Assisi: An Online Journal of Arts & Letters Volume 4, Issues 1 & 2 | Page 48

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catches from the Assunpink and they’d turned them all down flat. His mother had
declared once that she’d never eat anything that came out of that “mud hole.”
Maybe his trout would be different.
Before too long the fish ceased moving. Max studied its terrified eye for
any sign of life, but there was nothing except for a blank stare. He went back to
casting, curious to see whether his good luck would hold, but he couldn’t stop
thinking about the rainbow trout lying at his feet. It seemed a horrible shame to
have cut its life short for nothing, nothing at all, and perhaps he’d done just that.
He was suddenly filled with remorse, like an executioner who regrets having done
his duty by throwing the switch on a condemned prisoner.
But if he hadn’t caught the fish, one of the others would have. If the fish
didn’t perish at his hands, it would be eaten by a bigger fish perhaps, or it would
eventually die anyway.
He went on casting, but his luck had vanished. Or maybe his heart just
wasn’t in it anymore. He switched to worms, then to the lure, but nothing
worked. He didn’t get even a single nibble.
Weary and bored, he laid his rod down and peered into the cloudy water. If
he hoped for some kind of revelation, he was destined not to get one because the
murk would serve nothing up. This was his life, too: opaque and difficult to
understand.
Though Mack wasn’t much interested in food, he munched on a dry ham
and cheese sandwich and a small, tasteless apple. When he was through eating,
he dumped the rest of his worms into the water, then picked the dead trout up by
the tail and lowered it into his paper sack. He’d show it to the others; maybe
they’d be impressed.
But when he got back to the sand bar, it was deserted; everyone was gone.
He hauled his equipment down the road to the bridge under which the Assunpink
flowed on its way into the city. His father was waiting for him in the car there. As
usual, he wasn’t pleased.

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