What We Talk About When We Talk About Love: Stories

finger.
    "You set?" he called to me, jumping out of the car. "I'll go to the toilet, you put the stuff in. You can drive us out there if you want."
    I'd stowed everything in the back seat and was trying out the wheel when he came back out wearing his fishing hat and eating a wedge of cake with both hands.
    Mother was standing in the door watching. She was a fair-skinned woman, her blonde hair pulled back in a tight bun and fastened down with a rhinestone clip. I wonder if she ever went around back in those happy days, or what she ever really did.
    I let out the handbrake. Mother watched until I'd shifted
    The Third Thing That Killed My Father Off
    gears, and then, still unsmiling, she went back inside.
    It was a fine afternoon. We had all the windows down to let the air in. We crossed the Moxee Bridge and swung west onto Slater Road. Alfalfa fields stood off to either side, and farther on it was cornfields.
    Dad had his hand out the window. He was letting the wind carry it back. He was restless, I could see.
    It wasn't long before we pulled up at Dummy's. He came out of the house wearing his hat. His wife was looking out the window.
    "You got your frying pan ready?" Dad hollered out to Dummy, but Dummy just stood there eyeing the car. "Hey, Dummy!" Dad yelled. "Hey, Dummy, where's your pole, Dummy?"
    Dummy jerked his head back and forth. He moved his weight from one leg to the other and looked at the ground and then at us. His tongue rested on his lower lip, and he began working his foot into the dirt.
    I shouldered the creel. I handed Dad his pole and picked up my own.
    "We set to go?" Dad said. "Hey, Dummy, we set to go?"
    Dummy took off his hat and, with the same hand, he wiped his wrist over his head. He turned abruptly, and we followed him across the spongy pasture. Every twenty feet or so a snipe sprang up from the clumps of grass at the edge of the old furrows.
    At the end of the pasture, the ground sloped gently and became dry and rocky, nettle bushes and scrub oaks scattered here and there. We cut to the right, following an old set of car tracks, going through a field of milkweed that came up to our waists, the dry pods at the tops of the stalks rattling
    What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
    angrily as we pushed through. Presently, I saw the sheen of water over Dummy's shoulder, and I heard Dad shout, "Oh, Lord, look at that!"
    But Dummy slowed down and kept bringing his hand up and moving his hat back and forth over his head, and then he just stopped flat.
    Dad said, "Well, what do you think, Dummy? One place good as another? Where do you say we should come onto it?"
    Dummy wet his lower lip.
    "What's the matter with you, Dummy?" Dad said. "This your pond, ain't it?"
    Dummy looked down and picked an ant off his coveralls.
    "Well, hell," Dad said, letting out his breath. He took out his watch. "If it's still all right with you, we'll get to it before it gets too dark."
    Dummy stuck his hands in his pockets and turned back to the pond. He started walking again. We trailed along behind. We could see the whole pond now, the water dimpled with rising fish. Every so often a bass would leap clear and come down in a splash.
    "Great God," I heard my father say.
    W E came up to the pond at an open place, a gravel beach kind of.
    Dad motioned to me and dropped into a crouch. I dropped too. He was peering into the water in front of us, and when I looked, I saw what had taken him so.
    "Honest to God," he whispered.
    A school of bass was cruising, twenty, thirty, not one of them under two pounds. They veered off, and then they
    The Third Thing That Killed My Father Off
    shifted and came back, so densely spaced they looked like they were bumping up against each other. I could see their big, heavy-lidded eyes watching us as they went by. They flashed away again, and again they came back.
    They were asking for it. It didn't make any difference if we stayed squatted or stood up. The fish jusjt didn't think a thing about us. I tell you, it was a sight to behold.
    We sat there for quite a while, watching that school of bass go so innocently about their business, Dummy the whole time pulling at his fingers and looking around as if he expected someone to show up. All over the pond the bass were coming up to nuzzle the water, or jumping clear and falling back, or coming up to the surface to swim along with their dorsals sticking out.
    DAD signaled, and we got up to cast. I tell you, I was shaky with excitement. I could