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Show * RTVER vaguest notion of what it was. Partly I wanted to come to terms with the fear of some dark nights with their isolation and loss, a feeling that I was becoming nothing more than a part of the darkness. What was I afraid of? I was afraid of myself. I finally resolved the Strange Mysteriousness this way: somewhere down the river I was going to find what I needed to live. * * * * * * * * * * * I may not be the world's worst fisherman, but if there were a list of the ten worst, I'd be on it. If I had to depend on fishing to eat, I'd starve straightaway. It's not that I don't try, either. I'd bought a cheap rod and reel at the Kentucky Dam and I'd bait it up with cheese or bacon and hang it off the stern of my boat. The damn line would sit there for hours, scorned by the countless fish below. In the evening you could see fish jumping everywhere and eventually I came to believe that I had a better chance of a fish jumping into my boat than I did of catching one on a hook. I'm somewhat short in the skill department, but sometimes I have to blame it on a lack of faith. Either that, or the damn fish really were smarter than I was. This was unfortunate because I do love to eat fish. In the early morning when I left Columbus I had a stroke of luck. As the sun was breaking through the mist and clouds, an old fisherman, bald and red and smiling, brought his skiff up next to mine. "Do you eat fish?" he called to me. "You bet," I said. He heaved an enormous spoonbill catfish into my boat and was gone up the river without another word, his skiff slamming into the swells and the mosquito- -155- |