The Life of Hope Read Free Page B

size of a small finger, and a finger is what it looks like, to a certain degree. It’s carved out of wood and jointed twice where the knuckles would be. At the tip there is a large treble hook. This Hoper was painted a fleshy pink, spotted by big drops of red. It seemed as unlikely a lure as I could imagine, but Harv swore by the thing, so I asked, “How much?”
    Edgar thought about that for a while and then said, somewhat arbitrarily, “Four bucks.”
    “Oh,” I mumbled, “that’s a little dear.”
    Edgar stared at me.
    If I had my life to live over, I thought, I would say “expensive.” Never mind about screwing up my marriage to Elspeth, never mind about all the rotten things I’ve done to my friendsand loved ones, just let me live my life over, and all I’ll change is I won’t say to Edgar, “That’s a little dear.”
    Edgar said, finally, “The wife says that.”
    “I beg your pardon?”
    “The wife says things are ‘a little dear.’ ” Edgar crossed his arms and placed his elbows on the counter. “So get this,” he said. “Last summer, we go visit her brother, ’s got a cottage up north near Sudbury. So we stop at one of those places along the highway, y’know, a restaurant like, to get something to eat. And the place is full of all sorts of
gift
shit. I swear, I don’t know what those people are thinking. I mean, after driving a couple of hours, I want a burger and a coffee. I do not want to buy a Ookpik, or a piece of wood with the Lord’s Prayer burned into it, or a placemat with a fucking Mountie on it, or nothing. I want a burger and a coffee. Anyways, see, they got these china animals in this place, little bunnies and stuff. And they got this china Bambi, right? Yea big.” Edgar spaced off three or four inches between his massive thumb and forefinger. “Frigging thing costs eight bucks. So I take this thing, this Bambi, over to the wife. Okay? And I says, ‘Hey, hon, you want to buy this Bambi? It costs eight bucks.’ ”
    Edgar started to chuckle.
    “Ha!” I realized what the point was and started chuckling myself.
    Edgar looked suddenly crestfallen. “The dumb twat bought it.” He shook his head, world weary. “Didn’t say a word.” Edgar tried to forget about it. He dangled the odd lure in the air and demanded, “You want to buy the Hoper?”
    “Does it work?”
    Edgar answered, “So the story goes.”
    The Willing Mind
    Hope, Ontario, 1983
    Wherein our Biographer, after suffering sundry Inconveniences, discovers an Establishment that is to his liking
.
    Not only did I purchase a Hoper, I also picked up a copy of Gregory Opdycke’s tome,
Fishing for Ol’ Mossback
. Edgar had told me all about this legendary Mossback in the half-hour or so I’d spent chatting (axe-murderers are people, too). Ol’ Mossback, according to local myth, is the premier denizen of Lookout Lake. Edgar told me that there are various schools of thought concerning Ol’ Mossback’s species. The most popular has it that he is a muskellunge, and this seems probable given his length, conservatively estimated at five and a half feet. Others think he is a mutant pike, and this notion appeals for its supernatural aspects, supernatural in the most literal sense, Ol’ Mossback having arrogantly overstepped Mother Nature’s bounds. There’s a few, Edgar confided, who think Ol’ Mossback is some sort of walleye pickerel. These are usually people who claim to have seen the beast, for they report that he has the strange metallic eyes of that breed, large and round, with a luminous aspect like those of a blind Buddhist monk.
    Whatever he is, Ol’ Mossback is reported to be a monster, his body covered with scars, a record of his battles with mankind. He is adorned with fishhooks like jewelry. If anyone ever managed to land Ol’ Mossback (no one ever has, Edgar was quick to point out) the collection of terminal tackle stuck to the fish would supply one with the history of sport angling in North