Read Online Fishing the Sloe-Black River by Colum McCann - Free Book Online

last year there was a drought and some of the ranchers were low on hay for the cattle. We just wanted to start off with something small. Next year we’re going to plant ourselves a proper crop. But Kevin has a friend works in the feed store on Polk Street who said he could get us some free grass seed, and we said okay. The field was five miles down the road and it was lying idle. We called old man Cunningham and he laughed at first. Said he didn’t have time for fooling around. But we got it, in the end, pretty darn cheap too.
    At night we’d come home from the State School and get a few beers and sit down and watch the thing grow. Klein grass has a broad leaf and a narrow stem. It gets up to near four foot.
    It was mighty nice out there. We’d sit on the back of my pickup and watch the stars. Sometimes, when the sky was clear, Kevin would point out the satellites moving on through the stars. Every now and then you’d hear a coyote howl. I wanted to shoot those critters—used to be you could get some money for killing them—but Kevin said they never done anyone any harm. I suppose he’s right. There’s enough killing without having to start on the coyotes. When Kevin began in the State School twelve years ago there was hardly any kids who had done murder. Now they’re all over the place. It gets you to wondering.
    Kevin brings little Natalie out to the field a lot. She plays on the dirt road and sometimes climbs trees. But it scared the living daylights out of Kevin when Natalie found the rattlesnake down in the creekbed. She was six then and damn nearly got bit. I leave my Robert at home. He’s just four years old and don’t need to be messing around with snakes.
    That Friday night we were supposed to start cutting the field. The following day we were going to cut some more, crimp it and lay it out in nice neat swaths. Then we were going to turn it so it dried evenly and, the next day, bale it. As it happened, we ended up being late with the whole deal, seeing how Kevin took the story about Stephen. At first he wasn’t listening much, I was just babbling on. But then he looked at me, bug-eyed, like I’d told him the end of the world was coming.
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    Ferlinghetti got everything out of Stephen except why he gave himself up. I never seen anyone work a kid so hard for a tiny bit of information. I listened most days that I could, whenever they were out there on the bench. What I can’t believe is how Stephen opened up to Ferlinghetti, telling him nearly every damn bit, but not the bit he really wanted to hear.
    Once I seen Ferlinghetti hand him some Red Man, which is against the rules. It was raining pretty heavy but Ferlinghetti had himself an umbrella and they were huddled up close on the bench. I was walking over to one of the cottages and I seen him take the pack of Red Man out of his overcoat and give it to Stephen. But I do that too, sometimes. I have a can of Skoal and some kid’s working with me, just dying for a dip, so you give him a pinch. It’s only human. I suppose Ferlinghetti knew he could get Stephen to talk if he gave him some tobacco.
    Stephen was fourteen when he did the killing, living in a trailer out near the Piney Woods. He’d been in one of them chicken-eating Baptist homes for a few years after some petty thievery, but his momma had taken him back. He’d watch a lot of TV and play with Nintendo. His momma was whoring around while his father was off out west, working the oilfields.
    She was getting these pretty regular visits from this Bill Harris guy who was married and lived outside Nacogdoches. Nothing but cheap plyboard in the trailer and Stephen, he can hear all of it, the grunting and moaning and slapping and screaming. He gets mad and takes a baseball bat to Harris, who’s laying in bed. He gets a couple of licks in, but Harris ups and kicks Stephen in the mouth, sending him to the hospital, where