like a ticket. It was a ticket to a special place, like, to a club that only men belonged to. All of them in the Tackle Shop had the same one. The license was good for many years.
Jason knew that already he loved fishing so much that he would renew that license over and over, year after year, even after he was a grown man.
“Don’t linger now. You owe me seventeen more Saturdays.” Mrs. Hasturn’s voice grated on his ears like someone sandpapering wood.
“Yes, ma’am, I know.”
With every leaf he raked, the vision of Elihu danced on his fishing line. Each sweep of the rake became the net lifting up the great Elihu’s body. Even though Mrs. Hasturn was watching him, Jason began thinking of the dark-skinned fisherman out at the Orange Lake fish camp that he’d met there the last Friday.
The fisherman’s name was Cooter. When Jason and Grampy Luke had launched their jon boat, Cooter had been putting his canoe in at the dock. Jason remembered how he’d asked, “Mr. Cooter, you ever heard of Elihu?”
“Oh my, yes! We all hear about Elihu. Nobody I know’s touched the great fish in... well, let’s see now, must be two years going on three. I reckon that was Skeeter Nelson who was the last. You hook Elihu, you’ll be a growed man by the time you come back to this dock.”
“That’s enough.” Mrs. Hasturn’s voice broke Jason’s daydream. “Go home now. I’ll see you next Saturday. I want you to weed my mums then.” She held open her front door. “Put the rake in the shed. And don’t be so late next week.”
“But I wasn’t late.”
“Don’t talk back to me. And don’t throw that water bottle down in the yard. Don’t leave any trash.”
“I won’t.”
Jason walked home silently. He touched his back pocket where the fishing license was. That’s who he was: the owner of a fishing license, not some runty kid who had to rake yards to make up for something bad he’d done.
FOUR
THANKS BUT NO THANKS
That next Friday just as he promised, Grampy Luke was waiting in the driveway with the jon boat hooked to his pickup. “Let’s stop by and ask your daddy to go.”
Jason had doubts that his father would ever go fishing. But, “Sure,” he said.
Grampy Luke backed out of the driveway, and Jason waved to his mother. He clicked the snap on his seat belt. His feet tapped the truck’s carpeted floor. The afternoon light was like a gray-blue tissue spread over the road.
At Jason’s father’s apartment, Grampy Luke knocked on the front door, and when Jason’s father answered, Grampy Luke said cheerfully: “On our way out to the lake. Hoping to catch something to fit a biscuit. You’re welcome to go.”
Jason’s father sat back down at his computer. He twirled his chair around to look at them. His glasses were round, black frames that made him look somewhat like a puzzled owl. “Thanks but no thanks.” His hair, the same orange-brown as Jason’s, was parted and combed and held down with something stronger than water.
“Sure like to have you along,” Grampy Luke tried again. He took off his fishing hat and held it in his hand. “Plenty of room.”
“Naw. You all go ahead.” Jason’s father swirled the computer mouse on his desk. “I’ve got too much to do. But fishing is just what Jason needs.”
“Maybe next time, then.” Grampy Luke put his hat back on. He adjusted the brim over his brow like an awning.
“Here.” Jason’s father pulled out his wallet and handed Jason two dollars. “Buy your grandfather a cold drink. And one for yourself.” Then he teased, “Don’t fall out of the boat now, I hear they got giant gators out there.”
Yeah right. As Jason walked back to Grampy Luke’s pickup, he thought he knew what his father meant: Wiggle in a boat and you can fall out and drown. Mess around in a boat and you can get hooked by your own bait and die from the pain.
On the highway, Grampy Luke drove slowly because of traffic. They crept along, and when Grampy Luke asked Jason about school that week, he answered, “Nothing special.” Then asked, “Grampy Luke, do you think Elihu knows we’re coming?”
“I’m sure he does. Reach back there and read us a passage.”
Jason leaned into the truck’s short back seat and picked up the book that he and Grampy Luke had found in a used book store. They called it their bass bible.
Grampy Luke had fished in Michigan for many years. He was a master at catching trout. He could throw a fly rod as if conducting an orchestra, and he even made his own flies–fancy lures that looked like bugs with wings. But Grampy Luke had never caught a largemouth bass. He knew next to nothing about Florida fishing.
“Read that.” Grampy Luke’s finger pointed on a page.
“Largemouth bass resemble cats in their predatory habits. What’s predatory, Grampy Luke?”
“Keep reading.”
Jason held down the page. “The fish moves directly toward the quarry. It pauses like a cat stalking a mouse, then strikes. Wow!” Jason laughed. “I never knew a bass could plan an attack.”
Grampy Luke laughed, too. “I’m getting a feel for this largemouth bass, even though I’ve been here only a month. I’m as ignorant as an old stump about how to catch them. But I also know this Florida bass is wild. He reminds me of a cowboy, while the trout I’ve been catching is like a gentleman in a tuxedo. Oh yes, the largemouth bass whispers of wildness.”
“And Elihu is the wildest. I wonder what kind of bait will catch him? A jig like the one used in California? Or a Pintail Shiner, like the one used in Georgia?”
“Oh, I think Elihu’s going to take a special lure. It’ll be fun learning that.”
Jason reached down and opened Grampy Luke’s tackle box. Lures, bought at the Tackle Shop, were filling up the box. Some lures were divers or dippers, darters or skippers. Already the names of them sang in Jason’s mind: Culprit, Spinner Bait, Weedless Sally, Rattle Trap, Rooster Tail, Plastic Worm. Some of the worms wore skirts that hid their hooks. These would sit just below the surface of the water when you worked them in. Others were deep-water plugs, designed to sink. All these fishing lessons he and Grampy Luke learned in the Tackle Shop. Other fishermen were the best teachers. Already, he and Grampy Luke knew that you could put ground crawfish, or other fish juice, on a worm, and the smell would attract bass.
Their bass bible said all fish had keen senses of smell. But a bass wouldn’t take dead bait unless it was fished as if it were alive.
It was the bass’s eyesight that made them special. With muscles that pulled the lens in their eye back, they were like a person squinting. And with no pupil and no lid, a bass’s eyes were sensitive to changes in light. They felt safest in dark water and hated bright sunlight.
Even Elihu, with only one eye, could see plenty well in dark
