Where We Belong (35 page)

I was the one who opened my mouth.

“Seems weird, fishing without Rigby.”

No answer for a long time.

Then he said, “I don’t know what I’m going to do without that dog.”

“Don’t even say that. She’ll still be around awhile. Won’t she?”

“I certainly hope so.”

We sat in silence for another few minutes before I said, “You should ask Rachel to come up for a visit.”

“Where did that come from?”

“I don’t know. I was just thinking. You said Dan was sick of it up here. Which made it sound like Rachel still likes it. Maybe she misses the place.”

“Might be too soon for her.”

“Do you talk to her?”

“Yeah. She calls, or I call. Just about every day. It hasn’t been long enough yet, if that’s what you’re thinking. It’s only been a few days. She needs time to get over losing him. I’m not saying anything until the time is right.”

“How long, do you think?”

“I don’t know. Probably a year, at least.”

“A year. Wow.”

“She was married for a long time. Forty-seven years. It takes time to get over a loss like that.”

I decided my line was too slack, so I reeled in a little. But I hit the end of the slack in a weird way. It just stopped reeling. I couldn’t move it anymore.

“Crap,” I said. “I think I’m hung up on something.”

“Give it a steady pull. See if you can work your hook loose.”

I gave the line a good solid pull. It pulled back, bending that huge rod over into an arch shape.

“Ah, yes,” Paul said. “You’re hung up on something. A large fish.”

“What do I do?”

“Bring him in.”

I reeled. Or at least… I tried. But I felt like I was trying to haul in the trunk of a tree. And it hurt the scraped-up heels of my hands. A lot.

“Loosen your drag a little. Remember how I showed you that?”

“Yeah, but it’s different on this rod.”

“Here, just hold steady. I’ll do it for you.”

He reached over me and twisted a knob on the reel, and then when the fish yanked, I heard a zipping sound as he pulled some line free.

“Why are we doing that?”

“Makes it harder for him to break the line.”

It also made it easier for me to reel in. Less like I was hooked on a brick wall. I reeled him in closer, and he zipped off a little line and got farther away again. We did that for a long time. I have no idea how long. I wouldn’t even try to say. I’m sure time was playing tricks. I just know my arm muscles were screaming, and I thought they might give out. I wasn’t sure what I’d do if they let me down. My hands hurt so bad, it was hard not to yell out loud. But I didn’t. I kept my pain to myself.

Then, just when I thought I was getting nowhere, I saw him come up on the muddy bank. When he tried to pull again, he couldn’t do much, mired up in all that mud like he was. So I got up and walked straight backwards, pulling, until he was well out of the water. I ran to him, taking up the slack in the line as I went.

“Good job!” Paul said.

We stood there and looked at him for a second or two. Just in that brief moment, he held still. Like he knew it was over.

He was thick-bodied. Greenish brown, with weird eyes. And these long things like whiskers sticking out from both sides of his mouth, but made of the same stuff as the rest of him, not hair. I started to say that out loud, how they looked like whiskers. Then I realized how stupid it would sound. Of course they looked like whiskers. That’s probably why they call them catfish.

“Careful how you handle him,” Paul said. “Do
not
put your fingers in his mouth. They can really hurt you. Want me to put him on the stringer for you?”

“Yeah, would you?”

I didn’t even know what a stringer was. We’d always put fish in that creel basket. But this guy was about twice as long as the basket, which Paul hadn’t even bothered to bring.

I watched Paul take a yellow cord, like thin nylon rope, out of the tackle box. It had a metal ring on one end and a metal tip on the other. I watched him thread the metal tip through the cat’s gills on one side. He kept feeding it through until it came out the fish’s mouth, which was open and gasping. Then he threaded that end through the ring and pulled it snug, and he had the thing roped, the line looped right through the gills. He took my hook out of the fish’s mouth, and I reeled my line back in.

Paul carried the catfish to the edge of the creek, a little downstream of where we were fishing, and set him in shallow water. Tied the end of the stringer around a sapling, so he couldn’t swim away.

I put another disgusting chicken liver on the hook and cast in again.

“You’re getting really good at casting,” Paul said.

I hadn’t known he was watching.

He sat down at the next tree again and picked up his pole.

“Well,” he said. “That was exciting.”

“I never thought I’d catch a fish that big in my life. How much do you think he weighs?”

“Seven, eight pounds, maybe.”

“How much do the trout usually weigh?”

“A pound. Or less.”

“Wow. That’s going to make some good eating.”

We settled into quiet fishing for a while. Fifteen, twenty minutes with nothing said. Now and then, I’d pull gently on my line to see if it pulled back. But I could always feel the hook move.

Then I said, “What if you wait a year and talk to her, and it turns out she’s already seeing somebody?”

“Well. I talk to her almost every day.”

“Yeah. But what if it’s a year from now, and you’re talking to her, and she tells you she just started dating some new guy? Then it’s the wrong time to tell her again, and you waited too long.”

Speaking of waiting too long, I sat a long time thinking he was about to answer. But he never did.

“Sorry. I guess maybe you don’t want to talk about that. I was just thinking. Yeah, it’s a weird thing for me to say to you, I know. And I know you didn’t really like hearing it. But isn’t hearing me say it an awful lot better than having it happen?”

First nothing.

Then, “Look, I know you have my best interests at heart, but…”

“Fine. I’m sorry. It’s really none of my business. We’ll talk about something else. Where was Sophie when you woke up the last two mornings? She wasn’t right up on the bed with you, was she?”

“On the bed? No. Why would she be on the bed? She wants to be with Rig.”

“Doesn’t Rig sleep on the bed with you?”

“No. Rig sleeps on her dog bed on the floor.”

“Oops. I think I made a mistake. I thought she was allowed up on the bed. She got up there with me, and I figured she wouldn’t do it if she wasn’t allowed.”

“I don’t mind if she gets up there. I just don’t want her up there while I’m sleeping, because I won’t have any room.”

“She was really nice about only taking up half.”

“How is that possible? She’s bigger than the bed.”

“She slept with her legs hanging off.”

“That dog is so smart, it scares me sometimes.”

“Sorry if I did that wrong.”

“It really doesn’t matter. I don’t mind if
you
didn’t mind.”

“I was thinking maybe we could get one of those chain locks. For the inside of the apartment door. And put it up high, where Sophie couldn’t reach.”

“Okay. We’ll stop and get one on the way back through town. I’ll put it up while your mom’s at work.”

And I thought, Fine. Maybe that solves the problem. Maybe it’s just all good from here on out. But the part of me that was supposed to relax and be happy said, “Right. Like I haven’t heard that a hundred times before.”

“Tell me the story of what happened in the driveway this morning,” he said. “Since we have all this time.”

He looked over at the ripped knee of my jeans. With my knees bent, you could see the dried blood pretty clearly through the hole in the denim.

“She decided to break away from me and run up to your house. So I tackled her. I was trying to get her attention. I was trying to get some control back. I didn’t mean to hurt her. I have no idea if it was a right or a wrong thing to do. I just don’t know. Do you think it was right?”

“No idea at all,” he said. “But I applaud you for trying something new.”

We stayed out for nearly another two hours. Till the sun was up pretty high, and it was getting too warm. We never caught another channel cat.

The next morning, Paul’s third full day back, I woke up in my bed in the apartment. It was cold. And drafty.

“Not possible,” I said. Out loud. To myself.

I got up and peeked around the divider. The door was wide open. Paul’s new chain lock was dangling, undone.

I woke up my mom. My arms were sore, but I shook her by the shoulder until she sat up. She looked pissed. I didn’t care. I was pissed, too.

“The lock doesn’t work if you don’t put it on at night.”

“I did put it on.”

“Apparently not. Or Sophie wouldn’t be gone.”

She craned her neck around to see.

“I’ll be damned,” she said. “I wonder how she did that.”

“You must’ve forgotten to lock it.”

“I locked it.”

“I doubt that. She can’t reach it.”

“Hmm. I have no idea, kiddo. But I did lock it.”

“Fine. Whatever. I’ll just apologize to Paul one more time. But you won’t mind if tonight I lock it myself.”

That night before bed, after Sophie was long asleep, I reached up on my toes and locked the chain. It was high up even for me. And my arms still felt like they were about to fall off.

“I swear, I really did lock it,” my mom said.

I figured she was wrong, but I didn’t feel like arguing.

The next morning, Paul’s fourth day back, I woke up, and it was drafty and cold.

“Shit,” I said. Before I even got up and looked.

I woke my mom again, and we stared at the open door. And shook our heads.

“Maybe she dragged one of those kitchen chairs over,” she said.

“I can believe Sophie would figure that out. But I think after she got the lock off, she’d just go. I can’t picture her moving the chair back first. I can see her figuring out how to get what she wants, but I can’t see her covering her tracks.”

“Hmm. You think this couch is too close to the door? You think she climbed up on the back of it and braced herself on the wall and leaned way over?”

“I have no idea. But let’s move it farther away. Just to be safe. And I’ll just have to apologize to Paul one more time.”