Where We Belong

by Hyde, Catherine Ryan

  “Want to go fishing in the morning?” he asked me.

  “Love to,” I said.

  Then I took Rigby’s leash down from the peg by the door, and we set off on our walk. I was thinking, after the fact, that it would be complicated to go fishing in the morning, because if the three of us—Paul and Rig and me—took off fishing before her school van came, Sophie might scream.

  And, of course, the best fishing was always before the school van came.

  We didn’t make it all the way into town. Rigby came up sore. She started favoring her right front. I stopped, and she sat, and Sophie sat, and I picked up her paw and looked between the pads, thinking she might have a burr or something. But there was nothing wrong that I could see. We probably hadn’t gone more than a quarter of a mile. I wasn’t sure if we should go on.

  We walked another minute or so in the direction of town, but she was really limping by then.

  A woman jogger passed us going the other way and looked down at Rigby with this sad smile. “Poor guy’s getting old,” she said.

  “Girl.”

  “Oh.”

  I don’t know why I said that. I don’t know why it mattered. It didn’t matter if Rigby was a boy or a girl. It mattered that she was getting old.

  We just stood—and sat—there for a time. Probably a full minute. Then I decided we’d better turn around and call it a day.

  “You were right to come back,” Paul said. “Here. Walk her toward me, so I can see.”

  I led Rigby through the back bedroom as Paul watched. Sophie ambled along behind.

  “That’s not her paw. That’s her shoulder. She’s having trouble with her right shoulder.”

  “You think it was all that jumping around when you came home?”

  “Maybe. It’s definitely tied in with her arthritis.”

  “But she takes medication for that.”

  “The medication doesn’t cure it. Just helps her handle it.”

  “Oh. Well, I guess we’ll go and leave you alone now. Sophie. Come on back and see Mom with me. We’ll see Rigby again tomorrow. Oh. And Paul. About that fishing. I’m wondering how we’re going to get out of here in the morning without Sophie wanting to come along.”

  “Under the circumstances,” he said, “I think it might be best to leave Rigby here. I’m not sure how good it would be for her to lie on the hard ground for hours if she’s having a flare-up.”

  “Could she stay in the apartment while we’re gone?”

  “Sure. That would be fine. If we bring her bed up there. I’ll come knock on your door when it’s almost time to go. It’ll be early.”

  “I don’t mind.”

  “It’ll be dark.”

  “I don’t care. I can’t wait.”

  Then Sophie and I walked out of his house. She came along quietly and stayed calm.

  In the morning, Paul’s knock woke me up. It was dark, just like he’d said it would be. I stuck my head out from behind the room divider. He was standing in the wide-open doorway, knocking lightly.

  I went to the door, a little embarrassed, because my pajamas were raggedy. But I didn’t want to call over and wake my mom.

  “I have my clothes all laid out,” I whispered. “So I’ll just be a minute. Where’s Sophie?”

  “In the house with Rig.”

  “I thought we’d be up before her this morning. How long’s she been there?”

  “She was there at two in the morning, when I got up to go to the bathroom. That’s all I know for sure.”

  It was still nearly pitch dark when Paul handed me a fishing rod from the trunk. I looked at it closely and felt along the length of it. It seemed short, but then I realized it was in two pieces.

  “What’s this?”

  “Your fishing pole.”

  “Not like any other fishing pole I’ve ever used.”

  “That’s because we’re not fishing for trout.”

  “What are we fishing for?”

  He shone the flashlight around in the trunk to make sure we had everything, then slammed the trunk and locked up the car.

  “Not sure if I should tell you or let you be surprised.”

  We set out walking together, following the thin beam of flashlight on a dirt trail. I could hear flowing water already. It sounded like a lot more water than I was used to.

  “If they’re that much bigger than what we always caught before, maybe you better tell me.”

  “They are.”

  “You better tell me.”

  “Channel cats.”

  I stopped dead, which plunged me into total darkness when he kept going.

  “Cats? We’re fishing for cats?”

  “Catfish,” he said, stopping and shining the light at my feet.

  I caught up with him.

  “Catfish. Right. I knew that.”

  A thin layer of light was just starting to glow over the eastern mountains when we got to the water.

  “Is this a river?”

  “Not really. Technically, it’s a creek. But it’s as big as a small river. And there are channel cats in the deeper pools.”

  “What do channel cats bite on?”

  “All manner of things. The stinkier and more horrible, the better. They’re kind of like the goats of the water. But chicken livers are their favorite.”

  “You brought chicken livers?”

  “I did. Here. Hold out your hand. Careful, I’m going to set a hook on it. It’s a treble, so you have three chances to impale yourself. So careful how you handle it in the dark.”

  “How am I supposed to see to tie it on the line?”

  “Let me do mine, and then I’ll shine the flashlight on it for you.”

  “This hook is huge. And the line feels so thick. I feel like we’re fishing for giants.”

  “They get big. Twenty pounds or more, sometimes, around here. Though it’s not likely we’ll catch one that big.”

  “I didn’t even know they made hooks this big.”

  “They make hooks the size of my hand. People go out in the ocean and catch marlin and tuna and halibut that are bigger than you are. Bigger than I am. Hundreds of pounds.”

  “Weird,” I said.

  “What’s weird about it?”

  “I don’t know. I was just thinking about life, and how you never really know as much as you think you do. You think there’s one thing you know so much about, and then it turns out you haven’t even scratched the surface. Like Tibet.”

  He shined the flashlight on my face, and I winced and covered my eyes.

  “I give up. How is it like Tibet?”

  “Because… I know more about Tibet than anyone I know. I had a bookstore person tell me once that only somebody from a Tibetan travel bureau knows what I know. I had a woman in a library offer me a job as a reference librarian, I know so much. Well. She was joking. But she was joking about it because I know so much. But I’ve never even been to Tibet. What if I got there, and it was nothing like what I thought? Or what if it turned out that what I know isn’t one percent of one percent of all there is to know?”

  “If you’ve never been to a place before, I can just about guarantee you that what you know isn’t one percent of one percent of all there is to know.”

  “See what I mean? That’s what I think is weird.”

  The sun was up over the mountain, shining into my eyes, before we talked again. Our lines were in the water, in that deep pool, weighted down with chicken livers and those huge hooks. We were sitting with our backs up against the trunks of two evergreen trees. The sound of the water was like music. I didn’t care if we ever caught anything or not. Except I did want to see what a channel cat looked like.

  I was the one who opened my mouth.

  “Seems weird, fishing without Rigby.”

  No answer for a long time.

  Then he said, “I don’t know what I’m going to do without that dog.”

  “Don’t even say that. She’ll still be around awhile. Won’t she?”
/>   “I certainly hope so.”

  We sat in silence for another few minutes before I said, “You should ask Rachel to come up for a visit.”

  “Where did that come from?”

  “I don’t know. I was just thinking. You said Dan was sick of it up here. Which made it sound like Rachel still likes it. Maybe she misses the place.”

  “Might be too soon for her.”

  “Do you talk to her?”

  “Yeah. She calls, or I call. Just about every day. It hasn’t been long enough yet, if that’s what you’re thinking. It’s only been a few days. She needs time to get over losing him. I’m not saying anything until the time is right.”

  “How long, do you think?”

  “I don’t know. Probably a year, at least.”

  “A year. Wow.”

  “She was married for a long time. Forty-seven years. It takes time to get over a loss like that.”

  I decided my line was too slack, so I reeled in a little. But I hit the end of the slack in a weird way. It just stopped reeling. I couldn’t move it anymore.

  “Crap,” I said. “I think I’m hung up on something.”

  “Give it a steady pull. See if you can work your hook loose.”

  I gave the line a good solid pull. It pulled back, bending that huge rod over into an arch shape.

  “Ah, yes,” Paul said. “You’re hung up on something. A large fish.”

  “What do I do?”

  “Bring him in.”

  I reeled. Or at least… I tried. But I felt like I was trying to haul in the trunk of a tree. And it hurt the scraped-up heels of my hands. A lot.

  “Loosen your drag a little. Remember how I showed you that?”

  “Yeah, but it’s different on this rod.”

  “Here, just hold steady. I’ll do it for you.”

  He reached over me and twisted a knob on the reel, and then when the fish yanked, I heard a zipping sound as he pulled some line free.

  “Why are we doing that?”

  “Makes it harder for him to break the line.”

  It also made it easier for me to reel in. Less like I was hooked on a brick wall. I reeled him in closer, and he zipped off a little line and got farther away again. We did that for a long time. I have no idea how long. I wouldn’t even try to say. I’m sure time was playing tricks. I just know my arm muscles were screaming, and I thought they might give out. I wasn’t sure what I’d do if they let me down. My hands hurt so bad, it was hard not to yell out loud. But I didn’t. I kept my pain to myself.

  Then, just when I thought I was getting nowhere, I saw him come up on the muddy bank. When he tried to pull again, he couldn’t do much, mired up in all that mud like he was. So I got up and walked straight backwards, pulling, until he was well out of the water. I ran to him, taking up the slack in the line as I went.

  “Good job!” Paul said.

  We stood there and looked at him for a second or two. Just in that brief moment, he held still. Like he knew it was over.

  He was thick-bodied. Greenish brown, with weird eyes. And these long things like whiskers sticking out from both sides of his mouth, but made of the same stuff as the rest of him, not hair. I started to say that out loud, how they looked like whiskers. Then I realized how stupid it would sound. Of course they looked like whiskers. That’s probably why they call them catfish.

  “Careful how you handle him,” Paul said. “Do not put your fingers in his mouth. They can really hurt you. Want me to put him on the stringer for you?”

  “Yeah, would you?”

  I didn’t even know what a stringer was. We’d always put fish in that creel basket. But this guy was about twice as long as the basket, which Paul hadn’t even bothered to bring.

  I watched Paul take a yellow cord, like thin nylon rope, out of the tackle box. It had a metal ring on one end and a metal tip on the other. I watched him thread the metal tip through the cat’s gills on one side. He kept feeding it through until it came out the fish’s mouth, which was open and gasping. Then he threaded that end through the ring and pulled it snug, and he had the thing roped, the line looped right through the gills. He took my hook out of the fish’s mouth, and I reeled my line back in.

  Paul carried the catfish to the edge of the creek, a little downstream of where we were fishing, and set him in shallow water. Tied the end of the stringer around a sapling, so he couldn’t swim away.

  I put another disgusting chicken liver on the hook and cast in again.

  “You’re getting really good at casting,” Paul said.

  I hadn’t known he was watching.

  He sat down at the next tree again and picked up his pole.

  “Well,” he said. “That was exciting.”

  “I never thought I’d catch a fish that big in my life. How much do you think he weighs?”

  “Seven, eight pounds, maybe.”

  “How much do the trout usually weigh?”

  “A pound. Or less.”

  “Wow. That’s going to make some good eating.”

  We settled into quiet fishing for a while. Fifteen, twenty minutes with nothing said. Now and then, I’d pull gently on my line to see if it pulled back. But I could always feel the hook move.

  Then I said, “What if you wait a year and talk to her, and it turns out she’s already seeing somebody?”

  “Well. I talk to her almost every day.”

  “Yeah. But what if it’s a year from now, and you’re talking to her, and she tells you she just started dating some new guy? Then it’s the wrong time to tell her again, and you waited too long.”

  Speaking of waiting too long, I sat a long time thinking he was about to answer. But he never did.

  “Sorry. I guess maybe you don’t want to talk about that. I was just thinking. Yeah, it’s a weird thing for me to say to you, I know. And I know you didn’t really like hearing it. But isn’t hearing me say it an awful lot better than having it happen?”

  First nothing.

  Then, “Look, I know you have my best interests at heart, but…”

  “Fine. I’m sorry. It’s really none of my business. We’ll talk about something else. Where was Sophie when you woke up the last two mornings? She wasn’t right up on the bed with you, was she?”

  “On the bed? No. Why would she be on the bed? She wants to be with Rig.”

  “Doesn’t Rig sleep on the bed with you?”

  “No. Rig sleeps on her dog bed on the floor.”

  “Oops. I think I made a mistake. I thought she was allowed up on the bed. She got up there with me, and I figured she wouldn’t do it if she wasn’t allowed.”

  “I don’t mind if she gets up there. I just don’t want her up there while I’m sleeping, because I won’t have any room.”

  “She was really nice about only taking up half.”

  “How is that possible? She’s bigger than the bed.”

  “She slept with her legs hanging off.”

  “That dog is so smart, it scares me sometimes.”

  “Sorry if I did that wrong.”

  “It really doesn’t matter. I don’t mind if you didn’t mind.”

  “I was thinking maybe we could get one of those chain locks. For the inside of the apartment door. And put it up high, where Sophie couldn’t reach.”

  “Okay. We’ll stop and get one on the way back through town. I’ll put it up while your mom’s at work.”

  And I thought, Fine. Maybe that solves the problem. Maybe it’s just all good from here on out. But the part of me that was supposed to relax and be happy said, “Right. Like I haven’t heard that a hundred times before.”

  “Tell me the story of what happened in the driveway this morning,” he said. “Since we have all this time.”

  He looked over at the ripped knee of my jeans. With my knees bent, you could see the dried blood pretty clearly through the hole in the denim.

  “She decided to break away from me and run up to your house. So I tackled her. I was trying to get her attention
. I was trying to get some control back. I didn’t mean to hurt her. I have no idea if it was a right or a wrong thing to do. I just don’t know. Do you think it was right?”

  “No idea at all,” he said. “But I applaud you for trying something new.”

  We stayed out for nearly another two hours. Till the sun was up pretty high, and it was getting too warm. We never caught another channel cat.

  The next morning, Paul’s third full day back, I woke up in my bed in the apartment. It was cold. And drafty.

  “Not possible,” I said. Out loud. To myself.

  I got up and peeked around the divider. The door was wide open. Paul’s new chain lock was dangling, undone.

  I woke up my mom. My arms were sore, but I shook her by the shoulder until she sat up. She looked pissed. I didn’t care. I was pissed, too.

  “The lock doesn’t work if you don’t put it on at night.”

  “I did put it on.”

  “Apparently not. Or Sophie wouldn’t be gone.”

  She craned her neck around to see.

  “I’ll be damned,” she said. “I wonder how she did that.”

  “You must’ve forgotten to lock it.”

  “I locked it.”

  “I doubt that. She can’t reach it.”

  “Hmm. I have no idea, kiddo. But I did lock it.”

  “Fine. Whatever. I’ll just apologize to Paul one more time. But you won’t mind if tonight I lock it myself.”

  That night before bed, after Sophie was long asleep, I reached up on my toes and locked the chain. It was high up even for me. And my arms still felt like they were about to fall off.

  “I swear, I really did lock it,” my mom said.

  I figured she was wrong, but I didn’t feel like arguing.

  The next morning, Paul’s fourth day back, I woke up, and it was drafty and cold.

  “Shit,” I said. Before I even got up and looked.

  I woke my mom again, and we stared at the open door. And shook our heads.

  “Maybe she dragged one of those kitchen chairs over,” she said.

  “I can believe Sophie would figure that out. But I think after she got the lock off, she’d just go. I can’t picture her moving the chair back first. I can see her figuring out how to get what she wants, but I can’t see her covering her tracks.”