It is evening. The day’s fishing is over, and the faithful of Portage Bay have wreaked havoc on the wonderful dinner Aileen and her hand-maidens have set before them – a dinner, to use the words of Izaak Walton, “too good for any but anglers, or very honest men.” Now, replete and happy, they step forth from the lodge and gaze about them with the bland faces of men at peace with the world and their own digestions.
Before the lodge is a grassy slope, which invites one, if he desires to sprawl on the soft sod, and this we do, for there are still some hours of light in these northern latitudes of long summer days. We gaze at the estuary, dimpling here and there with evening rising fish; and at the rocky, tree-clad escarpment beyond; and they seem to be bathed in a quiet, translucent light as pure as that of creation’s first morning.
To add to our content, the birds are holding even-song. I mark the hymns of a rose-breasted grosbeak and several white-throated sparrows, the oft-repeated teacher-teacher-teacher of an oven bird, the brilliantly warbled aria of a wren, and high in the trees a vireo, such as the Indians call the “Leaf Counter,” repeating endlessly his robin-like phrases, separated by deliberate pauses.
It is the smiling story of the Indians that the little Leaf Counter, having disobeyed the great Manitou, for punishment was commanded to count all the leaves of the forest. And on this endless task the poor bird labors every day, throughout the day. You can hear him and his brethren, continuously and everywhere, so that you sometimes wonder how they have time to find food, so everlastingly do they keep at it. At times they repeat their chirruping calls as often as 40 a minute, throughout the daylight hours. And indeed they do sound very like the Ojibwa words for “one, two, three, four” – be-zhik’ – neesh – né-sui – ne-win’ –
Among us, of course, are always some eager beavers: persons who rush about, perhaps for a little extra casting in the bay after dinner, or even for late night trolling on Shoal Lake, as if all the fishing might be used up in the next 24 hours, and they would be cheated of their share of it if they do not get it now.
For most of us, however, this is the hour for leisure and contemplation and reminiscence. We gather on the sward, a few of us, sitting or outstretched, and cigarettes and pipes are lighted, or succulent grass stems chewed, and tales are told.
In some manner a belief has grown up (among nonfishermen) that all fishermen are liars. The ancient chestnut of “the big one that got away” is trotted out by such, and dusted off, and put through its tired paces – a joke hoary of age, and compounded and preserved by people who know nothing about fishing and have the firm conviction that when a man speaks of a mighty fish he failed to land, he is invariably fracturing the truth.
But take note of this, as we exchange experiences on the grass before the lodge this evening: When real fishermen hear such an account, they listen to it with respect, and are interested in it, and believe it. For they know it is true. The big fish are the ones that get away – and no angler worth the name exists who has not lost his big fish, and more than once.
A true fisherman, if he gets a glimpse of a fish, is a pretty good judge of its size, even though he loses it; and he will describe it to his fellow experts as accurately as he can, when later recounting the episode. And to those who listen, the details of his battle, and the tackle used, and the tactics of the fish, and the manner in which it escaped – all are matters of absorbing interest. For his mistakes, if he made any, can thus be better avoided; and the lost quarry’s behavior is remembered, so that if such a fish be hooked by the listener tomorrow or next week or even years from now – whenever the moment fraught with fate may come – pitfalls can be better avoided, and perhaps better success achieved than has just been recited.
Lying is therefore no inseparable part of the fabric of the lives of fishermen. In thinking over my fishing friends, I never knew one who would tell the mean, the treacherous, or the cheating lie, because they are men of honor and high character to whom such a thing is despicable.
It is the intent to deceive that makes the lie; and this fact is what releases my friends from culpability when they foregather and enlarge on matters sometimes that stretch the capacity of belief. For these yarns are to them merely an invigorating and healthful exercise of the imagination, the purpose being to entertain. The fact that they are told with great gravity of expression and much circumstantial detail is part of the telling of them.
One form of lie, told to amuse, not deceive, is the Progressive Lie. And this, as it has been practiced at Portage Bay, I now describe. It is not a new form of falsification, and perhaps has been described before, but this is the manner in which it was erected, and upper stories built upon it, and finally its roof garnished with a tower of mendacity, one evening some time ago.
Hanging on a wall of the lodge is a mounted crappie, a giant of its species. Also on the walls are a mounted muskie and a mounted walleye. The latter is Miss Cricket’s celebrated fish, and the muskie has its story also, into which I will not now go. Invariably a newcomer to the camp will learn the story of these last two fish, and invariably he will get around to asking about the crappie.
I was sitting one evening by the window with Clayton Moore, when a young man fresh from the wilds of Chicago gazed upon the mounted crappie. He had fished for crappie, and he knew something about them, or thought he did, and he realized that this crappie was close to a record, if not the record, and must have a thrilling story connected with it.
“I wonder who caught that one,” he said to nobody in particular.
Moore answered him quietly. “It happens that I did.”
“You?” said the young man with sudden interest.
Moore can assume an expression of such childlike innocence, and at the same time of such nobility and gentle candor that you would swear he was a saint who might be caught up to heaven at any minute.
“Yes,” he said, as if modestly deprecating the whole matter. “I picked that fellow up right here, off the end of the dock. Two years ago this summer. That little bay’s full of ’em – you can see ’em breaking water out there right now if you look through the window. Nobody fishes for them much, because there are more important fish. I just happened to have a fly rod up here, and went down for a few minutes to feel it out. Well, I tied into him. Joe thought enough of him to get him mounted. Three pounds, two ounces, as I remember.”
With that, Moore got up and went out. The young man stared after him as goggle-eyed as the crappie on the wall. A two-pound crappie is a big one, and to “pick up” a fish of three pounds, two ounces, with a fly, off the end of the dock right down there – it was astounding! He had forgotten to ask what fly Moore used and a number of other important things . . .
While he was again regarding the mounted fish and thinking of the questions he had omitted, Gyp Blair strolled into the room. He observed the direction of the young man’s gaze and said, “Nice one, isn’t he?”
The young man nodded. “Yes – yes, he sure is.”
“He weighed three pounds, eight ounces,” said Gyp.
“I remember it exactly, because I weighed him at the dock right after I caught him – ”
“You caught him?”
“Sure. Four years ago. Up the estuary about a quarter of a mile, where it widens. There’s a weedbed there. I was plug-casting for bass – ”
“Plugs? It wasn’t a fly rod, then?”
“Oh, no. What are you talking about? Nobody ever uses a fly rod up here. As I was saying, this crappie came up, and he was so big and mean that he actually fought off a fair-sized bass before he struck my lure. Joe begged me for him and had him mounted.”
Gyp went to the front door, gazed out, saw somebody he wanted to speak to, and left the dining room. The young man was still gazing after him, open-mouthed, when Doc Tolle entered.
“Hi, gentlemen,” said Doc, nodding in his pleasant manner.
“Hello, Doctor,” said the young man. “We – we’ve just been talking about that crappie on the wall, and – well, do you know anything about how he was caught?”
“Why, sure,” Doc chuckled. “Remember the day I got him,” he said, appealing to me. Then, to the young man, “It was over on Shoal Lake. We were trolling . . . for walleyes – ”
“You mean to say you caught that fish?” gasped the young man. “And trolling?”
“Of course. Everybody knows it. Let’s see – what did he weigh? Oh, yes. Three pounds, thirteen ounces. Joe wanted to enter him in the national fishing contest – it was five years ago. But I didn’t want to go to all that trouble – measuring, making affidavits, taking photos, the correspondence and so on. So he asked me for the fish, and there it is.”
As Doc went out the front door, McKeever came in from the kitchen.
He sat down with us, a benignant expression of lofty virtue and morality on his face. The young man gazed at the crappie and then at the camp boss.
Presently he cleared his throat. “Mr. McKeever,” he said. “I’m a little confused. We’ve been talking about the big crappie there. Three different gentlemen assured me that they caught it – ”
“Who were they?” asked McKeever.
“Well – Mr. Moore – and Mr. Blair – and Dr. Tolle – ”
McKeever chortled indulgently. “Haven’t you learned yet not to believe anything those characters tell you? They’d lie when they could save money by telling the truth. If you really want to know who caught the fish – “I did. Think I’d go to the expense of mounting it and putting it up there if anybody else had caught it?”
“And – and – where did you catch it?” gulped the young man.
“Up by the ice house. Last fall, right at the end of the season. I was trying out a spinning rod one of the guests had brought – ”
“A spinning rod?”
“Yes. Tubular glass, with four-pound monofilament line and one of those patent French spinners. The fish put up a nice little battle. He weighed exactly four pounds – right on the nose.”
This time it was the young man who got up. He appeared to be suffering as he staggered out.
Next day he discovered – as all of us knew all the time – that the crappie on the wall was of papier-mâché, a lifelike job of molding, and artistically colored to represent the real thing, put out by some sporting-goods house.
He privately confided to Art Land that we might not be the biggest liars in the world, but we would be if we kept on practicing at it.
All that, however, happened some time ago, and this evening we are out on the greensward before the lodge and the talk slides back and forth. And presently something reminds Moore of a story.
Moore has the true epic style, and it is a treat to hear him embark on a yarn, with his fine face and his dark eyes sparkling and his humorous mouth. He assures us beforehand that the story he is about to tell is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and I, for one, am prepared to believe his words, as he tells us:
The Story of the Old White Horse
This happened (says Moore) to a friend of mine – Charlie Kaiser, who died a year or so ago, as grand a guy as you could wish to meet.
Charlie belonged to a duck-shooting club near his home city, Springfield, Illinois. One fall the shooting was great. He got his limit every time he went out. He also did a little bragging about his luck, until finally three friends of his began badgering him to take them out, so much so that he finally agreed.
They got up not long after midnight, to be in the blind before dawn, and Charlie drove them out 20 or 30 miles to the club in his own car. There was, of course, a little good-natured grousing – you know how it is – about the earliness of the rising and the trouble connected with it. But this was only natural, and in anticipation of the shooting, everybody was in good humor. But that day – did you ever see it fail? – when Charlie wanted to show off his club, the ducks decided differently. Where before there had been perfect swarms of mallards, sprig, canvasback and teal, the four hunters sat all morning and saw only one solitary mud hen, too far away to shoot even if they had wanted it.
As the hours lengthened, I regret to say, Charlie’s guests began to needle him. Their sarcasms and personalities became progressively more painful, and by the time they gave up and started back to the city, they were really burning Charlie about his “false alarm club,” and his boasting, and his failure to produce and other matters, until even to Charlie, who was the personification of good humor and patience, it became unpleasant, and then tiresome and finally irritating.
This was especially so since he was their host, and they were free-loading, and had come by their own self-invitation, and he hadn’t guaranteed them any ducks in the first place. By the time they were halfway back to town, Charlie was glum and silent. His guests figured perhaps they had gone a little too far, but that didn’t cause them to let up. They only poured it on the more.
About that time a little cottontail rabbit scurried across the road ahead of the car.
“Too bad we can’t stop and go rabbit hunting,” one of Charlie’s companions said. “At least we’d get a chance to shoot at something.”
“If you really want to hunt rabbits,” replied Charlie, “I happen to know the farmer who owns the next place. “I’ll stop and ask him if he’ll let us do a little gunning there.”
The three all agreed that this might be a good idea.
So Charlie drove into the next farmyard and got out of the car, and hunted up his friend, the farmer who was down at the barn, and made his pitch.
“Why, sure,” said the farmer. “Go ahead and hunt. There are a few rabbits down in the trees and brush along the creek in the lower pasture You’re welcome to them.”
Charlie thanked him, and started back to the car.
“By the way,” said the farmer, “would you do me a favor?”
“Of course, be glad to,” said Charlie.
“We’ve got an old white horse down in the pasture somewhere,” the farmer said. “He’s about thirty years old, and he hasn’t worked for years – been a sort of a pensioner. But lately he’s gone blind, and he’s starving to death because he can’t see to find food. Someone ought to put him out of his misery, but he’s been in the family so long that none of us has the heart to shoot him. If you see him, would you do it for me?”
Charlie promised. But when he went back to his guests, he did not mention it to them.
They started out across the wooded pasture, and shot a cottontail or two. And then Charlie saw the old white horse. It was standing by itself near the creek, its poor old ribs showing, its head held back like a blind horse holds its head, and clearly it would be a mercy to end its existence.
“Look there, fellows,” said Charlie. “There’s a horse. Let’s go over and take a look at him.”
The four of them went over, and the horse stood still as they gathered around it.
“He looks awful thin,” one of the hunters said.
“Wonder what’s the matter with him?” said another.
Charlie spoke up suddenly.
“I don’t know what’s the matter with him,” he said, but he’s too bony and ugly to stay alive!”
With that he upped his shotgun and blasted a hole through the poor old nag’s head.
Down came the horse, legs flying and kicking, thumping the ground, and raising an awful cloud of dust.
Charlie’s three guests stood staring at him with their eyes bugging out and their mouths wide open, as if they couldn’t believe what they had just seen. Their expressions said that they thought he had gone suddenly mad.
“You know something?” Charlie said. “I never shot a horse before.” And then, as if suddenly thinking of something he’d overlooked, “Why – I’ve never shot a man, either!”
He turned to his companions.
Not one of them was in sight.
As a man they had dived headfirst into the brush and were cowering in it like frightened quail, scared to death that he would spot them.
Now they remembered the bad time they had been giving him all morning. And to their minds there could be but one explanation of his sudden shooting of the farmer’s horse. He had become demented – a dangerous homicidal maniac, on the loose and armed with a gun – to add a man to the list of game he had killed.
Meantime, Charlie had his joke, and now he called to them. They did not reply. He tried to find them, hunting through the bushes and laughing to show it was all in fun.
But to his terror-stricken friends his laughter only added the final touch of horror to the situation. There was Charlie, a crazed killer, stalking them and laughing insanely as he did so!
Deeper they fled into the bush, almost burrowing into the ground in abject and trembling dread.
To make a long story short (Moore concludes), it took Charlie most of the day to get those cowering refugees out of their bushes in the creek bottom. He tried driving about the farm in his car, calling to them. They only quaked and kept more closely to their coverts. A bird dog couldn’t have flushed them.
At last Charlie induced the farmer and his wife to go down into the pasture and hunt for them. It was, I believe, the lady’s assurances that eventually convinced the fugitives it was a joke, and Charlie’s reason hadn’t left him after all.
One by one, slowly and hesitantly, and looking as if any false move would send them bounding back into the bushes, they came out. Charlie finally had them all in his car and he drove them back to their homes in time for late dinner.
For a long time afterward they regarded him with an uneasy eye whenever they met. And neither during the trip home nor at any time later did it ever occur to any of them again to aim needling remarks in Charlie Kaiser’s direction.
That is the story as Moore tells it, and we believe it fully.
Then Gyp speaks.
“I call to mind something you may find it hard to believe,” he begins. “Clayton and I were fishing for yellow perch on a lake a few years back, and Clayton’s father was fishing with us. The old gentleman hooked a big perch, and somehow, in his excitement, he dropped his rod over the side of the boat.
“We were anchored at the time in about twenty feet of water, and of course we couldn’t see the rod. But Clayton said, “Just a minute, Dad. I’ll make a cast and get that rod for you.’
“Just like that! As sublime and sure as if he didn’t have a doubt in the world about it.
“Well, he made the cast. Just one cast, mind you. He felt something and reeled in.
“Believe it or not, the end hook of his lure was in the tip guide of his father’s rod!
“Not only that, but when he handed the rod over to his father and the old gentleman reeled in, that big perch was still on, and they landed him too.”
I have heard that story before. I believe it, have always believed it, and urge you to believe it too, even if the odds of hooking the tip guide of a rod, in 20 feet of water with a single cast, are not less than ten thousand to one.
Now McKeever clears his throat. “Speaking of believable stories, he says, “something happened a winter or so ago down near Oak Island that might interest you.”
McKeever has that look of bland, dovelike innocence, which is supposed to be the hallmark of probity and integrity. The very wrinkles at the corners of his eyes radiate gentle candor and tenderness of conscience. Yet as I repeat his remarks, I warn you that I will not take any responsibility for them, because I have my own integrity to uphold. After all, in my home community I am held in reasonably good repute, and I have a wife whose repute is naturally higher than mine, and a family, including young and trusting grandchildren. I must, therefore, be reasonably careful with the truth, at least in the printed word.
Nevertheless – having thus washed my hands of it – I set forth, as McKeever tells it:
Winters here on the Lake of the Woods (begins McKeever) are somewhat cold. Temperatures often drop to more than 60 degrees below zero, and even 70. To a stranger who has never experienced it, cold like that may be hard to imagine. For instance, if you spit, the saliva crackles in mid-air, frozen to solid ice before it hits the snowy ground. Furthermore, whiskey when exposed freezes to a rocklike consistency, so that you can use it, if you wish, for a paper weight.
One night a winter or two ago the thermometer fell to a new record, so low that nobody really could tell how cold it was, because the mercury went entirely down into the bulb and could not be read. Maybe it was 75, maybe 80 degrees, below zero, for all I know.
In that spell of record cold an Indian named Jim Sitdown met his death in an odd manner. The day before, Sitdown had been at the store on Oak Island. He there came into a windfall. The windfall consisted of a case of beer, and he came into it by the simple expedient of lifting it from the counter while nobody was looking and lugging it off.
Some persons would have shared such a windfall with friends, but Sitdown was no philanthropist. So instead of sharing it, he carried the case of beer across the frozen channel of Squaw Island, on which was his cabin.
It was a very small cabin, about large enough for one man to sit down in, or perhaps lie down in, if he didn’t have more than one case of beer to contend with for room. There, after building an all-night fire in the crude fireplace, he drank up the entire case of beer himself, solitary and alone.
Jim Sitdown had an enormous capacity for beer, but even a capacity like that has its limits. He fell into a drunken slumber, like that of a man who has been drugged. When he awakened the fire had burned out in the fireplace and the cabin was getting cold. But outside the sun was shining brightly and it was broad day.
Sitdown rose. He did not know how cold it was outside. His head ached too greatly to permit him to think of anything much, let alone remember that sometimes, even when the sun is shining, the mercury can make record descents into the bulb of the thermometer.
But he did know one thing. A case of beer consumed into one human alimentary canal imposes certain imperative physical demands sooner or later. Sitdown opened his cabin door and staggered out, to a place a little distance off, behind a clump of small spruce trees, to attend to his necessity.
Hours later they found him.
He was stone dead, still standing there by the little clump of small spruces, frozen rigidly in a sort of meditative attitude.
The people who found him (says McKeever solemnly) swear that the cause of his death was that he stood too long motionless in one spot – always a dangerous thing to do on a real cold day in this locality. His shadow, cast behind him on an area of glare ice, had frozen fast there. Because his shadow could not move, Jim Sitdown could not; and since there was nobody to help him, the poor fellow just stood there and froze to death.
They took an ice pick and a crowbar, and pried up his shadow from the ice before they could move him; and they just folded his shadow over his body, like a piece of black paper, and put him on a shelf in a warehouse for the time being, since the ground was frozen too hard to dig a grave. By the time they got around to burying him in the spring, it had warmed up enough to thaw out the shadow, and it was pliable again, and he was thereupon interred.
If any of you doubt this true account (McKeever concludes), I will be glad to take you down to Squaw Island and point out Jim Sitdown’s grave to prove it. There is a stick planted at the head of the grave, with, as a fitting memorial, an empty beer can hung on it.
After this there is silence for the space of a few minutes. The capacity for swallowing statements of even this audience has been strained to its limits.
Presently, however, having like the anaconda been temporarily numbed by what we have engorged, we recover a little, and I urge Doc to give us a truthful experience.
But Doc, the real man of action of us all, proverbially prefers listening to talking. He could tell of adventures riding his high, wild cattle range in the Siskiyou Mountains of Oregon; of leading a posse after rustlers in the true old Western style; of shooting killer bears; of fighting forest fires when the flames threatened to engulf the fighting crews until a change of wind and weather saved them; of a manhunt for two armed outlaws who swore they would kill rather than be taken, and who at last shot it out before they were wounded and captured; of any number of other things.
But he rarely tells stories. His account of the great hurricane, to which I have given some attention in “The Day the Lake Went Mad” elsewhere in this book, is a classic example of his economy of words. When his wife, who had heard about the storm, asked him to tell her about it, he gave her what he considered the gist of it in three words:
“It blew some.”
So Doc smiles, and pulls at his cigarette, and shakes his head.
For lack of any other volunteer, I now tell them:
Hank Brewer was a man I knew back in Missouri, when I was living there. He was a puny infant when he was born, and all the old ladies of the neighborhood cheered up his parents by predicting that he would never live.
But no such luck was in store for them. Hank Brewer lived and grew up to be celebrated for his flowery and picturesque mendacity, his devotion to the juice of the corn as distilled and placed in a jug, his love of fishing, and his complete lack of interest in any form of honest toil.
He liked to fish because there was no work connected with it, and he would take his cane pole – he never used the word “rod” – and his jug of white mule and go down the Missouri River, looking for a likely spot. When he found a place to his liking, he would stay there all day, taking precautionary anti-snake bite dosages from the jug at frequent intervals and watching his bobber.
After such a day he would come home at night with a string of catfish, an empty jug and a jag on – and this in spite of the fact that he hadn’t seen a snake.
But one time he did see a snake, and he came back cold sober and did what nobody ever expected: he took the teetotaler’s pledge.
That day Brewer had found on the banks of the wide Missouri a fishing spot that looked simply ideal – a deep hole close to shore, trees spreading their branches above for shade, and a log lying parallel to the river, of just the right thickness and at just the right distance from the water for a perfect seat.
Brewer set his jug in a convenient place on the ground where it would be in easy reach. Then he stepped over the log, cast his line into the water and sat.
It was at this moment that he first looked down. The sight he saw occasioned him considerable embarrassment.
Right between his two feet, all coiled and read to strike, was a three-foot cottonmouth water moccasin, the bite of which was death.
Brewer later told me that it was turning its ugly head from one of his legs to the other, as if it were trying to make up its mind as to which one it wanted to bite first.
Of course Brewer froze still. He knew that if he moved either foot, he would make up the snake’s mind – it would bite the leg that moved. So he sat motionless, quaking inwardly and thinking doleful thoughts.
Brewer did not know how long that serpent would go on saying “Eenie-meenie-minie moe” over his shanks. Even a woman will make up her mind eventually, and he was sure the water moccasin would.
But something occurred to him. In his pocket was a knife with a spring blade. Taking the utmost care not to move his legs by so much as a hair’s breadth, he reached into his pocket and succeeded in getting the knife out. When he pressed the button, out sprang the blade.
Brewer now had an open knife in his hand, but he still had a problem of delicate complications to figure out. If he could spear the snake’s head just right, he might save his own life. But the feat was more difficult than it might appear, for the reptile was continually shifting its head, being evidently under the impression it had all afternoon to decide which of Brewer’s legs would be the most toothsome.
Meantime, Brewer had one stab – just one. If he missed the first stab, the second stab would be the snake’s.
So he made long and careful calculations, trying to aim his thrust exactly, waiting for exactly the right instant, and schooling himself to combine care and accuracy with a blow of sufficient force to affect his object.
It was at this moment that surplusage took place in Hank Brewer’s life.
Just as he poised, ready for his stab, nicely calculated and with his life depending on it, a two-pound catfish took his hook – which all the time had been dangling, baited, in the river – and began fighting and swirling to get away as a catfish will.
There was Brewer – the fishing pole in his hand jerking violently up and down – and he did not dare let go of it, or allow that yanking to so much as stir his feet. And there was the snake –
he had to get in his crucial stab at the snake.
He held the rod in spite of its bending, threshing tip. And he held his breath.
Now he saw the moccasin cease weaving its head back and forth and fix its sinister beady eyes on his left shank. Evidently it had at last selected that leg to bite, choosing the meatier and juicier part of the calf in which to sink its fangs.
The critical moment had come. For an instant the serpent’s head was still as it drew back a little for the strike.
In that instant Brewer made his stab!
Luck, immense luck, was with him. Fair in the middle the knife point caught the ugly flat head. Through it went the blade, pinning it to the ground. He was saved!
But that, as Brewer explained to me afterward, was not what made him take the pledge.
When he speared the reptile’s head to the ground, its writhing body flashed up suddenly and coiled itself around one of his legs.
Brewer told me that he jumped backward off that log so quick that he left his pants sitting on it.
I have always had reservations concerning that last statement but give it for what it is worth. At any rate, Brewer’s reformation began from that day. It lasted for three months before he fell once more into the congenial slough of drunkenness.
The sun has sunk behind the pines on the other side of the estuary. From the dimming woods on either bank the gray shadows creep to erase the last lingering twilight. Above, stars begin to burn, all at once, as if someone has switched them on. A majestic shadow passes overhead, with slow measured beat of heavy wings – a great blue heron, belated on his way to his island rookery.
McKeever departs for one of his countless tasks about the camp. One by one the cigarettes wink out. One by one the men rise from the soft grass, stretch, yawn, say a pleasant good night and in leisurely manner go to their various cabins.
The four of us still lie, heads propped on hands, unwilling to break the spell of the evening, strangely full of thoughts, half sweet, half sad, lulled by the lapping wavelets of the lake and the rustling trees; the frets and cares of life for the moment distant and faint.
Gyp draws a deep breath at last. “Great, isn’t it?” he says. “Simply great.”
“The best days of our lives,” says Moore. “Why do we sweat and worry all the rest of the year, I wonder? Life’s a whole lot like a horse race, when you come to think of it – you do an awful lot of straining and running, just to wind up where you began.”
And Doc, the silent, lying face up to the stars, draws a last puff from his cigarette, tosses it away, and says softly, “If heaven is anything like this, I’m going to reform – and try to get there.”
Note: “Fishermen Are Not (Necessarily) Liars” is from Portage Bay, published by Doubleday & Company, Inc. in 1957. It’s reproduced here courtesy of Joyce Wellman.