Where We Belong (34 page)

“That would be nice. Thanks.”

We came inside, and Sophie shadowed the dog while Paul got me a plastic bottle of something to spray on her chin. Some kind of disinfectant for wounds.

“This shouldn’t sting too much. What about your hands? Do they need anything?”

I looked down at my scrapes. Held them out for both of us to see.

“They’re fine. They’re not even bleeding.”

“You should go wash them, though. Looks like you ground a little dirt in.”

While I was in the bathroom washing my hands, I noticed my knee was bleeding some. But the jeans more or less covered that up. So I was hoping Paul wouldn’t notice. I didn’t want to complicate things any more. I just wanted to get out on that walk.

Paul was waiting for me with a cotton ball and the spray stuff and an adhesive bandage, and I was grateful that he’d known better than to try to do anything to Sophie himself.

She didn’t give me a hard time, though. She was lying on the dog bed in Paul’s bedroom, with Rigby. Rigby was relaxed, and so was she.

I got her chin cleaned up and covered, and Paul held out his hands to take the paper wrapper and the cotton and the spray stuff back from me.

“Want to go fishing in the morning?” he asked me.

“Love to,” I said.

Then I took Rigby’s leash down from the peg by the door, and we set off on our walk. I was thinking, after the fact, that it would be complicated to go fishing in the morning, because if the three of us—Paul and Rig and me—took off fishing before her school van came, Sophie might scream.

And, of course, the best fishing was always before the school van came.

We didn’t make it all the way into town. Rigby came up sore. She started favoring her right front. I stopped, and she sat, and Sophie sat, and I picked up her paw and looked between the pads, thinking she might have a burr or something. But there was nothing wrong that I could see. We probably hadn’t gone more than a quarter of a mile. I wasn’t sure if we should go on.

We walked another minute or so in the direction of town, but she was really limping by then.

A woman jogger passed us going the other way and looked down at Rigby with this sad smile. “Poor guy’s getting old,” she said.

“Girl.”

“Oh.”

I don’t know why I said that. I don’t know why it mattered. It didn’t matter if Rigby was a boy or a girl. It mattered that she was getting old.

We just stood—and sat—there for a time. Probably a full minute. Then I decided we’d better turn around and call it a day.

“You were right to come back,” Paul said. “Here. Walk her toward me, so I can see.”

I led Rigby through the back bedroom as Paul watched. Sophie ambled along behind.

“That’s not her paw. That’s her shoulder. She’s having trouble with her right shoulder.”

“You think it was all that jumping around when you came home?”

“Maybe. It’s definitely tied in with her arthritis.”

“But she takes medication for that.”

“The medication doesn’t cure it. Just helps her handle it.”

“Oh. Well, I guess we’ll go and leave you alone now. Sophie. Come on back and see Mom with me. We’ll see Rigby again tomorrow. Oh. And Paul. About that fishing. I’m wondering how we’re going to get out of here in the morning without Sophie wanting to come along.”

“Under the circumstances,” he said, “I think it might be best to leave Rigby here. I’m not sure how good it would be for her to lie on the hard ground for hours if she’s having a flare-up.”

“Could she stay in the apartment while we’re gone?”

“Sure. That would be fine. If we bring her bed up there. I’ll come knock on your door when it’s almost time to go. It’ll be early.”

“I don’t mind.”

“It’ll be dark.”

“I don’t care. I can’t wait.”

Then Sophie and I walked out of his house. She came along quietly and stayed calm.

In the morning, Paul’s knock woke me up. It was dark, just like he’d said it would be. I stuck my head out from behind the room divider. He was standing in the wide-open doorway, knocking lightly.

I went to the door, a little embarrassed, because my pajamas were raggedy. But I didn’t want to call over and wake my mom.

“I have my clothes all laid out,” I whispered. “So I’ll just be a minute. Where’s Sophie?”

“In the house with Rig.”

“I thought we’d be up before her this morning. How long’s she been there?”

“She was there at two in the morning, when I got up to go to the bathroom. That’s all I know for sure.”

It was still nearly pitch dark when Paul handed me a fishing rod from the trunk. I looked at it closely and felt along the length of it. It seemed short, but then I realized it was in two pieces.

“What’s this?”

“Your fishing pole.”

“Not like any other fishing pole I’ve ever used.”

“That’s because we’re not fishing for trout.”

“What are we fishing for?”

He shone the flashlight around in the trunk to make sure we had everything, then slammed the trunk and locked up the car.

“Not sure if I should tell you or let you be surprised.”

We set out walking together, following the thin beam of flashlight on a dirt trail. I could hear flowing water already. It sounded like a lot more water than I was used to.

“If they’re that much bigger than what we always caught before, maybe you better tell me.”

“They are.”

“You better tell me.”

“Channel cats.”

I stopped dead, which plunged me into total darkness when he kept going.

“Cats? We’re fishing for
cats
?”

“Catfish,” he said, stopping and shining the light at my feet.

I caught up with him.

“Catfish. Right. I knew that.”

A thin layer of light was just starting to glow over the eastern mountains when we got to the water.

“Is this a river?”

“Not really. Technically, it’s a creek. But it’s as big as a small river. And there are channel cats in the deeper pools.”

“What do channel cats bite on?”

“All manner of things. The stinkier and more horrible, the better. They’re kind of like the goats of the water. But chicken livers are their favorite.”

“You brought chicken livers?”

“I did. Here. Hold out your hand. Careful, I’m going to set a hook on it. It’s a treble, so you have three chances to impale yourself. So careful how you handle it in the dark.”

“How am I supposed to see to tie it on the line?”

“Let me do mine, and then I’ll shine the flashlight on it for you.”

“This hook is huge. And the line feels so thick. I feel like we’re fishing for giants.”

“They get big. Twenty pounds or more, sometimes, around here. Though it’s not likely we’ll catch one that big.”

“I didn’t even know they made hooks this big.”

“They make hooks the size of my hand. People go out in the ocean and catch marlin and tuna and halibut that are bigger than you are. Bigger than I am. Hundreds of pounds.”

“Weird,” I said.

“What’s weird about it?”

“I don’t know. I was just thinking about life, and how you never really know as much as you think you do. You think there’s one thing you know so much about, and then it turns out you haven’t even scratched the surface. Like Tibet.”

He shined the flashlight on my face, and I winced and covered my eyes.

“I give up. How is it like Tibet?”

“Because… I know more about Tibet than anyone I know. I had a bookstore person tell me once that only somebody from a Tibetan travel bureau knows what I know. I had a woman in a library offer me a job as a reference librarian, I know so much. Well. She was joking. But she was joking about it because I know so much. But I’ve never even been to Tibet. What if I got there, and it was nothing like what I thought? Or what if it turned out that what I know isn’t one percent of one percent of all there is to know?”

“If you’ve never been to a place before, I can just about guarantee you that what you know isn’t one percent of one percent of all there is to know.”

“See what I mean? That’s what I think is weird.”

The sun was up over the mountain, shining into my eyes, before we talked again. Our lines were in the water, in that deep pool, weighted down with chicken livers and those huge hooks. We were sitting with our backs up against the trunks of two evergreen trees. The sound of the water was like music. I didn’t care if we ever caught anything or not. Except I did want to see what a channel cat looked like.