wants to see all of us.”

Now we all looked strange and worried.

We got up and went through the hall under the river and came out in the living room, right beside Pauline's painting. We went out on the front porch of i
DEATH
and there was in
BOIL
waiting, drunk.

“Y
OU PEOPLE THINK
you know about i
DEATH
. You don't know anything about i
DEATH
. You don't know anything about i
DEATH
,” in
BOIL
said, and then there was wild laughter from that gang of his, who were just as drunk as he.

“Not a damn thing. You're all at a masquerade party,” and then there was wild laughter from that gang of his.

“We're going to show you what i
DEATH
is really about,” and then there was wild laughter.

“What do you know that we don't know?” Charley said.

“Let us show you. Let us into the trout hatchery and we'll show you a thing or two. Are you afraid to find out about i
DEATH
? What it really means? What a mockery you've made of it? All of you. And you, Charley, more than the rest of these clowns.”

“Come, then,” Charley said. “Show us i
DEATH
.”

In
BOIL
and that gang of his staggered into i
DEATH
. “What a dump,” one of them said. Their eyes were all red from that stuff they made and drank in such large quantities.

We crossed the metal bridge over the little river in the living room and went down the hall that leads to the trout hatchery.

One of in
BOIL
's gang was so drunk that he fell down and the others picked him up. They almost had to carry him along be cause he was so drunk. He kept saying over and over again, “When are we going to get to i
DEATH
?”

“You are at i
DEATH
.”

“What is this?”

“i
DEATH
.”

“Oh. When are we going to get to i
DEATH
?”

Margaret was nowhere around. I walked beside Pauline to kind of shield her from in
BOIL
and his trash. in
BOIL
saw her and came over. His overalls looked as if they had never been washed.

“Hi, Pauline,” he said. “How are tricks?”

“You disgusting man,” she replied.

in
BOIL
laughed.

“I'll mop the floor after you leave here,” she said. “Wherever you walk is filth.”

“Don't be that way,” in
BOIL
said.

“How should I be?” Pauline said. “Look at you.”

I had gone over to shield Pauline from in
BOIL
and now I almost had to step between them. Pauline was very mad. I had never seen Pauline mad before. She had quite a temper.

in
BOIL
laughed again and then he broke away from her and went up and joined Charley. Charley was not happy to see him either.

It was a strange procession travelling down the hall. “When are we going to get to i
DEATH
?”