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“Come on back later. We’re going to have a game in back.”
“You all are too sharp for me,” J.P. said.
“Listen to that. He used to roll sevens like there wasn’t no other numbers.”
“See you later,” J.P. said.
&nbs
p; “Tell Ella we’re coming out to see her,” Clois said.
J.P. left the billiard hall and walked down the street towards the hardware store. The sun was above the courthouse now, and the day was getting hot. The shade trees across the street shadowed the lawn, and some old men sat on the benches out of the heat whittling shavings on the grass and spitting tobacco juice and watching the people move along the sidewalk. He went into the hardware store and bought some light fishing tackle—a detachable cane pole that came in three sections, twenty feet of six-pound test line, a wood float, some number four hooks, a piece of gut leader, and several small weights. The clerk wrapped the cane pole up and put the rest of the tackle in a paper bag.
J.P. hired one of the town’s two taxis and rode down to the river where it made a bend by a deserted sawmill and the logs were jammed up along the shore under the overhanging trees. He walked down the green slope of the bank and looked out over the water, red from the clay and swirling in eddies around the logs across the river there were more trees and some Negro shacks and a pirogue was tied by its painter to a willow tree and pulling in the current. He laid his tackle down in the grass and found a piece of board to dig worms with. He squatted on the ground and dug in the soft dirt around the roots of a tree, sifting the dirt through his hands and picking out the worms one by one and putting them in a tin can. The worms were small, not like the big night crawlers he used to look for with a flashlight behind the barn at home. He scooped some dirt and leaves into the can and sat down under a tree on the bank and inserted the joints of the detachable pole into each other. Letting out the twenty feet of line, he tied a knot one foot from the end of the pole and another right at the tip to even out the pull of a fish along the whole cane. He slipped his float up the line and plugged the wood stick in the hole to keep it secure, and put on two small weights and mashed them tight on the line with his teeth, and tied the gut leader and the hook with a slip knot at the end. He threaded a worm carefully over the hook, not exposing the barb, and dropped the line into the water between the logs where the catfish nested.
The wind was cool coming through the trees, and he sat in the shade and looked at the sun reflect on the water. The river had overrun the bank around the sawmill and the outer door to the logging chute was partly under water and wood chips stacked in a pile by the wall were lapped over and pulled out in the current. He could see the gars turning in the water, their backs and tails just fanning the surface, and he picked up his line and moved it to another place between the logs and then the cane jerked hard in his hand and the float went under. The line was taut and pulling from side to side in the water as the catfish tried to tangle it in the logs. J.P. stood up and pulled the catfish out of the river, swinging him in the air clear of the logs onto the bank beside him. The fish flipped in the grass with the hook protruding from the corner of his mouth and tangled himself in the line. J.P. lifted him up carefully, putting his fingers behind the stingers, and removed the hook. It was a mud cat, pale yellow from living on the bottom of the river, with whiskers and a wide-slitted mouth. J.P. cut a forked twig from a bush and shaved it clean of bark and sharpened one end to a point. He ran the pointed end through the fish’s third gill and out the mouth and dropped him in the water and stuck the other end of the twig firmly in the side of the bank. The fish ginned the water with his tail and tried to get off the twig.
J.P. put another worm on the hook and threw his line out among the logs. He caught three sun perch, another catfish, and two cottonfish which he threw back. He wanted to catch some bass but it was too early in the year. The time to catch bass was in the early fall when the weather was cool and he could go upriver in a boat beyond the sawmill to those deep ponds cut back in the bank and surrounded by trees and the water was dark and still. About evening he would fish the reeds with a flyrod and the fly would rest motionless on the surface and he would snap it back over his head and whip it dry in the air and cast again; there would be a flick of silver in the water when the bass hit and the rod would throb in his palm, and he would take up the slack in the line with one hand and use the automatic reel with the other. The bass would fight hard and finally J.P. would dip him out of the water with his net and put him in the straw creel in the bottom of the boat.
He caught two bullheads, and it was late afternoon and the sun was red in the west over the green of the trees. He took the forked twig out of the water and slid the fish off and laid them on the bank. He cleaned the perch first, scaling them and leaving the heads, and then he cleaned the catfish. He slit their stomachs open from the gills back to the tail and scooped out the entrails and threw them in the river, then he snapped the heads off cleanly by breaking the vertebras backwards; then he cut two long slices along the dorsal fin from front to back and peeled the skin off in strips. He washed each of the fish in the water and wrapped them in the paper sack his tackle had come in.
He walked the two miles back to town along a dirt road with trees and fields and farmhouses on each side. The sun was now setting and the day had become cool and the wind dried the sweat on his neck. There were a few rain clouds beginning to build and the sky looked green, the way it does before it rains at evening during the summer. The fish felt moist in his hand through the paper sack. He wanted to come back tomorrow and fish farther upstream for the bass, even though he knew it was too early. He looked at the sky and hoped that the rain would only be a shower so the fishing would still be good the next day. He walked into town and stopped at a café and had the cook prepare the fish for him. They were fried in cornmeal, and he ate them with his hands, the grease hot on his fingers, and drank two bottles of beer. He gave the cook a dollar and paid for the beer and picked up his pole, which he had left outside, and went to the hotel.
It started to rain after he reached the hotel, and he looked out his window and watched the water streak down the glass and the evening twilight diminish from green to lavender and the neon sign come on over the billiard hall. The street and the high sidewalks and the courthouse lawn and the one-story brick buildings were empty of people. The afterglow of the sun faded in the wet sky, and the small crack of red in the clouds low on the horizon sank out of sight, then it was dark.
He went down to the billiard hall, since everything else in town was closed after seven o’clock except the gas station, the café, and a couple of taverns. He went inside and drank a beer at the bar. Some of the men he had been with earlier were still there. He listened to the crack of the billiard balls and the squeak of the cues being chalked and the cursing when someone missed a shot. Clois, the man who could switch a pair of dice in a game or make them walk up a backboard and come back sevens so often that he was required to throw with a cup, come over to J.P. and asked him to join the others in back.
“What are you playing?”
“Craps. We never play nothing else,” Clois said. “Like the nigger says, them galloping dominoes ain’t done me wrong yet.”
They walked the length of the bar past the pool tables and went through a door in the back. There was a room bare of any furniture with no windows and a single light bulb with a green shade like those over the pool tables. A dirty blanket was spread on the floor, and six or seven men were kneeling around in a circle and one was bouncing the dice off the wall back onto the blanket.
“Mind if me and J.P. gets in?” Clois said.
The men looked at them and then back at the game. The man who was shooting smacked the dice off the wall.
“Ain’t you fellows ready to let some more money in the game?” Clois said.
“Shut up. Can’t you see I’m shooting?” the man with the dice said.
He hit them off the wall again and crapped out.
“All right. You done made me lose my point. You can get in now,” he said.
“Whose dice?” Clois said.
“You got money?” a man said.
“What the hell do you think I come in here for?”
“Put it on the board.”
Clois dropped two crumpled one-dollar bills on the blanket and took the dice.
“None of your stuff, neither. This is a straight game,” the man said.
“I ain’t pulling nothing on you boys,” Clois said, and rolled his sleeves up over his elbows.
