Read Online Eye Lake by Tristan Hughes - Free Book Online

And then they’d moved on because there wasn’t much need for engineers in Crooked River anymore, but she’d stayed because of Billy.
    Bobby came out of the Pine dorm wearing his sheets and we started off down the path to the shoreline. As soon as we were out of sight he took off the sheets and stashed them behind a rock.
    â€˜I’m sick of wearing them,’ he said.
    â€˜That’s okay,’ I said, ‘I won’t tell. You want some bug dope?’
    â€˜I’m not supposed to use it,’ he said. ‘Mom says it gives you cancer.’
    I took Billy along the shore to where the old dock was, near the boat launch. The Earl used to live about a hundred yards further on along the shore and if you looked a few feet back in the bush there was a pile of boards that used to be his shack. (When they first made the conference centre it’d still been standing and they’d put a sign on it saying Traditional Trapper’s Cabin.)
    Bobby was asking me about a hundred questions at once – about why this was a good spot and why we weren’t using proper hooks and a whole bunch of other questions like that. I tried to slow him down and answer them as best I could.
    I told him minnows were just the same as bigger fish. They liked living beside things, like rocks or logs or reefs or old docks, so they could hide from other fish that were trying to eat them. ‘If you’re a minnow you don’t want to spend too much time in the open water where everything can see you,’ I told him. ‘It’s dangerous. You want to find yourself a bit of cover.’ Then I bent a couple of pins in half and showed Bobby how to tie the line on to them. I told him pins were fine for minnows and we’d get on to barbed hooks when he’d had a bit of practice.
    â€˜And reels and rods too?’
    â€˜Yes, and reels and rods too,’ I said.
    â€˜Why do you need barbs?’ he asked.
    â€˜To keep a fish on when you’ve set it.’
    â€˜What’s setting?’
    â€˜It’s when you give your line a little tug to get the hook stuck in its mouth.’
    â€˜What’s the bacon for?’
    â€˜It’s for bait,’ I said, and cut us each a tiny piece of white fat for putting on our hooks.
    I hadn’t fished for minnows since I was Bobby’s age or younger. It was strange how having him with me made it feel as if I was doing it for the first time myself and was that age all over again. I could feel that hopeful beating of my heart as I looked over the side into the water, the what’s-in-there flutter of the blood that every fisherman starts out with and never leaves behind, not really.
    We lay down on our bellies and leaned over the edge of the dock, holding our lines in our hands.
    â€˜Now put her into the water,’ I told Bobby.
    â€˜How will I know when I got one?’
    â€˜You just wait till you can’t see the bacon fat. When you see it disappear give your line a jerk.’
    â€˜So when I can’t see it, I got something?’
    â€˜That’s it, Bobby. When it looks like it’s gone then you’ll probably have one biting.’
    I dropped my line in near Bobby’s and watched the white fleck of bacon fat drift down towards the cradle of the dock, where everything was shadowy and murky. Sometimes it looked like there might be something moving through the water, a shape like a minnow’s back or fin, but then it’d turn into shadow again. Bobby had stopped asking questions the moment his line went in. He was staring at his hook all hushed and expectant, the same as me, and everything was quiet, more quiet than the air can be – like we’d become part of the still, waiting quiet of the underwater. This is what I love about fishing: how it gets like this, like there’s nothing but you and your line, no thinking or remembering or nothing; how with my hook in the water there was no difference between