"Do I have to bait my own hook?" Marty asked.

"That's part of the game," Harry said. Harry Feinman was stocky and muscular, six inches shorter than Arthur, with premature ash-gray hair receding on all fronts but his neck, where it ventured as stiff fuzz below the collar of his black leather jacket. His face was beefy, friendly, with small piercing eyes and heavy dark eyebrows. He reeled in loose nylon vigorously and propped the pole between the bait can and a tackle box. "You don't earn your fish without doing the whole thing."

Arthur winked at Marty's dubious glance.

"Might hurt the worms," Marty said.

"I honestly don't know whether they feel pain or not," Harry said. "They might. But that's the way of things."

"Is that the way of things, Dad?" Marty asked Arthur.

"I suppose it is." In all the time they had spent living by the river, Arthur had never taken Marty fishing.

"Your dad's here to break things easy to you, Marty. I'm not. Fishing is serious business. It's a ritual."

Marty knew about rituals. "That means we're supposed to do something a certain way so we won't feel guilty," he said.

"You got it," Harry said.

Marty put on the vacant look that meant he was hatching an idea. "Peggy getting married ... is that a ritual, because they're going to have sex? And they might be guilty?"

In the morning, Francine and Martin would drive to Eugene to attend her niece's wedding. Arthur would have accompanied them, but now there were far more important things.

Arthur raised his eyebrows at Harry. "You've done all the talking so far," he said.

"He's your son, fellah."

"Getting married is celebration. It's a ritual, but it's joyous. Not at all like baiting a hook."

Harry grinned. "Nobody's guilty about having sex anymore."

Marty nodded, satisfied, and took a hooked line from Arthur. Arthur gingerly pulled a worm out of the carton and handed it to his son. "Twist it around and hook it several times."

"Blecchh," Martin said, doing as he was told. "Worm blood is yellow," he added. "Squishy."

They fished in the hollow for an hour without luck. By nine-thirty, Martin was ready to put the pole down and eat a sandwich. "All right. Wash your hands in the river," Arthur told him. "Worm juice, remember."

"Bleechh." Marty bent over the gunwale to immerse his hands.

Harry leaned back, letting his knees grip the pole, and locked his hands behind his neck, grinning broadly. "We haven't done this in years."

"I don't miss fishing much," Arthur said.

"Sissy."

"Dad's not a sissy," Marty insisted.

"You tell him," Arthur encouraged.

"Fishing's gross," Marty said.

"Like father, like son," Harry lamented.

Harry's floppy fisherman's cap cast a shadow over his eyes. Arthur suddenly remembered the dream, with Harry's head a full moon, and shuddered. The wind rose cool and damp in the tree shadows of the hollow with a beautiful, mourning sigh.

Marty ate his sandwich, oblivious.