The Prince Of Perch Fishing - University of Pittsburgh Press

the sewer was in his pores, I suppose. Bob got first crack too at the
widow. She’d have been mine otherwise, and we’d have been spared
this. This ugliness. This ungainly wrestle.
What do you know? Bob said, standing next to me.
I know you’re not the boss.
And I know you’re not a thief. A backstabber.
Hammond took Leo’s pole rom him and worked it a minute
and handed it back. Leo pulled and reeled and reeled and pulled;
just another day at the dock for Leo B. Jensen. He toxered momentarily.
Hammond reached to steady him. He stuck a finger in
Leo’s belt loop in back and held on.
Yes, I am, I told Bob.
We were both watching Leo’s pole now, and Leo.
Yes you are what? Bob asked.
A backstabbing thief.
No, you’re not.
I am.
Bob looked at Leo, then me.
You wish. You’re just trying the part on for size. It doesn’t fit.
About now Leo’s fish came into sight, easing out of the depths.
A mighy thing, colossal, a fish to behold. A gargantuan halibut. A
long flaxened fat garbage can, way too big for this dock, or for Leo,
or weny-pound line.
Jesus tits! Hammond cried.
The thing rose to the top as Bob and I looked, driting up leisurely,
easy and graceful and slow, gray and brown speckled, its undercarriage
shock-white, and got a load of Leo, its monofilament
master and lord, and of us all, seven gaudy clowns crowding in, and
did something like laugh, and shook its massive fish face sideways
and snapped Leo’s line, and back down it went.
So once again Bob and I didn’t fish, though the rest of them
did. For a while they all used steel leaders, and muffins and tube
worms for bait. Maybe Hammond crowned himself interim king.
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