Round Rock - Michelle Huneven [57]
“Nothing to it,” Lewis said. “Take him to the lake, fish from the bank like Libby and I do. It’s great. Fresh air. Big body of water. Something always happens.”
“I don’t know,” Red said. “Rods, reels, hooks, tackle boxes, bait—it’s overwhelming.”
“Talk to Libby. She’s got it down to an art. Want me to ask her? We go every Sunday, anyway, so maybe we could all go together. Whaddaya say?”
Somehow, through no effort of his own, Red and son were booked for Sunday’s excursion. The night before, he took Joe to the Kmart and bought rods and reels. At five-thirty a.m., Libby and Lewis drove up and loaded an ungodly amount of fishing and picnic supplies into the back of Red’s pickup. Joe was thrilled to ride in the back while Red, Libby, and Lewis were crammed into the cab. Libby, in the middle, kept one hand against the dash to brace herself from leaning into Red. He had to touch her thigh every time he shifted gears. Her ponytail switched his face. She smelled of sandalwood soap.
“Maybe we’ll have bass for dinner,” Libby said. “Makes me hungry just thinking about it. Did anyone have breakfast? I’m starving. Lewis,” she said, “could you hand me one of those apples in the bag at your feet?”
Lewis dug around in the canvas sack and found an apple. Libby’s enormous, thirsty bites sent juice spraying. “Wanna bite, Red?” She held the half-eaten fruit so close to Red’s face that he could smell the cider, see her lipstick staining the crumpled white meat.
“Naw, no thanks, Lib,” he muttered, blood suffusing his face.
In all the years he’d lived in Rito, Red hadn’t spent much time at the lake. A CCC project from the thirties, a reservoir for Los Angeles, it looked to him bleak and inhospitable, simply a valley in chaparral foothills plugged up and filled with water. An enormous county park with spaces for four hundred RVs was often filled to capacity during the summer, and you had to pay six dollars at the park entrance to visit two small, overcrowded stretches of sandy beach.
Libby, however, directed him down a dirt road outside the park gates. The road, cut like a shelf in the hill, ran alongside a skinny inlet. Red parked behind three other vehicles and a trash can spewing beer cans and soggy garbage.
Toting a rusty cooler, lawn chairs, old quilts, and thickets of fishing poles, they picked their way down a steep bank of sharp fill rock. The water was as opaque and green as a farm pond. The wedge of sky overhead had a lemon-colored tint. Lewis led them along the shore halfway to the main body of the lake, then stopped and planted the ice chest a few feet from the water. The mud-flat bank looked like a floor of warped tiles.
“Best catfish hole in the whole lake,” Libby told Red. “But with your high-dollar equipment, you’ll want to fish further up there.” She pointed to where the finger of water widened into the lake itself. “I guarantee you’ll catch at least one crappie.” Deadpan, she pronounced the word obscenely.
Red smiled. Out here in the warming day, Libby seemed more physical and energetic, truly spirited. She was one of those people who seemed familiar to Red from the moment he laid eyes on her, as if, contrary to fact, there’d never been a time when she wasn’t somewhere in his life. As she unfolded chairs, assembled poles, her face was guileless and happy. Her shin-length pedal pushers made her calves look muscled, her ankles bony, her feet strong and capable of traversing great distances.
In the time that Red had one pole ready to go, Libby had all four of hers snapped together and threaded with line. She called Joe over to her. “You ever been fishing?” she said.
“Once, with a friend. Didn’t catch anything.”
“Your luck’s about to change, knock wood.” Libby rapped the side of her head with her fist. “Let’s get these lines in the water.” She spread out newspaper and opened a Tupperware container of pork livers. She tipped the bowl toward Joe. “Gross, huh?”
“Really gross.”
“Catfish go crazy for it.” She cut the meat into bloody chunks, baited the line of the first pole, rinsed her hand in the lake, and cast