What We Talk About When We Talk About Love: Stories

son. I said, "He works with—" And then I realized. "You know, your husband. We were on our bicycles and thought we could get a drink."
    "Wait here," she said.
    She came back with a little tin cup of water in each hand. I downed mine in a single gulp.
    But she didn't offer us more. She watched us without
    What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
    saying anything. When we started to get on our bicycles, she came over to the edge of the porch.
    "You little fellas had a car now, I might catch a ride with you."
    She grinned. Her teeth looked too big for her mouth.
    "Let's go," Pete said, and we went.
    THERE weren't many places you could fish for bass in our part of the state. There was rainbow mostly, a few brook and Dolly Varden in some of the high mountain streams, and silvers in Blue Lake and Lake Rimrock. That was mostly it, except for the runs of steelhead and salmon in some of the freshwater rivers in late fall. But if you were a fisherman, it was enough to keep you busy. No one fished for bass. A lot of people I knew had never seen a bass except for pictures. But my father had seen plenty of them when he was growing up in Arkansas and Georgia, and he had high hopes to do with Dummy's bass, Dummy being a friend.
    The day the fish arrived, I'd gone swimming at the city pool. I remember coming home and going out again to get them since Dad was going to give Dummy a hand—three tanks Parcel Post from Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
    We went in Dummy's pickup, Dad and Dummy and me.
    These tanks turned out to be barrels, really, the three of them crated in pine lath. They were standing in the shade out back of the train depot, and it took my dad and Dummy both to lift each crate into the truck.
    Dummy drove very carefully through town and just as carefully all the way to his house. He went right through his yard without stopping. He went on down to within feet of the pond. By that time it was nearly dark, so he kept his
    The Third Thing That Killed My Father Off
    headlights on and took out a hammer and a tire iron from under the seat, and then the two of them lugged the crates up close to the water and started tearing open the first one.
    The barrel inside was wrapped in burlap, and there were these nickel-sized holes in the lid. They raised it off and Dummy aimed his flashlight in.
    It looked like a million bass fingerlings were finning inside. It was the strangest sight, all those live things busy in there, like a little ocean that had come on the train.
    Dummy scooted the barrel to the edge of the water and poured it out. He took his flashlight and shined it into the pond. But there was nothing to be seen anymore. You could hear the frogs going, but you could hear them going anytime it newly got dark.
    "Let me get the other crates," my father said, and he reached over as if to take the hammer from Dummy's coveralls. But Dummy pulled back and shook his head.
    He undid the other two crates himself, leaving dark drops of blood on the lath where he ripped his hand doing it.
    FROM that night on, Dummy was different.
    Dummy wouldn't let anyone come around now anymore. He put up fencing all around the pasture, and then he fenced off the pond with electrical barbed wire. They said it cost him all his savings for that fence.
    Of course, my father wouldn't have anything to do with Dummy after that. Not since Dummy ran him off. Not from fishing, mind you, because the bass were just babies still. But even from trying to get a look.
    One evening two years after, when Dad was working late and I took him his food and a jar of iced tea, I found
    What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
    him standing talking with Syd Glover, the millwright. Just as I came in, I heard Dad saying, "You'd reckon the fool was married to them fish, the way he acts."
    "From what I hear," Syd said, "he'd do better to put that fence round his house."
    My father saw me then, and I saw him signal Syd Glover with his eyes.
    But a month later my dad finally made Dummy do it. What he did was, he told Dummy how you had to thin out the weak ones on account of keeping things fit for the rest of them. Dummy stood there pulling at his ear and staring at the floor. Dad said, Yeah, he'd be down to do it tomorrow because it had to be done. Dummy never said yes, actually. He just never said no, is all. All he did was pull on his ear some more.
    WHEN Dad got home that day, I was ready and waiting. I had his old bass plugs out and was testing the treble hooks with my