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her arms encircling him could say. He drycast twice, then dropped the female Adams where seconds before a dimple had been. It was a good fish, he knew. It bore down to the tail of the pool, then drove back toward the boulders . Dave turned him to the center of the pool, then stripped line in as the fish came flopping up to the net. He dipped his hand into the water, then lifted trie trout out of the net and held him up. The fly remained in the center of his upper lip. He worked it loose, saw the gills like red rickrack pumping hard, studied the sheen of its glistening rainbow stripe. He lowered his hand into the water, watched the trout right itself, then slip into the current, a liquid shadow gone. "Go find some ramps, boy. I'll see you later." He waded out of the stream and started up the bank. Ed was standing in the trail looking down at him. "Any luck?" he asked. "They all got away, Ed. They all got away." Together they began to descend the trail down the mountain. Streetlights Blue urban stars hung above the sooty snow. Or nuclei of yellow light, around which careen, like mad electrons, heat-crazed moths. Town fathers trust these public lanterns, believe their tracery of order between the glitz of suburb, the cavern of deep country. We festoon our roads with these city moons. Out there, our darker motives stalk this shining picket line. Out there, the tatters of a song, the stench of smoking lard, the flayed carpet, a crawl of flies, a rusty blade jabbed like a moan into the bloody block. From the clean side of dark we have watched them, watched from twisted sheets as they flicked on. Then we pulled night up like a comforter. Nothing there beyond each amber nimbus. Nothing there beyond the webs of branches caught in their winking, but the sway of silver-brushed translucent leaves. And sometimes, lost in that glow, we let it all fall away. And sometimes, in that tender persistence of light, we slept. -Mark DeFoe 16 ...

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