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

“Let me see.” Moss snatched the glasses and put them up to his eyes, just at the time when Wilson and his boat began to move again.

“He’s off again,” said Moss.

By noon Wilson had progressed halfway back around the lake and was headed toward them, stopping every once in a while for undetermined periods of time. A car pulled up alongside their picnic table. “Stay in the car,” the driver barked through his opened door as he got out. The faces of six young girls pressed against the glass. A back door flew open. “Stay in, I said,” he shouted, and the door reclosed. He came over to Jim and Moss Terry, approaching them with a caution known only to family men. “That fellow out there,” he said, “I saw him across the lake. Is that a fish hauling him around?”

“We don’t know,” said Jim.

“I thought maybe you knew him. He’s not from our resort. No one over there knows him.” Car doors were opening silently and girls ran in all directions to the lake front.

“Get back in—Oh hell,” he grumbled, and began to shuffle back to the car. Moss opened the cooler and held out a cold can of beer to him. He hesitated. “Take it,” Moss said. The man looked back to his car and the tired eyes of his wife, sitting alone in the front seat, waiting for him to begin yelling at the children. “Bring her over,” said Moss. “Hell, women like beer too.” Jim was looking down at the grass. The family man took in one deep breath, wishing in it the drowning death of his whole family, blew it out and called, “Ann, these men here have kindly invited us to have a drink with them.” Ann came out of the car and over to the table. “Bring the cheese,” he said, and she returned again with a tinfoil-wrapped piece of yellow cheese. He took it from her, put it directly in the middle of the table, unwrapped it and laid an opened pocket knife beside it. Only then did he accept the can of beer, and clearly intended that they would share, he and Ann, instead of each having one. Because of the heat, though, and his overwhelming desire to drink long, satisfying, cold and even slightly manly draughts, they soon accepted another, even though the cheese stayed untouched. The scene was not nearly so terrible, Jim thought, as he had imagined when he had at first seen the girls getting out. They were within shouting distance, playing along the shore, but no problem. Wilson had stopped again during this.

“Go tell them to stay away from the water,” Larry Cokeman said quietly to his wife. She got up from the bench and started toward the children. Wilson was moving again toward them, less than fifty yards away, staying in the deeper water away from the shore.

“It beats me,” said Jim, looking through the glasses. “He sure doesn’t seem too excited.”

“Very odd,” said Moss.

“You fellows been catching any?” asked Cokeman.

“Not really,” said Jim. “It’s been awfully slow.”

“Same with me,” said Cokeman. “Not enough wind to catch fish. You got to have some wind to catch fish.”

“Water’s too hot,” said Moss.

Ann and the six girls were headed toward them.

“If I was a kid,” said Jim quickly, “I’d be down there swimming in the water and get away from this heat.”

“Wouldn’t that be illegal,” said Cokeman, “just jumping in any old place along here—without a lifeguard or anything? Somebody’d come along and arrest you.”

“Why? It’s public property, these lakes. Kids is public too. There ain’t no signs anywhere.”

Ann returned with the six girls.

“Why don’t you girls go put on your suits and get in the water?”

Jumping with excitement, they returned to the car with their mother, made a U turn on the road and headed back toward Wild Pines Resort.

“Only five of them are mine,” said Cokeman. “The other one’s a neighbor’s. Jesus, he sure doesn’t seem much excited.”

Wilson was coming past them, maybe twenty yards from the shore.

“Hey, do you have a fish?” yelled Cokeman. “Is that a fish pulling you around?”

“Yes,” said Wilson. “I got him over by the rock point and he’s pulled me clear around the lake.”

Jim, Moss Terry and Larry Cokeman ran down to the water, following him along the shore, hollering out to him. Then the giant fish stopped again and lay still on the bottom until after the girls had returned and were splashing in the water near their mother, who lay on her rubber mattress and floated serenely out to the edge of the deep water, gazing up at the clouds, and telling by the voices nearer the shore that all was safe with the girls.

“Drop the anchor, quick!” shouted Moss. “Drop the anchor! Dragging that around’ll slow ’em down.”

“I’ll bust my line that way,” said Wilson. “Eight-pound test.”

“How deep is he?”

“About a hundred feet.”

“A hundred feet!” exclaimed Cokeman. “A northern, huh?”

Moss and Jim tried to look like they weren’t standing next to him.

“Catfish,” said Wilson, and began moving off.

“It can’t be a catfish,” whispered Moss. “Too far north. It’s got to be a muskie.”

“A muskie!” exclaimed Cokeman.

“No, a catfish,” called back Wilson. “A mud cat.”

“How long?” called Cokeman. “What do you think it weighs?”

“Hard to say,” said Wilson.

The three men went back to their bench. Each was trying to picture how big—how it would look—this giant fish down on the bottom, moving when it wanted to, pulling a boat from an eight-pound test line. As they finished the beer, they discussed how it might not be possible to land him at all, given that he could just lie on the bottom and be like a hundred-pound piece of rock. But the vision of what he must look like down on the bottom, the size, and how it might be to see him surface first, filled them with excitement, and they went off into town to buy more beer and get