“Got to make him want you, much as you want him,” Hoke Moore had said.

The water moved again.

All right, he thought. I will catch you now.

He turned and went to the shack and took his fishing rod and pulled the line from the eye tip and attached a lure that had the body of a small slender fish, colored like a flashing silver minnow. A large hook dangled from the lure like a tail fin.

He had caught many bass with the lure, had made a name for it: Lucky. The naming of lures was from one of Marvin Linquist’s stories. Marvin had vowed that each of his lures carried the name of one of his former girlfriends, but only those he had seriously courted and caught. The story was always ended by a pause, by a thoughtful expression on Marvin’s face, and by his claim, “I had sixty-seven of them lures, I believe it was.”

Noah had chosen the name Lucky, not for the fish it had caught, but for the fact he was lucky to have lived through the war that had killed Marvin Linquist.

He left the shack, taking with him the ax he had found propped in a corner of the porch, and he went to the east side of the dam, to the place where Matthew Reynolds had entered the water.

The ax was for killing the fish.

Even-up for Matthew’s death.

He placed the ax and the rod on the ground beside him. Knelt at the edge of the lake. Leaned to the water. Put the palm of his hand on it. Held the palm steady. Closed his eyes, bowed his head as in prayer. For my mother, he thought. For Matthew Reynolds. For Hoke Moore. He could feel warmth in his palm from the electricity of the water. And then the water moved slightly, slapped at his palm, and he knew it was the fish speaking to him, saying it was time.

He stood, held the palm in front of his face and licked the water from his hand, letting the taste hold on his tongue.

“I will catch you,” he said aloud.

He picked up the rod and readied it. Lifted it over his head and threw his arm forward in an easy motion. A singing came from the reel and he watched the lure arching through the air like the silver dot of a falling star, watched it pop against the water, watched it dive, watched water circles curling away from where the lure had hit.

He stood, waiting.

“I will catch you,” he said again.

Suddenly, the fish erupted out of the water ten feet from him, splitting the surface like an explosion, rolling its great head in the air. It turned in its fall, struck the water hard and the sound of it was the sound of a shotgun being fired. A spray of water misted against Noah.

“Used to try and catch him, but all he’d do was spit water at me,” Hoke Moore had said.