Where I'm Calling From

and lit the next to last weed. I looked up the valley and began to think about the woman. We were going to her house because she wanted help carrying in the groceries. Her husband was overseas. I touched her and she started shaking. We were Frenchkissing on the couch when she excused herself to go to the bathroom. I followed her. I watched as she pulled down her pants and sat on the toilet. I had a big boner and she waved me over with her hand. Just as I was going to unzip, I heard a plop in the creek. I looked and saw the tip of my fly rod jiggling.
    He wasn’t very big and didn’t fight much. But I played him as long as I could. He turned on his side and lay in the current down below. I didn’t know what he was. He looked strange. I tightened the line and lifted him over the bank into the grass, where he started wiggling. He was a trout. But he was green. I never saw one like him before. He had green sides with black trout spots, a greenish head, and like a green stomach. He was the color of moss, that color green. It was as if he had been wrapped up in moss a long time, and the color had come off all over him. He was fat, and I wondered why he hadn’t put up more of a fight. I wondered if he was all right. I looked at him for a time longer, then I put him out of his pain.
    I pulled some grass and put it in the creel and laid him in there on the grass.
    I made some more casts, and then I guessed it must be two or three o’clock. I thought I had better move down to the bridge. I thought I would fish below the bridge awhile before I started home. And I decided I would wait until night before I thought about the woman again. But right away I got a boner thinking about the boner I would get that night. Then I thought I had better stop doing it so much. About a month back, a Saturday when they were all gone, I had picked up the Bible right after and promised and swore I wouldn’t do it again. But I got jism on the Bible, and the promising and swearing lasted only a day or two, until I was by myself again.
    I didn’t fish on the way down. When
    I got to the bridge, I saw a bicycle in the grass. I looked and saw a kid about George’s size running down the bank. I started in his direction. Then he turned and started toward me, looking in the water.
    “Hey, what is it!” I hollered. “What’s wrong?” I guessed he didn’t hear me. I saw his pole and fishing bag on the bank, and I dropped my stuff. I ran over to where he was.
    He looked like a rat or something. I mean, he had buckteeth and skinny arms and this ragged longsleeved shirt that was too small for him.
    “God, I swear there’s the biggest fish here I ever saw!” he called. “Hurry! Look! Look here! Here he is!”
    I looked where he pointed and my heart jumped.
    It was as long as my arm.
    “God, oh God, will you look at him!” the boy said.
    I kept looking. It was resting in a shadow under a limb that hung over the water. “God almighty,” I said to the fish, “where did you come from?”
    “What’ll we do?” the boy said. “I wish I had my gun.”
    “We’re going to get him,” I said. “God, look at him! Let’s get him into the riffle.”
    “You want to help me, then? We’ll work it together!” the kid said.
    The big fish had drifted a few feet downstream and lay there finning slowly in the clear water.
    “Okay, what do we do?” the kid said.
    “I can go up and walk down the creek and start him moving,” I said. “You stand in the riffle, and when he tries to come through, you kick the living shit out of him. Get him onto the bank someway, I don’t care how. Then get a good hold of him and hang on.”
    “Okay. Oh shit, look at him! Look, he’s going! Where’s he going?” the boy screamed.
    I watched the fish move up the creek again and stop close to the bank. “He’s not going anyplace. There’s no place for him to go. See him? He’s scared shitless. He knows we’re here. He’s just cruising around now looking for someplace to go. See, he stopped again. He can’t go anyplace. He knows that. He knows we’re going to nail him. He knows it’s tough shit. I’ll go up and scare him down. You get him when he comes through.”
    “I wish I had my gun,” the boy said. “That would take care of him,” the boy said.
    I went up a little way, then started wading down the creek. I watched ahead of me as I went. Suddenly the fish darted away from the bank, turned right in front of me in a big cloudy swirl, and