Copyright © 1998 by PJ
He wrapped his left hand around the thing the way his father had taught him.
Now his hand was as strong as he remembered his father's, tanned with brave, hairy knuckles. But he pictured his youthful hand when it gripped a fly rod, resilient with his first catch. Life was simple then, in that time before he left home. He discovered the woods, the smells of pine and innocent deer dung.
He and his father found places beyond his mother's voice. He liked their wordless man's world.
He became a decent fisherman soon enough, away from the suburbs and music lessons. Nature didn't write complicated songs.
It was right that he learned to fish before he learned to shoot a gun. Why did all his youth come back to him like undigested food? His stomach had been good then.
And it was good to be hungry, to acknowledge the emptiness of his belly. He didn't need fancy food. He could enjoy an out-of-the-way cafe. Or he could take life at its best: gourmet cooking, good liquor, and the finest wines. French wines. Italian wines.... He loved to eat at Harry's when he worked in Florence. It made him forget that his father condemned strong drink.
Get hold of your own life, he'd told himself. Don't look back so damned much. You've forgotten a great many things that weren't so pleasant.
His father was once again offering him one of those blue and white enameled plates. A whole fish, dusted with corn meal and fried in bacon drippings, lay there. Its accusing eye marked him. He hated fish heads.
He liked to eat and drink and sing some rowdy songs, maybe a German drinking song, nothing his mother would have sung in her clear, trained voice.
Finally hunger overcame him. He brought up his right hand. Was his strength up to the task? Sharply he smacked the bottom of the bottle he grasped. It would take a good glob of catsup to satisfy him that night.