Blue Shadows Farm: A Novel

58. Fishing—August 1947

339 August 1947 Ayear after Emma hired Jim Lockwell, she still didn’t know much about him. It was obvious he was a hard worker and he seemed to enjoy everything that he did. She remembered hearing him whistling one day when he was cleaning out the chicken house. Shoveling chicken manure is one mean job no matter how you look at it. It’s dusty and dirty, and, besides, the smell is so strong it burns your eyes. But there was Jim. He’d worked up a considerable sweat shoveling chicken droppings through the chicken house window into the manure spreader and was whistling a tune while doing it. Emma worried a little bit about him climbing into the upper reaches of the haymow during haying season with his bad leg and all. She was even more concerned when he crawled up into the silo on the narrow metal ladder. But heights didn’t seem to bother him, even with his gimpy leg. He surprised her in other ways, too. Emma always prepared an especially good Sunday dinner with pork chops, fried chicken, or roast beef, plus mashed potatoes, carrots, and peas from the garden (in season, or from what she’d canned), and a big apple pie. Jim liked 58 Fishing apple pie. He’d take a big piece—she always cut her pies into five slices. He’d finish off his slice, and she’d ask him if he’d like another. He’d always say, “I expect . . . one piece would do me.” But then he’d smile and slide another hunk onto his plate. Jim wasn’t much for talking. He may have been a little ashamed that he couldn’t spit out the words as fast as he wanted. But that was no matter to Emma, especially when she got used to hearing him. When he did open his mouth, he usually had something to say. This made him about 90 percent different from most of the folks she ran into those days. Sometimes they’d eat an entire meal and about all she’d get out of him was, “Thank you. That . . . was sure . . . a fine meal.” Otherwise he just sat and ate. One Sunday noon, after he’d polished off his second piece of apple pie and pushed back from the table, Emma asked him what he’d planned for the afternoon. Of course, it was none of her business . Sunday afternoon was his to do with what he wanted. “I was . . . thinking . . . of going fishing,” he said. “I didn’t know you liked to fish.” “Yup, . . . grew up fishing . . . with my pa. Just the two of us . . . we’d go off to the lake . . . and spend an afternoon. Caught a . . . bunch of fish, too. Pa’s . . . no longer with us . . . but I remember those days.” “Would you mind if I came along?” Emma asked. She remembered an old cane pole tucked under the eaves of the corncrib, one Silas probably used years ago. She didn’t recall that her dad, Abe, had ever gone fishing. He never had taken Emma along, if he did. “I don’t know much about how to do it,” Emma said. “It’s been a long time.” She didn’t want to share that she’d never fished a day in her life and didn’t know one end of a fishing pole from the other. Jim found the old cane pole and said it was in good order but the line had rotted off. He said he had some extra line and would fasten some onto it, knot on a hook and bobber, and it’d be all set. 340 Fishing—August 1947 341 Fishing—August 1947 He tied the pole, which was fourteen feet long, across the top of his old Model A Ford, and they drove off toward Link Lake. Someone at the Link Lake Mill had told Jim that the fish were biting; Emma guessed that’s the reason he’d mentioned it. They stopped at Paul’s Bait Shop, located right on Link Lake and just south of the village, where they rented an ancient wooden boat. Jim had a casting rod and reel, something his dad had given him for his birthday many years ago. And he also had some fishing lures, wooden things with hooks coming out from all sides. Some were red and white. Some green and...