sympathy fish

The wind laughed through the grass and the sun convulsed as I repeatedly punched it in the back of it's stupid yellow head. The tall weeds giving me total privacy from the lesbian couple camped in the small dirt parking lot. Little golden eyes looked on in terror from the surface muck but said nothing. I leaned back and caught my breath before walking to the truck and inflating my pontoon boat.

Two hours prior I had been staring into the inky darkness of my bedroom ceiling when I had a thought: I could just go now... I blinked and felt what little potential there had been for sleep recede like a bastard wave. I got up and packed the truck.

I had planned to fish the afternoon/evening, but instead found my self standing in line at a gas station convenience store at 4:35AM listening to the weary-eyed clerk explain to the prostitute in front of me that they had no public restrooms, and she would have to wash the semen stains out of her shirt somewhere else.

I asked her if she wanted to go fishing. She said she didn't know what that meant but it would cost fifty dollars. I didn't have fifty dollars so I bought my gallon of water and left.

The morning bite should have been better. It would have been better, I am sure, if I weren't such a stubborn prick.

"Look that that frog, you little sonsabitches!" I screamed. "You should want to eat that. You should need to eat that. Look how awesomely it walks weedlessly around on the muck. What's wrong with you little slimy bastards?" They didn't seem to care and for a brief moment I thought about tying on a beadhead bugger, but my ego threw up a little in my mouth and I swallowed it back with a sip of turkey.

The morning took pitty on my pathetic face and gave me one sympathy fish which reluctantly slurped a small foam popper between the shadows and looked at me with hatred while I pushed the steel out of his lip.

The wind shit-talked through the tall trees and the sun glowed unconscious in a small clearing behind the tall weeds. I rowed back to the truck in shame.

I met an old man with a 4wt in the parking lot and lied to his face with a smile and gave him a foam popper.

-Alex who still hasn't learned his lesson.