Peggy Jo steps carefully into the canoe. Mary follows, fearless, like a sleepwalker.

“Aw, too bad,” Sara says. “I was hoping the aussies had somehow organized a general strike of all activities. But Mary’s not resisting.”

Mosquitoes hum around us, but no one moves. On the water the cork floats are just as inert. Nothing is happening. Nothing is likely to happen, either. No self-respecting fish will bite a bright green hard plastic worm. That much is obvious. Not that lures and bait can’t be a matter of debate; Dad and his fishing buddies can argue for hours about what to use where. However, in a sandy-bottomed black-water lake, pond really, live earthworms are what you need.

The canoe has glided away. I try to make out the surfer guy’s voice, but all I can hear is the sound of Sara’s pastels scratching across the rough paper.

Sara’s drawing is becoming a picture of this place. The foreground is still in outline: cattails, the strip of sand, a spindly pine branch arching upward. On the horizon, a hill and tall pines beyond the lake. The shapes are right, but trees should be green; these are a jumble of blues, browns, and purples, with spots of orange and red. What green there is, is incidental. And then the lake—that cool, dull black sheet I love to wrap up in—is being rendered as a warfare of color: blues fighting reds, oranges against greens, blues versus grays. Here, one side dominates, there another. In some places, there’s such a melee that you can’t tell who’s winning.

Sara squints, so I squint too. Now I see; I can imagine the final effect. Unable to take in so many jarring extremes, the eye tricks itself into seeing a tame and muted scene.

It is this place, and not this place. There is no dock. No safety-orange floating barrels. No man-made body parts on the shore. No sign that it was all built by the Jaycees, with invaluable help from the Honorable State Senator B. J. McNeill. It’s a typical North Carolina fishing hole, just like a normal lake.

Our corks hang lifeless in the water. Well, I can always hope. There are supposed to be lots of fish down there. If I catch one, maybe that dancing cook will fry it for me. Or maybe not. Probably, they’d make me let it go.

Now the corks are bobbing but not because fish are biting; the canoe is coming back. The sounds come near. Lapping paddles, the pleasant voice of the surfer guy. I look up to smile at him and only then realize how tense I am.