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fisher, like Simon. I be no prophet. Yet I know a famous person come, as sure as John Baptist knowed about Jesus.”
    â€œCaptain’ll be mad,” said Huff.
    â€œMaybe so,” Brother Smith said, “but ol’ Captain ain’t young no more.” As he talked, Brother pointed a finger in a gentle way. “Captain’s getting long of tooth.”
    â€œWhat’s that mean?”
    Brother smiled. “Olden. Like me.”
    â€œSay, what kind of a knot is that you’re twisting into your net?” Huff asked.
    â€œThis?” Brother Smith tapped the twine with hisdwindle. “It ain’t got a name, like Huff and Arly do. So I calls it a hemplock.”
    â€œDid you create it, Brother?”
    His big black face lit up brighter than a Coleman lantern. “No,” he said, poking the dwindle in my ribs, gentle easy. “I just invent it. Because only Almighty God create.”
    I saw Brother rest a large paw on Huff’s shoulder and then his other on mine. “Out yonder,” he said, turning us around to look at the water, “out in Okeechobee, I hook me a catfishy. But I couldn’t never create one. Hadn’t I seen one, I never could’ve thunk up a creation. Young brothers, an ol’ catfish favors you an’ me. A fish and boy be only two of God’s ideas.”
    As I listened to Brother Smith’s deep voice almost whispering between my ear and Huff’s, I kept on squinting into the sun and the silver it dropped out on Okeechobee. Big as the sea it was, folks said, and in a storm, everyone in Jailtown agree, only a fool would dare to cross. And he’d possible never come back. Because he’d make food for catfish, gars, and gators.
    â€œBrother, how did the lake git here?” I asked our big friend.
    â€œCome,” he answered, “and maybe I can show you young brothers how it begin.”
    The three of us walked along the short dock, Brother Smith in the middle, dragging the big seine net over one beefy shoulder, which he then hanged up on pegs that he’d pound into the gray boards of his boat house. At our feet, the shore was sandy in one spot, so Brother bended to it. We hunker down to look.
    â€œLong ago,” said Brother, his fingers smoothing the sand, “the land be flat as firmament. But then God dip the tip of one finger into the Florida dirt, like so, to dent a great hole and that be Okeechobee.”
    I couldn’t breathe. “Praise be,” I final said, staring at the lake. “The tip of God’s finger do all
that?”
    It weren’t easy to measure just how big the Almighty really was. A whole lot bigger than Brother Smith. Too big for my mind to fetch in.
    â€œBrother,” I asked him, “how big’s the world? I actual want to know.”
    He shaked his gray head. “Me, I don’t know at all.” His hand reached upward into the sunlight like he could touch beyond it. Then he walked away from the lake shore, as we followed, to where we could rest in the shade of a small stand of scrub pine. I watched his fingers pry off a bark slab and then point to the lighter scar of underbark that now showed on the trunk.
    â€œChildren always want knowing how big our world be,” he told us. “But under each chip of bark live a tiny town, all style of life in yonder, too small to see. Or hear. I guess it be there all right. A tiny town of life.”
    â€œYou mean like Jailtown?”
    Brother nodded. “Almost exact. So I say to you, young brothers, not to ask only how big our world be. Ask how small it go.”
    Wrinkling his nose, Huff Cooter leaned in close by the bark scar on the trunk of the pine and squinted. “I can’t see no little town.”
    Brother Smith whispered to him. “And nobody in that little town see you. Or care how growed you is. In there, they got their own business, and catfish to cook up for supper.”
    â€œGod made that