Where I'm Calling From Read Free

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 barrel-assed downstream.
    “Here he comes!” I hollered. “Hey, hey, here he comes!” But the fish spun around before it reached the riffle and headed back. I splashed and hollered, and it turned again. “He’s coming! Get him, get him! Here he comes!”
    But the dumb idiot had himself a club, the asshole, and when the fish hit the riffle, the boy drove at him with the club instead of trying to kick the son of a bitch out like he should have. The fish veered off, going crazy, shooting on his side through the shallow water. He made it. The asshole idiot kid lunged for him and fell flat.
    He dragged up onto the bank sopping wet. “I hit him!” the boy hollered. “I think he’s hurt, too. I had my hands on him, but I couldn’t hold him.”
    “You didn’t have anything!” I was out of breath. I was glad the kid fell in. “You didn’t even come close, asshole. What were you doing with that club? You should have kicked him. He’s probably a mile away by now.” I tried to spit. I shook my head. “I don’t know. We haven’t got him yet. We just may not get him,” I said.
    “Goddamn it, I hit him!” the boy screamed. “Didn’t you see? I hit him, and I had my hands on him too.
    How close did you get? Besides, whose fish is it?” He looked at me. Water ran down his trousers over his shoes.
    I didn’t say anything else, but I wondered about that myself. I shrugged. “Well, okay. I thought it was both ours. Let’s get him this time. No goof-ups, either one of us,” I said.
    We waded downstream. I had water in my boots, but the kid was wet up to his collar. He closed his buckteeth over his lip to keep his teeth from chattering.
    The fish wasn’t in the run below the riffle, and we couldn’t see him in the next stretch, either. We looked at each other and began to worry that the fish really had gone far enough downstream to reach one of the deep holes. But then the goddamn thing rolled near the bank, actually knocking dirt into the water with his tail,