He sat on a rock that jutted out over the river, above one of the pools made from water pouring off the shoals, and he watched the bobber on his line ride the gentle lapping made from the spill. In the gazing, in the hypnotic sound of the falling water, his mind wandered to the lake, to the great bass, to his promise of returning for the fight the bass would give him. It was a put-off promise, but one he would keep at the right time. His order had been for river cats, and that was his duty. An order was an order. The army had taught him that. Somebody gives you an order, you do it. The army had said there was honor in being such a soldier, and he had found it to be so. Even with so much killing around him, he had believed in the honor of doing as he had been told. There were times, remembering it, when he believed that following orders had saved his life. Even a slow-thinking man could do what he was told to do.

The float jiggled, then disappeared. He yanked quickly at the line, felt the weight of the fish, saw it bend the tip of his rod, watched the line flash to his left, then toward him. It was a fish of size and power, angrily trying to spit the hook or break the line. He laughed a chuckle laugh, began to turn the handle on the reel.

The fish weighed three or four pounds, he guessed. Maybe five. Its head was massive, its eyes fierce, its long whiskers like thin, limp horns, its back and side fins as sharp and deadly as ice picks, its skin as slippery as oil.

Too big, he decided. A catfish was best for frying when it was smaller, one that could be held comfortably by the eater, like an ear of boiled corn. Nothing was better than the fried tail fins of a small catfish, nibbled off.

He released the fish, rebaited, cast again into the center of the pool.

The sun was on his face and back, the smell of the water deep in his lungs. He closed his eyes, let the sun coat him. His muscles ached pleasantly. He was twenty-eight years old, his body still trim from years of farming and the rigors of war, yet there were moments—such moments as he now felt—when he imagined that he was many years older. As old as some of the men who had gathered at the Bowerstown store. He inhaled slowly, holding the sweetness of the sun-colored water in his lungs.

It was a good place, he thought again. A good place.

THREE

The book she was reading was John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. Rereading it. Steinbeck was her favorite American writer and The Grapes of Wrath her favorite Steinbeck book. It caused her to ache for the Joad family, and for all the families made to migrate from the near-nothing of their existence to the flimsy hope of some future holding promise, though none knew for certain what that promise would be.