“No luck?”
“No more than you’re having.”
“Which isn’t a whole lot,” Mowbray said. “You from around here?”
“No. Been through here a good many times, however. I’ve fished this lake now and again and had good luck more often than not.”
“Well,” Mowbray said. The man’s company was invigorating, but there was a strict code of etiquette governing meetings of this nature. “I think I’ll head on around the next bend. It’s probably pointless but I’d like to get a plug in the water.”
“You never can tell if it’s pointless, can you? Any minute the wind can change or the temperature can drop a few degrees and the fish can change their behavior completely. That’s what keeps us coming out here year after year, I’d say. The wonderful unpredictability of the whole affair. Say, don’t go and take a hike on my account.”
“Are you sure?”
The big man nodded, hitched at his trousers. “You can wet a line here as good as further down the bank. Your casting for bass won’t make a lot of difference as to whether or not a crappie or a sunnie takes a shine to the shiner on my hook. And, to tell you the truth, I’d be just as glad for the company.”
“So would I,” Mowbray said, gratefully. “If you’re sure you don’t mind.”
“I wouldn’t have said boo if I did.”
Mowbray set his aluminum tackle box on the ground, knelt beside it, and rigged his line. He tied on a spoon plug, then got to his feet and dug out a pack of cigarettes from the breast pocket of his corduroy shirt. He said, “Smoke?”
“Gave ’em up a while back. But thanks all the same.”
Mowbray smoked his cigarette about halfway down, then dropped the butt and ground it underfoot. He stepped to the water’s edge, took a minute or so to read the surface of the lake, then cast his plug a good distance out. For the next fifteen minutes or so the two men fished in companionable silence. Mowbray had no strikes but expected none and was resigned to it. He was enjoying himself just the same.
“Nibble,” the big man announced. A minute or two went by and he began reeling in. “And a nibble’s the extent of it,” he said. “I’d better check and see if he left me anything.”
The minnow had been bitten neatly in two. The big man had hooked him through the lips and now his tail was missing. His fingers very deft, the man slipped the shiner off the hook and substituted a live one from his bait pail. Seconds later the new minnow was in the water and the red bobber floated on the surface.
“I wonder what did that,” Mowbray said.
“Hard to say. Crawdad, most likely. Something ornery.”
“I was thinking that a nibble was a good sign, might mean the fish were going to start playing along with us. But if it’s just a crawdad I don’t suppose it means very much.”
“I wouldn’t think so.”
“I was wondering,” Mowbray said. “You’d think if there’s bass in this lake you’d be after them instead of crappies.”
“I suppose most people figure that way.”
“None of my business, of course.”
“Oh, that’s all right. Hardly a sensitive subject. Happens I like the taste of little panfish better than the larger fish. I’m not a sport fisherman at heart, I’m afraid. I get a kick out of catching ’em, but my main interest is how they’re going to taste when I’ve fried ’em up in the pan. A meat fisherman is what they call my kind, and the sporting fraternity mostly says the phrase with a certain amount of contempt.” He exposed large white teeth in a sudden grin. “If they fished as often as I do, they’d probably lose some of their taste for the sporting aspect of it. I fish more days than I don’t, you see. I retired ten years ago, had a retail business and sold it not too long after my wife died. We were never able to have any children so there was just myself and I wound up with enough capital to keep me without working if I didn’t mind living simply. And I not only don’t mind it, I prefer it.”
“You’re young to be retired.”
“I’m fifty-five. I was forty-five when I retired, which may be on the young side, but I was ready for it.”
“You look at least ten years younger than you are.”
“If that’s a fact, I guess retirement agrees with me. Anyway, all I really do is travel around and fish for my supper. And I’d rather catch small fish. I did the other kind of fishing and tired of it in no time at all. The way I see it, I never want to catch more fish than I intend to eat. If I kill something, it goes in that copper skillet over there. Or else I shouldn’t have killed it in the first place.”
Mowbray was silent for a moment, unsure what to say. Finally he said, “Well, I guess I just haven’t evolved to that stage yet. I have to admit I still get a kick out of fishing, whether I eat what I catch or not. I usually eat them but that’s not the most important part of it to me. But then I don’t go out every other day like yourself. A couple times a year is as much as I can manage.”
“Look at us talking,” the man said, “and here you’re not catching bass while I’m busy not catching crappie. We might as well announce that we’re fishing for whales for all the difference it makes.”
A little while later Mowbray retrieved his line and changed lures again, then lit another cigarette. The sun was almost gone. It had vanished behind the tree line and was probably close to the horizon by now. The air was definitely growing cooler. Another hour or so would be the extent of his fishing for the day. Then it would be time to head back to the motel and some cocktails and a steak and baked potato at the restaurant down the road. And then an evening of bourbon and water in front of the motel room’s television set, lying on the bed with his feet up and the glass at his elbow and a cigarette burning in the ashtray.
The whole picture was so attractive that he was almost willing to skip the last hour’s fishing. But the pleasure of the first sip of the first martini would lose nothing for being deferred an hour, and the pleasure of the big man’s company was worth another hour of his time.
And then, a little while later, the big man said, “I have an unusual question to ask you.”
“Ask away.”
“Have you ever killed a man?”
It was an unusual question, and Mowbray took a few extra seconds to think it over. “Well,” he said at length, “I guess I have. The odds are pretty good that I have.”
“You killed someone without knowing it?”
“That must have sounded odd. You see, I was in the artillery in Korea. Heavy weapons. We never saw what we were shooting at and never knew just what our shells were doing. I was in action for better than a year, stuffing shells down the throat of one big mother of a gun, and I’d hate to think that in all that time we never hit what we aimed at. So I must have killed men, but I don’t suppose that’s what you’re driving at.”
“I mean up close. And not in the service, that’s a different proposition entirely.”
“Never.”
“I was in the service myself. An earlier war than yours, and I was on a supply ship and never heard a shot fired in anger. But about four years ago I killed a man.” His hand dropped briefly to the sheath knife at his belt. “With this.”
Mowbray didn’t know what to say. He busied himself taking up the slack in his line and waited for the man to continue.
“I was fishing,” the big man said. “All by myself, which is my usual custom. Saltwater though, not fresh like this. I was over in North Carolina on the Outer Banks. Know the place?” Mowbray shook his head. “A chain of barrier islands a good distance out from the mainland. Very remote. Damn fine fishing and not much else. A lot of people fish off the piers or go out on boats, but I was surfcasting. You can do about as well that way as often as not, and that way I figured to build a fire right there on the beach and cook my catch and eat it on the spot. I’d gathered up the driftwood and laid the fire before I wet a line, same as I did today. That’s my usual custom. I had done the same thing the day before and I caught myself half a dozen Norfolk spot in no time at all, almost before I could properly say I’d been out fishing. But this particular day I didn’t have any luck at all in three hours, which shows that saltwater fish are as unpredictable as the freshwater kind. You done much saltwater fishing?”