The Risk Pool

bodies pinged against the metal like small pebbles. They would buzz frantically in the hardened chili for a few seconds, then do wide arcs above the skillet before diving back again. I watched with interest for a while and then went down to the river. We were so far upstream that it wasn’t very deep in most spots, a river in name only. Rocks jutted up above the surface of the water and it looked like you’d be able to jump from one to the next all the way to the opposite bank. I tried it, but only got partway, because when you got out toward the middle, the rocks weren’t as close together as they’d looked from the bank. One solid-looking flat rock tipped under my weight and I had to plunge one sneakered foot deep into the cool current to keep from falling in. The water ran so fast that the shoe was nearly sucked off, and I was scared enough to head back to shore on asquishy sneaker, aware that if my mother had been there, she’d have thrown a fit about my getting it wet. I doubted my father and Wussy would even notice. I found a comfortable rock on the bank and had another look at my father’s knife gadget, trying to pretend I didn’t have to go to the bathroom. Having the river right there made the necessity to pee hard to ignore. I wasn’t sure I could hold it all day.
    After a while the door of the cabin opened and Wussy appeared in his undershorts. “Hello, Sam’s Kid,” he said. He tiptoed over to the spot where he’d built the fire, yanked himself out of his shorts and watered the bushes for a very long time. I could hear him above the sound of the river.
    When he saw me watching, he said, “Gotta go, Sam’s Kid?”
    I shook my head. I could hold out a while longer, and I wanted it to seem like my own idea when I went. I was very relieved to learn that peeing in the weeds was permissible, though it was one more thing I didn’t think I’d mention to my mother.
    “First thing every morning for me,” Wussy explained. “Can’t wait.”
    When he was finished, he went back inside for his pants and shoes. I went over to where he’d stood, as if it were an officially designated area, and released my agony.
    Wussy came out with the rods and his tackle box. “Better get our ass going and catch breakfast,” he said. “Your old man ain’t going to be no help. I see you got your shoe wet.”
    “Fell in,” I admitted, surprised that I had been wrong about him not being the type to notice.
    “River runs pretty quick out there in the middle,” he observed without looking at me, and I was suddenly sure he’d seen me out there, though he wasn’t going to say anything.
    At the water’s edge, he attached the spinning reels to the rods and ran line through the eyelets all the way to the tips. I watched, full of interest. “Ever fish before?”
    I shook my head.
    “It’s about the best thing there is until you’re older and can do some other stuff, and it’s better than most of the other stuff too.”
    I watched him tie on the hooks, and he did it slowly so I could see. He pointed to the little wing on each hook. “Called a barb,” he said. “So the fish can’t slip off once he’s on. Works the same way on your finger if you aren’t careful.”
    We walked upriver about a hundred yards so that when myfather woke up there’d be nobody around. “Serve him right,” Wussy said, without explaining what for.
    When we got to a spot that looked lucky to Wussy, where there was a good safe rock for me to sit on, he handed me a rod. Then he opened up a can that looked like it was full of dirt, but when he fished around with his brown index finger I could see the bottom was alive and writhing. He pulled out an astonishingly long worm and hooked him three times until he oozed yellow and twisted angrily. I must have looked a little yellow myself, because Wussy baited my hook with two bright pink salmon eggs. Then he taught me how to release the bail and let the current carry the bait downstream, and how to reel in. “How will I know when there’s a fish?” I said when he started out toward the middle.
    He said not to worry about it, I’d know, though that didn’t strike me as a satisfactory explanation. Then I was by myself with only the sound of the running water for company. The sun was high and warm and when I saw Wussy had taken off his shirt I did the same. I watched Wussy for a while, then studied the reflected sun on the water near the drooping tip of my rod.
    I couldn’t have been