she got back.
Peyton found Preacher in the cool of his front porch, rocking. Preacher was getting very old. He didn’t do much of anything any more except rock. Preacher was the oldest person Peyton had ever seen. Now that he had grown a white beard, he looked like a dark prophet out of the Bible. Peyton said, “Preacher, can you tell me something?”
Preacher was startled. He hadn’t seen her slip up on him, and her voice had broken his dream. He started to rise and then sank back into the chair. “Sure, Peyton,” he said. “What do you want to know?”
“Why don’t the fish bite?”
Preacher chuckled. “hey do bite. They bite whenever they eat.”
“Come on, Preacher. Tell me how I can catch some fish.” “To catch fish, you got to think like a fish. Can you think like a fish, little girl?”
Peyton felt injured, being called a little girl, but she was a child of dignity, and it was with dignity that she answered. “No, I can’t. But I know that you can. You must, because you’re a great fisherman.”
Preacher nodded in agreement. “I was a great fisherman. Now I feel too poorly to fish. Nobody thinks of me any more as a great fisherman. They only think of me as an old man of no use to anyone. You are the first one to ask, `Why don’t the fish bite?’ So I’ll tell you.”
Peyton waited.
“If it was very hot, like now, the hottest I ever remember, and you was a fish, what would you do?”
“I don’t know,” Peyton said. “I know what I do. I take showers, three or four a day. Outside with nothing on.”
Preacher nodded. “The fish, he wants to stay cool too. He don’t hand around the shore there-” his arm swept to indicate the river banks-”he goes out into the middle. The water close to the shore, it’s hot. You put your hand in it, it feels like soup. But out in the middle of the river, way down deep, it’s nice and cool. Down there the fish feels lively and hungry and he eats and when he eats he bites.”
“Bass?”
“Yes. Big bass, ‘way down deep.”
“How would I get them? Nobody’s been able to net any bass bait-no shiners.”
“That’s the trouble,” Preacher said. “The little fish he gets hot too and so he’s out there in the middle deep, being chased by the big fish like always.”
Peyton thought of something. “Would a bass bite a goldfish?”
Preacher looked at her suspiciously. “He sure would! He’d take a goldfish in a second if one was offered! But it against the law to fish with goldfish. But if I did have goldfish, and if it weren’t against the law, and if I did fish out in the deep channel, then I wouldn’t use a bobber. I’d just put a little weight next my hook so that goldfish would sink right down where the big bass lie.”
Peyton said, “Thank you, Preacher,” and skipped away, not wishing to incriminate him further, if it really was true that goldfish were illegal. She went home, found a bucket on the back porch, and then walked across River Road for a talk with Florence Wechek. She and Florence were good friends and often had long talks, but about simple subjects, such as mending.
Florence wasn’t home-she was probably in town helping Alice at the library-but the goldfish were. She watched them swimming dreamily, ignoring her in their useless complacency. “In with you,” she said, and dumped fish and water into the pail.
She borrowed Ben Franklin’s rod and reel and made for the dock. She was forbidden to go out in Randy’s boat alone, but since she was already involved in one criminal act, she might as well risk another.
At noon Randy had not returned and Elizabeth McGovern Bragg climbed to the captain’s walk where she could be alone with her fears and anxiety. Her father and Dan Gunn had walked to town that morning. With some volunteers from Braggs Troop, they had begun to clean up and repair the clinic. So there was no man in the house and she was afraid for her husband. He had told her there would be no danger but in this new life the dangers were deadly and unpredictable. She kept her face turned steadily to the east, where the Admiral’s striped-awning sail should appear at the first bend of the Timucuan.
She told herself that she was silly, that Randy and the others, if they found the place at all, might tarry there for hours. They would undoubtedly feast on crab, and she couldn’t blame them. They might find it difficult to load the salt. Anything could delay them.
From the grass behind the kitchen Helen called up, “Lib!” She leaned over the rail. “Yes?”
“Is Peyton up there with you?” “No. I haven’t seen her.”
“Is she out on the dock?”
Lib looked out at the dock and saw that Randy’s boat was missing. Before she told Helen this she scanned the river. It was nowhere in sight; Randy had sailed in the Admiral’s cruiser, and the boat should be there.
At five that evening the Fort Repose fleet sighted Randy’s house. There was no doubt that it had been a triumphant voyage. The five boats were deep with salt, the thirteen men were filled with boiled crabs, lavishly seasoned, so they were all stronger and felt better, and in every boat there were buckets and washtubs filled with live crabs.
The Admiral ran his boat alongside Randy’s dock and turned into the wind. “You unload what salt you want here,” Sam Hazzard said, “and that washtub full of crabs, and I’ll sail back with the Henrys’ share, and mine.”
Randy unloaded. He had expected that Lib would be down at the dock to greet him, or certainly watching from the captain’s walk. Coming home with such rich cargo, he was chagrined. He lifted the washtub to the dock and then two fat sacks of salt. Fifty pounds, at least, he thought. It would last for months and when it was gone there was an unlimited supply waiting on the shores of Blue Crab Pool. He said, “So long, Sam. See you tonight.”
The Admiral pushed away from the dock and Randy picked up the washtub, deliberately spilled some of the water that had kept the crabs alive, and walked to the house.
The kitchen was empty except for four very large black bass in the sink. He lifted the largest. An eleven- pounder, he judged. It was the biggest bass he had seen in a year. It was unbelievable.
There was a plate on the kitchen table heaped with roasted meat. It looked like lamb. He tasted it. It didn’t taste like lamb. It didn’t taste like anything he had ever tasted before, but it tasted wonderful. He thought of the crabs, and their value dwindled to hors d’ouevres.
It was then he heard the first sobs, from upstairs, he thought, and then a different voice weeping hysterically somewhere else in the house. In fear, he ran through the dining room.
Three women were in the living room. They were all crying, Lib silently, Florence and Helen loudly. Lib saw him and ran into his arms and wiped her tears on his shirt. “What’s happened?” he demanded.
“I thought you’d never come home,” Lib said. “I was afraid and there’s so much trouble.”
“What? Who’s hurt?”
“Nobody but Peyton. She upstairs, crying. Helen spanked her and sent her to bed.”
“Why?”
“She went fishing.”
“Did Peyton catch those big bass?”
“Yes.”
“And Helen spanked her for it?”
“Not that. Helen spanked her because she took out your boat and drifted downstream. We didn’t know what had happened to her until she rowed home an hour ago. She said she couldn’t make it sail right.”
Randy looked at Helen. “And what’s wrong with you?” “I’m upset. Anybody’d be upset if they had to spank their child.”
Florence wailed and her head fell on her arms. “What’s wrong with her?”
“Somebody or something came in and ate her goldfish.” Florence raised her head. “I think it must have been Sir Percy. I’m sure of it. I did love that cat and now look how he behaves.” She wept again.
Randy said, “Isn’t anybody going to ask me whether I got salt?”
“Did you get salt?” Lib asked.
“Yes. Fifty pounds of it. And if you women want it, you’ll take the wheelbarrow down to the dock and lug it up.”
He went into the kitchen to clean the beautiful bass and put the crabs in the big pot. It was all ridiculous and stupid. The more he learned about women the more there was to learn except that he had learned this: they
