Trout Fishing in America

by Richard Brautigan

  “Yes,” I said.

  “They’re really beautiful tombs,” Pauline said.

  Moths fluttered above the light that came out of the river from the tombs below. There were five or six moths fluttering over each tomb.

  Suddenly a big trout jumped out of the water above a tomb and got one of the moths. The other moths scattered and then came back again, and the same trout jumped again and got another moth. He was a smart old trout.

  The trout did not jump any more and the moths fluttered peacefully above the light coming from the tombs.

  Margaret Again

  “How’s MARGARET taking all this?” Pauline said.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Is she hurt or mad or what? Do you know how she feels?” Pauline said. “Has she talked to you about it since you told her? She hasn’t talked to me at all. I saw her yesterday near the Watermelon Works. I said hello but she walked past me without saying anything. She seemed terribly upset.”

  “I don’t know how she feels,” I said.

  “I thought she’d be at iDEATH tonight, but she wasn’t there,” Pauline said. “I don’t know why I thought she’d be there. I just had a feeling but I was wrong. Have you seen her?”

  “No,” I said.

  “I wonder where she’s staying,” Pauline said.

  “I think she’s staying with her brother.”

  “I feel bad about this. Margaret and I were such good friends. All the years we’ve spent together at iDEATH,” Pauline said. “We were almost like sisters. I’m sorry that things had to work out this way, but there was nothing we could do about it.”

  “The heart is something else. Nobody knows what’s going to happen,” I said.

  “You’re right,” Pauline said.

  She stopped and kissed me. Then we crossed over the bridge to her shack.

  Pauline’s Shack

  PAULINE’S SHACK is made entirely of watermelon sugar, except the door that is a good-looking grayish-stained pine with a stone doorknob.

  Even the windows are made of watermelon sugar. A lot of windows here are made of sugar. It’s very hard to tell the difference between sugar and glass, the way sugar is used by Carl the windowmaker. It’s just a thing that depends on who is doing it. It’s a delicate art and Carl has it.

  Pauline lit a lantern. It smelled fragrant burning with watermelontrout oil. We have a way here also of mixing watermelon and trout to make a lovely oil for our lanterns. We use it for all our lighting purposes. It has a gentle fragrance to it, and makes a good light.

  Pauline’s shack is very simple as all our shacks are simple. Everything was in its proper place. Pauline uses the shack just to get away from iDEATH for a few hours or a night if she feels like it.

  All of us who stay at iDEATH have shacks to visit whenever we feel like it. I spend more time at my shack than anybody else. I usually just sleep one night a week at iDEATH. I of course take most of my meals there. We who do not have regular names spend a lot of time by ourselves. It suits us.

  “Well, here we are,” Pauline said. She looked beautiful in the light of the lantern. Her eyes sparkled.

  “Please come here,” I said. She came over to me and I kissed her mouth and then I touched her breasts. They felt so smooth and firm. I put my hand down the front of her dress.

  “That feels good,” she said.

  “Let’s try some more,” I said.

  “That would be good,” she said.

  We went over and lay upon her bed. I took her dress off. She had nothing on underneath. We did that for a while. Then I got up and took off my overalls and lay back down beside her.

  A Love, a Wind

  WE MADE a long and slow love. A wind came up and the windows trembled slightly, the sugar set fragilely ajar by the wind.

  I liked Pauline’s body and she said that she liked mine, too, and we couldn’t think of anything to say.

  The wind suddenly stopped and Pauline said, “What’s that?”

  “It’s the wind.”

  The Tigers Again

  AFTER MAKING LOVE we talked about the tigers. It was Pauline who started it. She was lying warmly beside me, and she wanted to talk about the tigers. She said that Old Chuck’s dream got her thinking about them.

  “I wonder why they could speak our language,” she said.

  “No one knows,” I said. “But they could speak it. Charley says maybe we were tigers a long time ago and changed but they didn’t. I don’t know. It’s an interesting idea, though.”

  “I never heard their voices,” Pauline said. “I was just a child and there were only a few tigers left, old ones, and they barely came out of the hills. They were too old to be dangerous, and they were hunted all the time.

  “I was six years old when they killed the last one. I remember the hunters bringing it to iDEATH. There were hundreds of people with them. The hunters said they had killed it up in the hills that day, and it was the last tiger.

  “They brought the tiger to iDEATH and everybody came with them. They covered it with wood and soaked the wood down with watermelontrout oil. Gallons and gallons of it. I remember people threw flowers on the pile and stood around crying because it was the last tiger.

  “Charley took a match and lit the fire. It burned with a great orange glow for hours and hours, and black smoke poured up into the air.

  “It burned until there was nothing left but ashes, and then the men began right then and there building the trout hatchery at iDEATH, right over the spot where the tiger had been burned. It’s hard to think of that now when you’re down there dancing.

  “I guess you remember all this,” Pauline said. “You were there, too. You were standing beside Charley.”

  “That’s right,” I said. “They had beautiful voices.”

  “I never heard them” she said.

  “Perhaps that was for the best,” I said.

  “Maybe you’re right,” she said. “Tigers,” and was soon fast asleep in my arms. Her sleep tried to become my arm, and then my body, but I wouldn’t let it because I was suddenly very restless.

  I got up and put on my overalls and went for one of the long walks I take at night.

  Arithmetic

  THE NIGHT WAS COOL and the stars were red. I walked down by the Watermelon Works. That’s where we process the watermelons into sugar. We take the juice from the watermelons and cook it down until there’s nothing left but sugar, and then we work it into the shape of this thing that we have: our lives.

  I sat down on a couch by the river. Pauline had gotten me thinking about the tigers. I sat there and thought about them, how they killed and ate my parents.

  We lived together in a shack by the river. My father raised watermelons and my mother baked bread. I was going to school. I was nine years old and having trouble with arithmetic.

  One morning the tigers came in while we were eating breakfast and before my father could grab a weapon they killed him and they killed my mother. My parents didn’t even have time to say anything before they were dead. I was still holding the spoon from the mush I was eating.

  “Don’t be afraid,” one of the tigers said. “We’re not going to hurt you. We don’t hurt children. Just sit there where you are and we’ll tell you a story.”

  One of the tigers started eating my mother. He bit her arm off and started chewing on it. “What kind of story would you like to hear? I know a good story about a rabbit.”

  “I don’t want to hear a story,” I said.

  “OK,” the tiger said, and he took a bite out of my father. I sat there for a long time with the spoon in my hand, and then I put it down.

  “Those were my folks,” I said, finally.

  “We’re sorry,” one of the tigers said. “We really are.”

  “Yeah,” the other tiger said. “We wouldn’t do this if we didn’t have to, if we weren’t absolutely forced to. But this is the only way we can keep alive.”

  “We’re just like you,” the other tiger said. “
We speak the same language you do. We think the same thoughts, but we’re tigers.”

  “You could help me with my arithmetic,” I said.

  “What’s that?” one of the tigers said.

  “My arithmetic.”

  “Oh, your arithmetic.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What do you want to know?” one of the tigers said.

  “What’s nine times nine?”

  “Eighty-one,” a tiger said.

  “What’s eight times eight?”

  “Fifty-six,” a tiger said.

  I asked them half a dozen other questions: six times six, seven times four, etc. I was having a lot of trouble with arithmetic. Finally the tigers got bored with my questions and told me to go away.

  “OK,” I said. “I’ll go outside.”

  “Don’t go too far,” one of the tigers said. “We don’t want anyone to come up here and kill us.”

  “OK.”

  They both went back to eating my parents. I went outside and sat down by the river. “I’m an orphan,” I said.

  I could see a trout in the river. He swam directly at me and then he stopped right where the river ends and the land begins. He stared at me.

  “What do you know about anything?” I said to the trout.

  That was before I went to live at iDEATH.

  After about an hour or so the tigers came outside and stretched and yawned.

  “It’s a nice day,” one of the tigers said.

  “Yeah,” the other tiger said. “Beautiful.”

  “We’re awfully sorry we had to kill your parents and eat them. Please try to understand. We tigers are not evil. This is just a thing we have to do.”

  “All right,” I said. “And thanks for helping me with my arithmetic.”

  “Think nothing of it.”

  The tigers left.

  I went over to iDEATH and told Charley that the tigers had eaten my parents.

  “What a shame,” he said.

  “The tigers are so nice. Why do they have to go and do things like that?” I said.

  “They can’t help themselves,” Charley said. “I like the tigers, too. I’ve had a lot of good conversations with them. They’re very nice and have a good way of stating things, but we’re going to have to get rid of them. Soon.”

  “One of them helped me with my arithmetic.”

  “They’re very helpful,” Charley said. “But they’re dangerous. What are you going to do now?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “How would you like to stay here at iDEATH?” Charley said.

  “That sounds good,” I said.

  “Fine. Then it’s settled,” Charley said.

  That night I went back to the shack and set fire to it. I didn’t take anything with me and went to live at iDEATH. That was twenty years ago, though it seems like it was only yesterday: What’s eight times eight?

  She Was

  FINALLY I STOPPED THINKING about the tigers and started back to Pauline’s shack. I would think about the tigers another day. There would be many.

  I wanted to stay the night with Pauline. I knew that she would be beautiful in her sleep, waiting for me to return. She was.

  A Lamb at False Dawn

  PAULINE BEGAN TALKING in her sleep at false dawn from under the watermelon covers. She told a little story about a lamb going for a walk.

  “The lamb sat down in the flowers,” she said. “The lamb was all right,” and that was the end of the story.

  Pauline often talks in her sleep. Last week she sang a little song. I forget how it went.

  I put my hand on her breast. She stirred in her sleep. I took my hand off her breast and she was quiet again.

  She felt very good in bed. There was a nice sleepy smell coming from her body. Perhaps that is where the lamb sat down.

  The Watermelon Sun

  I WOKE UP before Pauline and put on my overalls. A crack of gray sun shone through the window and lay quietly on the floor. I went over and put my foot in it, and then my foot was gray.

  I looked out the window and across the fields and piney woods and the town to the Forgotten Works. Everything was touched with gray: Cattle grazing in the fields and the roofs of the shacks and the big Piles in the Forgotten Works all looked like dust. The very air itself was gray.

  We have an interesting thing with the sun here. It shines a different color every day. No one knows why this is, not even Charley. We grow the watermelons in different colors the best we can.

  This is how we do it: Seeds gathered from a gray watermelon picked on a gray day and then planted on a gray day will make more gray watermelons.

  It is really very simple. The colors of the days and the watermelons go like this—

  Monday: red watermelons.

  Tuesday: golden watermelons.

  Wednesday: gray watermelons.

  Thursday: black, soundless watermelons.

  Friday: white watermelons.

  Saturday: blue watermelons.

  Sunday: brown watermelons.

  Today would be a day of gray watermelons. I like best tomorrow: the black, soundless watermelon days. When you cut them they make no noise, and taste very sweet.

  They are very good for making things that have no sound. I remember there was a man who used to make clocks from the black, soundless watermelons and his clocks were silent.

  The man made six or seven of these clocks and then he died.

  There is one of the clocks hanging over his grave. It is hanging from the branches of an apple tree and sways in the winds that go up and down the river. It of course does not keep time any more.

  Pauline woke up while I was putting my shoes on.

  “Hello,” she said, rubbing her eyes. “You’re up. I wonder what time it is.”

  “It’s about six.”

  “I have to cook breakfast this morning at iDEATH,” she said. “Come over here and give me a kiss and then tell me what you would like for breakfast.”

  Hands

  WE WALKED BACK to iDEATH, holding hands. Hands are very nice things, especially after they have travelled back from making love.

  Margaret Again, Again

  I SAT IN THE KITCHEN at iDEATH, watching Pauline make the batter for hot cakes, my favorite food. She put a lot of flour and eggs and good things into a great blue bowl and stirred the batter with a big wooden spoon, almost too large for her hand.

  She was wearing a real nice dress and her hair was combed on top of her head and I had stopped and picked some flowers for her hair when we walked down the road.

  They were bluebells.

  “I wonder if Margaret will be here today,” she said. “I’ll be glad when we’re talking again.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said. “Everything will be all right.”

  “It’s just—well, Margaret and I have been such good friends. I’d always liked you before, but I never thought we’d ever be anything but friends.

  “You and Margaret were so close for years. I just hope everything works out, and Margaret finds someone new and will be my friend again.”

  “Don’t worry.”

  Fred came into the kitchen just to say, “Ummmm—hot cakes,” and then left.

  Strawberries

  CHARLEY MUST HAVE EATEN a dozen hot cakes himself. I have never seen him eat so many hot cakes, and Fred ate a few more than Charley.

  It was quite a sight.

  There was also a big platter of bacon and lots of fresh milk and a big pot of strong coffee, and there was a bowl of fresh strawberries, too.

  A girl came by from the town and left them off just before breakfast. She was a gentle girl.

  Pauline said, “Thank you, and what a lovely dress you have on this morning. Did you make it yourself? You must have because it’s so pretty.”

  “Oh, thank you,” the girl said, blushing. “I just wanted to bring some strawberries to iDEATH for breakfast, so I got up very early and gathered them down by the river.”

 
Pauline ate one of the berries and gave one of them to me. “They are such fine berries,” Pauline said. “You must know a good place to get them, and you must show me where that place is.”

  “It’s right near that statue of a rutabaga by the ball park, just down from where that funny green bridge is,” the girl said. She was about fourteen years old and very pleased that her strawberries were a big hit at iDEATH.

  All of the strawberries were eaten at breakfast, and again as for the hot cakes: “These are really wonderful hot cakes,” Charley said.

  “Would you like some more?” Pauline said.

  “Maybe another one if there is any more batter.”

  “There’s plenty,” Pauline said. “How about you, Fred?”

  “Well, maybe just one more.”

  The Schoolteacher

  AFTER BREAKFAST I kissed Pauline while she was washing the dishes and went with Fred down to the Watermelon Works to see something he wanted to show me about the plank press.

  We took a long leisurely stroll down there, through the morning of a gray sun. It looked like it might rain but of course it would not. The first rain of the year would not start until the 12th day of October.

  “Margaret wasn’t there this morning,” Fred said.

  “No, she wasn’t,” I said.

  We stopped and talked to the schoolteacher who was taking his students for a walk in the woods. While we talked to him all the children sat down in the grass nearby, and were kind of gathered together like a ring of mushrooms or daisies.

  “Well, how’s the book coming?” the schoolteacher said.

  “All right,” I said.

  “I’ll be very curious to see it,” the schoolteacher said. “You always had a way with words. I still remember that essay you wrote on weather when you were in the sixth grade. That was quite something.

  “Your description of the winter clouds was very accurate and quite moving at the same time and contained a certain amount of poetic content. Yes, I am quite interested in reading your book. Will you give any hints on what it is about?”