The fish erupted from the water, flinging itself high, like a god becoming flesh, a spray of water spinning from its silver head, its tail fins dancing over the shattered surface. For a moment—a flash—the huge mouth flared open in outrage at the tasteless lure and he could see the orange of the gills shining in the sun.

He had never seen a lake fish so large.

The fish fell hard against the water, making a belly-flopping slapping sound, a sound like a sudden thunderclap, and then it disappeared. Water rippled again in circles and the late sun filled the circles like ringlets of liquid gold.

Hoke Moore’s fish, he believed.

Hoke Moore’s fish announcing itself, coming out of the water like that. Not the habit of bass to leap up, though it depended on the spirit of the fish, he guessed. He had seen such leaps. Not so high, though. Not from such a large fish.

Soon, he thought. Maybe tomorrow. Soon, I will catch you and see if you are the giant Hoke Moore says you are.

The fish would bring good money, being so big. Feed a good-size family, though it might not be easy finding somebody wanting a bass as big as a small pig. Most country people he knew—white and colored—liked the taste of catfish more than bass. So did he. Catfish—small ones, the length of his hand, wrist to fingertip—were as tasty as any fish he had ever eaten if they were cooked right in seasoned meal and melted lard. Some of the colored men he had fished with in his boyhood would come close to fighting over a string of catfish. One he knew—Runt Carter was his name—had a habit of collecting the heads of catfish and stringing them across his barn with binder twine, saying the fish kept away owls. Runt Carter had so many catfish heads dangling on binder twine, his barn had the look of wearing a necklace.

He wondered if there were many colored families in the valley. Doubted it, being in the mountains. Most colored people he knew were workers in cotton fields, and there was little cotton grown in the mountains. He had seen only one colored family in the last two days. They lived in a small house—if it could be called house, for it was more barnlike than houselike. Remembered watching three or four small, knobby-shouldered black children at play as he came upon the house, and then seeing them become suddenly quiet, suddenly motionless, like small deer going on guard, their eyes following him as he walked past them.

It was a family that would like catfish, and maybe he would catch some and take a stringer to them. It would be easy enough to do, though the walk to where they lived was a good distance. Still, he knew there were catfish in the lake. Knew by the scent of the water. Bass and catfish and bream. He would catch stringers of each, enough for a good sale, or for trades.