Trout Fishing in America (19 page)

4: The Statue of Mirrors.

5: Old Chuck.

6: The long walks I take at night. Sometimes I stand for hours at a single place, without hardly moving. (I've had the wind stop in my hand.)

7: The Watermelon Works.

8: Fred. (My buddy.)

9: The baseball park.

10: The aqueduct.

11: Doc Edwards and the schoolteacher.

12: The beautiful trout hatchery at i
DEATH
and how it was built and the things that happen there. (It's a swell place for dancing.)

13: The Tomb Crew, the Shaft and the Shaft Gallows.

14: A waitress.

15: Al, Bill, others.

16: The town.

17: The sun and how it changes. (Very interesting.)

18: in
BOIL
and that gang of his and the place where they used to dig, the Forgotten Works, and all the terrible things they did, and what happened to them, and how quiet and nice things are around here now that they are dead.

19: Conversations and things that happen here day to day. (Work, baths, breakfast and dinner.)

20: Margaret and that other girl who carried the lantern at night and never came close.

21: All of our statues and the places where we bury our dead, so that they are forever with light coming out of their tombs.

22: My life lived in watermelon sugar. (There must be worse lives.)

23: Pauline. (She is my favorite. You'll see.)

24: And this the twenty-fourth book written in 171 years. Last month Charley said to me, “You don't seem to like making statues or doing anything else. Why don't you write a book?

“The last one was written thirty-five years ago. It's about time somebody wrote another book.”

Then he scratched his head and said, “Gee, I remember it was written thirty-five years ago, but I can't remember what it was about. There used to be a copy of it in the sawmill.”

“Do you know who wrote it?” I said.

“No,” he said. “But he was like you. He didn't have a regular name.”

I asked him what the other books were about, the twenty-three previous ones, and he said that he thought one of them was about owls.

“Yeah, it was about owls, and then there was a book about pine needles, very boring, and then there was one about the Forgotten Works, theories on how it got started and where it came from.

“The guy who wrote the book, his name was Mike, he took a long trip into the Forgotten Works. He went in maybe a hundred miles and was gone for weeks. He went beyond those high Piles we can see on clear days. He said that there were Piles beyond those that were even higher.

“He wrote a book about his journey into the Forgotten Works. It wasn't a bad book, a lot better than the books we find in the Forgotten Works. Those are terrible books.

“He said he was lost for days and came across things that were two miles long and green. He refused to furnish any other details about them, even in his book. Just said they were two miles long and green.

“That's his tomb down by that statue of a frog.”

“I know that tomb well,” I said. “He has blond hair and he's wearing a pair of rust-colored overalls.”

“Yeah, that's him,” Charley said.

A
FTER
I
FINISHED WRITING
for the day it was close to sundown and dinner would be ready soon down at i
DEATH
.

I looked forward to seeing Pauline and eating what she would cook and seeing her at dinner and maybe I would see her after dinner. We might go for a long walk, maybe along the aqueduct.

Then maybe we would go to her shack for the night or stay at i
DEATH
or come back up here, if Margaret wouldn't knock the door down the next time she came by.

The sun was going down over the Piles in the Forgotten Works. They turned back far beyond memory and glowed in the sundown.

I
WENT OUT AND STOOD
on the bridge for a while and looked down at the river below. It was three feet wide. There were a couple of statues standing in the water. One of them was my mother. She was a good woman. I made it five years ago.

The other statue was a cricket. I did not make that one. Somebody else made it a long time ago in the time of the tigers. It is a very gentle statue.

I like my bridge because it is made of all things: wood and the distant stones and gentle planks of watermelon sugar.

I walked down to i
DEATH
through a long cool twilight that passed like a tunnel over me. I lost sight of i
DEATH
when I passed into the piney woods and the trees smelled cold and they were growing steadily darker.

I
LOOKED UP
through the pines and saw the evening star. It glowed a welcoming red from the sky, for that is the color of our stars here. They are always that color.

I counted a second evening star on the opposite side of the sky, not as imposing but just as beautiful as the one that arrived first.

I came upon the real bridge and the abandoned bridge. They were side by side across a river. Trout were jumping in the river. A trout about twenty inches long jumped. I thought it was a rather nice fish. I knew I would remember it for a long time.

I saw somebody coming up the road. It was Old Chuck coming up from i
DEATH
to light the lanterns on the real bridge and the abandoned bridge. He was walking slowly because he is a very old man.

Some say that he is too old to light the bridges and that he should just stay down at i
DEATH
and take it easy. But Old Chuck likes to light the lanterns and come back in the morning and put them out.

Old Chuck says that everybody should have something to do and lighting those bridges is his thing to do. Charley agrees with him. “Let Old Chuck light the bridges if he feels like it. It keeps him out of mischief.”

This is a kind of joke because Old Chuck must be ninety years old if he's a day and mischief has passed far beyond him, moving at the speed of decades.

Old Chuck has bad eyes and did not see me until he was almost on top of me. I waited for him. “Hello, Chuck,” I said.

“Good evening,” he said. “I've come to light the bridges. How are you this evening? I've come to light the bridges. Beautiful evening, isn't it?”

“Yes,” I said. “Lovely.”

Old Chuck went over to the abandoned bridge and took a six-inch match out of his overalls and lit the lantern on the i
DEATH
side of the bridge. The abandoned bridge has been that way since the time of the tigers.

In those days two tigers were trapped on the bridge and killed and then the bridge was set on fire. The fire only destroyed part of the bridge.

The bodies of the tigers fell into the river and you can still see their bones lying on the bottom in the sandy places and lodged in the rocks and scattered here and there: small bones and rib bones and part of a skull.

There is a statue in the river alongside the bones. It is the statue of somebody who was killed by the tigers a long time ago. Nobody knows who they were.

They never repaired the bridge and now it is the abandoned bridge. There is a lantern at each end of the bridge. Old Chuck lights them every evening, though some people say he is too old.

The real bridge is made entirely of pine. It is a covered bridge and always dark inside like an ear. The lanterns are in the shape of faces.

One face is that of a beautiful child and the other face is that of a trout. Old Chuck lit the lanterns with the long matches from his overalls.

The lanterns on the abandoned bridge are tigers.

“I'll walk with you down to i
DEATH
,” I said.

“Oh no,” Old Chuck said. “I'm too slow. You'll be late for
dinner.”

“What about you?” I said.

“I've already eaten. Pauline gave me something to eat just before I left.”

“What are we having for dinner?” I said.

“No,” Old Chuck said, smiling. “Pauline told me if I met you on the road not to tell you what the dinner is tonight. She made me promise.”

“That Pauline,” I said.

“She made me promise,” he said.

I
T WAS ABOUT DARK
when I arrived at i
DEATH
. The two evening stars were now shining side by side. The smaller one had moved over to the big one. They were very close now, almost touching, and then they went together and became one very large star.

I don't know if things like that are fair or not.

There were lights on down at i
DEATH
. I watched them as I came down the hill out of the woods. They looked warm, calling and cheery.

Just before I arrived at i
DEATH
, it changed. i
DEATH
's like that: always changing. It's for the best. I walked up the stairs to the front porch and opened the door and went in.

I walked across the living room toward the kitchen. There was nobody in the room, nobody sitting on the couches along the river. That's where people usually gather in the room or they stand in the trees by the big rocks, but there was nobody there either. There were many lanterns shining along the river and in the trees. It was very close to dinner.

When I got on the other side of the room, I could smell some thing good coming out of the kitchen. I left the room and walked down the hall that follows beneath the river. I could hear the river above me, flowing out of the living room. Theriver sounded fine.

The hall was as dry as anything and I could smell good things coming up the hall from the kitchen.

Almost everybody was in the kitchen: that is, those who take their meals at i
DEATH
. Charley and Fred were talking about something. Pauline was just getting ready to serve dinner. Everybody was sitting down. She was happy to see me. “Hi, stranger,” she said.

“What's for dinner?” I said.

“Stew,” she said. “The way you like it.”

“Great,” I said.

She gave me a nice smile and I sat down. Pauline was wearing a new dress and I could see the pleasant outlines of her body.

The dress had a low front and I could see the delicate curve of her breasts. I was quite pleased by everything. The dress smelled sweet because it was made from watermelon sugar.

“How's the book coming?” Charley said.

“Fine,” I said. “Just fine.”

“I hope it's not about pine needles,” he said.

Pauline served me first. She gave me a great big helping of stew. Everybody was aware of me being served first and the size of the helping, and everybody smiled, for they knew what it meant, and they were happy for the thing that was going on.

Most of them did not like Margaret any more. Almost everybody thought that she had conspired with in
BOIL
and that gang of his, though there had never been any real evidence.

“This stew really tastes good,” Fred said. He put a big spoonful of stew in his mouth, almost spilling some on his overalls. “Ummmm—good,” he repeated and then said under his breath, “A lot better than carrots.”

Al almost heard him. He looked hard for a second over at Fred, but he didn't quite catch it because he relaxed then and said, “It certainly is, Fred.”

Pauline laughed slightly, for she had heard Fred's comment and I gave her a look as if to say: Don't laugh too hard, deary. You know how Al is about his cooking.

Pauline nodded understandingly.

“Just as long as it isn't about pine needles,” Charley repeated, though a good ten minutes had passed since he'd said anything and that had been about pine needles, too.

A
FTER DINNER
Fred said that he would do the dishes. Pauline said oh no, but Fred insisted by actually starting to clear the table. He picked up some spoons and plates, and that settled it.

Charley said that he thought he would go in the living room and sit by the river and smoke a pipe. Al yawned. The other guys said that they would do other things, and went off to do them.

And then Old Chuck came in.

“What took you so long?” Pauline said.

“I decided to rest by the river. I fell asleep and had a long dream about the tigers. I dreamt they were back again.”

“Sounds horrible,” Pauline said. She shivered and kind of drew her shoulders in like a bird and put her hands on them.

“No, it was all right,” Old Chuck said. He sat down in a chair. It took him a long time to sit down and then it was as if the chair had grown him, he was in so close.

“This time they were different,” he said. “They played musical instruments and went for long walks in the moon.

“They stopped and played by the river. Their instruments looked nice. They sang, too. You remember how beautiful their voices were.”

Pauline shivered again.

“Yes,” I said. “They had beautiful voices but I never heard them singing.”

“They were singing in my dream. I remember the music but I can't remember the words. They were good songs, too, and there was nothing frightening about them. Perhaps I am an old man,” he said.

“No, they had beautiful voices,” I said.

“I liked their songs,” he said. “Then I woke up and it was cold. I could see the lanterns on the bridges. Their songs were like the lanterns, burning oil.”

“I was a little worried about you,” Pauline said.

“No,” he said. “I sat down in the grass and leaned up against a tree and fell asleep and had a long dream about the tigers, and they sang songs but I can't remember the words. Their instruments were nice, too. They looked like the lanterns.”

Old Chuck's voice slowed down. His body kept relaxing until it seemed as if he had always been in that chair, his arms gently resting on watermelon sugar.

P
AULINE AND
I went into the living room and sat down on a couch in the grove of trees by the big pile of rocks. There were lanterns all around us.