by Robb White
56
'Tve caught fish with a rod and reel/' Jonathan said coldly.
''Shucks/' she said. "Rod and reel.''
''Worms/' he said, just as scornfully, and went on toward the house.
On the porch he stopped and turned around slowly. Through the woods, years and years ago, a vista had been cut so that you could see for miles across the land of the Farm. See the fields and pines and rolling land. Off to the left the Big Pond glistened dark and calm under the sun, and, farther, the Little Pond was spotted with green lily pads.
At first he was so busy looking at the view that he didn't see the dog walk slowly out from behind a tree and come, step by step, up the drive toward the house. It was the same black-and-white dog, Pot Likker. The dog with no instincts.
It stopped and sat down exactly where it had sat that morning.
Jonathan called to it and was a little pleased to see that Pot Likker at least raised its long ears a little and cocked its head.
But it wouldn't come any closer, so Jonathan gave up and went to get his fishing tackle.
It took some rooting around in the closet to find it all. He had put the reel away in a chamois bag so it looked bright and new, and the nylon line on it was all right. The rod was bamboo and the varnish was still smooth and clear. But his
baits were in bad shape. The gang hooks on the plugs and spoons were all rusty and the colors had faded.
Jonathan locked the door behind him and went back to the Worths'. Judy was waiting for him with two long cane poles and a can of bait.
He left the key, and together they started off for the Big Pond. ''Is the boat still there?'' Jonathan asked.
''There's a boat Uncle Dan built."
"I guess the one we left rotted away," Jonathan said. ''How long have you been living here?"
"I don't Jive here," she told him. "I live with my mother over there." She pointed across the woods.
"The Forbes' place?"
"We bought it. Oh, a long time ago."
"What happened to your father, Judy?"
"He got killed in the war. He was in the Navy. Before that he was a painter."
"What'd he paint?"
"Pictures," she said. "My mother does, too. That's where she is now, down in the Everglades painting pictures of wild birds. Sometime I'll show you some of them. They're beautiful."
"Can you paint?"
She shook her head. "I'm going to be a farmer when I grow up. I'm learning from Uncle Dan now."
"I like him," Jonathan decided. "I like Mrs. Worth, too."
"They're wonderful. Uncle Dan is my mother's brother, although he's a lot older than she is. Ever since we came
here theyVe been niee to me, and I always stay with them when Mother goes away to paint things because she has to go to places where she has to wait all day maybe for a certain kind of bird to come. I've been with her, but I get restless just waiting all da}' long. So now I stay here. I guess I spend as much time over here as I do on our own place."
''Do you ever go down to the river?''
''Lots/'
"W^hat's it like now?" he asked, remembering days upon days when he had plaed along its banks or fished in it or gone swimming in the Glass Hole.
"Too much rain lately. She's a little high," Judy told him.
"Is there a sand bar at the curve below those rocks?"
"Why shouldn't there be?"
"I just wondered." That sand bar was where, in the old days, he had always had his birthday parties. His mother and father and lots of children would go down there and cook hot dogs and swim and eat. Those days had been fun, he remembered.
The boat Mr. Worth had built was a double-ender, narrow and tippy, and leaked like a sponge, but it was easy to row and the wind didn't blow it all over the pond.
Judy put in the poles and the bait and then looked at him. "You got that fancy rod and reel ready to scare fish with?" she asked.
Jonathan, wondering whether he still knew how to cast, decided that he'd try pole fishing for a while first. If they caught enough with the worms, he wouldn't need to use his
rod. Anyway, he ought to practice a httle first, he decided. He left the rod unjointed as he got into the boat with her.
''Since you don't know where the fish are, Til paddle," Judy told him.
'Who says I don't?''
"I do."
''They're over on the far side, near those stumps. At least that's where the big ones are."
''Never caught one over there," she said. "So I'll show you where they are."
Jonathan started to argue with her, but then remembered that it had been a long, long time since he had been fishing.
Judy paddled the boat slowly along until she found a big open space of water among the lily pads. She dropped anchor at the edge of it and got her pole.
For the first five minutes after she started fishing she didn't move or speak, just sat watching her cork. But nothing happened. Judy at last allowed herself to glance o er at his cork.
"Not biting," Jonathan said.
"They will," she said positively.
He leaned back in the boat, resting his pole on his knees. "I don't much care whether they do or not." He sighed. "This is better than going to school."
She looked at him, frowning. "What's the matter with you in school anyway?" she asked.
"Nothing's the matter with me. The trouble's with the school."
'Those F's/' she said.
''What about those F's?" he asked lazily. Then he grinned. "After all, anybody can make B's and C's—even A's. Not many people make F's."
Judy said slowly, ''I used to, too.''
Jonathan was suddenly interested. ''In what?''
"Arithmetic."
"That's what's got me," he confessed. "That stuff! I can do it pretty good when it's just adding or long division-just numbers. But when they give you those problems . . ."
She nodded in agreement. "They used to bother me, too. But I whipped 'em."
"I'll bet," he said, laughing.
"I did, too. I used to get F's sometimes. Now I never get lower than a B."
"I'll bet."
"All right, you don't have to believe me. I don't care."
Jonathan pulled his line up to see whether his worm was still on the hook. It was. "How'd you whip 'em?" he asked, not caring much one way or the other.
"I made 'em all me," she told him. "Me and dollars."
Jonathan twisted his head around to look at her. "You goofy?" he asked.
"Not as goofy as you are. I don't make F's any more. Ssssh. I got a bite!"
But the fish didn't nibble again, and she relaxed. "Every time thev make me do problems I just turn them into me and dollars."
"How?"
''All right. They give you a problem about a farmer and he's got so and so many bushels of corn and he wants to give some away and sell some and—oh, you know, all that foolishness they put in problems/'
Jonathan moaned, remembering.
'AVell, I don't mess around with farmers and bushels of corn. I make those problems so that IVe got so and so many dollars. The problem says I've got to give some of them away, and all that, but I'm going to have some left. That's when I start wanting to know how many I'm going to have left. How many dollars. Just as soon as I find out, I feel better."
Jonathan laughed out loud. ''That's the goofiest way to do arithmetic I ever heard of."
''Maybe so, but it works."
"It wouldn't for me," he declared.
"Why not? Don't you like dollars?"
"Sure I do. But they haven't got anything to do with arithmetic."
Judy said flatly, "I don't get F's any more."
"Well," he told her, lying farther down in the boat, "I still do."
Judy bailed out some of the water, then looked oer at him. She began to laugh. "I said your hair was gold and it's just a sort of mangy brown."
Jonathan laughed, too. "You really were making a sissy out of me. So pale and feeble."
She looked embarrassed. 'AVell/' she said.
Jonatlian thought for a while. "You know, it's kind of funny. Your father's dead and my mother's dead, so we've both got the same kind of sadness, haxen't we?"
She nodded. '1 never knew my father, though. Not the way you knew your mother. I hardly even remember him."^
^'That's rough," Jonathan decided. ''My mother was. wonderful."
*'My father was, too, I guess/'
*'Has vour mother ever married anybody else?"
''No. She hasn't met anybody she wants to marr}'."
"Neither has mv dad." Jonathan suddenly ehuckled.. "W^onder what would happen if they married eaeh other?'^
"It'd be terrible," Judy said. "Then I'd have you for a brother or something, and we'd ha'e to go li'e in the city where you live."
"Yeah," he agreed, "that would be bad, wouldn't it?"'
"It sure would."
CHAPTER SIX
The fish weren't biting, but Jonathan didn't care. He lay across the boat, his bare feet in the water on one side, his head on the gunwale on the other, the butt of his fishing pole stuck under his belt. Above him the sky was clean and cool-looking. Little yellow butterflies were flying around and dragonflies were skimming along, laying their eggs in the water. Long-legged, silly-looking birds called bonnet walkers were skipping along from one lily pad to the other, teetering on each one.
Judy at last picked up the tip section of Jonathan's rod and looked at it, rubbing her fingers down the smooth varnish on the glued-up bamboo. ''That's pretty, isn't it?" she asked.
Jonathan nodded, rubbing his head on the gunwale.
''I don't see how it could hold a fish, though. It's too limbery. It'd break."
She put down the tip and picked up the butt section. Then she opened the tackle box and took out the English spinning reel. She turned the handle carefully and exam-
ined the whole thing. ''Let's see you fish with this thing/' she said.
Jonathan turned his head and looked at the reel. 'Tm not sure I still know how."
'AVell, try, anyway/' she insisted. ''I want to see how it works/'
Jonathan sat up and put the rod together, first rubbing the tip ferrule against the side of his nose to oil it a little. Then he put the reel on the eork seat and threaded the line through the guides. The line wasn't mueh thicker than a good-sized spiderweb.
Finally he looked at all the plugs and things in his box and picked out a wooden top-water plug shaped like a short, fat cigar. It had a spinner on one end and two sets of three hooks. It was painted green and white, a little like a frog's back.
Judy stared at it and then picked it up gingerly so she wouldn't get hooked. 'Tve seen these things in stores, but I don't think a fish would bite one. Why should they?"
'They think it's a frog."
*'They do not! Fish aren't dumb enough to think a piece of wood with paint on it is a frog."
''You wait," Jonathan warned her.
"How long? Ten years?"
He ignored her. ''How about paddling over toward those stumps? Go real slow."
V/hile she was paddling across the lake he practiced a few
times and soon he had the feel of the rod again, but he wasn't very accurate.
At last he asked her to stop paddling. About a hundred feet away there was a big stump in the water, black with age and deeply grooved. It looked to Jonathan like a good place for a bass to live. A big bass. Little fishes swimming around the stump would swim right into his mouth. Bugs flying around would want to light on that stump and a big bass could jump and get them. And it was a good stump for a frog to sit on and croak awhile, but when that frog decided to jump into the water, a big bass could make a whole meal out of him.
There were three lily pads to the right of the stump. Jonathan figured they would make good shade for the bass on hot days. But all the rest of the water was clear. It was just a natural place for a fish to set up housekeeping, and Jonathan cast the plug out toward the stump.
It was the most beautiful cast he had ever made. The green-and-white plug sailed out in a long arc and when he guessed that it had gone far enough, he stopped the line flowing off the reel spool. The plug slowed in the air and dropped down, hitting the side of the stump and plopping into the water about two inches away from it.
Even Judy was impressed. 'That thing really chunks, doesn't it?''
Jonathan nodded. He was watching the plug as it now lay motionless on the water. The rings of waves it had
started when it hit got wider and wider, spreading out away from the pkig and the stump.
''W^ell/' Judy said after a while, ''what do we do, just sit here until a fish comes along and thinks that pieee of wood is a frog?"
That made him a little irritated. 'TIow^ many fish did we cateh by using your worms?"
Judy bridled. "At least they were real worms. I just don't think any fish in his right mind will bite that piece of wood."
'Tish haven't got any minds. They've just got appetites.''
''Like Pot Likker," Judy decided.
Jonathan didn't know why that made him so mad, but it did. "Pot Likker's got plenty of mind. You and Mr. Worth don't think much of him, but he's a good dog."
"What you so mad about?" Judy asked, smiling a little. "You talk like Pot Likker was yours."
Jonathan calmed down. "Well, you're always saving he isn't any good and hasn't got any sense or instincts or anything."
"Well, he hasn't. All he's got is appetite."
By this time all the rings of waves had died down to nothing. The water around the stump was glass-smooth and Jonathan could see three drops of water shining like little mirrors on one of the lily pads where the plug had splashed them.
Being as gentle as he could, Jonathan slowly raised the rod tip, pulling in the threadlike line lying on the water.
When the pull reached the plug, it just spun slowly around and swam toward him an inch or two.
After it was all over, Jonathan could remember every bit of it. The plug stopped swimming, the water got calm again. A dragonfly stopped in the air just over it and then went on.
Then the smooth surface of the water began to bulge up. It was like an air bubble pushing up when you're cooking fudge. The lily pads began to slide around. The wooden plug shivered as though it were really a live frog about to get gobbled up.
Then the water exploded around that stump. The dark surface was suddenly white foam. There was a terrific ''cha-womp/' and a bass came straight up out of the foam. His mouth was wide open and big enough to put Judy's head in it. In the split second before he could move a muscle Jonathan saw the green plug lying peacefully inside the white mouth.
He heaved back on the rod and felt the slack coming out of the line. Then the hooks bit in, and it felt as though he'd hooked into the stump itself.
Behind him he heard Judy say in a whisper, ''Oh, my goodness.''
For another second nothing happened. The bass couldn't figure out what sort of frog he had that could grab the inside of his mouth that way. But when he found he couldn't spit it out, he took off.
Jonathan's reel whined like a buzzer as the fish stripped off line.
'«^4.
I
*'Holcl him, Jonathan! Hold him!" Judy yelled.
Jonathan kept the long rod up, the tip bent down in a hard arc against the pull of the fish. In a clear place, far away from the boat, the bass came up out of the water. He was huge and black and his mouth, wide open again, was enormous. He rose straight up into the air, shaking his head like a wild horse. Then he fell back, splashing water out in a wide circle.
''Oh, my goodness,'' Judy whispered again. ''He's a whale! Don't let him go, Jonathan."
Over his shoulder Jonathan said, ''He won't let ine go. Keep paddling toward him. He's taking all the line."
As she paddled she said, "In a minute he'll start really going. Then he'll break that little thread."
"Maybe so. But he isn't just loafing now."
Then the fish stopped moving. Jonathan tightened the brake a little and gave a light, experimental tug. There was no live resistance and he knew that the bass had wrapped the line around a stump or a snag down on the bottom somewhere.
"He's fouled the line," he told Judy. "Paddle over there and let's see what we can do."
She paddled the boat along until Jonathan's line was straight up and down. Jonathan was whispering by now. "If he hasn't broken loose, we might get him started again. Beat on the boat with the paddle."
"What for?" Judy asked.
"It might scare him, and he'll go back the way he came."
Jiidv haninicrcd on tlic bottom of the boat and Jonathan waited, no brake at all on the reel because he knew that if the bass did move it would come out of there doing a hundred miles an hour and any tension on the line would snap it.
The sudden buzzing of the reel scared him and he yelled, ''Look out, here he comes/'
Not ten feet away the bass jumped again and splashed water into the boat when he landed.
From then on it was just a battle. The bass jumped, circled, rested on the bottom, came toward the boat, or went straight awav from it.
The long, thin bamboo rod fought back. Its way of fighting was alwajs gentle, but it never stopped for a second. It kept up an easy, punishing pressure on the fish so that at last it wore him out. Jonathan reeled him in to the side of the boat and got his fingers in his gills and heaved.
When he was in the boat, Jonathan held him by his lower jaw so that he couldn't move.
Judy sat for a moment staring at the fish. Then, almost in a whisper, she said, 'That's the biggest bass I ever saw/'
Back on shore they strung him on the paddle handle and, while Jonathan took his rod apart, Judy squatted beside the fish, peering down into its throat to find out what it had been eating.
By that time it was getting dark. Jonathan picked up one end of the paddle and his tackle box and was reaching for his rod when Judy picked it up. 'Til carry it," she said.
As they walked back up through the field, Judy kept looking at the rod. ''This thing can really hold 'em, can't it?''
