Admit Possession to Rent

We stopped at a farmer’s house before parking at the dock that creaked over the river. Rowboats for rent, five bucks an hour, twenty for the day. Deep water: I knew a canvas bag was in the trunk. I knew lunch would be roast beef sandwiches and hot stew from a thermos, chunks of carrot and potatoes cut by my mother who slept through the racket of our leaving. While my father paid, I loaded the boat with our poles and tackle boxes, lead sinkers shaped like grey pears, raincoats and a case of beer. I was ten and I knew my dad would toss that canvas bag into the aluminum boat with a thunk. We fish for gar with kittens, he’d yelled last night at my mother, and that was that. The rowboat slid from the dock, the occasional clunk of the first six-pack clipped on the fish stringer, and I knew that I should take my time fastening the wire leader to the brass swivel, tying on those massive sinkers. I knew that the six-inch treble hook would tremble in my hands, and when I was done, I knew what came next, a canvas bag, stiff kittens, blood. I tore two hooks through the side of a calico, yanked upward with a sharp tug to lodge the third barb beneath the ribs. I dangled my fingers in cold water to wash them, then reared the rod back into a cast that splashed twenty feet from the boat. He popped the third beer and finished baiting his hook. Too deep for an anchor, we drifted, and far beneath, the gar cruised back and forth, their prehistoric snouts slicing the dark, bumping our bait again and again until that fierce hunger I was learning said clamp down and take it.