Where I'm Calling From Read Free Page A

and took off again. He went through another riffle, his big tail sticking out of the water. I saw him cruise over near the bank and stop, his tail half out of the water, finning just enough to hold against the current.
    “Do you see him?” I said. The boy looked. I took his arm and pointed his finger. “Right there. Okay now, listen. I’ll go down to that little run between those banks. See where I mean? You wait here until I give youa signal. Then you start down. Okay? And this time don’t let him get by you if he heads back.”
    “Yeah,” the boy said and worked his lip with those teeth. “Let’s get him this time,” the boy said, a terrible look of cold in his face.
    I got up on the bank and walked down, making sure I moved quiet. I slid off” the bank and waded in again. But I couldn’t see the great big son of a bitch and my heart turned. I thought it might have taken off already. A little farther downstream and it would get to one of the holes. We would never get him then.
    “He still there?” I hollered. I held my breath.
    The kid waved.
    “Ready!” I hollered again.
    “Here goes!” the kid hollered back.
    My hands shook. The creek was about three feet wide and ran between dirt banks. The water was low but fast. The kid was moving down the creek now, water up to his knees, throwing rocks ahead of him, splashing and shouting.
    “Here he comes!” The kid waved his arms. I saw the fish now; it was coming right at me. He tried to turn when he saw me, but it was too late. I went down on my knees, grasping in the cold water. I scooped him with my hands and arms, up, up, raising him, throwing him out of the water, both of us falling onto the bank. I held him against my shirt, him flopping and twisting, until I could get my hands up his slippery sides to his gills. I ran one hand in and clawed through to his mouth and locked around his jaw. I knew I had him. He was still flopping and hard to hold, but I had him and I wasn’t going to let go.
    “We got him!” the boy hollered as he splashed up. “We got him, by God! Ain’t he something! Look at him! Oh God, let me hold him,” the boy hollered.
    “We got to kill him first,” I said. I ran my other hand down the throat. I pulled back on the head as hard as I could, trying to watch out for the teeth, and felt the heavy crunching. He gave a long slow tremble and was still. I laid him on the bank and we looked at him. He was at least two feet long, queerly skinny, but bigger than anything I had ever caught. I took hold of his jaw again.
    “Hey,” the kid said but didn’t say any more when he saw what I was going to do. I washed off the blood and laid the fish back on the bank.
    “I want to show him to my dad so bad,” the kid said.
    We were wet and shivering. We looked at him, kept touching him. We pried open his big mouth and felt his rows of teeth. His sides were scarred, whitish welts as big as quarters and kind of puffy. There were nicks out of his head around his eyes and on his snout where I guess he had banged into the rocks and been in fights. But he was so skinny, too skinny for how long he was, and you could hardly see the pink stripe down his sides, and his belly was gray and slack instead of white and solid like it should have been. But I thought he was something.
    I guess I’d better go pretty soon,” I said. I looked at the clouds over the hills where the sun was going down. “I better get home.”
    “I guess so. Me too. I’m freezing,” the kid said. “Hey, I want to carry him,” the kid said.
    “Let’s get a stick. We’ll put it through his mouth and both carry him,” I said.
    The kid found a stick. We put it through the gills and pushed until the fish was in the middle of the stick.
    Then we each took an end and started back, watching the fish as he swung on the stick.
    “What are we going to do with him?” the kid said.
    “I don’t know,” I said. “I guess I caught him,” I said.
    “We both did. Besides, I saw