by Larry D. Harwood

John’s mother handed her son his wife’s note. He eased back on the five gallon bucket rubbing his fishing pole with orange resin and whistled.

“Don’t look good for you,” she said.

He plopped his fishing line into still water.

“Why you say that?” he said.

“Read it,” she answered.

The tip of his fishing pole zipped down, and he struggled before jerking the line up. A bass dripping with water droplets and green algae dangled from the flying end of his cane pole.

“Would you look at that!” he said.

“You going to read it or not?”

“I’m gonna eat it. When we had something like that on our plates? Good thing I came down here. We’ll be eatin’ high, tonight.”

“You might.”

“What you mean?” He stared at the woman.

“Anything scare you?” she asked.

He dropped his jaw as he unhooked the fish.

“Nothing. You’re the one who raised me. You know that.”

“So I did.”

He laughed as he swept algae from the fish with his hand.

“You gonna look at that letter?”

“I know what’s in it.”

“Why you reckoned she left again?”

“Don’t matter,” he said, gawking at his catch, and trying to measure it with his hand.

His mother shoved him into the water. “Lazy you is; stupid you ain’t.” He fell backwards, as his fingers gripped the fish’s mouth.

“What’s that about?” he said, sitting in water with cattails brushing against his face.

“Don’t act stupid. Lazy you is; stupid you ain’t.”

“I heard the first time,” he shouted.

“You living on borrowed time.”

“She’ll be back,” he said.

“She always comes back, does she?”

(line break)

“Where’d you say you caught it?” she asked.

“I told you, behind them tails,” he answered.

“What you using?”

“Plastic, black worm.”

“Anymore down there?”

“Don’t know. We can go again in the morning.”

“I’ll be gone then.”

“Gone?”

“You don’t know what gone means?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I bought me a ticket this afternoon. I reckon you were occupied with fishing, or readin’ my letter.”

“Ticket?”

“Yea. You read it, didn’t you?”

He starred at her, and pushed back uncombed hair.

“You said you bought a ticket.”

“You read the letter, did ya?”

He flinched. “The letter got lost when I fell, in the water. Maybe a fish ate it or something.”

“She didn’t tell you? I mean she didn’t tell you?” She snickered.

“Tell me what?”

“Better than I figured.”

“What?”

“I said better than I figured.”

“I heard. What you done did Sarah?”

“I told you, I bought a ticket, outta here.”

“Did what? Quit beating around the bush woman!”

“She sold the place.”

He stopped eating and looked out the window.

“Sold what?”

“This place.”

“She can’t do that, just up and sell. This place means something, something to me anyway.” He looked out the window again, as his fish started to get cold.

“No, ain’t seen him for a couple days now, sheriff. She told me I might have trouble from him. Don’t know that they did right by him though. I mean them up and leaving him like that.”

“If he comes on the property again you can call me.”

“If I have a mind to, I will,” he said. Ab Runn, the new owner, didn’t have a mind to, but when John Surd showed up again, Runn did assess him from the window of the house. He had little else to do, so he sat by the window and watched the lanky figure maneuver around the pond. Runn had little idea why the boy’s mother sold the place now, lock stock and barrel. She took only her clothes, and left everything else, and told him if he bought the place he’d have enough stuff to set up housekeeping. Runn couldn’t figure the woman selling in such haste. He’d wanted the place for years, in fact asked her if she would sell it many times, with no thought he’d ever have it. Too bad it was so close to the end of him when she called. Said she had to “move on” and was taking her daughter-in-law with her.

Runn didn’t ask questions—wasn’t the type—not his affair, but he wondered when she told him about her son. She had smiled a little, made him curious, though he had not seen Surd till two days ago walking around the pond. Runn didn’t particularly mind that, though the sheriff told him he should watch him. Said the boy had been in some trouble before, stealing.

Runn patted his dog as he watched the boy groping around the shallow end of the pond, and finally resting himself on a five gallon bucket. Surd wiped his face; that was understandable, it was hot out there. The visitor sat for a half hour, throwing pieces of weed in the water, and looking like he was lost. The warm sun must have got to him, because he fell off his bucket after a while. Runn was in no shape to get outside the house without help. The old man scarcely walked any more, so when the boy just lay in the water, Runn decided to let his dog out of the house to see if his visitor was okay.

Surd moved when the dog approached and he pulled himself back up onto his bucket. After that he got his fishing pole up. Runn’s dog scampered back to the house.

When Surd came back the next day, Runn decided he’d better send the fellow a note. Runn kept a bulky collar on his dog and managed to wrap his note around the dog’s collar, with a big “For You” scribbled on the outside. He watched from the window as the dog scampered down to the pond where Surd sat on his bucket. Runn watched the man pull the note out.

Surd must have written his letters with a little mud and a twig and then let the piece of paper dry in the sun. Runn’s eyes were about as gone as his legs, but he did make out the nine reddish words etched on the paper after an hour. The old man dropped the paper, and hated he had bought the place:

“My momma and wife run off. I got nothing.”

Surd came back with some cardboard and his five gallon bucket the next day, but Runn didn’t figure the entire plan until Surd put it together. The boy built a shelter for himself with the cardboard. It was hot out there, fiercely hot, but Runn still didn’t get that the boy intended the covering to house him during the day and night too. It was obvious that the wanderer had been sleeping and staying who knows where before, so the next morning Runn sent another note around the dog collar, telling Surd it was okay for him to stay there, but Surd sent him a longer message back. The writing this time was in ink:

“The raw earth is hard on the flesh. If you aren’t using that old car up there could you bring it down here?”

Surd had a good handwriting, and Runn wondered how much school he had with penmanship as neat and pretty as any he had ever seen. The old man had a car, but he never drove it anymore because his legs couldn’t exert the strength to work the pedals, so he tied the keys around the dog’s collar and sent the animal down to Surd’s place at the water. Runn had had someone drive the jalopy over when he moved into the new place. But Surd didn’t drive either, and wrote him back a note to that effect. The note was actually a letter, for Surd went on to explain that there was a big tree nearby where he had built his cardboard shack, and that if he gave the car just a little shove probably it would roll down the hill toward the pond and the tree would stop it before it went too far. Runn thought this a good idea, and wondered again how much schooling Surd had had, and what other kind of things the man had done with his education.

The car didn’t stop where it was supposed to and wound up submerged, though not all of it. Water came up in the floorboard, but didn’t reach the seats, so Surd did have some dry spots in his new place.

The gas in the tank started to leak out into the water a week later, and Surd noticed that he no longer had to fish anymore, because some of the fish started to come to the surface. They didn’t taste good, though, Surd wrote to Runn, and when Runn sent him another note, Surd wrote back that he feared his only staple perishing soon and there’d be no fish for him to eat then. The old man couldn’t have that and because there wasn’t any cemetery on the place, Ab wrote Surd back and told him to come up and share his house.
That day Surd moved in, and the next day he went fishing.

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