Twisted

ruining that screwdriver. Here it comes. One . . .”
    He’d never known what screwdriver the man had been talking about. Probably there wasn’t one. But afterward, Alex the boy and now Alex the man always oiled, dried and sharpened. Yet he knew that his father’s approach was so wrong. He could teach Jessie-Bessie the right way to live without resorting to losing his temper, without beatings, without screaming—all those traumas whose aftermath lasted forever.
    He’d calmed for a while but thinking of his father made him anxious again. He recalled the conversation he’d had with his daughter earlier—about fighting, about school-yard bullies—and that made him anxious too. Alex knew he kept everything bottled up. He wondered if he had actually spoken back to his father, face-to-face, then maybe he wouldn’t feel the tension and stress as painfully as he did now. Alex tended to take the easy way, avoiding confrontations.
    Fist fights . . . a new self-help concept, he laughed to himself.
    He halfheartedly cast a few more times then hooked the lure into the bail of his reel and began walking along the shore, heading east. He stepped from rock to rock carefully, looking down the whole time, mindful of the slippery rocks. Once he nearly tumbled into the cold, black water as he stared at the reflections of the fast-moving strips of clouds, gray and grayer, in the oily water near his feet.
    Because he was gazing at his footing he didn’t see the man until he was only ten or twelve feet from him. Alex stopped. The driver of the pickup truck, he assumed, crouching at the shore.
    He was in his mid-forties, dressed in jeans and a workshirt. Gaunt and wiry, his face was foxlike, an impression accentuated because of a two- or three-day growth of beard. His right hand held a galvanized pipe over his head. His left gripped the tail of a walleye pike, holding the thrashing, shimmering fish against a rock. He glanced at Alex, took in his expensive, designer-label outdoor clothing, and then slammed the pipe down on the fish’s head, killing it instantly. He pitched it into a bucket and picked up his rod and reel.
    “How you doing?” Alex asked.
    The man nodded.
    “Having any luck?”
    “Some.” The fellow eyed the clothes again, walked to the shore and began casting.
    “Haven’t caught a thing.”
    The man said nothing for a minute. He cast, the lure sailing far into the lake. “What’re you using?” he asked finally.
    “Poppers. On a twelve-inch leader. Fifteen-pound line.”
    “Ah.” As if this explained why he wasn’t catching anything. He said nothing else. Alex felt his anxiety flutter like the crows’ wings. Fishermen were usually among the friendliest of sportsmen, willing to share their intelligence about lures and locations. It wasn’t as if they were competing for the only fish in the whole damn lake, he thought.
    What the hell’s so hard about being polite? he wondered. If people behaved the way they ought to, the decent way he’d told Jessie that they behaved, the world would be different—no hate, no anger, noscared little girls. No boys afraid of their fathers, no boys growing up into anxious men.
    “What time you got?” Alex asked.
    The man looked at the combination compass/watch hanging on his belt. “Half past noon. Thereabouts.”
    Alex nodded at a nearby picnic bench. “Mind if I have my lunch here?”
    “Suit yourself.”
    He sat down, opened the bag and pulled out his sandwich and apple. His hand touched something else—a piece of drawing paper, folded in quarters. Opening it, Alex felt a rush of emotion. Jessica had drawn him a picture with the colored pencils he’d bought for her birthday last month. It was of him—a square-jawed, clean-shaven man with thick black hair—reeling in a shark about ten times his size. The fish had a terrified expression on its face. Beneath it she’d written:
    Fish beware . . . my daddy’s out there!!!
    —Jessica Bessie Mollan
    He thought fondly of his family once more and his anger dissipated. He ate the meat loaf sandwich slowly. Then opened the thermos. He was aware that the other fisherman was glancing his way. “Hey, mister, you like some coffee? My wife made it special. It’s French roast.”
    “Can’t drink it. My gut.” Not smiling, glancing away. Not even thanking him. The man gathered up his tackle and walked to a tree stump, sawn off smooth about three feet above the ground, like atable, and stained with old