bullied me toward the murky pools, while my father, rooted in the river bottom, waved his dancing line above the surface, sweeping arms casting an incantation, landing the fly suddenly, as if it were stunned, as though the wings were real and blood pumped through the steel, barbed thorax. His spell coaxed a rainbow trout up from the depths, bursting under the hook, dragging it down as though trying to pull my father out of the river bed into the darkness, swimming deep but losing the fight, cranked to the edge of the hole where I waited with the small net. The silvery body, cradled but thrashing in the mesh, shined as if its scales reflected the blaze from my father 's tired eyes. Flying on the high, I rushed downstream to where the river blackens through the bottom of a swampy ravine, but my father called me back, shook his head, warned me that few trout are ever worth the darkest waters.
hlll#21
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