Fishbone's Song Read Online Free
Author: Gary Paulsen
more than that a way to learn, to know. A way to be.
A hunter.
A watcher.
The spear was not enough, not fast enough for chubs. Once in a great while we would stretch an old seining net across a part of the creek down where it pools and net twenty or so to salt and smoke. They tasted good smoked, smoky and oily and salty. Each fish was about the length of Fishboneâs hand spread out, with fat and slick and oily meat. But hedidnât like to net them too often because he said we would take them all out with the net and not have any fish. But any I could catch alone we could cook in the pan and have with sliced potatoes, picking the meat carefully off the bones.
But they didnât bite. I tried with some line and a small hook I found in an old box in the shanty shed at the rear of the cabin. Dug a few worms and hung the line off an old piece of willow and they came to it. You could see them gather around bait. But they just nibbled and nibbled at the worm until it was all taken off, broken away from the hook.
So I couldnât spear them and we only netted them almost never, and they didnât take a hook, and you can, I figured, get hungry something awful just watching and learning about things but never taking any food. Well, true fact is there is always food here from what the man brings once a month when he comes to check on things. Can always make biscuits and gravy with flour and bacon grease andlord only knows how many cans of beans there are stored in shelves in back of the stove. And cans of some meat called Spam. Fishbone said he lived through some hard times when he was small, where the onliest thing he had to eat were lard sandwiches on week-old bread. With a little salt. Said sometimes his mother would find a way to buy flour and yeast and make bread or biscuits to have with gravy. Burned brown gravy made from flour and lard usually on the week-old bread from the bakery. Penny a loaf, he said, and they couldnât afford that. Lard and old bread. Three times a day. So now he kept cans of beans and some Spam. Just in case, he said, just in case it came on hard times again, but he wouldnât use any of it unless it happened. Hard times. I couldnât just open a can of beans or Spam whenever I felt a little lean in the belly, he said. Go out, he said. Earn it.
So I needed a faster way to hunt and I thought on it and decided that I could make a bow and usecane arrowsâstraight and lightâif I could find the right wood for the bow. I tried elm, using an old leather bootlace for a string first, but it either bent too much and was too weak, or if thicker wouldnât bend at all. Messed around with other wood I didnât know the name of and finally settled on dried willow. There was a stand of old dead and dried water willows that grew when there was a heavy runoff from the long mountains one year, then no runoff again, so they died and stayed there, straight and clean from knots or splits. I picked a piece a little thinner than my wrist and whittled on it with the kitchen knife until it was rough tapered. Then Fishbone showed me how to scrape and shave wood with a piece of broken jar glass from the junk pile where it seemed like we threw stuff away until we needed to use it again.
Bow was about as long as me. I read in one of the books all about a crook a long time ago named Robin Hood. Was really good with a bow. Saidhe could shoot one arrow into a target and then another so it split the first arrow down the middle, but I found later that there probably wasnât a man like him, that it was all based on an old tombstone behind a church in England that said:
Here lies Robyn Hode
âNere was an archer so giud
Period. There never was any more about him anywhere, but people started making up stories about him based on the tombstone. There was nothing else you could hang on to as true about the whole business. Good. Fun to read. Only made up.
But in the book they said a wooden bow
A hunter.
A watcher.
The spear was not enough, not fast enough for chubs. Once in a great while we would stretch an old seining net across a part of the creek down where it pools and net twenty or so to salt and smoke. They tasted good smoked, smoky and oily and salty. Each fish was about the length of Fishboneâs hand spread out, with fat and slick and oily meat. But hedidnât like to net them too often because he said we would take them all out with the net and not have any fish. But any I could catch alone we could cook in the pan and have with sliced potatoes, picking the meat carefully off the bones.
But they didnât bite. I tried with some line and a small hook I found in an old box in the shanty shed at the rear of the cabin. Dug a few worms and hung the line off an old piece of willow and they came to it. You could see them gather around bait. But they just nibbled and nibbled at the worm until it was all taken off, broken away from the hook.
So I couldnât spear them and we only netted them almost never, and they didnât take a hook, and you can, I figured, get hungry something awful just watching and learning about things but never taking any food. Well, true fact is there is always food here from what the man brings once a month when he comes to check on things. Can always make biscuits and gravy with flour and bacon grease andlord only knows how many cans of beans there are stored in shelves in back of the stove. And cans of some meat called Spam. Fishbone said he lived through some hard times when he was small, where the onliest thing he had to eat were lard sandwiches on week-old bread. With a little salt. Said sometimes his mother would find a way to buy flour and yeast and make bread or biscuits to have with gravy. Burned brown gravy made from flour and lard usually on the week-old bread from the bakery. Penny a loaf, he said, and they couldnât afford that. Lard and old bread. Three times a day. So now he kept cans of beans and some Spam. Just in case, he said, just in case it came on hard times again, but he wouldnât use any of it unless it happened. Hard times. I couldnât just open a can of beans or Spam whenever I felt a little lean in the belly, he said. Go out, he said. Earn it.
So I needed a faster way to hunt and I thought on it and decided that I could make a bow and usecane arrowsâstraight and lightâif I could find the right wood for the bow. I tried elm, using an old leather bootlace for a string first, but it either bent too much and was too weak, or if thicker wouldnât bend at all. Messed around with other wood I didnât know the name of and finally settled on dried willow. There was a stand of old dead and dried water willows that grew when there was a heavy runoff from the long mountains one year, then no runoff again, so they died and stayed there, straight and clean from knots or splits. I picked a piece a little thinner than my wrist and whittled on it with the kitchen knife until it was rough tapered. Then Fishbone showed me how to scrape and shave wood with a piece of broken jar glass from the junk pile where it seemed like we threw stuff away until we needed to use it again.
Bow was about as long as me. I read in one of the books all about a crook a long time ago named Robin Hood. Was really good with a bow. Saidhe could shoot one arrow into a target and then another so it split the first arrow down the middle, but I found later that there probably wasnât a man like him, that it was all based on an old tombstone behind a church in England that said:
Here lies Robyn Hode
âNere was an archer so giud
Period. There never was any more about him anywhere, but people started making up stories about him based on the tombstone. There was nothing else you could hang on to as true about the whole business. Good. Fun to read. Only made up.
But in the book they said a wooden bow
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