Fishing With Dad Quotes

Some are sad. And some are glad. And some are very, very bad. Why are they Sad and glad and bad? I do not know. Go ask your dad.

Fundamentalist Christianity: fascinating. These people actually believe that the world is twelve thousand years old. Swear to God. Based on what? I asked them. "Well, we looked at all the people in the Bible and we added 'em up all the way back to Adam and Eve, their ages? Twelve thousand years." "Well, how fucking scientific, OK. I didn't know that you'd gone to so much trouble there. That's good. You believe the world's twelve thousand years old?" "That's right." "OK, I got one word to ask you, a one word question, ready?" "Uh huh." "Dinosaurs." You know, the world's twelve thousand years old and dinosaurs existed, and existed in that time, you'd think it would been mentioned in the fucking Bible at some point: And O, Jesus and the disciples walked to Nazareth. But the trail was blocked by a giant brontosaurus... with a splinter in its paw. And the disciples did run a-screamin'. "What a big fucking lizard, Lord!" "I'm sure gonna mention this in my book," Luke said. "Well, I'm sure gonna mention it in my book," Matthew said. But Jesus was unafraid. And he took the splinter from the brontosaurus paw, and the brontosaurus became his friend. And Jesus sent him to Scotland where he lived in a loch, O so many years, attracting fat American families with their fat fuckin' dollars to look for the Loch Ness Monster. And O the Scots did praise the Lord: "Thank you, Lord! Thank you, Lord!" Twelve thousand years old. But I actually asked this guy, "OK, dinosaur fossils-- how does that fit into your scheme of life? What's the deal?" He goes: "God put those here to test our faith." "I think God put you here to test my faith, dude. I think I've figured this out." Does that-- That's what this guy said. Does that bother anyone here? The idea that God might be fucking with our heads? Anyone have trouble sleeping restfully with that thought in their head? God's running around burying fossils: "Ho ho! We'll see who believes in me now, ha ha! I'm a prankster God. I am killing me, ho ho ho!" You know? You die, you go to St. Peter: "Did you believe in dinosaurs?" "Well, yeah. There were fossils everywhere. (trapdoor opens) Aaaaarhhh!" "You fuckin' idiot! Flying lizards? You're a moron. God was fuckin' with you!" "It seemed so plausible, aaaaaahh!" "Enjoy the lake of fire, fucker!" They believe this. But you ever notice how people who believe in Creationism usually look pretty unevolved. Eyes really close together, big furry hands and feet? "I believe God created me in one day." Yeah, looks like he rushed it. Such a weird belief. Lots of Christians wear crosses around their necks. You think when Jesus comes back he's gonna want to see a fucking cross, man? "Ow." Might be why he hasn't shown up yet. "Man, they're still wearing crosses. Fuck it, I'm not goin' back, Dad. No, they totally missed the point. When they start wearing fishes, I might show up again, but... let me bury fossils with you, Dad. Fuck 'em, let's fuck with 'em! Hand me that brontosaurus head, Dad.

Most dads had hobbies that they passed down to their sons; hunting, fishing, auto repair. Dad’s hobby was nuclear war, which meant his sons knew everything about it.

Fishing is much less about the fishing, and much more about the time alone with your kid, away from the hustle and bustle of the everyday.

When I was a kid I used to drink from the tap all the time. I'd run back into the flat all hot and sweaty from playing and didn't even bother putting it in a glass, just turned the tap on and stuck my mouth underneath it. If my mom caught me doing it she used to scold me, but my dad just said that I had to be careful. 'What if a fish jumped out?' he used to say. 'You'd swallow it before you knew it was there.' Dad was always saying stuff like that and it wasn't until I was seventeen that I realised it was because he was stoned all the time.

We hugged, and my dad cried a little. I don't have a macho-type dad, who hunts and fishes and collects guns. He's sensitive and caring. He drives me crazy most of the time, but I do admire that he's not afraid to show his "feminine side.

Hey! I'm not gonna watch this damn Nemo fish by myself!" My dad yells from the living room, making the girls giggle.

She doesn’t like ducks,” Shane said, nodding.  “I’ve seen a couple of dead ducks before my dad fishes them out.  He says they died naturally, but I know she killed them.  I don’t know why, though.

No I am not okay. I've just been pulled out of play tryouts where I had to be the first to audition and everyone's trying out for the same parts, I just had a very bizarre conversation with the school secretary, Megan may be throwing up her cucumber sandwiches, I've broken five of the seven deadly sins in as many hours, a demon may be inside a girl in my world religions class, Grant Brawner called me by name, my license photo looks like a dead fish, I have to drive my friends all over town in two hours when I've never even driven without Dad before, none of my birthday wishes have come true yet, and now you're here with muffins like I'm in second grade? So, no, I am not ok.

Granana doesn't understand what the big deal is. She didn't cry at Olivia's funeral, and I doubt she even remembers Olivia's name. Granana lost, like, ninety-two million kids in childbirth. All of her brothers died in the war. She survived the Depression by stealing radish bulbs from her neighbors' garden, and fishing the elms for pigeons. Dad likes to remind us of this in a grave voice, as if it explained her jaundiced pitilessness: "Boys. Your grandmother ate pigeons.

i'm sorry your mom did not hug you and your dad did not teach you to love you but there are reasons and ways to overcome hate and the first step would be to choose to

Here is my room, in the yellow lamplight and the space heater rumbling: Indian rug red as Cochise's blood, a desk with seven mystic drawers, a chair covered in material as velvety blue-black as Batman's cape, an aquarium holding tiny fish so pale you could see their hearts beat, the aforementioned dresser covered with decals from Revell model airplane kits, a bed with a quilt sewn by a relative of Jefferson Davis's, a closet, and the shelves, oh, yes, the shelves. The troves of treasure. On those shelves are stacks of me: hundreds of comic books- Justice League, Flash, Green Lantern, Batman, the Spirit, Blackhawk, Sgt. Rock and Easy Company, Aquaman, and the Fantastic Four... The shelves go on for miles and miles. My collection of marbles gleams in a mason jar. My dried cicada waits to sing again in the summer. My Duncan yo-yo that whistles except the string is broken and Dad's got to fix it.

At the same time, Dad was working on a book arguing the case for phonetic spelling. He called it 'A Ghoti out of Water.' "Ghoti," he liked to point out, could be pronounced like "fish." The "gh" had the "f" sound in "enough," the "o" had the short "i" sound in "women," and "ti" had the "sh" sound in "nation.

Tristan’s Mom: What are these? Tristan: Your granddaughters. Tristan’s Dad: Don’t worry honey, you don’t look old enough to be a mother let alone a grandmother. Tristan’s Mom: Again with the flattery, thank you dear. Where did they come from? Tristan: Camie gave birth last night. Jeff: I didn’t know she was pregnant. Tristan: She wasn’t. It was a miracle. Tristan’s Mom: Do they have names? Tristan: Phineas and Ferb. Jeff: From the cartoon? Tristan’s Dad: That figures, he named the dog Scooby. Tristan’s Mom: They sound like boy names. Tristan: Mom! Shhh, you’ll give them a complex. Jeff: If that Ferb one climbs my legs again I’m drop kicking it. Tristan: That’s child abuse and I’ll press charges. Besides, they just miss their mom. Jeff: I’m calling CPS (cat protective services)… Tristan: What for? Jeff: Because you’re making your kids live in a broken home unnecessarily. Tristan: I’m not talking to you anymore. Jeff: Fine, as long as you to talk to her. Tristan: Back off. Jeff: Nope, not gonna do it. Tristan: I’m warning you man. Jeff: You miss her too. Tristan: Yeah, so? Jeff: So do something about it. Tristan: Happy? Last night was miserable and I think it’s too late. Jeff: You still have a 12 year old ace in the hole. Tristan: Saving it as a last resort. Tristan’s Dad: Honey, do you have a clue as to what they’re talking about? Tristan’s Mom: No and I don’t want one. Jeff: I’m just helping my nieces get their parents back together. Dude, it’s time. Make the call. Tristan: Alright, I did it. But I get the feeling I’m about to do business with the mob. I hope I don’t wake up with the head of my horse in bed with me tonight. Jeff: Well, a good father will do anything he can to protect his family, even if that means he runs the risk of sleeping with the fishes. Tristan: Okay girls, your aunt helped Daddy come up with a plan and if it works you should get to see Mommy today. Cross your paws, or claws, or whatever…just cross something for luck.

I love salmon. Of all my fishy friends, I love salmon the best. Or trout. Or tuna. Or smelts. Oh heck. I love them ALL! But I have such fond memories of salmon. See, my dad was a fisherman. I mean a fanatic fisherman. Fishing was probably what he liked to do most (along with gardening and riding horses and camping in the Sierra and bowling and… ) But honestly, folks, fishing was probably the winner for leisure-time activities.

I have a grandfather. I have a king for a grandfather. A king fish. I clear my throat. “So…This isn’t just about my mom’s identity. This is Jagen making his move to take over the kingdoms? And…you think he’s getting away with it?” “Yes. Exactly.” “But I don’t understand. What could I do to stop him? I’m just a Half-Breed.” “You can come with me and show them that you have the true Gift of Poseidon. That Nalia is your mother. It will prove her identity, that the Royals aren’t lying, and that they haven’t strayed.” “Won’t it technically prove that they have strayed? I mean, you know how babies are born right? That means my mom and my dad-“ “I know how it works. And, uh, I don’t want to talk about it with you. And I’m pretty sure Galen doesn’t want me to, either.

The mystery o’ fishing’s this,’ said Dean’s dad, ‘what’s the hook, who’s got the rod, what’s the maggot, what’s the fish?’ ‘Why’s that a mystery, Dad?’ ‘Yer’ll understand when yer older.’ ‘But ain’t it obvious what’s what?’ ‘It changes, son. In a heartbeat.

I told you. He says it’s the miracle of the loafs and the fishes.” She stared at him blankly, and he felt stupid. When his father said it, people would laugh. “Um. Like in the Bible. The miracle of the loaves and the fishes. Dad used to say that he loafs and fishes, and it’s a miracle that he still makes money. It was a sort of joke.

There is grandeur in this view,” scolds a quote from Darwin hanging over my dad’s desk at his lab. The words are written in looping brown calligraphy, enclosed in a varnished wooden frame. The quote comes from the last sentence of *On the Origin of Species*. It is Darwin’s sweet nothing, his apology for deflating the world of its God, his promise that there is grandeur—if you look hard enough, you’ll find it. But sometimes it felt like an accusation. If you can’t see it, shame on you.

When my grandpa died, I had this same fear. I love Grandpa so much. He was Mom's dad, and he was my favorite person in the whole world. He lived up north, between Grayling and the Mackinaw Bridge. He had, like, twenty acres. He had horses and dirt bike and all this awesome stuff. I'd go up there for weeks at a time during the summers, and he'd let me do whatever I wanted. We'd go hunting and fishing and four-wheeling, and I'd stay up till midnight every night. Then one day, he died. All of a sudden, just like that that. I cried for days. Dad kicked the shit out of me for crying, but I didn't care. I loved Grandpa, and he was gone. Then, like a month after he'd died, I had this panic attack. I couldn't remember what he looked like. I thought it meant I didn't love him, or that I'd forgotten about him. It was the only time Dad was anything like helpful. He told me you have to forget what they look like. Otherwise, you can't learn to live without them. Forgetting is your brain's way of telling you it's time to try and move on. Not forget who they were, just...keep living.

In Mass I wanted to talk to God, but I didn’t know if He’d recognize me. I couldn’t think of nothing to say. So instead I pictured my life as a shattered plate, a fine piece of crockery broke and splintered into a thousand tiny pieces. And then I spent the hour collecting up all them bits of colored wreckage, and one by one, I placed them shards into the invisible hands of God. I hoped He would maybe glue them back together for me. He could stitch them up the way Pavees did, until the cracks was so well healed that nobody could see them at all. After Mass, Dad took me fishing, which made everything worse, because he’d never took me fishing on my own before, and the gravity of that was like a sad confession.

I enjoy a torture session on the rowing machine and I also enjoy my mom’s homemade peach cobbler. I enjoy flopping like that dead fish with hips that can’t lie in dance class, and I also enjoy ordering pizza with my kid, renting a movie, and downing popcorn while we share some special time together. I enjoy seeing how much I can lift at the gym and I also enjoy stuffing a fresh chewy chocolate chip cookie into my face when I’m having a hard day.

Dad's on a fishing boat in front of Carter's estate. If we get into trouble, all I have to do is press the button on the tiny transmitter in my pocket and he'll destroy the dome on top of Carter's house. Is that enough of a distraction for you?" "Maybe we can work out something a little more subtle.

Looks like the wrong kind of bait can you the right kind of fish. -Graham's Dad

They had never really figured out how the fish had known to grow eyes. His dad had had some theories, of course, but he couldn’t explain how the fish had been able to change so fast.

My father is on the roof. This is how I remember him sometimes. Well-dressed in a dark suit and shiny, slippery shoes, he is looking left, looking right, looking as far as his eyes will travel. Then, looking down, he sees me, and just as he begins to fall he smiles, and winks. All the way down he's looking at me–smiling, mysterious, mythic, an unknown quantity: my dad.

There's no "get rich quick." There's no "overnight success." However, this doesn't mean that when you decide to start a business that you're just starting. You could start making new money tomorrow. I was fishing with my son and taught him that you can't catch a fish unless your line is in the water. A truth my dad once taught me. You may have spent years learning a skill or creating a product or service that you just simply haven't thought to monetize. Like leaving a fishing pole on the ground along side the river, but not having your line in the water yet. All you need to create a new stream of income is to make something consumable and offer it at a price that someone will pay. If you're not making offers, you're not making money. Get your line in the water!

But I couldn’t block out the sound of his voice. “Hayden wasn’t the son I expected to have,” he said. “I’d imagined playing catch in the yard, watching football on the weekends, going fishing. The things I’d done with my dad; the things I do with Ryan. It was the only kind of relationship I knew how to have with a son.” His voice cracked. “But my second son didn’t enjoy any of those things. He loved music and video games and computers. I didn’t know how to talk to him. And now I’ll spend the rest of my life wishing I’d learned how.” He lowered his head, as if he were trying to hide the fact that he was crying.

The biggest problem we faced was people stealing our nets and fish. Sometimes the thieves would ruin the nets by cutting the fish out. The first time it happened, I asked my dad if we should call the police, but he said, “Son, where we live, I am 911.

I don't know what happens, what line gets crossed that transitions a girl from seeing her dad as the entirety of her world to viewing him as an embarrassment. For years, we were best friends. Fishing, the movies he slept through, cooking on the grill outside when he was home in the summers. I was his little girl, and he was everything. And then, he wasn't. I woke one day to realize that to be liked, I had to give up the one person who loved me. That's a pretty shitty way to introduce a girl to growing up.

You are a good dad,” I say. “Thanks,” he says, and his eyelids flutter a bit, as if he’s heard what he’s come to hear. This is what is meant by last words: they are keys to unlock the afterlife. They’re not last words but passwords, and as soon as they’re spoken you can go. “So.

You know, we still have like, half an hour down here. Seems a shame to waste it.” I poked him in the ribs, and he gave an exaggerated wince. “No way, dude. My days of cellar, mill, and dungeon lovin’ are over. Go castle or go home.” “Fair enough,” he said as we interlaced our fingers and headed for the stairs. “But does it have to be a real castle, or would one of those inflatable bouncy things work?” I laughed. “Oh, inflatable castles are totally out of-“ I skidded to a stop on the first step, causing Archer to bump into me. “What the heck is that?” I asked, pointing to a dark stain in the nearest corner. “Okay, number one question you don’t want to hear in a creepy cellar,” Archer sad, but I ignored him and stepped off the staircase. The stain bled out from underneath the stone wall, covering maybe a foot of the dirt floor. It looked black and vaguely…sticky. I swallowed my disgust as I knelt down and gingerly touched the blob with one finger. Archer crouched down next to me and reached into his pocket. He pulled out a lighter, and after a few tries, a wavering flame sprung up. We studied my fingertip in the dim glow. “So that’s-“ “It’s blood, yeah,” I said, not taking my eyes off my hand. “Scary.” “I was gonna go with vile, but scary works.” Archer fished in his pockets again, and this time he produced a paper napkin. I took it from him and gave Lady Macbeth a run for her money in the hand-scrubbing department. But even as I attempted to remove a layer of skin from my finger, something was bugging me. I mean, something other than the fact that I’d just touched a puddle of blood. “Check the other corners,” I told Archer. He stood up and moved across the room. I stayed where I was, trying to remember that afternoon Dad and I had sat with the Thorne family grimoire. We’d looked at dozens of spells, but there had been one- “There’s blood in every corner,” Archer called from the other side of the cellar. “Or at least that’s what I’m guessing it is. Unlike some people, I don’t have the urge to go sticking my fingers in it.

At the same time, Dad was working on a book arguing the case for phonetic spelling. He called it A Ghoti out of Water. “Ghoti,” he liked to point out, could be pronounced like “fish.” The “gh” had the “f” sound in “enough,” the “o” had the short “i” sound in “women,” and “ti” had the “sh” sound in “nation.” Dad

I think about how angry I was that my dad didn't take better care of himself. How he never went to the doctor, let himself become grossly overweight, smoked three packs a day, drank like a fish and never exercised. But then I think about how his colleague mentioned that, days before dying, my dad had said that he had lived a good life and that he was satisfied. I realize that there is a certain value in my father's way of life. He ate, smoked and drank as he pleased, and one day he just suddenly and quickly died. Given some of the other choices I'd witnessed, it turns out that enjoying yourself and then dying quickly is not such a bad way to go.

Everything felt wrong. She needed to go home, to her dad’s small lab in the basement, to curl up on one of the tables like she used to. It had been a long time since she’d last brought a quilt down and made a nest for herself among the books, tubes, and wires—a million years or however long it took light to travel. She’d rest her cheek on the table and listen to her dad talk about space. She’d been little when he’d told her about the beginning of the universe and how the solar system was born. How the sun was like an island, and the planets were ships sailing around it. He’d said, “Pluto is our far star sailor,” the way other people said Once upon a time. His words opened a door inside her. She wished she’d brought her NASA book, with six full pages on the “Thirty-Five New Guys,” the Astronaut Class of 1978, NASA’s first new group of astronauts since 1969. On Sally Ride, on Challenger—which she realized was gone now—on Judy Resnik, mission specialist, the second American woman in space. Who Nedda wanted to be. Who was gone now too. They were gas and carbon—and what else? They had to be something else. She wanted her stupid little-kid pony, but it was in the classroom. She wanted to go fishing with Denny, even if it was too cold. She wanted to smell her mother’s perfume until she was sick from it. She wanted to eat all the icing roses off that stupid cake until Betheen yelled.

I guess getting out of homelessness doesn’t happen all at once, either. We were lucky. Some people live in their cars for years. I’m not looking on the bright side. It was pretty scary. And stinky. But my parents took care of us the best they could. After a month, my dad got a part-time job at a hardware store. My mom picked up some extra waitressing shifts, and my dad kept singing for tips. Every time his fishing sign got wet, I made him a new one. Slowly they started saving money, bit by bit, to pay for a rental deposit on an apartment. It was sort of like getting over a cold. Sometimes you feel like you’ll never stop coughing. Other times you’re sure tomorrow is the day you’ll definitely be well.

When Noam was a kid and felt picky about choking down gefilte fish on Pesach, his dad sat him down and told him the story of la pobre viejecita. Once upon a time, there was an old lady with nothing to eat but meat, fruit and sweets... and he'd flop another lump of poached fish on Noam's plate and say, "God bless us with the poverty of that poor old woman.

At the end of my dad’s line, a huge green sea serpent erupted from the water. It thrashed and fought, but Poseidon just sighed. Holding his fishing pole with one hand, he whipped out his knife and cut the line. The monster sank below the surface. “Not eating size,” he complained. “I have to release the little ones or the game wardens will be all over me.” “Little ones?” He

A few months into our relationship, we had a campout down at my dad’s place. There were a lot of people from church, and we played games and fished into the night. We all gathered around a huge campfire, ate dinner, and sang songs together. Missy was clinging all over me, mainly because she was scared of everything flying in the air or crawling on the ground. It was one of those nights when you feel closer to God and everyone else because of the setting and the ambience--despite the bug activity. That was the first time we said “I love you” to each other. Now, there is still an ongoing debate as to who said it first. I remember clearly that she whispered, “I love you,” and then I responded. She is convinced that I said it first, but she was under the influence of bug paranoia. I believe her condition affected her memory.

Like gamblers, baseball fans and television networks, fishermen are enamored of statistics. The adoration of statistics is a trait so deeply embedded in their nature that even those rarefied anglers the disciples of Jesus couldn't resist backing their yarns with arithmetic: when the resurrected Christ appears on the morning shore of the Sea of Galilee and directs his forlorn and skunked disciples to the famous catch of John 21, we learn that the net contained not "a boatload" of fish, nor "about a hundred and a half," nor "over a gross," but precisely "a hundred and fifty three." This is, it seems to me, one of the most remarkable statistics ever computed. Consider the circumstances: this is after the Crucifixion and the Resurrection; Jesus is standing on the beach newly risen from the dead, and it is only the third time the disciples have seen him since the nightmare of Calvary. And yet we learn that in the net there were "great fishes" numbering precisely "a hundred and fifty three." How was this digit discovered? Mustn't it have happened thus: upon hauling the net to shore, the disciples squatted down by that immense, writhing fish pile and started tossing them into a second pile, painstakingly counting "one, two, three, four, five, six, seven... " all the way up to a hundred and fifty three, while the newly risen Lord of Creation, the Sustainer of all their beings, He who died for them and for Whom they would gladly die, stood waiting, ignored, till the heap of fish was quantified. Such is the fisherman's compulsion toward rudimentary mathematics! ....Concerning those disciples huddled over the pile of fish, another possibility occurs to me: perhaps they paid the fish no heed. Perhaps they stood in a circle adoring their Lord while He, the All-Curious Son of His All-Knowing Dad, counted them all Himself!

When Dad came home a couple of days later, Mom told him about the fish I’d caught and how much money we’d made. I could see the smile on his face. But then he went outside to check his boat and noticed that a paddle was missing. Instead of saying, “Good job, son,” he yelled at me for losing a paddle! I couldn’t believe he was scolding me over a stupid oar! I’d worked from daylight to dusk and earned enough money for my family to buy a dozen paddles! Where was the gratitude?

Right around that time, I started dating a guy named Jeff. He was a classically handsome, popular guy. But there was something different about him too. He was angrier than most teenage boys, and a little misunderstood. I ignored the signs that he was probably a bit unstable. Signs like when they gave him a fish fillet at McDonald’s instead of a Big Mac, he became so furious that he cried. Truly lost it. Real tears of rage. Like the kind of tears guys are only supposed to get when they watch a movie that touches on their dad issues. (So, most movies.) Isn’t it funny that they say most girls have daddy issues, when really, every dude does? But this dude had daddy, mommy, doggy, and fish fillet issues. I just thought, Well, he can’t help it. But I understand him. I’m here for him. Even though we were both generally well liked, when we were together it was us vs. the world. I’ve only recently broken my pattern of being drawn to the “you’re the only one who gets me” guy. Which is a bad guy to be drawn to, and it’s not a coincidence if everyone—including all your friends and family and your dog—dislikes him. But

Humans interpret. Like fish swim and birds fly, we interpret. We have always done so. We were created as interpreters. We interpret God, gardens, snakes, light, darkness, Mom’s voice, Dad’s voice, colours, babysitters, nurseries, spinach, commandments, events, sacrifices, poems, songs, books, newspapers, the sports newscaster, soccer games, speeches, scenery, sunrises, sunsets, food, sermons, allegories, street lights, people, cursing, a kiss, the wink of an eye, cancer, and death (to name just a few). We are homo interpretum as much as we are homo sapiens.

When I finally leave the market, the streets are dark, and I pass a few blocks where not a single electric light appears – only dark open storefronts and coms (fast-food eateries), broom closet-sized restaurants serving fish, meat, and rice for under a dollar, flickering candles barely revealing the silhouettes of seated figures. The tide of cyclists, motorbikes, and scooters has increased to an uninterrupted flow, a river that, given the slightest opportunity, diverts through automobile traffic, stopping it cold, spreads into tributaries that spill out over sidewalks, across lots, through filling stations. They pour through narrow openings in front of cars: young men, their girlfriends hanging on the back; families of four: mom, dad, baby, and grandma, all on a fragile, wobbly, underpowered motorbike; three people, the day’s shopping piled on a rear fender; women carrying bouquets of flapping chickens, gathered by their feet while youngest son drives and baby rests on the handlebars; motorbikes carrying furniture, spare tires, wooden crates, lumber, cinder blocks, boxes of shoes. Nothing is too large to pile onto or strap to a bike. Lone men in ragged clothes stand or sit by the roadsides, selling petrol from small soda bottles, servicing punctures with little patch kits and old bicycle pumps.

You know, Lockie,’ she said aloud. ‘What?’ ‘The thing about parents is . . . the thing about good parents — and I think your parents are pretty good . . .’ ‘Yeah, Mum makes cakes, amazing cakes, and Dad takes me fishing even when there’s work to do. They’re good parents, my mum and dad. But . . . but they didn’t find me.’ ‘I know, Lockie, but I promise they were looking. When we get you home they’ll tell you. I promise they were looking.’ ‘I should have stayed by the stroller. Maybe they’re mad and that’s why they didn’t look. Maybe they know I’m a bad boy.’ ‘You are not bad, Lockie,’ said Tina. She said the words slowly, patiently. ‘You are not bad and your parents sound like they’re pretty good parents. And you know . . . well, the thing about good parents is that they kind of love you no matter what.’ ‘No matter what?’ ‘Yeah, whatever happens, whatever you do, they still love you. Sometimes they shout when you do stuff they don’t like but they always love you.’ ‘What if the stuff you do is really bad?’ ‘They’ll still love you. That’s their job.’ ‘No, I mean what if the stuff you did is really, really bad?’ ‘It doesn’t matter, Lockie. You’re just a kid. Nothing you could do could be that bad.’ ‘You don’t know what bad is,’ said Lockie, and then he repeated the words to himself. ‘You don’t know what bad is.

This is the definition of peace. The definition is interrupted by Toraf's ringtone. Why did Rachel get Toraf a phone? Does she hate me? Fumbling behind him in the sand, Galen puts a hand on it right before it stops ringing. He waits five seconds and...Yep, he's calling again. "Hello?" he whispers. "Galen, it's Toraf." Galen snorts. "You think?" "Rayna's ready to leave. Where are you?" Galen sighs. “We’re on the beach. Emma’s still sleeping. We’ll walk back in a few minutes.” Emma braved her mom’s wrath by skipping curfew again last night to be with him. Grom’s mating ceremony is tomorrow, and Galen and Rayna’s attendance is required. He’ll have to leave her in Toraf’s care until he gets back. “Sorry, Highness. I told you, Rayna’s ready to go. You have about two minutes of privacy. She’s heading your way. “The phone disconnects. Galen leans down and sweeps his lips over her sweet neck. “Emma,” he whispers. She sighs. “I heard him,” she groans drowsily. “You should tell Toraf that he doesn’t have to yell into the phone. And if he keeps doing it, I’m going to accidentally break it.” Galen grins. “He’ll get the hang of it soon. He’s not a complete idiot.” At this, Emma opens one eye. He shrugs. “Well, three quarters maybe. But not a complete one.” “Are you sure you don’t want me to come with you?” she says, sitting up and stretching. “You know I do. But I think this mating ceremony will be interesting enough without introducing my Half-Breed girlfriend, don’t you think?” Emma laughs and pulls her hair to one side, draping it over her shoulder. “This is our first time away from each other. You know, as a couple. We’ve only been really dating for two weeks now. What will I do without you?” He pulls her to him, leaning her back against his chest. “Well, I’m hoping that this time when I come back, it won’t be to the sight of you kissing Toraf.” The snickers beside them let them know their two minutes of privacy are up. “Yeah. Or someone’s gonna die,” Rayna says cordially. Galen helps Emma up and swats the leftover sand out of her sundress. He takes her hands into his. “Could I please just ask one thing without you getting all mad about it?” She scowls. “Let me guess. You don’t want me to get in the water while you’re gone.” “But I’m not ordering you to stay out of it. I’m asking, no begging, very politely, and with all my heart for you not to get in. It’s your choice. But it would make me the happiest man-fish on the coast if you wouldn’t.” They sense the stalker almost daily now. That and the fact that Dr. Milligan blew his theory about Emma’s dad being a Half-Breed out of the water makes Galen more nervous than he can say. It means they still don’t have any answers about who could know about Emma. Or why they keep hanging around. Emma rewards him with a breathtaking smile. “I won’t. Because you asked.” Toraf was right. I just had to ask. He shakes his head. “Now I can sleep tonight.” “That makes one of us. Don’t stay gone too long. Or Mark will sit by me at lunch.” He grimaces. “I’ll hurry.” He leans down to kiss her. Behind them, he hears Rayna’s initial splash. “She’s leaving without you,” Emma whispers on his lips. “She could have left hours ago and I’d still catch her. Good-bye, angelfish. Be good.” He places a forceful kiss on her forehead, then gets a running start and dives in. And he misses her already.

Adrian gets the Saab. Everything else is for you to take care of. You’ve got the house keys. The cat eats tuna fish twice per day and doesn’t like shitting in other people’s houses. Please respect that. There is a lawyer in town who has all the bank papers and so on. There is an account with 11,563,013 kronor and 67 öre. From Sonja’s dad. The old man had shares. He was mean as hell. Me and Sonja never knew what to do with it. Your kids should get a million each when they turn eighteen, and Jimmy’s girl should get the same. The rest is yours. But please don’t let Patrick bloody take care of it. Sonja would have liked you. Don’t let the new neighbors drive in the residential area. Ove At the bottom of the sheet he’s written in capitals “YOU ARE NOT A COMPLETE IDIOT!

My dad gave me these charms, and each one represents something different. The raven protects against black magic. The bear inspires courage. The fish signifies a refusal to recognize other people’s magic.” “I never knew those charms had meaning.” Absently, Vivian reaches up and touches her own necklace. Looking closely at the pewter pendant for the first time, Molly asks, “Is your necklace—significant?” “Well, it is to me. But it doesn’t have any magical qualities.” She smiles. “Maybe it does,” Molly says. “I think of these qualities as metaphorical, you know? So black magic is whatever leads people to the dark side—their own greed or insecurity that makes them do destructive things. And the warrior spirit of the bear protects us not only from others who might hurt us but our own internal demons. And I think other people’s magic is what we’re vulnerable to—how we’re led astray. So . . . my first question for you is kind of a weird one. I guess you could think of it as metaphorical, too.” She glances at the tape recorder once more and takes a deep breath. “Okay, here goes. Do you believe in spirits? Or ghosts?” “My, that is quite a question.” Clasping her frail, veined hands in her lap, Vivian gazes out the window. For a moment Molly thinks she isn’t going to answer. And then, so quietly that she has to lean forward in her chair to hear, Vivian says, “Yes, I do. I believe in ghosts.” “Do you think they’re . . . present in our lives?” Vivian fixes her hazel eyes on Molly and nods. “They’re the ones who haunt us,” she says. “The ones who have left us behind.

When the water rose on the Ouachita River, creatures without fins and gills climbed to higher ground, and the first place they seemed to go was our houses. The culprits that caused us the most misery were ants, rats, and snakes. One particular day, when I was only a kid, I heard shotgun blasts near my grandmother’s house, and I went next door to investigate. Then another shot rang out! I looked a little more closely and saw a big fish snake in the water, and whoever was shooting at it had done so with a surgical strike. As my grandparents’ porch came into view, I saw that my grandmother was the one doing the shooting! She chuckled and asked me, “Did you see that shot?” I couldn’t help thinking that maybe the reason my dad is such a good shot had something to do with what I’d just witnessed.

Maybe it’s not a coincidence that I’ve always been interested in heroes, starting with my dad, Phil Robertson, and my mom, Miss Kay. My other heroes are my pa and my granny, who taught me how to play cards and dominoes and everything about fishing (which was a lot), and my three older brothers, who teased me, beat me up, and sometimes let me follow them around. Not much has changed in that department. I’ve always loved movies, and when I was about seven or eight years old, I watched Rocky, Sylvester Stallone’s movie about an underdog boxer who used his fists, along with sheer will, determination, and the ability to endure pain, to make a way for himself. He fought hard but played fair and had a soft spot for his friends. I fell in love with Rocky. He was my hero, and I became obsessed. When I decide to do something, I’m all in; so I found a pair of red shorts that looked like Rocky’s boxing trunks and a navy blue bathrobe with two white stripes on the sleeve and no belt. I took off my shirt and ran around bare-chested in my robe and shorts. Most kids I knew went through a superhero phase, but they picked DC Comics guys, like Batman or Superman. Not me. I was Rocky Balboa, the Italian Stallion, and proud of it. Mom let me run around like that for a couple of years, even when we went in to town. Rocky had a girlfriend, Adrian, who was always there, always by his side. When he was beaten and blinded in a bad fight, he called out for her before anybody else. “Yo, Adrian!” he shouted in his Philly-Italian accent. He needed her. Eventually, I grew up, and the red shorts and blue bathrobe didn’t fit anymore, but I always remembered Rocky’s kindness and his courage. And that every Rocky needs an Adrian.

In these years we did the tried-and-true masculine things. We watched ball games on the TV, fished for catfish and bluegill in stripper pits in the Greene-Sullivan State Forest, shot guns, stood out in the garage, as is customary, and generally bullshitted. But what was most amazing, other than my father’s apparent transformation, was that Dad, seemingly exhausted by years and years of near-silence, began to speak openly about the burden of masculinity. He told me the expectations he’d carried, as a father, as a son, as a man, had sabotaged his relationships and prevented him from expressing himself, or really enjoying intimacy, emotionally or intellectually, his entire life. Shocked at the depth of frustration and despair my dad had suffered, I listened and realized, for the first time, that the masculinity I’d sought, the masculinity I’d been denied, had always been an impossibility. Deep down, I realized that masculinity, as I knew it, as it was presented to me, was a lie.

The biggest problem we faced was people stealing our nets and fish. Sometimes the thieves would ruin the nets by cutting the fish out. The first time it happened, I asked my dad if we should call the police, but he said, “Son, where we live, I am 911.” He policed the river and would awaken many times during the night to check out boats he heard motoring by. I was with him during a few confrontations after we caught people in the act of stealing our nets. They were the most intense moments of my childhood. How my dad handled these situations was in a way a reflection of his growth as a Christian. He started out with a shotgun and a threat to use it if he ever caught them stealing again. But then one day when we caught two guys red-handed, Dad raised his shotgun and gave one of the best sermons from the Bible I’ve ever heard. Toward the end of our commercial-fishing career, he would have the gun but not raise it, give the sermon, and then give them the fish. He would tell them, “If you wanted some fish, all you had to do was ask.” I actually saw grown men shed tears over this approach, and a couple of them came to the Lord.

I don’t want to come to the mainland. I don’t want a better job. Don’t you get it? I’m happy here. Not everyone wants to leave, Gabe! This is where I want to be. If I could have Dove and my space and a sack of beans, I’d call that enough.” Gabriel looks at his feet and works his mouth, the way he used to when he and Dad would get into it and he didn’t like the corners he was being pushed into. “And that’s worth dying for?” “Yeah. I think it is.” He works a loose splinter on the top of a board. “You didn’t even think about it.” “I don’t have to. How about this? I won’t race, and you’ll stay here.” But as I say it, I know that he’ll say no, and that I’d race anyway. “Puck,” Gabe says, “I can’t.” “Well,” I reply, pushing the gate open and leading Dove out past him, “there you go.” But I don’t feel angry about it. There’s the old sting, but no surprise. It feels like I’ve known all along, ever since I was little, that he was going to leave, and I’d just been ignoring it. I think Gabe knew, too, when he started this conversation, that there was no way that he’d keep me and Dove off the beach. It was just something we both had to say. As I pass by, Gabe snags my arm. Dove amiably stops as he pulls me into a hug. He doesn’t say anything. It is like any number of hugs he’d given me growing up, when the six years of difference between us was a canyon, me a child on one side, him an adult. “I’ll miss you,” I say into his sweater. For once it doesn’t smell of fish; it smells of the hay that he moved for me the night before and the smoke from the funeral pyre.

When Dad came home a couple of days later, Mom told him about the fish I’d caught and how much money we’d made. I could see the smile on his face. But then he went outside to check his boat and noticed that a paddle was missing. Instead of saying, “Good job, son,” he yelled at me for losing a paddle! I couldn’t believe he was scolding me over a stupid oar! I’d worked from daylight to dusk and earned enough money for my family to buy a dozen paddles! Where was the gratitude? I was so mad that I jumped in the boat and headed to the nets to see if I could find the missing paddle. After checking about seventy nets, I was resigned to the fact that it was probably gone. But when I finally reached the seventy-ninth net, I saw the paddle lying in a few bushes where I’d tied up a headliner, which is a rope leading to the net. It was almost like a religious experience for me. What were the odds of my finding a lost paddle floating in a current on a washed-out river? It was like looking for a needle in a haystack. I took the paddle back to my dad, but he was still mad at me for losing it in the first place. I have never liked the line “up a creek without a paddle” because of the trouble boat paddles caused me. I swore I would never lose another one, but lo and behold, the next year, I broke the same paddle I’d lost while trying to kill a cottonmouth water moccasin that almost bit me. My dad wasn’t very compassionate even after I told him his prized paddle perhaps saved my life. I finally concluded that everyone has quirks, and apparently my dad has some sort of weird love affair with boat paddles.

I’ll never forget the time I went duck-hunting with my buddy Mike Williams; you’ll read a lot about our adventures and shenanigans in this book. Mike and I were hunting blue-winged teal ducks, which tend to move en masse, so typically you’ll either shoot your limit or not see a duck. In other words, there is a lot of idle time involved with teal hunting, so we usually bring along our fishing poles. After a hunt with Mike one morning, in which we had not seen a single teal, I hooked a four-pound bass. Almost simultaneously, one lone blue-winged teal flew over our heads. As I was reeling in the bass, I reached for my shotgun, raised it with only my left hand, and shot the duck. Now, I’m right-handed but left-eye dominant. It was the first duck I ever shot left-handed, but it would be the first of many. I eventually made the switch to shooting left-handed permanently. It was the hardest obstacle I’ve ever had to overcome in hunting, but it made me a better shot because I’m left-eye dominant. When Mike and I went back to my dad’s house and told him what happened, Phil didn’t believe us, even though we had the teal and bass as evidence. He’d told us about a similar feat many times before, when his friend Hookin’ Bull Thompson pulled in a fish with one hand and shot a duck with the other. I had heard the story many time, but only then did I realize it had now been duplicated. No matter how many times we told Phil about what I did, he didn’t believe us. He thought we made the entire story up because of the countless times he’d bragged about witnessing his buddy’s epic feat. Now, Mike is one of the most honest people you’ll meet, so he couldn’t believe Phil thought we were lying to him. “I’m going to sign an affidavit about what you did,” Mike told me. “Maybe then he’ll believe us.” “Oh, drop it,” I said. “That’s just how my family rolls.

I was a country kid who went to a public school, and she was more of a middle-class girl who attended a private school. I was into hunting and fishing, and she liked drama and singing in the choir at school and church. Our lives up until that point were totally different. But Missy and I had a very deep spiritual connection, and I thought our mutual love for the Lord might be our biggest strength in sustaining our relationship. Even though Missy was so different from me, I found her world to be very interesting. Looking back, perhaps another reason I decided to give our relationship a chance was because of my aunt Jan’s bizarre premonition about Missy years earlier. My dad’s sister Jan had helped bring him to the Lord, and she taught the fourth grade at OCS. One of her students was Missy, and they went to church together at White’s Ferry Road Church. When I was a kid we attended a small church in the country, but occasionally we visited White’s Ferry with my aunt Jan and her husband. One Sunday, Missy walked by us as we were waiting in the pew. “Let me tell you something,” Jan told me as she pointed at me and then Missy. “That’s the girl you’re going to marry.” Missy was nine years old. To say that was one of the dumbest things I’d ever heard would be an understatement. I love my aunt Jan, but she has a lot in common with her brother Si. They talk a lot, are very animated, and even seem crazy at times. However, they love the Lord and have great hearts. I actually never thought about it again until she reminded me of that day once Missy and I started getting serious. Freaky? A bit. Bizarre? Definitely! Was she right? Absolutely, good call! Missy still isn’t sure what my aunt Jan saw in her. Missy: What did Jan see in me at nine years old? Well, you’ll have to ask her about that. She was the only teacher in my academic history from whom I ever received a smack. She announced a rule to the class one day that no one could touch anyone else’s possessions at any time (due to a recent rash of kids messing with other people’s stuff). The next day, I moved some papers around on one of my classmates’ desks before school, and he tattled on me. Because of her newly pronounced rule, she took me to the girls’ bathroom and gave me a whack on the rear. At the time, I certainly would have never thought she had picked me out to marry her nephew!

After my dad started making duck calls, he’d leave town for a few days, driving all over Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Texas trying to sell them. He left me in charge of the fishing operation. I was only a teenager, but it was my responsibility to check almost eighty hoop nets three times a week. Looking back now, it was pretty dangerous work for a teenager on the river, especially since I’d never done it alone. If you fell out of the boat and into the river, chances were you might drown if something went wrong and you were alone. But I was determined to prove to my father that I could do it, so I left the house one morning and spent all day on the river. I checked every one of our hoop nets and brought a mound of fish back to Kay to take to market. I was so proud of myself for pulling it off without anyone’s help! When Dad came home a couple of days later, Mom told him about the fish I’d caught and how much money we’d made. I could see the smile on his face. But then he went outside to check his boat and noticed that a paddle was missing. Instead of saying, “Good job, son,” he yelled at me for losing a paddle! I couldn’t believe he was scolding me over a stupid oar! I’d worked from daylight to dusk and earned enough money for my family to buy a dozen paddles! Where was the gratitude? I was so mad that I jumped in the boat and headed to the nets to see if I could find the missing paddle. After checking about seventy nets, I was resigned to the fact that it was probably gone. But when I finally reached the seventy-ninth net, I saw the paddle lying in a few bushes where I’d tied up a headliner, which is a rope leading to the net. It was almost like a religious experience for me. What were the odds of my finding a lost paddle floating in a current on a washed-out river? It was like looking for a needle in a haystack. I took the paddle back to my dad, but he was still mad at me for losing it in the first place. I have never liked the line “up a creek without a paddle” because of the trouble boat paddles caused me. I swore I would never lose another one, but lo and behold, the next year, I broke the same paddle I’d lost while trying to kill a cottonmouth water moccasin that almost bit me. My dad wasn’t very compassionate even after I told him his prized paddle perhaps saved my life. I finally concluded that everyone has quirks, and apparently my dad has some sort of weird love affair with boat paddles.

What a wonderful crunch! And yet the char's meat was still hot and deliciously juicy! The breading perfectly contained inside its protective shell the savory flavor of the fish! The Kaki no Tane Crackers came already seasoned... ... so the breading itself had a solid, delicious taste. And the dipping sauce is perfect! The Ki no Me mixed with Tamago no Moto is wonderfully light and fluffy!" *Ki no Me: The young leaves of the Japanese pepper plant. Clapping one in your palm crushes the leaf's cells, releasing a distinctive scent.* TAMAGO NO MOTO. Mayonnaise without the vinegar, it is simply egg yolks and vegetable oil whisked into a creamy consistency. It's often used to bring ingredients together or to add flavor to a dish. Some salt and minced Ki no Me adds an overall refreshing taste to the fish... ... erasing any oiliness and giving it a refined flavor. "That wonderfully smooth creaminess hiding between the crispy crunchiness of the breading really spurs the appetite! The breaded and deep-fried mountain vegetables on the side cannot be ignored, either. They provide an eye-pleasing contrast when arranged side-by-side with the deep-fried fish. " "Soma, where on earth did you get the idea for this?" "In Japanese cooking, there's a type of tempura called Okakiage, right? When deep-frying things, use crushed-up Okaki Rice Crackers instead of panko to give the dish some uniqueness and kick. I made this at home once long ago with my dad. " "And that gave you the idea to use the Kaki no Tane Crackers in place of the Okaki Rice Crackers?" "Yep! I call it the Yukihira Style Okaki- YUKIHIRA STYLE OKAKI-NO-TANE-AGE CHAR!" "You just slapped the two names together!" On one hand, Takumi Aldini maintained a broad version that did not overlook potential ingredients, such as the duck. On the other, Soma Yukihira's rare ability to think outside the box... ... led him to create a dish that no one else even expected! Neither was intimidated by the time constraints or the limited ingredients. They instead focused on what they could do to create their dish. That is the spirit of a true professional! Hee hee! This is hardly the first time I've given this assignment. And students have made deep-fried items before... without breading. But he is the first one to find a way to present to me fish that is both breaded and deep-fried! The char, in season this spring... ... is snuggly wrapped in a protective shell of Kaki no Tane Cracker breading.

We've been here three days already, and I've yet to cook a single meal. The night we arrived, my dad ordered Chinese takeout from the old Cantonese restaurant around the corner, where they still serve the best egg foo yung, light and fluffy and swimming in rich, brown gravy. Then there had been Mineo's pizza and corned beef sandwiches from the kosher deli on Murray, all my childhood favorites. But last night I'd fallen asleep reading Arthur Schwartz's Naples at Table and had dreamed of pizza rustica, so when I awoke early on Saturday morning with a powerful craving for Italian peasant food, I decided to go shopping. Besides, I don't ever really feel at home anywhere until I've cooked a meal. The Strip is down by the Allegheny River, a five- or six-block stretch filled with produce markets, old-fashioned butcher shops, fishmongers, cheese shops, flower stalls, and a shop that sells coffee that's been roasted on the premises. It used to be, and perhaps still is, where chefs pick up their produce and order cheeses, meats, and fish. The side streets and alleys are littered with moldering vegetables, fruits, and discarded lettuce leaves, and the smell in places is vaguely unpleasant. There are lots of beautiful, old warehouse buildings, brick with lovely arched windows, some of which are now, to my surprise, being converted into trendy loft apartments. If you're a restaurateur you get here early, four or five in the morning. Around seven or eight o'clock, home cooks, tourists, and various passers-through begin to clog the Strip, aggressively vying for the precious few available parking spaces, not to mention tables at Pamela's, a retro diner that serves the best hotcakes in Pittsburgh. On weekends, street vendors crowd the sidewalks, selling beaded necklaces, used CDs, bandanas in exotic colors, cheap, plastic running shoes, and Steelers paraphernalia by the ton. It's a loud, jostling, carnivalesque experience and one of the best things about Pittsburgh. There's even a bakery called Bruno's that sells only biscotti- at least fifteen different varieties daily. Bruno used to be an accountant until he retired from Mellon Bank at the age of sixty-five to bake biscotti full-time. There's a little hand-scrawled sign in the front of window that says, GET IN HERE! You can't pass it without smiling. It's a little after eight when Chloe and I finish up at the Pennsylvania Macaroni Company where, in addition to the prosciutto, soppressata, both hot and sweet sausages, fresh ricotta, mozzarella, and imported Parmigiano Reggiano, all essential ingredients for pizza rustica, I've also picked up a couple of cans of San Marzano tomatoes, which I happily note are thirty-nine cents cheaper here than in New York.

For some reason, Jase thought it would be really funny to lock me out of the house, and I was furious. I kept banging on the door, but Jase had turned the music up loud so he wouldn’t hear me. He kicked his feet up on a table and kept yelling, “I can’t hear you. I can’t hear you.” I went to Granny’s house and told Kay what Jase had done. Kay went marching back to our house and was hotter than a catfish fry in July. She started banging on the door, but Jase thought it was still me and just kept blaring the music and enjoying having the house to himself. Kay got so angry that she banged on the glass pane and her fist went right through the window, cutting up her hand pretty badly. This caught Jase’s attention. When he saw her hand, he knew he was in big trouble. “When your dad gets home, he’s going to whip y’all’s butts,” Kay told us. I hadn’t even done anything, but Phil didn’t usually conduct and investigation to find out who was at fault. He just whipped whoever was in the vicinity of the crime. Jase and I ran back to our room and padded up with anything we could find-socks, underwear, and pillowcases. We sat on our bed with our butts padded, waiting for Phil to get home, certain we were in big trouble. Phil came into our house and saw the bandage on Kay’s hand. “What in the world did you do?” Phil asked her. “Look at what these boys did,” Kay told him. “Jase locked Willie out of the house, and I was banging on the door for him to let us in. My hand went right through the window.” “Kay, that’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. Why would you bang on a glass window?” Phil said. Phil walked right by her and took a shower. Jase and I were standing there with padded behind, our mouths wide open with relief. Phil was always in charge of disciplining us, but sometimes Kay tried to take matters into her own hands. Unfortunately for Kay, she was really an uncoordinated disciplinarian. One day when Phil was out fishing, Kay announced that she was going to whip us. She grabbed a belt that had a buckle on one end and told us to line up for a whipping. Now, Kay never liked whipping us and always closed her eyes when she swung because she didn’t want to watch. This time, she reared back and swung and missed, and the buckle flew back and hit her right in the forehead. Jase and I just looked at her, started laughing, and took off running into the backyard. I really don’t know how she survived raising us four boys. Korie: Poor Kay! All that testosterone in one house! Maybe that’s why she is so great to us daughters-in-law. She is thankful we took them off her hands. She has definitely enjoyed all of her granddaughters. She has set up a cute little library and a place for tea parties. They have coloring contests and dress-up parties. She didn’t get to do any of that with her four boys so our daughters have gotten the full “girly” grandma treatment.

Hi, I have just added my new novel, "Incessant Expectations" for your reading enjoyment. It is about commercial salmon fishing on the Oregon coast circa 1976. It is fiction. The industry doesn't exist anymore. A young farmer from the dry country in Southwestern Colorado visits the wet Northwestern Oregon coast, seeking a summer job after his dad's farm is sold in the spring. He has spent his first 22 years in isolation, doing hard labor on the family farm. He knows hard work but has little social experience. During his summer of 1976 he learns about the ocean, fishing, and women.

I watch Emmy. I watch the cowboys at the bar who turn to watch Emmy. My dad suddenly joins them. I should tell Mom, but I don't. He's watching Emmy, but not in a lusty way. There's almost a protective look on his face. I'm not sure I've ever loved him more. He gets up and two-steps for a minute to the honky-tonk music. I try not to grin. Then he does a few native dance moves to a far older rhythm--a rhythm he's always heard better than I can. "Listen," the elders say. To the the earth, they mean, to the fish, to the wind, to the silence of rocks, to your fathers. But what if your father is a drunk? Your uncles? My dad stops dancing. He gives me the same warning gesture he did on Teresa's couch. "Listen," he's insisting. He was never pushy with me while he was alive. Then he disappears.

Nowadays, people often ask me what it’s like hunting with my dad. We’ve actually had offers of tens of thousands of dollars from people who want to spend a day in Phil’s blind. It always amazes us because when we were growing up, duck hunting was our everyday life. When we were kids, we were always in the blind with Dad. I don’t remember my first hunt or the first duck I killed, like other young hunters. It was a different time and Phil wasn’t exactly a traditional dad. He didn’t take pictures of our first duck. It wasn’t sentimental; it was just life. We hunted and fished because we wouldn’t eat if we didn’t. Phil’s number one concern was always safety. If you were careless with a loaded gun, you would not come back to the blind. You’d be stuck at home with Mom the next time. Also, you had to be prepared because Phil wasn’t gonna baby you out there. If you didn’t wear the proper clothes, you were gonna freeze your butt off. And I did many times! You had to get your stuff together as well: shells, guns, and whatever you needed. I will never forget a time when I was about ten and we were all going on a dove hunt. It was opening day, and we were all excited. I was shooting a .410 shotgun, but I could only find one shell. Since we were leaving early in the morning, Phil let me know we wouldn’t be able to stop at a store because none of them would be open that early in the morning. “You better make that shot count,” Phil told me. So I shadowed Phil during the entire hunt, watching him drop ‘em. I rant to fetch the birds for Phil, and if any were still alive, he would pinch their heads. With one flick of Phil’s wrist, the dove’s head separated from its body. I was fascinated and yet a little freaked out. You can’t be sensitive when you’re hunting with Phil. I kept throwing my shotgun up to shoot, but I knew I had only one shot. Finally, about eleven o’clock in the morning, I saw my opportunity. I told Phil I was gonna take my shot. He was supportive and told me to make it count. Boom! Wouldn’t you know I smoked the dove? I couldn’t believe it. I went one-for-one with only one shell. As I turned to look at my dad with the biggest smile ever, I noticed he was putting his gun down. He’d shot at the exact same time. He wanted to make sure my shot counted. “Good shot, Willie boy, put your safety back on,” Phil told me. I didn’t know why the safety mattered since I only had one shell, but he wanted to instill the practice in my brain. We’ll never know who hit that bird, but believe me, I told Jase that I got it for sure.

Cool.” Yep. Twenty seconds, and we were done. “Sorry,” I said. “Ditto,” said Beck. “Is anybody going to apologize to me?” Storm trudged into the hallway from the cabin she shares with Beck. “I was trying to sleep.” “I thought you were making a list of our food supplies,” said Beck. “It took about two seconds because we have about nada. I decided to take a nap instead. And now thanks to you two, I’m awake. What’re you two doing?” “We need to get into The Room,” I said. “Why?” “To find Dad’s treasure map for the Caymans dive.” Storm made a fish-lips face and thought about that for a couple of seconds. “Good idea.” Then, yawning and scratching her butt, she turned around and shuffled back into her cabin. “Okay,” I said to Beck, “if you were

Mercury starts barking at a bunch of colourful parrots sitting in the bending fennel. I let him off the leash, and they twitter and fly away, points in a moving constellation. Dad used to say Aussie birds reminded him of fish in the reef near his village, Free, multicoloured, dreamlike.

Shura, I did quit. I want you to quit, too.” He sat and considered her. His brow was furled. “You’re working too hard,” she said. “Since when?” “Look at you. All day in the dank basement, working in cellars... what for?” “I don’t understand the question. I have to work somewhere. We have to eat.” Chewing her lip, Tatiana shook her head. “We still have money— some of it left over from your mother, some of it from nursing, and in Coconut Grove you made us thousands carousing with your boat women.” “Mommy, what’s carousing?” said Anthony, looking up from his coloring. “Yes, Mommy, what’s carousing?” said Alexander, smiling. “My point is,” Tatiana went on, poker-faced, “that we don’t need you to break your back as if you’re in a Soviet labor camp.” “Yes, and what about your dream of a winery in the valley? You don’t think that’s back-breaking work?” “Yes . . .” she trailed off. What to say? It was just last week in Carmel that they’d had that wistful conversation. “Perhaps it’s too soon for that dream.” She looked deeply down into her plate. “I thought you wanted to settle here?” Alexander said in confusion. “As it turns out, less than I thought.” She coughed, stretching out her hand. He took it. “You’re away from us for twelve hours a day and when you come back you’re exhausted. I want you to play with Anthony.” “I do play with him.” She lowered her voice. “I want you to play with me, too.” “Babe, if I play with you any more, my sword will fall off.” “What sword, Dad?” “Anthony, shh. Alexander, shh. Look, I don’t want you to fall asleep at nine in the evening. I want you to smoke and drink. I want you to read all the books and magazines you haven’t read, and listen to the radio, and play baseball and basketball and football. I want you to teach Anthony how to fish as you tell him your war stories.” “Won’t be telling those any time soon.” “I’ll cook for you. I’ll play dominoes with you.” “Definitely no dominoes.” “I’ll let you figure out how I always win.” A Sarah Bernhardt-worthy performance. Shaking his head, he said slowly, “Maybe poker.” “Absolutely. Cheating poker then.” Rueful Russian Lazarevo smiles passed their faces. “I’ll take care of you,” she whispered, the hand he wasn’t holding shaking under the table. “For God’s sake, Tania... I’m a man. I can’t not work.” “You’ve never stopped your whole life. Come on. Stop running with me.” The irony in that made her tremble and she hoped he wouldn’t notice. “Let me take care of you,” Tatiana said hoarsely, “like you know I ache to. Let me do for you. Like I’m your nurse at the Morozovo critical care ward. Please.” Tears came to her eyes. She said quickly, “When there’s no more money, you can work again. But for now... let’s leave here. I know just the place.” Her smile was so pathetic. “Out of my stony griefs, Bethel I’ll raise,” she whispered. Alexander was silently contemplating her, puzzled again, troubled again. “I honestly don’t understand,” he said. “I thought you liked it here.” “I like you more.

{W}hy did she go into the field? A twinge of pleasure, of knowledge. Her dad would pull over to the side of a bridge, and they would watch from above, before he slipped down the bank to catch them. She was charmed by the motions of trout. How they take their forms from the pressures of another world, the cold forge of water. Their drift, their mystery, the way they turn and let the current take them, take them, with passive grace. They turn again, tumbling like leaves, then straighten with mouths pointing upstream, to better sip a mayfly, to root up nymphs, to watch for the flash of a heron's bill. The current always trues them, like compass needles. When she watches them, she feels wise.

I thought about Gobi and her sister and the way it had all come unraveled. I thought about my dad. When you’re young, you think your father can do anything. Unless he was this severely abusive person and beat you or got drunk and smashed things, you probably worshiped him. At least most of the guys I knew were like that. They might not have used those exact words, but they all have some cherished memory of something they did with their father, even if it was just a shiny, far-off moment. I remembered being eight years old and making a Pinewood Derby car for Boy Scouts. Dad had brought out a gleaming red Craftsman toolbox that I had never seen before and helped me carve the car out of a block of wood, and we sat at the kitchen table painting it silver and blue with red flames up the side. I drank Pepsi and he sipped a beer. When we finished, the car didn’t weigh enough, so we put lead weights in the bottom and sprayed lubricant on the wheels until it rolled freely from one side of the table to the other. I won third place, and he said, “I’m proud of you.” I remembered going fishing with him up in Maine, taking a little motorboat out across the foggy lake until it was too dark to see our bobbers. I remembered him teaching me how to tie a necktie on the morning of my cousin’s wedding. I remembered seeing him in the stands at my first junior high swimming tournament, standing next to my mom and cheering. I remembered waking up very early in the morning and hearing him downstairs making coffee before slipping out to work. I remembered the first time I ever heard him swear.

Well, here’s a quick summary of my archery adventures:   1) The Gobbling Grass: Dad set the target up in a big open field, and he gave me his old wooden arrows to start out with. I scored a hit with every arrow—if you count the ground as a target.  Result: We lost half of the arrows in the tall grass.   2) The Ruthless Rocks: This time Dad set the target up on the side of a hill so we could use it as a backstop. My arrows hit every time—the hill, not the target. Unfortunately, the wooden arrows broke when they hit rocks hidden under the dirt. (For the record, it wasn’t my fault. I didn’t put the rocks in the hillside.) Dad mumbled something about keeping my eyes open while aiming. Result:  We ran out of wooden arrows, and Dad switched me to aluminum ones.   3) The Luring Lake: This time I used the same target on the hillside but Dad’s aluminum arrows. He told me to aim a little higher because the aluminum arrows were heavier. So I drew the first arrow back as far as I could, aimed up, and fired. The arrow flew beautifully—way over the target, clean over the hill, and PLUNK into the pond. My next two arrows came much closer. The last one even almost hit the hill. Result: Dad decided we’d done enough archery, and we should try fishing instead. (And we all know how well that worked out.)

“Remember that time you dumped out a whole box of bait?” I almost smile. It was the summer before eighth grade. Dad bought crickets at the bait shop. “They were screaming for help.” *** “And your dad,” Jeb continues. “He didn’t get mad that you turned the bugs loose. He just pulled out the aluminum lures, and that’s what we used from then on. I never knew a father could be like that. Forgiving. Kind. He’s the best guy I know. Pretty sure he saved my life a time or two.”

Later that day, after we talked more and things were starting to settle down, Dad said, “I’m going to put you on house arrest. You cannot leave this house for three months. You’re going to study the Bible with me, and you’re going to duck hunt every single day.” “All right, Dad. I think I can do that.” During the months I spent at Mom and Dad’s, I hunted, fished, and studied the Bible every day with Dad. I began to realize that all this time, I had been living off of my dad’s faith. I’d never had my own relationship with God. For the first time, I started to find my own faith. As I looked at God’s Word with fresh eyes, I realized that repenting and turning to God meant I was saved and forgiven. Jesus’ blood covered my sins and redeemed me from the path of destruction I was on. I couldn’t ever have been good enough on my own. Back when I was in the middle of that crazy time of drugging and drinking, I remember feeling guilty once in a while and knowing I needed God. But then the thoughts would come. I’m not good enough. Or I’m just not quite ready. I think that’s the number one excuse because you’ll never be perfect, and you’ll never be ready. Getting right with God and getting rid of the bad stuff in your life takes him. You have to take it one step at a time. It’s not easy, I’m not perfect, and I still struggle.

Frankie spun around, and couldn’t believe his tired eyes. Standing there – like a cowboy in the old Western movies Frankie’s dad often fell asleep in front of – was none other than Drew Bird. The Guard With The Scar had moved next to the Close-But-Not-Close-Enough-Emperor, and Frankie saw him translate Drew’s question. The toffee-toothed figure on the stage grinned as he replied. ‘He wants to know what game you suggest,’ said Ping, her voice weak. Instantly, Drew Bird produced the old dirty bottle from behind his back; the exact one that had been tossed into the South China Sea on behalf of Alfie Fish, found by Oscar Bugg on a war-torn Japanese beach in 1945, and then brought to Frankie Fish in Australia by the mystery-hunting Texan twins – and then half-filled with river water just days earlier. If Drew was feeling nervous, he certainly didn’t show it. Arms folded, head tilted to one side, Drew asked his next question, which made Frankie gasp in shock. ‘Do you know anything about bottle-flipping, Close-But-Not-Quite-Emperor dude?

It had probably been passed through my DNA, but I had a serious appetite for seafood. James always joked that there was nothing the sea could cook up that I wouldn't at least try. He was right. My dad and I had eaten fish every chance we got.

I’ve always liked to picture my grandpa napping under a tree, and it would be nice to think your dad is working a fishing hole.

That was my costume for the past five years. A hobo. Actually, it wasn’t much of a costume. I wore one of Dad’s baggy old suits with patches on the pants. Mom rubbed charcoal on my face to make me look dirty. And I carried a knapsack on a fishing pole over my shoulder. Bor-ring!

Everyone watched the older gentleman wearing a smeared white apron who did all the cooking. It was Mr. Smoot, a longtime friend of her dad's. He gave her a nod of recognition right before he dumped an entire bucket of red potatoes into the boiling cauldron of water, then added a huge scoop of salt. "What's the white stuff?" Bass asked. "That's the salt. The fish boil here is just four ingredients: water, salt, potatoes, and whitefish from Lake Michigan. Some places add in corn on the cob or onions, but I like their simple approach best." "So what happens?" "In a little while, they'll add another basket that's full of whitefish and more salt. As the fish cooks, the oil will rise to the top. They have a special trick for removing it you aren't going to want to miss. It's the best part. Then we go inside, fill a plate, then pour warm melted butter and lemon over it and eat until we're stuffed." Sanna's stomach growled. She'd forgotten how much she enjoyed fish boils here. Rustic and delicious. As they waited for the fish to cook, she answered Bass's and Isaac's questions, but saved the best part as a secret. When everyone began to gather around the cooking pit, Sanna maneuvered Bass to the front so he could have a perfect view for the grand finale with her and Isaac behind him. When Mr. Smoot splashed the kerosene on the fire, it caused the fish oil to boil over the edge of the pot into the fire, making a huge flare- like a fireball. Bass jumped and the crowd oohed as one.

Girls 10 and Older’ world they played in. No boys were allowed, especially brothers.  With visions of an epic horse ranch dancing in her head, she completely forgot to reel the line in, and the bobber stopped moving. “What?” she asked as she realized what she had done. “Oh rats!” Now she would have to wait again.  “What’s wrong?” a voice asked behind her and Kate jumped so high she almost fell in the water.  Dad chuckled; he had always liked to startle the kids. It was fun to watch them jump. Kate windmilled her arms to keep from falling in the water and nearly lost her fishing pole in the process. “Don’t DO that!” she yelled at him.  “Ahem,” Dad said and raised an eyebrow at her. Kate blushed.  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to yell at you. You startled me and I almost fell in the water and lost my pole!”  “What made you upset? I mean, before I did.”  “Oh it’s nothing, I just missed my first catch.

Fishing isn’t just about catching fish, that’s just what you get at the end if you’re good at it. Fishing is about the journey, and the journey is typically the thoughts you have as you go through the motions. Fishing, my dad always said, is a thinking man’s sport.

Dad is up at first light. To birdsong he cannot identify, or maybe it's a frog. He nods to a sentry and leaves the camp. He makes his way to a small rise of higher ground above the bend in the river. A low white mist hangs over the surface as if tethered by strands of invisible silk. He wants a minute to himself; he squints through the mist to the inimical horizon, judges it safe enough to light his pipe. From his breast pocket he fishes out his packet of baccy. Hovers his nose over the sweet odour of the soft brown leaves. He pulls out a few strands, packs them lightly into his pipe's bowl. Then flicks the lid of his lighter and spins the wheel. A blue flame sways as the smell of lighter fuel momentarily overpowers the sweetness of the tobacco. He fills his cheeks with the pungent smoke. Crouched on this haunches, he watches tails of vapour rise and disappear. A warm easterly stipples the surface of the river. A noise from behind him makes his heart skip a beat as two large wings soar over him, like sails, woosh, woosh, slow and beautiful. Reminding him there is still another world. He watches the bird until it melts into the trees on the horizon. for one brief moment, he is wholly astonished at who and where he is.

As far as I’m concerned, he’s not my dad.” My dad was the man who’d welcomed me into his home, taken me fishing every Saturday morning, and taught me how to knot a necktie. The

my dad to get the fish and chips. I don’t sit with them. I know they will shout at me and then they won’t buy me any food. I don’t want to smell it. Then it makes me hungry. Me and Sheba sit at a different place. But she wants to sit with them. They have food and they give her some. I

A guy once asked me to go with him to Indonesia to help people after the latest tsunami hit. I said yes. I had no idea what I was doing. We arrived in Banda Aceh two weeks after the destruction. (Indonesia alone lost a mind-bending two hundred thousand lives.) We weren’t welcomed by everyone. Most people love the help, sure. But I felt unwelcome when a group of Muslim separatists threatened to kill us. (I have a sixth sense about this kind of thing.) They were opposed to Western interference in Aceh and didn’t want us saying anything about Jesus. I just wanted to help some people. I also wanted a hotel. I wanted a safer place. I didn’t want to die. I had no idea what I was getting into. We took supplies to what was, before the tsunami, a fishing village. It was now a group of people living on the ground, some in tents. I just followed what the rest of our little group was doing. They had more experience. We distributed the food, housewares, cooking oil, that sort of thing, and stayed on the ground with them. That’s how our little disaster-response group operated, even though I wanted a hotel. They stayed among the victims and lived with them. After the militant group threatened to slit our throats, I felt kind of vulnerable out there, lying on the ground. As a dad with two little kids, I didn’t sign up for the martyr thing. I took the threat seriously and wanted to leave. The local imam resisted our presence, too, and this bugged me. “Well, if you hate us, maybe we should leave. It’s a thousand degrees, we’ve got no AC or running water or electricity, and your co-religionists are threatening us. So, yeah. Maybe let’s call it off.” But it wasn’t up to me, and I didn’t have a flight back. As we helped distribute supplies to nearby villages, people repeatedly asked the same question: “Why are you here?” They simply couldn’t understand why we would be there with them. They told us they thought we were enemies. One of the members of our group spent time working in a truck with locals, driving slowly through the devastation, in the sticky humidity, picking up the bodies of their neighbors. They piled them in the back of a truck. It was horrific work. They wore masks, of course, but there’s no covering the smell of death. The locals paused and asked him too: “Why? Why are you here?” He told them it was because he worshiped Jesus, and he was convinced that Jesus would be right there, in the back of the truck with them. He loves them. “But you are our enemy.” “Jesus told us to love our enemies.” The imam eventually warmed up to us, and before we left, he even invited our little group to his home for dinner! We sat in his home, one of the few in the area still standing. He explained through an interpreter that he didn’t trust us at first, because we were Christians. But while other “aid” groups would drive by, throw a box out of a car, and get their pictures taken with the people of his village, our group was different. We slept on the ground. He knew we’d been threatened, he knew we weren’t comfortable, and he knew we didn’t have to be there. But there we were, his supposed enemies, and we would not be offended. We would not be alienated. We were on the ground with his people. His wives peered in from the kitchen, in tears. He passed around a trophy with the photo of a twelve-year-old boy, one of his children. He told us the boy had been lost in the tsunami, and could we please continue to search for him? Was there anything we could do? We were crying too.

He ain’t a Coot not really,” said Bill. “He ain’t got a head on him no better’n a squashed frog. I see him all right but he don’t know nothing. Fishing he were on the gravel reach.” “Catching anything?” asked Pete, who, detective or no detective, was still a fisherman. “Perch,” said Bill. “Oh, never mind the fish,” said Dorothea. “Had any boats been cast off?” “He tell me to keep my shadow off the water,” said Bill. “So I creep up and give him one of my sandwiches and when I ask if any boats been cast off, why Tommy he say ‘How do you know?’ “ “Go on. Go on,” said Dorothea, reaching out for one of the little black paper flags all ready on its pin. “I say I don’t know but I want to know and Tommy he say it weren’t his fault and I say when were it and what boat and Tommy he said it were his Dad’s row-boat and he give it Tommy to tie up and Tommy he tie it to a stick what broke and he have to go in swimming to catch it.

she takes a deep breath and runs a finger under the chain around her neck. “My dad gave me these charms, and each one represents something different. The raven protects against black magic. The bear inspires courage. The fish signifies a refusal to recognize other people’s magic.” “I never knew those charms had meaning.” Absently, Vivian reaches up and touches her own necklace. Looking closely at the silver pendant for the first time, Molly asks, “Is your necklace—significant?” “Well, it is to me. But it doesn’t have any magical qualities.” She smiles. “Maybe it does,” Molly says. “I think of these qualities as metaphorical, you know?

We go back to our silent fishing, but I'm smiling the whole time. The tension has dimmed. Well, until Blake shoves Graham into the river. A gasp leaves me, my mouth hanging open as I watch my roommate sputter to the surface of the dirty water. I drop my fishing pole, frozen in place. My dad mutters, “What the hell?” Blake throws his head back and laughs like I have never seen nor heard him laugh before. The loud and hearty sound is cut off short when Graham comes barreling out of the water, his body aimed straight for him, his eyes daggers of retribution. He lunges for his brother, wrapping his arms around his stomach and heaving him toward the water. Blake stumbles back, landing on his rear just inside the water. The sound of jeans smacking into water is sharp. He swipes water out of his eyes as Graham smirks at him. “What is wrong with you two?” I demand, more annoyed than worried. They seem to be getting along, even if they are being brutish about it. Suddenly I have the attention of two wet men, twin calculating gleams in their eyes. Graham is closest, his steps slow and purposeful as he approaches me. “Don't even think about it.” I put my hands out in front of me to ward him off. His grin deepens as he reaches me. Water drips from his hair down his face to become one with his soggy clothes. “Don't think about what?” A glance over my shoulder tells me a tree, the first form of cover I think of, is too far away. Not one to give up, I move for it anyway, but a wet, strong hand grabs the back of my shirt and pulls me away from where I want to go until I am flush with a cold chest. Cold clothes; warm body, I should say. His skin is burning through the dampness of his shirt. “Graham, I swear, if you throw me in that water, I will never speak to you again.” His voice is low and close as he says, “You make it sound like that wouldn't be a good thing.” I haven't even finished my sound of incredulity before I am gathered into his arms, my arms unconsciously going around his neck to anchor me to him. His touch is gentle, his eyes are smiling. “I mean it. This won't be good for you.” “Oh, I don't know about that.” His arms swing out, and I tighten my hold on him, threatening him even as he is laughing at me. He does it again as we move closer to the water and I glare all my irk at him. “If I go, you go.” He tilts his head as he studies me. His voice is unnaturally sober as he tells me, “That's fine with me.” I don't have time to process that before he lets go of me. I hit the water, refusing to let go of his neck, and we both go under. Lucky for me, the water is only a couple feet deep. Unlucky for Graham, I twist around until I am straddling him, keeping him down with my weight so the only thing above water is his head. I give him a sweet smile. He doesn't return it. “Hi,” I purr. He grunts in response. “Fancy meeting you here.” “What can I say? Where you go, I follow.” I pat his cheek. “That's so sweet.” “I'm a sweet guy.” “So sweet,” I agree. “Hey! You're scaring the fish away.” This from Blake, who is now standing near my father. “The fish love me!” I declare, sweeping my arms out wide and losing my balance. I splash into the water, first laughing, and then choking as water goes down my throat. Graham lifts me out of the water by my shirt. “The weight of your arrogance obviously tipped you over.” “It was more like the air couldn't handle all my splendor.” Half of his mouth lifts. “Something like that.” “Fishing with the three of you is impossible,” Dad grumbles and stomps to the cooler, opening a can of soda and gulping it down

Dad takes a couple of sips of his beer. “Let me tell you, son. Relationships are like fishing. You cast your bait, hoping for that one fish to bite. Once it does, you have to struggle to reel it in. Even when you think you’ve captured it, you can still lose it back to the ocean. Many different circumstances can happen. You lose your balance. A wave knocks the boat. Not until you have it on board, do you know that you have secured your catch. You’ve loved that girl from an early age. She loves you. Give her time, and keep tugging on the line.

It was a multicoloured world of make-believe, a million miles away from their black-and-white existence. “Take me to the haunted house again, Daddy!” the boy would beg. “Perhaps today, my pup, we will take a journey to the old haunted castle…!” Dad would tease. “Please, please, please…” Alfie would say. Father and son would close their eyes and meet in their daydreams. Together they: • Went out fishing for the day in Scotland and caught the Loch Ness Monster.

Party time Part 1 After school, we go to Maddie’s. When we were little, like freshman year and even some of the sophomore year, we would sometimes stay in her room and put on x-out and pluck out eyebrows into that fine little line, and color our hair with highlights, and order pizza, cramming down as much as we could eat. Those days are going, we can’t get fat. Now Jenny hardly eats anything, and if she does, she can hardly keep it down. I think maybe that’s what I get so lightheaded, I only eat like once a day now. Jenny back then had a little extra around the middle, and now you can see her ribs, she even has that two-defined line on her tummy that goes into her underwear. I remember sneaking around late at night in her hose stealing a cookie from the jar on the top shelf in the old wood cabinet, that is also where her mom would hide her cigarettes that Jenny loved also, and the condoms were in a trinity box on top of the fridge, I sorry but I find that hilarious. At that time, we would stretch out on one of her, old enormous worn-out couches and watch, TV or movies until we fell asleep in our nightshirts’-the TV in Maddie’s living room is like 80 inches it’s like being in a movie theater our legs tangled together under an enormous fleece blanket. Maddie and liv are always entangled more passionately than Jenny and me on the loveseat! Maddie has an ancient TV in her room from the 1990s. It sucks and is small, it’s one of those with the big back on it, and the color is green, like looking into a fish tank. It’s funny her mom and dad don’t have money blinds on the windows, yet they have a big ass TV. You can sometimes see the people in the next condo overlooking us like we can see them get busy in their room! Yet nothing beats the hot guy taking a leak in room 302, he looks to be in his late twenties. He takes the boxes off at 10 pm and we get a free show. He knows we can see him because he makes it look inflexible and you are no more personable. Jenny and we girls love to press upon the glass, and just have fun and be a little crazy, like lifting our nighties and flashing the goods. Facebook stocking gets boring quickly anymore, so some nights the webcam comes out too. After her mom and dad are asleep… I like it’s more fun to be bad! Like we all have profiles and fake names because none of us are eighteen yet. Any- how’s mine is ‘Angel Pink Wings 01’ Maddie goes by: ‘Mad kitty 69’ Jenny goes by: ‘Ms. Little Lover 14’ Liv goes by: ‘Olivia O 123’ Yet everyone knows her by Liv so that name is okay- I guess. We make good money- ‘Double Clicking the Mouse.’ You would not believe all the pervs on this cam. the site, just wanting to see us doing it. Like old guys like our PE teacher! Man- that I didn’t even think about how to turn on a computer. Just like him, I guess they need too to see more of us close up. We have our checks mailed to Jenny's college boyfriend’s PO Box. Me this is what I do and yes- I come for you all, I just put in fake blue hair dye in, and have fake long lashes, and put in my blue contacts, and you don’t even know me. And then pen in more eyebrows. Fake, fake, fake, fake FAKE! Boys don’t like it when you fake it or do, they look at me, that's why I am Bi.

Party time Part 1 After school, we go to Maddie’s. When we were little, like freshman year and even some of the sophomore year, we would sometimes stay in her room and put on x-out and pluck out eyebrows into that fine little line, and color our hair with highlights, and order pizza, cramming down as much as we could eat. Those days are going, we can’t get fat. Now Jenny hardly eats anything, and if she does, she can hardly keep it down. I think maybe that’s what I get so lightheaded, I only eat like once a day now. Jenny back then had a little extra around the middle, and now you can see her ribs, she even has that two-defined line on her tummy that goes into her underwear. I remember sneaking around late at night in her hose stealing a cookie from the jar on the top shelf in the old wood cabinet, that is also where her mom would hide her cigarettes that Jenny loved also, and the condoms were in a trinity box on top of the fridge, I sorry but I find that hilarious. At that time, we would stretch out on one of her, old enormous worn-out couches and watch, TV or movies until we fell asleep in our nightshirts’-the TV in Maddie’s living room is like 80 inches it’s like being in a movie theater our legs tangled together under an enormous fleece blanket. Maddie and liv are always entangled more passionately than Jenny and me on the loveseat! Maddie has an ancient TV in her room from the 1990s. It sucks and is small, it’s one of those with the big back on it, and the color is green, like looking into a fish tank. It’s funny her mom and dad don’t have money blinds on the windows, yet they have a big ass TV. You can sometimes see the people in the next condo overlooking us like we can see them get busy in their room! Yet nothing beats the hot guy taking a leak in room 302, he looks to be in his late twenties. He takes the boxes off at 10 pm and we get a free show. He knows we can see him because he makes it look inflexible and you are no more personable. Jenny and we girls love to press upon the glass, and just have fun and be a little crazy, like lifting our nighties and flashing the goods. Facebook stocking gets boring quickly anymore, so some nights the webcam comes out too. After her mom and dad are asleep… I like it’s more fun to be bad! Like we all have profiles and fake names because none of us are eighteen yet. Any- how’s mine is ‘Angel Pink Wings 01’ Maddie goes by: ‘Mad kitty 69’ Jenny goes by: ‘Ms. Little Lover 14’ Liv goes by: ‘Olivia O 123’ Yet everyone knows her by Liv so that name is okay- I guess. We make good money- ‘Double Clicking the Mouse.’ You would not believe all the pervs on this cam the site, just wanting to see us doing it. Like old guys like our PE teacher! Man- that I didn’t even think about how to turn on a computer. Just like him, I guess they need too to see more of us close up. We have our checks mailed to Jenny's college boyfriend’s PO Box. Me this is what I do and yes- I come for you all, I just put in fake blue hair dye in, and have fake long lashes, and put in my blue contacts, and you don’t even know me. And then pen in more eyebrows. Fake, fake, fake, fake FAKE! Boys don’t like it when you fake it or do, they look at me, that's why I am Bi.

Well, now what?” he asked. “I have them in my coldbar.”  Kate and Jack exploded in laughter. “It’s a HOTbar Dad!” Jack said, barely able to breathe. Dad shrugged. “Hot bar, cold bar, taco bar, ice cream bar... I just want to know how to make a fishing rod!

Characters must have these moments of casual intimacy and closeness, if not explicitly romantic. Be it a shopping date with Mom, a fishing date with Dad, or a cooking date with a new lover, there must be time to date.

longing to suck that bottle of warm, delicious milk. I hadn’t been weaned off it for very long. I couldn’t resist. I pulled the bottle gently out of my brother’s mouth and hands, popped it hastily into my own mouth, lay back on the sofa and enjoyed the trickle of something warm down my throat - something I still enjoy today. Warm milk is heaven for a toddler, a pleasure beyond measure. That was until my younger brother’s legs began shaking, his fists clenched and his breath started puffing away. This was not a good sign. I turned my head to look at him, the bottle still locked in my mouth, when all of a sudden his face turned red and distorted, like he was about to poop. Instead, he let out a high-pitched scream that didn’t quite shatter the front window – though it must have come close – but shattered my eardrums and froze my whole body. Unfortunately for me, it also ignited my mum and dad, who both dropped whatever they had been doing in the kitchen and came running immediately into the living room. ‘What the hell is going on?’ shouted Dad. ‘Brett’s taken Trevor’s bottle,’ shrieked Mum as she ripped it out of my mouth – with my only tooth still stuck in the teat. She shoved it straight back into my brother’s mouth to disable the alarm. ‘He needs a bloody good hiding.’ ‘Little bastard. Get up and come here now!’ bellowed Dad. He yanked me off the sofa and held me dangling in the air by one arm as if he were holding up the biggest fish he ever caught, but with much less pride. My world was spinning and so was I as Dad whacked my petite bottom. I must have blacked out from the pain as I don’t remember anything after that. What I do remember, however, is resenting my little brother for making me lose both my tooth and my taste for dairy products. I also learnt one of life’s important lessons: be very careful what you put in your mouth.

Cas was still sensitive about the size of his mouth. Ted, his step dad, had once joked that he could probably suction Cas’s lips to a window like a sucker fish. Cas sighed at the memory. Ted was a dick, but he wasn’t exactly wrong.

And none of your secret fish and chip dinners on the way home, Dad!

Easter. On this one day in the year, everybody went fishing. We often teamed up with cousins and other friends in the neighborhood. This day, my cousin Eli and I said we were going to the lake fishing, but instead, we went to Kmart. Going to town hardly ever happened. I didn’t even know how to get to Kmart, but Eli was a little older and knew the way. Regrettably, I stole money from my dad’s cash register to spend. We bought battery-operated watches, a toy car with a racetrack, and a camera − all forbidden by the church rules. While we were there, Dad came to town. We were so engrossed in our illicit activities and enjoying our freedom that we didn’t see him walk into Kmart, but he saw us. However, he didn’t say a word to us, neither did he show himself. We never knew he was there until later that evening. As we headed back to the community, we had so much fun with that camera. We took countless pictures and played with our toys and

battery watches. Before we got all the way home, we agreed on our cover story. “We’ll say we fished all day and didn’t catch anything. But we had a good time.” That night, my family gathered around the table to share favorite fishing stories of the day. Who caught the biggest fish, who caught the most fish, and who got the wettest? When I offered my cover story of how Eli and I had a few nibbles but no good bites, everybody was saddened that we didn’t catch any fish − all except Dad.

I happened to look over and found Amos leaning against the counter, looking way too introspective. “What?” I asked him, popping the tab on my own soda and taking a sip. The boy shook his head. “You can tell me anything, Little Sting, and I can tell you want to.” That seemed to be enough for him. “Are you flirting with my dad?” he straight-up asked. I almost spit the soda out. “No…?” He blinked. “No?” “Maybe?” Amos raised an eyebrow. It was my turn to blink. “Yes, okay. Yes. But I flirt with everyone. Men and women. Children. You should see me around pets. I used to have a fish, and I sweet-talked her too. Her name was Gretchen Wiener. I miss her.” She had passed away a few years ago, but I still thought about her from time to time. She’d been a good travel companion. Not fussy at all. That had the teenager’s cheeks going puffy for a second. He fucking liked me. I knew it. “Does it bother you if I flirt with your dad?” I paused. “Would it bother you if I liked him?” That wasn’t the best word to describe it, but it was the simplest. That got him to scoff. “No! I’m sixteen not five.” “But you’re still his wittle baby, Am. And my feelings won’t be hurt”—that was a lie, they would be—“if you weren’t okay with it. You’re my friend too. Just like your dad. I don’t want to make things weird.” The kid gave me a disgusted expression that made me laugh. “I don’t care. We already talked about it anyway.” “You did?

The teenager let out a deep, deep sigh, like he’d been holding it in for hours. “Dad’s gonna be so pissed.” “Yeah, but not at you,” I reassured him. The look he sent me was one that told me he wasn’t totally convinced that was going to be the case, but I knew it would. And I’d be nosey and eavesdrop. We headed into the house. I went to the table in the kitchen, picking up a hunting and fishing magazine stacked neatly in the middle as Amos went for the house phone and punched in some numbers. His face was gloomy as hell. I pretended not to look at him as he held the receiver and let out a deep breath. He winced right before saying, “Hey, Dad… uh, Ora and I think there’s a leak in the garage apartment… The ceiling has, like, pockets of water, and there’s drops—what? I don’t know how… I just went in there and saw it… Ora turned off the water. Then she turned off the power when the lights started flickering… Hold on.” The boy held the phone out. “He wants to talk to you.” I took it. “Hi, Rhodes, how’s your day going? How many people have you busted for not having a permit?” I flashed a grimace-like smile at Amos, who suddenly didn’t look so sick. Rhodes didn’t say anything for a heartbeat before coming on the line with “It’s going good now.” Excuse me? Was that flirting? “And only two hunters. How’s yours?” He was really asking me about my day. Who was this man and how could I buy him? “Pretty good. A customer brought me a Bundt cake. I gave Clara half when she gave me the stink eye. I’ll give Am half of my half so you can try it. It’s good.” Amos was giving me the funniest look, and I winked at him. We were in this together. “Thanks, Buddy,” he said almost softly. “You mind telling me what happened over there?

At sea, I was the captain. I was important, and I had a role. I ran the show. At home, I was the swab. I did the shit work, almost always unappreciated. I loved my family, but man did I hate being on land all the time. I tried my best, I honestly did. I really stepped up my game around the house to be the best dad and partner I could be. It just was never good enough. With no offshore fishing and encouragement at home, part of me was dead inside, the part that made me who I am. I missed my boat daily. Flashbacks were a constant. I daydreamed of foaming schools of tuna while washing bubbly dishes. I saw mahi mahi boldly charging baits as I folded brightly colored laundry. When I went jogging and my heart started pumping, I saw huge marlin going wild on the gaffs. Everything reminded me of the boat. I most likely honestly had post-traumatic stress from the whole ordeal

Before we left the chapel, I caught up with my grandfather to make one final plea. “Grandpa,” I said, “we can’t bury Dad’s ashes.” “That’s not your decision to make.” He started to walk away, but I grabbed his sleeve, knowing it would be my last chance. “Wasn’t it his?” I asked. “He wanted to be cremated because he didn’t want to be buried. Please, let us take his ashes out to Montauk.” As soon as the words came out of my mouth, I realized that I’d made a critical mistake. My grandfather realized it, too. He associated Montauk with my father’s frivolous hobbies, such as boating and fishing, activities that had distracted him from the serious business of real estate. “Montauk,” he repeated, almost smiling. “That’s not going to happen. Get in the car.” Sunlight glinted off the marble and granite grave markers as our grandfather, his light blue eyes squinting beneath his enormous eyebrows at the brightness of the day, explained that the tombstone, which was already inscribed with his mother’s and father’s names, would be removed temporarily so my father’s name and dates could be added. As he spoke, he spread his hands wide, like a used-car salesman, bouncing on the balls of his feet, almost jaunty, knowing he was in the presence of a rube. My grandfather followed the letter of the law and then did what he wanted. After my father was cremated, they put his ashes into a metal box and buried them in the ground.