Read Online Someone Like You by Elaine Coffman - Free Book Online Page B

the weeds and took another dive. He caught it this time and felt his hands close around cold, smooth flesh. The fish thrashed and he felt the spines of its fins brush against his arm. The fish wiggled free. He dived for it again and came up with his arms full of flapping fish, weeds, gravel, and creek mud. But he had his fish, and he threw it toward the bank before it could get away.
    He heard a yelp and then a squeal and looked up in time to see the big white-bellied bass hit Susannah square in the chest. She caught the fish with a loud “Oooof!” then took a few steps back, trying to keep her balance. She still held the fish, but when she looked down and saw it, eye to eye, she made a sound of disgust and dropped it.
    He stumbled toward her, fighting against the pull of bottom mud until he was on the bank. He stopped a few feet from Susannah, panting hard, water running from his soaked clothes. The fish was flopping around, bits of grass and sand clinging to it, but it was far from the water now. He was too tuckered out to do much more than stand there, wet and winded as a blown horse, looking at her. She still had a surprised expression on her face, and the front of her dress was all wet. He remembered her going eye to eye with that fish and began to laugh.
    Surprised at first, she suddenly started laughing, too. “I wish you could see yourself,” she said in short gasps. “You’re a holy mess. Your hair is plastered to your face in front. In the back it’s sticking up like the feathers in a war bonnet.”
    He looked her over. “You’re not so tidy yourself.”
    She glanced down at her wet dress and laughed harder. When she got control of herself, she asked, “You didn’t exactly handle that fishing pole like you’d done much fishing.”
    “I haven’t.”
    “What made you decide to come down here, then?”
    Reed shrugged and began dusting the grit and gravel off his soaked clothes, then went to pick up his catch. “It’s Sunday, my day off. There wasn’t much to do, and I found myself thinking about a fish dinner.” He paused a moment, looking at the fish. He wasn’t sure where he should pick it up, so he just reached for the tail. It flipped out of his hand. “Slippery litle devils, aren’t they?”
    “Pick it up by the gills.”
    Reed didn’t move. He knew what the gills were, but he wasn’t certain how you picked a fish up by them. Susannah must have sensed that, for she walked over to the fish and picked it up by inserting three fingers into its gills. She held the fish aloft. It hung down past her elbow.
    “It’s a big one, the biggest I’ve ever seen.”
    “I thought you said you’d never seen anybody catch one before.”
    “Not in this creek, but I’ve seen them caught out of ponds.”
    “Looks like I finally found something us Yankees can excel at.”
    She ignored that comment and said, “Here, hold the fish while I take that piece of cord off my bundle of clothes. We can run it through his gills and stake him in the water.”
    He took the fish from her, inserting his fingers into the gills just as she had done. “What for?”
    “So he won’t die.”
    “You want to keep it alive?”
    “Of course, but if it were me, I’d throw it back.”
    “Is that what you want me to do?”
    She shrugged. “It’s your fish.”
    “I thought we’d eat it.”
    “You can if you like.”
    “Then why go to all the trouble of keeping it alive if we’re just going to eat it?”
    “So it will stay fresh. Of course, you Yankees may prefer to eat fish that has been dead for several hours.”
    “Some Yankees know how to fish. Boston is, after all, a seaport. I just don’t happen to be one of them.”
    “Why not?”
    “I never went fishing, so I never learned how.”
    “You really never fished before?”
    “No.”
    “Truly?”
    “Honest to God.”
    “Why didn’t your father take you?”
    “He didn’t know how to fish.”
    “Why?”
    “I guess his father didn’t know how either. My