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Show RIVER I. THE FISHERMAN I suppose that Fred got out of bed that morning, fed his dogs and ate his breakfast. I wonder if he ate fish. He probably listened to the radio and heard the latest report of casualty figures from the Vietnam War or another glowing account of the triumphal march of Richard Nixon toward reelection. I'm sure he got in his old black Ford pick-up and drove down to the river. There he loaded his gear into a battered sixteen-foot aluminum skiff, cranked up his old Evinrude outboard, and set off into the dim light of early dawn on the Ohio River to check the lines and traps he'd set the night before. It was early March and a layer of bone-penetrating fog clung to the surface of the water. The fishing was off because the river was in flood: a tornado had just swept up the valley. The rising light revealed a colorless day. The sky was a flat gray from horizon to horizon, the river was the color of steel, and the winter-naked trees lined the bank like skeletons, black and gray with no promise of the spring that was soon to come. A thick morning smell hung on the river, heavy with swamp and rot. There was a small leak in Fred's skiff. When he returned to the landing he hauled the boat out of the water and turned it over. He built a small fire out of driftwood and dug up an old coffee can. He began to melt tar in the can. About this time my dog and I showed up. I was drifting in a twelve-foot wooden boat, keeping in close to the Illinois shore, looking for a place to land and build a fire. I pulled into the landing without seeing Fred. My dog leaped ashore and I dragged my boat up the bank so the wakes from passing towboats -4- |