I didn’t have any fishing tackle, just a 30:30 Winchester, so I took an old rusty bent nail and tied some white string on to it like the ghost of my childhood and tried to catch a trout using a piece of deer meat for bait and I almost caught one, too, lifting it out of the water just before it fell off my nail and back into the painting that carried it from my sight, returning it to the Seventeenth Century where it belonged on the easel of a man named Rembrandt.

CARTHAGE SINK

The Carthage River came roaring out of the ground at a fountainhead that was like a wild well. It flowed arrogantly a dozen miles or so through an open canyon and then just disappeared into the ground at a place that was called Carthage Sink.

The river loved to tell everybody (everybody being the sky, the wind, the few trees that grew around there, birds, deer and even the stars if you can believe that) what a great river it was.

‘I come roaring from the earth and return roaring to the earth. I am the master of my waters. I am the mother and father of myself. I don’t need a single drop of rain. Look at my smooth strong white muscles. I am my own future!’

The Carthage River kept this kind of talking up for thousands of years. Needless to say: Everybody (everybody being the sky, etc) was bored up to here with that river.

Birds and deer tried to keep away from that part of the country if they could avoid it. The stars had been reduced to playing a waiting game and there was a dramatically noticeable lack of wind in that area, except of course for the Carthage River.

Even the trout that lived there were ashamed of the river and always glad when they died. Anything was better than living in that God-damn bombastic river.

One day the Carthage River in mid-breath telling about how great it was, dried up; ‘I am the master of my …’ It just stopped.

The river couldn’t believe it. Not one more drop of water came from the ground and its sink was soon just a trickle dripping back into the ground like the runny nose of a kid.

The Carthage River’s pride vanished in an irony of water and the canyon turned into a good mood. Birds suddenly flew all over the place and took a happy look at what had happened and a great wind came up and it even seemed as if the stars were out earlier that night to take a look and then smile beatifically.

There was a summer rainstorm a few miles away in some mountains and the Carthage River begged for the rain to come to its rescue.