Every Day After Read Online Free Page B

his hoe against the side of the house and sopped his face with his sleeve. “You get the bait; I’ll grab the poles.”
    I rushed into the barn for the worms. Mama could get pretty riled up when she wanted something done and didn’t get it, and that day she wanted her vegetablegarden weeded. If Daddy didn’t leave within five minutes, he’d start thinking about the trouble he’d be in when he got back. We were gone within three, tromping through the field to the pond behind our house.
    The sweet scent of hay mingled in the air with the pungent smell of freshly plowed dirt, but Daddy didn’t seem to notice. His steps were heavy, his jaw tight. He reminded me of the man in Pilgrim’s Progress , carrying his heavy burdens and not knowing how to let them go.
    All my life Daddy had been willful and full of fire, but he’d changed the day he lost his job at the steel mill. Seemed to me a lot of folks around town had lost their jobs since the depression came on back in ’29. I guess Daddy had figured he might skirt by. That wasn’t in his cards. He’d been laid off a month and a half earlier, and I’d begun to wonder if he’d ever be his old self again.
    “You wait. I’m gonna land the biggest fish yet,” I said when we reached the pond. I shielded the sun from my eyes and studied the water.
    “Maybe,” said Daddy, only half listening. “Now hand me those worms and bait up.”
    As usual, he was the first to land a fish. He was always first at everything. He tossed it back into the water and it darted away. “That’s one,” he said, holding up his pointer finger.
    I shook my head. “Uh-uh. That puny bream didn’t count. He was even too little to keep.”
    I jumped up from my fishing spot and jogged out intothe field. On hands and knees I dug and poked through freshly cut hay.
    “What on earth are you doing?” Daddy called as he hooked another worm. “You won’t catch anything out there.”
    “I’m finding a cricket. We only ever fish with worms and neither of us has caught him yet. Maybe he’s a picky eater.”
    “Caught who?”
    “One-Eye.”
    Daddy shook his head. “Uh-uh-uh.” He cast out his line.
    Five minutes later, a juicy cricket dangled from my hook. I tossed it into the water and sat stone still. The only movement came from my heart. Each time it beat, my hands jerked a little. I focused on the motion, trying hard to keep it from happening. Up-down my hands went in barely noticeable rhythm. Up-down, up-down, OUT!
    “I got one!” I shrieked. For a moment, I thought I might’ve hooked a whale. Every muscle in my body, from my toes to my eyeballs, tensed in resistance to the fish’s pulls and jerks. The pole dug into my hands.
    Moving faster than he had in weeks, Daddy jumped up to encourage me. “Hold ’im, Lizzie. He’s a real fighter. If you want to see him, you’re gonna have to beat him.” He propped his lanky hands on his knees, straining for a glimpse of the fish as it slapped and splashed in the water.
    I took a deep breath and dug way down deep, deeperthan I ever had, and just like Daddy told me to do, I fought that fish. After one last glorious heave, the fish slid onto land.
    “Oh, my Lord,” said Daddy, his eyes bigger than Grandfather’s pocket watch. He stared at the conquered catfish as it squirmed in the grass. It had only one eye.
    “It’s him,” I uttered. “One-Eye.”
    Town legend had told of a one-eyed channel cat living in our pond for more than fifty years. Folks were said to have seen him skimming old bait or bread crumbs off the top of the water, but no one had ever actually caught him. Ben and I had always believed One-Eye existed, but Daddy had insisted the story held as much water as a busted glass. After all, anyone worth his salt knew catfish didn’t live that long, and Daddy had never seen him, and it was his pond. Mama said sometimes folks see what they want to see, even if it’s not there.
    But Daddy and I weren’t seeing things now. One-Eye