Trout Fishing in America (20 page)

I took her hand in mine. Her hand had a lot of strength gained through the process of gentleness and that strength made my hand feel secure, but there was a certain excitement, too.

She sat very close to me. I could feel the warmth of her body through her dress. In my mind the warmth was the same color as her dress, a kind of golden.

“How's the book coming along?” she said.

“Fine,” I said.

“What's it about?” she said.

“Oh, I don't know,” I said.

“Is it a secret?” she said, smiling.

“No,” I said.

“Is it a romance like some of the books from the Forgotten Works?”

“No,” I said. “It's not like those books.”

“I remember when I was a child,” she said. “We used to burn those books for fuel. There were so many of them. They burned for a long time, but there aren't that many now.”

“No, it's just a book,” I said.

“All right,” she said. “I'll get off you, but you can't blame a person for being curious. Nobody has written a book here for so long. Certainly not in my lifetime.”

Fred came in from washing the dishes. He saw us up in the trees. Lanterns illuminated us.

“Hello, up there,” he yelled.

“Hi,” we shouted down.

Fred walked up to us, crossing a little river that flowed into the main river at i
DEATH
. He came across a small metal bridge that rang out his footsteps. I believe that bridge was found in the Forgotten Works by in
BOIL
. He brought it down here and put it in.

“Thanks for doing the dishes,” Pauline said.

“My pleasure,” Fred said. “I'm sorry to bother you people, but I just thought I would come up and remind you about meeting me down at the plank press tomorrow morning. There's something I want to show you down there.”

“I haven't forgotten,” I said. “What's it about?”

“I'll show you tomorrow.”

“Good.”

“That's all I wanted to say. I know you people have a lot to talk about, so I'll go now. That certainly was a good dinner, Pauline.”

“Do you still have that thing you showed me today?” I said. “I'd like Pauline to see it.”

“What thing?” Pauline said.

“Something Fred found in the woods today.”

“No, I don't have it,” Fred said. “I left it in my shack. I'll show it to you tomorrow at breakfast.”

“What is it?” Pauline said.

“We don't know what it is,” I said.

“Yeah, it's a strange-looking thing,” Fred said. “It's like one of those things from the Forgotten Works.”

“Oh,” Pauline said.

“Well, anyway, I'll show it to you tomorrow at breakfast.”

“Good,” she said. “I look forward to seeing it. Whatever it is. Sounds pretty mysterious.”

“OK, then,” Fred said. “I'll be going now. Just wanted to remind you about seeing me tomorrow at the plank press. It's kind of important.”

“Don't feel as if you should rush off,” I said. “Join us for a while. Sit down.”

“No, no, no. Thank you, anyway,” Fred said. “There's something I have to do up at my shack.”

“OK,” I said.

“Good-bye.”

“Thanks again for doing the dishes,” Pauline said.

“Think nothing of it.”

I
T WAS NOW GETTING LATE
and Pauline and I went down to say good night to Charley. We could barely see him sitting down on his couch, near the statues that he likes and the place where he builds a small fire to warm himself on cold nights.

Bill had joined him and they were sitting there together, talking with great interest about something. Bill was waving his arms in the air to show a part of the conversation.

“We came down to say good night,” I said, interrupting them.

“Oh, hi,” Charley said. “Yeah, good night. I mean, how are you people doing?”

“OK,” I said.

“That was a wonderful dinner,” Bill said.

“Yeah, that was really fine,” Charley said. “Good stew.”

“Thank you.”

“See you tomorrow,” I said.

“Are you going to spend the night here at i
DEATH
?” Charley said.

“No,” I said. “I'm going to spend the night with Pauline.”

“That's good,” Charley said.

“Good night.”

“Good night.”

“Good night.”

“Good night.”

P
AULINE'S SHACK
was about a mile from i
DEATH
. She doesn't spend much time there. It's beyond the town. There are about 375 of us here in watermelon sugar.

A lot of people live in the town, but some live in shacks at other places, and there are of course we who live at i
DEATH
.

There were just a few lights on in the town, other than the street lamps. Doc Edwards' light was on. He always has a lot of trouble sleeping at night. The schoolteacher's light was on, too. He was probably working on a lesson for the children.

We stopped on the bridge across the river. There were pale green lanterns on the bridge. They were in the shape of human shadows. Pauline and I kissed. Her mouth was moist and cool. Perhaps because of the night.

I heard a trout jump in the river, a late jumper. The trout made a narrow doorlike splash. There was a statue nearby. The statue was of a gigantic bean. That's right, a bean.

Somebody a long time ago liked vegetables and there are twenty or thirty statues of vegetables scattered here and there in watermelon sugar.

There is the statue of an artichoke near the shingle factory and a ten-foot carrot near the trout hatchery at i
DEATH
and a head of lettuce near the school and a bunch of onions near the
entrance to the Forgotten Works and there are other vegetable statues near people's shacks and a rutabaga by the ball park.

A little ways from my shack there is the statue of a potato. I don't particularly care for it, but a long time ago somebody loved vegetables.

I once asked Charley if he knew who it was, but he said he didn't have the slightest idea. “Must have really liked vegetables, though,” Charley'd said.

“Yeah,” I'd said. “There's the statue of a potato right near my shack.”

We continued up the road to Pauline's place. We passed by the Watermelon Works. It was silent and dark. Tomorrow morning it would be filled with light and activity. We could see the aqueduct. It was a long long shadow now.

We came to another bridge across a river. There were the usual lanterns on the bridge and statues in the river. There were a dozen or so pale lights coming up from the bottom of the river. They were tombs.

We stopped.

“The tombs look nice tonight,” Pauline said.

“Certainly do,” I said.

“There are mostly children here, aren't there?”

“Yes,” I said.

“They're really beautiful tombs,” Pauline said.

Moths fluttered above the light that came out of the river from the tombs below. There were five or six moths fluttering over each tomb.

Suddenly a big trout jumped out of the water above a tomb and got one of the moths. The other moths scattered and then came back again, and the same trout jumped again and got another moth. He was a smart old trout.

The trout did not jump any more and the moths fluttered peacefully above the light coming from the tombs.

“How's M
ARGARET
taking all this?” Pauline said.

“I don't know,” I said.

“Is she hurt or mad or what? Do you know how she feels?” Pauline said. “Has she talked to you about it since you told her? She hasn't talked to me at all. I saw her yesterday near the Watermelon Works. I said hello but she walked past me without saying anything. She seemed terribly upset.”

“I don't know how she feels,” I said.

“I thought she'd be at i
DEATH
tonight, but she wasn't there,” Pauline said. “I don't know why I thought she'd be there. I just had a feeling but I was wrong. Have you seen her?”

“No,” I said.

“I wonder where she's staying,” Pauline said.

“I think she's staying with her brother.”

“I feel bad about this. Margaret and I were such good friends. All the years we've spent together at i
DEATH
,” Pauline said. “We were almost like sisters. I'm sorry that things had to work out this way, but there was nothing we could do about it.”

“The heart is something else. Nobody knows what's going to happen,” I said.

“You're right,” Pauline said.

She stopped and kissed me. Then we crossed over the bridge to her shack.

P
AULINE'S SHACK
is made entirely of watermelon sugar, except the door that is a good-looking grayish-stained pine with a stone doorknob.

Even the windows are made of watermelon sugar. A lot of windows here are made of sugar. It's very hard to tell the difference between sugar and glass, the way sugar is used by Carl the windowmaker. It's just a thing that depends on who is doing it. It's a delicate art and Carl has it.

Pauline lit a lantern. It smelled fragrant burning with watermelontrout oil. We have a way here also of mixing watermelon and trout to make a lovely oil for our lanterns. We use it for all our lighting purposes. It has a gentle fragrance to it, and makes a good light.

Pauline's shack is very simple as all our shacks are simple. Everything was in its proper place. Pauline uses the shack just to get away from i
DEATH
for a few hours or a night if she feels like it.

All of us who stay at i
DEATH
have shacks to visit whenever we feel like it. I spend more time at my shack than anybody else. I usually just sleep one night a week at i
DEATH
. I of course take most of my meals there. We who do not have regular names spend a lot of time by ourselves. It suits us.

“Well, here we are,” Pauline said. She looked beautiful in the light of the lantern. Her eyes sparkled.

“Please come here,” I said. She came over to me and I kissed her mouth and then I touched her breasts. They felt so smooth and firm. I put my hand down the front of her dress.

“That feels good,” she said.

“Let's try some more,” I said.

“That would be good,” she said.

We went over and lay upon her bed. I took her dress off. She had nothing on underneath. We did that for a while. Then I got up and took off my overalls and lay back down beside her.

W
E MADE
a long and slow love. A wind came up and the windows trembled slightly, the sugar set fragilely ajar by the wind.

I liked Pauline's body and she said that she liked mine, too, and we couldn't think of anything to say.

The wind suddenly stopped and Pauline said, “What's that?”

“It's the wind.”

A
FTER MAKING LOVE
we talked about the tigers. It was Pauline who started it. She was lying warmly beside me, and she wanted to talk about the tigers. She said that Old Chuck's dream got her thinking about them.

“I wonder why they could speak our language,” she said.

“No one knows,” I said. “But they could speak it. Charley says maybe we were tigers a long time ago and changed but they didn't. I don't know. It's an interesting idea, though.”

“I never heard their voices,” Pauline said. “I was just a child and there were only a few tigers left, old ones, and they barely came out of the hills. They were too old to be dangerous, and they were hunted all the time.

“I was six years old when they killed the last one. I remember the hunters bringing it to i
DEATH
. There were hundreds of people with them. The hunters said they had killed it up in the hills that day, and it was the last tiger.

“They brought the tiger to i
DEATH
and everybody came with them. They covered it with wood and soaked the wood down with watermelontrout oil. Gallons and gallons of it. I remember people threw flowers on the pile and stood around crying because it was the last tiger.

“Charley took a match and lit the fire. It burned with a great
orange glow for hours and hours, and black smoke poured up into the air.

“It burned until there was nothing left but ashes, and then the men began right then and there building the trout hatchery at i
DEATH
, right over the spot where the tiger had been burned. It's hard to think of that now when you're down there dancing.

“I guess you remember all this,” Pauline said. “You were there, too. You were standing beside Charley.”

“That's right,” I said. “They had beautiful voices.”

“I never heard them” she said.

“Perhaps that was for the best,” I said.

“Maybe you're right,” she said. “Tigers,” and was soon fast asleep in my arms. Her sleep tried to become my arm, and then my body, but I wouldn't let it because I was suddenly very restless.

I got up and put on my overalls and went for one of the long walks I take at night.

T
HE NIGHT WAS COOL
and the stars were red. I walked down by the Watermelon Works. That's where we process the watermelons into sugar. We take the juice from the watermelons and cook it down until there's nothing left but sugar, and then we work it into the shape of this thing that we have: our lives.

I sat down on a couch by the river. Pauline had gotten me thinking about the tigers. I sat there and thought about them, how they killed and ate my parents.

We lived together in a shack by the river. My father raised watermelons and my mother baked bread. I was going to school. I was nine years old and having trouble with arithmetic.