OCR Text |
Show RFVER wouldn't swamp her. Fred was hunkered over his fire, stirring the can with a stick. I walked over to talk to him. "Whaf re you up to?" I asked him. "Melting tar to patch this skiff," he said. Fred was about thirty-five and had short black hair under a duckbilled cap, liquid black eyes, and water-weathered gray skin. He was so thin he seemed lanky, though he wasn't very tall. "I oughta use tin and solder, but this will hold it for a while." We watched the tar begin to smoke and bubble in the pot. It crackled as it heated up. I'd tried to land one place already that morning and I'd been run out by an old man who threatened to have a coronary if I didn't disappear straightaway, so I asked Fred if this was a public landing. "If s a town park," he said. "What town?" I asked. "Olmstead. Illinois." There wasn't much to the park-a boarded-up bait shop, a broken concrete launching pad, some elderly picnic tables and a roofed-over barbecue pit. The roof over the barbecue pit caught my eye. In the last several wet days I had developed a profound theory that in a storm any roof over your head was better than no roof. It looked like it might storm and I asked Fred, "Do you think it would be all right if I stayed around here for a while?" "There's nobody to mind. You come a long ways?" "From the Kentucky Dam." "Where you going?" - 5 - |