Rock Island Line by David Rhodes (most life changing books txt) 📗

were sound; but, good or bad, he would hang on to them with the same tenacity, and weeks later when you would try to bring up an incident in a light way, giving him a chance to take back what he’d said—like eating fish eyes can be a cure for blindness—he would jump into the argument as though he had spent the whole time thinking up more reasons to hurl at you.

Simply, he was one of us, and like us all, in his own way. Only a little more confident, perhaps, because of the great faith he had in his parents and their ability to manage all parts of his life that were out of his own control, allowing him to be very open and personable and radiate good humor and be obstinate.

He’d never known his grandfather except from what his parents told him, and Della (who, though she did not talk about him constantly, always said we; we did this or went over there, or we thought that was funny. This we, his mother explained to him later, was completed by the no-longer-present figure of his grandfather, a living, breathing person who was dead. The bodies of the dead went back to the ground. The living got old, and when they were finished, they were dead. His grandmother, he was told, was getting old).

July’s favorite story of Wilson was a fishing story. He had supposedly gone up north once, into Minnesota, after walleyes and northerns, and fished in a two-hundred-acre lake on the outskirts of a small town. The water was hot, and the fish had simply not been biting. Nearly everyone else was off the lake, or swimming, or waiting for the cooler air of evening to go for bullheads. The walleyes, it was thought, were in too deep water, down deep with the bottom feeders, sleeping. It had been like that all week. Once in a while someone would get a small northern out of the arrowheads and water lilies, a couple of pan fish, but nothing of any size. Men were drinking beer in the shade along the lake though it was several hours before noon. Wilson was out by himself, sitting in the bow of a twelve-foot rented rowboat, fishing off a rock point. Maybe twenty-five yards out.

Two men sat at a picnic table on the other side of the lake, Jim and Moss Terry. They had been trying not to drink heavily, but had bought too much to begin with, had it cold in the cooler, and it was just a little too easy to drain off the bitter beer in the bottom of the can, chuck it into a nearby trash barrel, open another and kill the memory of the taste with an ice-cold stiff swig from the top. Moss Terry was ahead of his friend, but excused it due to having recently given up smoking, and every time his entrail desires would form visions of gray, curling, sweet smoke, he would reach again for a can.

“We should go easier on this stuff,” remarked Jim. “It’s a poor idea in the morning.”

“It’s a poor morning,” said Moss Terry. “Too blasted hot. Try to keep from blowing that smoke in my face.”

“Sorry. This is sure some vacation, I’d say. Been just as well to stay home.”

“Relax. When else do you get to drink beer in the morning, safely?”

“I’d give it all—all the beer in the world—to feel one four-pounder bump on the end of my line. Hell, a two-pounder—even one!”

“Fish don’t like it when it’s this hot. Slows ’em down too much. We’ll get some bullheads tonight.”

“Bullheads! Drive four hundred miles to catch nigger fish.”

“Don’t blow smoke in my face.”

“Sorry, Moss. Say, look at that poor motherfucker over there, snagged off those rocks.”

Across the lake, Wilson, still in the bow of his boat, was standing up, every once in a while heaving backward, bending his rod in a violent arch.

“Only one thing to do with a snag,” said Moss, punching triangles into the top of a new can, lefthandedly enjoying the sound. “Bust it off right away. It’s never worth the effort of trying to save a couple of stinking five-cent hooks—and can ruin a whole day.”

Wilson kept heaving backward every once in a while.

“Must be on the rocks,” said Jim.

“Give me a cigarette,” said Moss.

“No. Remember what you said—”

“Forget that. Give me a cigarette.”

“Nope. You said no matter—”

“Come on, give me a cigarette. What kind of a guy are you, anyhow?”

“One who’d be scared to death to come over to your place for the next month after Cathy found out.”

“Look. He sat down.” Pointing.

“Probably worn out.”

“Pole’s still bent over. You’d think he’d let up on it.”

“Maybe the sun’s got to him. Must be awfully hot out there. Least he could do’d be move his boat around a little.”

“I think it has moved, at least from where it was,” said Moss.

“Probably straightened up a little toward where he’s fastened. He’s moving a little bit now. Must be pulling himself over above the snag.”

“It’s not worth it. As soon as you get hung up, snap it off,” said Moss, yanking back in a gesture that snapped an imaginary line.They were watching Wilson more closely now, noticing without comment the slow progression of his boat past the end of the point, out into the darker water.

“He’s not reeling in,” said Jim.

“No. It doesn’t seem so.”

Wilson moved silently out farther into the lake, his pole bent nearly over into the water directly in front of his boat. He trolled in this manner for a distance of several boat lengths, then stopped; here, out in the middle of the lake, he remained motionless for some time, his pole still violently arched over. Then he began moving again, this time clear over to the other side of the lake, where he stopped again.

“Get the glasses,” said Moss, and Jim ran over to their car, returning with the binoculars, focusing them as he came.

“His pole’s still bent.”

“Let me see.”

“He’s