Read Online The Lost Salt Gift of Blood by Alistair MacLeod - Free Book Online Page B

the trout turns glisteningly and tears itself free. In a darting flash of darkened greenness it rights itself within the regained water and is gone. “Oh damn!” says the small fisherman, struggling upright onto his rock. He bites his lower lip to hold back the tears welling within his eyes. There is a small trickle of blood coursing down from a tiny scratch on the inside of his wrist and he is wet up to his knees. I reach down to retrieve the rod and return it to him.
    Suddenly a shout rises from the opposite shore. Another line zings tautly through the water throwing off fine showers of iridescent droplets. The shouts and contagious excitement spread anew. “Don’t let him get away!” “Good for you.” “Hang on!” “Hang on!”
    I am caught up in it myself and wish also to shout some enthusiastic advice but I do not know what to say. The trout curves up from the water in a wriggling arch and lands behind the boys in the moss and lichen that grow down to the sea-washed rocks. They race to free it from the line and proclaim about its size.
    On our side of the harbour the boys begin to talk. “Where do you live?” they ask and is it far away and is it bigger than St. John’s? Awkwardly I try to tell them the nature of the North American midwest. In turn I ask them if they go to school. “Yes,” they say. Some of them go to St. Bonaventure’s which is the Catholic school and others go to Twilling Memorial. They are all in either grade four or grade five. All of them say that they like school and that they like their teachers.
    The fishing is good they say and they come here almost every evening. “Yesterday I caught me a nine-pounder,” says John. Eagerly they show me all of their simple equipment. The rods are of all varieties as are the lines. At the lines’ ends the leaders are thin transparencies terminating in grotesque three-clustered hooks. A foot or so from eachhook there is a silver spike knotted into the leader. Some of the boys say the trout are attracted by the flashing of the spike; others say that it acts only as a weight or sinker. No line is without one.
    “Here, sir,” says John, “have a go. Don’t get your shoes wet.” Standing on the slippery rocks in my smooth-soled shoes I twice attempt awkward casts. Both times the line loops up too high and the spike splashes down far short of the running, rising life of the channel.
    “Just a flick of the wrist, sir,” he says, “just a flick of the wrist. You’ll soon get the hang of it.” His hair is red and curly and his face is splashed with freckles and his eyes are clear and blue. I attempt three or four more casts and then pass the rod back to the hands where it belongs.
    And now it is time for supper. The calls float down from the women standing in the doorways of the multi-coloured houses and obediently the small fishermen gather up their equipment and their catches and prepare to ascend the narrow upward-winding paths. The sun has descended deeper into the sea and the evening has become quite cool. I recognize this with surprise and a slight shiver. In spite of the advice given to me and my own precautions my feet are wet and chilled within my shoes. No place to be unless barefooted or in rubber boots. Perhaps for me no place at all.
    As we lean into the steepness of the path my young companions continue to talk, their accents broad and Irish. One of them used to have a tame sea gull at his house, had it for seven years. His older brother found it on the rocks and brought it home. His grandfather called it Joey. “Because it talked so much,” explains John. It died last week and they held a funeral about a mile away from the shore where there was enough soil to dig a grave. Along the shore itself it is almost solid rock and there is no ground for a grave. It’s the same with people they say. All week they have been hopefully looking along the base of the cliffs for another sea gull but have not found one. You cannot kill a sea