Read Online Where's My Wand?: One Boy's Magical Triumph Over Alienation and Shag Carpeting by Eric Poole - Free Book Online Page B

seemed not only disgusting but a tad barbaric.
    “Since you only have two fishing rods,” I piped up graciously, holding up the Mad magazine I had just bought with my allowance, “I’ll bow out. I have a lot of reading to catch up on.”
    “Nonsense. You can use mine,” Aunt Jinny said, handing one rod to Val, who held it as far away as possible, obviously assuming it was loaded. Aunt Jinny handed me the tub of bait. “Here, hold this.”
    I gingerly took the container. A thin layer of Tupperware plastic was all that separated me from a teeming horde of slimy annelids.
    “Oh, for heaven’s sake, they’re just worms,” she barked. We walked through the woods to the shore and sat down on the bank of the river. The morning sun glistened atop the lake.
    Aunt Jinny popped open the covered bowl. The live worms were crawling over one another in a tangled, oily mess. Val and I nearly vomited. She extracted a worm and grabbed the hook swinging from the end of Val’s rod.
    “Watch me, now.” She stabbed the worm with the hook.
    I blanched. “You killed it.”
    “That’s horrible!” Val shrieked.
    Aunt Jinny sighed. She grabbed the other pole and repeated the process. “They’re just worms. Living things eat other living things. It’s the cycle of nature.”
    She showed us how to cast the line into the lake. The first time, Val hooked the back of my shirt; the second time she caught it on a stump. By the fourth attempt for both of us, we deposited the hooks more or less squarely in the water.
    Aunt Jinny beamed. “See, it’s not so hard, is it?”
    We had to admit there was a certain satisfaction in landing the worms in the middle of the lake. Now, as long as we didn’t actually catch a fish, this whole thing would be reasonably pleasant. We could sit on the bank of the river and sing the greatest hits of the Cowsills.
    “Let’s play Name That Tune,” I piped up.
    Aunt Jinny shushed me. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, “but we have to be very quiet. You’ll scare away the fish.”
    We sat for nearly twenty long minutes in silence until a distraction arrived, in the form of a family of campers who had come to fish across the river. The kids seemed wholly at home, baiting their own hooks and casting their lines effortlessly into the water. I saw Aunt Jinny watching them, a slight look of envy on her unguarded face. I caught Val’s eye as if to say, “Well, what do you expect? They’re wearing overalls .”
    As twenty minutes became an hour, the sun began to disappear behind clouds, the humidity slowly rising as the sky became a mass of light gray.
    “This is boring,” Val declared. “I should have brought my Tiger Beat .”
    “What is so boring about enjoying nature?” Aunt Jinny replied.
    Everything , I thought to myself. Nature is dirty and unpredictable and lacks climate control.
    “Nothing,” I said brightly, knowing this couldn’t lead anywhere good.
    “Not if you want to go insane,” Val said. “What are we gonna do the rest of the week?”
    “Well,” Aunt Jinny replied with a sigh, “I thought we’d fish some more, and go hiking.”
    “That’s it?” Val said. “For six days? Can we hike to the mall?”
    After ninety long minutes, during which time the family across the lake reeled in three fish and I slapped repeatedly at my skin, wondering if my decision to be the blue plate special on the mosquito menu actually beat being coated in sticky pesticides, my rod suddenly snapped to attention.
    “Finally!” Aunt Jinny crowed. “See, isn’t this fun? Now, just pull it toward you gently.”
    “Wow,” Val marveled as the fishing line unspooled frantically until Aunt Jinny grabbed the spinner, “so there’s really a dead fish on the other end?”
    “No,” she replied, tugging on the rod. “It’s not dead yet. We’ll have to kill it.”
    Having not quite thought this part through, I guess Val and I assumed that biting down on the hook somehow euthanized the fish and he