The sun had risen beyond the trees now and cast a glow on the lake mist, which hovered just above the flat surface of the water. This is the best time to be on the water, when it’s so calm that you can spot the striders. So placid, water appears to be something other than water, like a surface you can walk on. When the water is settled in this way it quietly records all that it reflects, as if its purpose is to remember, to jot down the story of the world. The spray of pine needles. The arc of a passing hawk. Clouds. A man alone in a boat.

I untied the bow painter from its metal ring on the dock, pushed off with my foot and yanked the motor cord. The engine spewed a small burst of oily smoke and chucked into action, and I cut a lazy, wide turn away from the dock and headed across the water towards the mouth of the creek. I took my time, watched the V-shaped wake from my outboard spread and thin and disappear. When I got to my fishing spot, I dropped the anchor – a brick tied to a length of rope – and pulled my rod from its bag and assembled the parts, strung the line and fastened a hook to its end with a bowline knot.

I can’t remember now if I was thinking about you, Bear, or not. If I was feeling guilty for having left you behind. I don’t think I was. What I remember now is the feeling of a dead infant mouse between my fingers, delicate and yielding as an overripe berry. I studied it: a little bit gruesome, a little bit fascinating. Translucent skin textured like a scrotum. Purple shadows of organs and veins and tiny, clawed paws. Black buds of eyes sealed in milky skin, ears not yet unfurled, white filaments for whiskers. It was perfect.

I hooked the pup through the neck and cast the line.

My first trout was a good size, about a kilo. And the mouse was still intact so I used it again. And then once more. When I opened the tackle box to get the other pup, I found that it was alive, nudging its soft, blunt nose blindly into the side of the box. Maybe this was cruel, Bear, but I was a different man then. Stronger and more resilient. Not as prone to symbolism or prophetic thinking. Knowing that the lethargic movements of a live mouse would make even better bait, I hooked this pup through the hind leg and cast my line. I reeled it slowly in and, when I lifted it into the air to cast again, it arched its back and its legs clawed at nothing. I cast again and reeled and noticed that there was now a little wind blowing, skating across the water. I watched the lake’s surface change and darken, like something coming for me. I caught one last fish and, because I was beginning to feel hungry, turned the boat for home.