Trout Fishing in America (25 page)

T
HE TROUT HATCHERY
at i
DEATH
was built years ago when the last tiger was killed and burned on the spot. We built the trout hatchery right there. The walls went up around the ashes.

The hatchery is small but designed with great care. The trays and ponds are made from watermelon sugar and stones gathered at a great distance and placed there in the order of that distance.

The water for the hatchery comes from the little river that joins up later with the main river in the living room. The sugar used is golden and blue.

There are two people buried at the bottom of the ponds in the hatchery. You look down past the young trout and see them lying there in their coffins, staring from beyond the glass doors. They wanted it that way, so they got it, being as they were keepers of the hatchery and at the same time, Charley's folks.

The hatchery has a beautiful tile floor with the tiles put together so gracefully that it's almost like music. It's a swell place to dance.

There is a statue of the last tiger in the hatchery. The tiger is on fire in the statue. We are all watching it.

“A
LL RIGHT
,” Charley said. “Tell us about i
DEATH
. We're curious now about what you've been saying for years about us not knowing about i
DEATH
, about you knowing all the answers. Let's hear some of those answers.”

“OK,” in
BOIL
said. “This is what it's all about. You don't know what's really going on with i
DEATH
. The tigers knew more about i
DEATH
than you know. You killed all the tigers and burned the last one in here.

“That was all wrong. The tigers should never have been killed. The tigers were the true meaning of i
DEATH
. Without the tigers there could be no i
DEATH
, and you killed the tigers and so i
DEATH
went away, and you've lived here like a bunch of clucks ever since. I'm going to bring back i
DEATH
. We're all going to bring back i
DEATH
. My gang here and me. I've been thinking about it for years and now we're going to do it. i
DEATH
will be again.”

in
BOIL
reached into his pocket and took out a jackknife.

“What are you going to do with that knife?” Charley said.

“I'll show you,” in
BOIL
said. He pulled the blade out. It looked sharp. “This is i
DEATH
,” he said, and took the knife and cut off his thumb and dropped it into a tray filled with trout just barely hatched. The blood started running down his hand and dripping on the floor.

Then all of in
BOIL
's gang took out jackknives and cut off their thumbs and dropped their thumbs here and there, in this tray, that pond until there were thumbs and blood all over the place.

The one who didn't know where he was said, “When do I cut off my thumb?”

“Right now,” somebody said.

So he cut off his thumb, unevenly because he was so drunk. He did it in such a way that there was still part of the fingernail fastened to his hand.

“Why have you done this?” Charley said.

“It's only a beginning,” in
BOIL
said. “This is what i
DEATH
should really look like.”

“You all look silly,” Charley said. “Without your thumbs.”

“It's only a beginning,” in
BOIL
said. “All right, men. Let's cut off our noses.”

“Hail, i
DEATH
,” they all shouted and cut off their noses. The one who was so drunk also put out his eye. They took their noses and dropped them all over the place.

One of them put his nose in Fred's hand. Fred took the nose and threw it in the guy's face.

Pauline did not act like a woman should under these circumstances. She was not afraid or made ill by this at all. She just kept getting madder and madder and madder. Her face was red with anger.

“All right, men. Off with your ears.”

“Hail, i
DEATH
,” and then there were ears all over the place and the trout hatchery was drowning in blood.

The one who was so drunk forgot that he had cut his right ear off already and was trying to cut it off again and was very confused because the ear wasn't there.

“Where's my ear?” he said. “I can't cut it off.”

By now in
BOIL
and all his gang were bleeding to death. Some of them were already beginning to grow weak from the loss of blood and were sitting down on the floor.

in
BOIL
was
STILL
up and cutting fingers off his hands. “This is
i
DEATH
,” he said. “Oh, boy. This is really i
DEATH
.” Finally he had to sit down, too, so he could bleed to death.

They were all on the floor now.

“I hope you think you've proved something,” Charley said. “I don't think you've proved anything.”

“We've proved i
DEATH
,” in
BOIL
said.

Pauline suddenly started to leave the room. I went over to her, almost slipping on the blood and falling down.

“Are you all right?” I said, not knowing quite what to say. “Can I help you?”

“No,” she said, on her way out. “I'm going to go get a mop and clean this mess up.” When she said mess, she looked directly at in
BOIL
.

She left the hatchery and came back shortly with a mop. They were almost all dead now, except for in
BOIL
. He was still talking about i
DEATH
. “See, we've done it,” he said.

Pauline started mopping up the blood and wringing it out into a bucket. When the bucket was almost full of blood, in
BOIL
died. “I am i
DEATH
,” he said.

“You're an asshole,” Pauline said.

And the last thing that in
BOIL
ever saw was Pauline standing beside him, wringing his blood out of the mop into the bucket.

“W
ELL
, that's that,” Charley said.

in
BOIL
's sightless eyes stared at the statue of the tiger. There were many sightless eyes staring in the hatchery.

“Yeah,” Fred said. “I wonder what it was all about.”

“I don't know,” Charley said. “I think they shouldn't have drunk that whiskey made from forgotten things. It was a mistake.”

“Yeah.”

We all joined Pauline in cleaning up the place, mopping up the blood and carting the bodies away. We used a wheelbarrow.

“H
ERE
, help me get this wheelbarrow down the stairs.”

“There.”

“Ah, thank you.”

We piled the bodies out in front. No one knew quite what to do with them, except that we didn't want them in i
DEATH
any more.

A lot of people from the town had come up to see what was going on. There were maybe a hundred people there by the time we got the last body wheeled out.

“What happened?” the schoolteacher said.

“They made a mess out of themselves,” Old Chuck said.

“Where are their thumbs and features?” Doc Edwards asked.

“Right over there in that bucket,” Old Chuck said. “They cut them off with their jackknives. We don't know why.”

“What are we going to do with the bodies?” Fred said. “We're not going to put them in tombs, are we?”

“No,” Charley said. “We have to do something else.”

“Take them to their shacks at the Forgotten Works,” Pauline said. “Burn them. Burn their shacks. Burn them together and then forget them.”

“That's a good idea,” Charley said. “Let's get some wagons and take them down there. What a terrible thing.”

We put the bodies in the wagons. By then almost everybody in watermelon sugar had gathered at i
DEATH
. We all started down to the Forgotten Works together.

We started off very slowly. We looked like a parade barely moving toward YOU MIGHT GET LOST. I walked beside Pauline.

T
HERE WAS
a warm golden sun shining down on us and on the slowly nearing Piles of the Forgotten Works. We crossed rivers and bridges and walked beside farms, meadows and through the piney woods and by fields of watermelons.

The piles of the Forgotten works were like chunks of half-mountains and half-apparatus that glowed like gold.

An almost festive spirit was coming now from the crowd. They were relieved that in
BOIL
and that gang of his were dead.

Children began picking flowers along the way and pretty soon there were many flowers in the parade, so that it became a kind of vase filled with roses and daffodils and poppies and bluebells.

“It's over,” Pauline said, and then, turning, she threw her arms around me and gave me a very friendly hug to prove that it was all over. I felt her body against me.

In
BOIL
and the bodies of his gang were put into a shack and drenched with watermelontrout oil. We brought along a barrelful for that purpose and then all the other shacks were drenched with watermelontrout oil.

All the people stood back and just as Charley was getting ready to set fire to the shack where the bodies were, Margaret came waltzing out of the Forgotten Works.

“What's up?” she said. She acted as if nothing had happened, as if we were all down there on some kind of picnic.

“Where have you been?” Charley said, looking a little bewildered at Margaret, who was as cool as a cucumber.

“In the Forgotten Works,” she said. “I came down here early this morning, before sunrise, to look for things. What's wrong? Why are you all down here at the Forgotten Works?”

“Don't you know what happened?” Charley said.

“No,” she said.

“Did you see in
BOIL
when you came down here this morning?”

“No,” she said. “They were all asleep. What's wrong?” She looked all around. “Where's in
BOIL
?”

“I don't even know if I can tell you,” Charley said. “He's dead and all his gang, too.”

“Dead. You must be joking.”

“Why? No, they came up to i
DEATH
a couple of hours ago and they all killed themselves in the trout hatchery. We've brought their bodies down here to burn them. They made a terrible scene.”

“I don't believe it,” Margaret said. “I just can't believe it. What kind of joke is this?”

“It's no joke,” Charley said.

Margaret looked around. She could see that almost everybody was there. She saw me standing beside Pauline and she ran over to me and said, “Is it true?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I don't know. None of us do. They just came up to i
DEATH
and killed themselves. It's a mystery to us.”

“Oh no,” Margaret said. “How did they do it?”

“With jackknives.”

“Oh, no,” Margaret said. She was very shocked, dazed. She grabbed ahold of my hand.

“This morning?” she said, almost to no one now.

“Yes.”

Her hand felt cold and awkward in my hand as if the fingers were too small to fit. I could only stare at her who had disappeared into the Forgotten Works that morning.

C
HARLEY TOOK
a six-inch match and set fire to the shack that contained in
BOIL
and the bodies of his gang. We all stood back and the flames went up higher and higher and burned with that beautiful light that watermelontrout oil makes.

Then Charley set fire to the other shacks and they burned just as brightly, and pretty soon the heat was so bad that we had to stand farther and farther back until we were in the fields.

We watched for an hour or so and the shacks were fairly gone by then. Charley stood there watching very quietly. in
BOIL
had once been his brother.

Some of the children were playing in the fields. They got tired of watching the fire. It had been very exciting at first, but then the children grew tired of it and decided to do something else.

Pauline sat down on the grass. The flames brought total peace to her face. She looked as if she had just been born.

I stopped holding Margaret's hand and she was still in a daze over what was happening. She sat by herself in the grass, holding her hands together as if they were dead.

As the flames diminished to very little, a strong wind came out of the Forgotten Works and scattered ashes rapidly through the air. After while Fred yawned, I dreamt.

 

 

 

 

BOOK THREE: MARGARET

I
WOKE UP
feeling refreshed and stared at my watermelon ceiling, how nice it looked, before getting out of bed. I wondered what time it was. I was supposed to meet Fred for lunch at the cafe in town.

I got up and went outside and stretched again on the front porch of my shack, feeling the cool stones under my bare feet, feeling their distance. I looked at the gray sun.

The river shone not quite lunch time yet, so I went over to the river and got some water and threw it in my face to finish the job of waking up.

I
MET
Fred at the cafe. He was already there, waiting for me. Doc Edwards was with him. Fred was looking at the menu.

“Hello,” I said.

“Hi.”

“Hello,” Doc Edwards said.

“You were really in a hurry this morning,” I said. “You looked like you needed a horse.”

“That's right. I had to go deliver a baby. A litle girl joined us this morning.”