Trotlines

New River’s muddy bottom feeds catfish that hook themselves on biscuit dough bait dropped by men using flat-bottom boats to set trotlines they check just before dinner time. New River feeds Deetum Dunford, my first-grade classmate who never learned to read and who cares for me just about as much as I care for catfish, which is to say only in the abstract–if I talk to him very long, I see Deetum start to hate me in a bored kind of way.

      His cousins Joe and Charles, twins and my classmates through fifth grade, were smart boys I played with until they drowned in New River. That day they helped George Cary and Pig Clemons break the chain that tethered a boat to a tree, four of them in a craft made for two people and a mess of fish. When it sank, the big boys made it back to shallow water, while Joe and Charles in their overalls and high top shoes were pulled down into the mud.

    Hours later men in Rescue Squad boats dropped cords with dragging hooks, found them, pulled their bodies up, then other men in white coveralls loaded my friends into white trucks that screamed away–even though along the river bank we’d seen how Joe and Charles had blue-white skin so we all knew they’d turned cold as deep river current.

    I can’t count how many times I’ve told this story and written it out, each time living it again and thinking finally I’ve gotten it right, just to see whatever truth I think I’ve fixed in place start dissolving and sifting right out of the words, and a few years later, there I’ll be, trying to write it again. Here’s what I can tell you–this is true as I can make it, and it’s still not right. How do I know that? Just close my eyes and see the Lord of the River, Deetum, shaking his head, sucking his teeth. We know I’m lying again.