Stealing by Margaret Verble

Author:Margaret Verble
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2023-02-07T00:00:00+00:00

28

I didn’t go fishing again until Saturday. By then, I really needed to catch some, and I’d sort of convinced myself that Mrs. Burnett didn’t mean for me to never come on her property again. And that was the only way to get to the bayou. So, I walked past Bella’s, noticed Marvin’s car there, and figured that, at least inside the cabin, everything was okay. Then I walked through Mrs. Burnett’s pasture just like nothing had ever happened. Or really, that’s what I tried to look like on the outside. On the inside, I was shaking.

Once I got to the bayou, I picked out a shady place where a tree curved over the water. The bayou is sometimes green, sometimes brown, and sometimes blue, but on that day it was blue, and there were little silver spots dancing on the surface where the sunlight broke through the leaves onto the water. I settled in, and pretty quickly a catfish started gumming my bait. I let him gum and felt sure that I’d have dinner on my stringer in a few minutes.

While the catfish and I played with one another, I got to thinking about Marvin’s DeSoto. Usually, Stan’s Ford was at Bella’s at least one morning a weekend. But it seemed to me that lately I’d seen only the DeSoto. That sort of bothered me. I didn’t mind Marvin, but I preferred Bella to have two boyfriends to one, and I decided to ask her about Stan on my way back. About the time I got that settled in my mind, that catfish took my bobber all the way under and held it. I jerked my pole to the right, and he took the bait lower. That started a tug of war. The catfish was so strong that I had to steady myself with my leg against the trunk of the tree. My pole bent and I hoped to goodness the fish didn’t break it.

And he didn’t. But when I drew him out of the water, my pole was bent double and the catfish was bigger than any fish I’d ever caught. He was so close to the ground that his tail hit it with a whapping sound. I got in front of him and pulled him along on his belly farther away from the bank so he wouldn’t flip and flop back into the water. Finally, he just lay in the weeds, glared at me and gulped. He was colored strange, not mud or blue, and I couldn’t tell what kind he was. Not any I’d ever caught before. But whatever kind, a catfish that size can be a considerable problem, more so than a bass or any fish other than a gar. And that’s because a catfish will cut you in a heartbeat and they’ll cut you deep. I knew that it’d be too dangerous to try to get my hook out of his mouth. So I pulled my pole around so the line was tight, and I wound that line around the trunk of a little tree nearby.

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