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  "Her parents didn't mind much. They were river trash and were ready to get shed of her anyway. Just one more mouth to feed far as they were concerned. I guess that made it all the easier for me.

  "Anyway, we got married. Things went right smart for the first few years. Then one day this Bible-thumper came by. He was something of a preacher and a Bible salesman, and I let him in to talk to us. Well, he talked a right nice sermon, and Amy, my wife, insisted that we invite him to dinner and buy one of his Bibles.

  "I noticed right then and there that she and that Bible-thumper were exchanging looks, and not the sort to make you think of church and gospel reading.

  "I was burned by it, but I'm a realistic old cuss, and I knew I was pretty old for Amy and that there wasn't any harm in her looking. Long as that was all she did. Guess by that time, she'd found out I wasn't nearly as worldly as she had thought. All I had to offer her was a hardscrabble farm and what I could catch off the river, and neither was exactly first-rate. Could hardly grow a cotton-pickin' thing on that place, the soil was so worked out, and I didn't have money for no store-bought fertilizer—and didn't have no animals to speak of that could supply me with any barnyard stuff, neither. Fishing had got plumb rotten. This was before the bait.

  "Well, me not being about to catch much fish was hurtin' me the most. I didn't care much for plowing them old, hot fields. Never had. But fishing . . . now that was my pride and joy. That and Amy.

  "So, we're scraping by like usual, and I start to notice this change in Amy. It started taking place the day after that Biblethumper's visit. She still fixed meals, ironed and stuff, but she spent a lot of time looking out the windows, like she was expecting something. Half the time when I spoke to her, she didn't even hear me.

  "And damned if that thumper didn't show up about a week later. We'd already bought a Bible, and since he didn't have no new product to sell us, he just preached at us. Told us about the Ten Commandments and about hellfire and damnation. But from the way he was looking at Amy, I figured there was at least one or two of them commandments he didn't take too serious, and I don't think he gave a hang about hellfire and damnation.

  "I kept my temper, them being young and all. I figured the thumper would give it up pretty soon anyway, and when he was gone Amy would forget.

  "But he didn't give it up. Got so he came around often, his suit all brushed up, his hair slicked back, and that Bible under his arm like it was some kind of key to any man's home. He even took to coming early in the day while I was working the fields, or in the barn sharpening my tools.

  "He and Amy would sit on the front porch, and every once in a while I'd look up from my old mules and quit plowing and see them sitting there in the rocking chairs on the porch. Him with that Bible on his knee—closed—and her looking at him like he was the very one that hung the moon.

  "They'd be there when I quit the fields and went down to the river in the cool of the afternoon, and though I didn't like the idea of them being alone like that, it never really occurred to me that anything would come of it—I mean, not really.

  "Old men can be such fools.

  "Well, I remember thinking that it had gone far enough. Even if they were young and all, I just couldn't go on with that open flirting right in front of my eyes. I figured they must have thought me pretty stupid, and maybe that bothered me even more.

  "Anyway, I went down to the river that afternoon. Told myself that when I got back I'd have me a talk with Amy, or if that Bible-thumper was still there amoonin' on the porch, I'd pull him aside and tell him politely that if he came back again I was going to blow his head off.

  "This day I'm down at the river there's not a thing biting. Not only do we need the food, but my pride is involved here. I'd been a fisherman all of my life, and it was getting so I couldn't seine a minnow out of a washtub. I just couldn't have imagined at that time how fine that bait was going to work . . . But I'm getting ahead of myself.

  "Disgusted, I decided to come back from the creek early, and what do I see but this Bible fella's car still parked in our yard, and it getting along toward sundown, too. I'll tell you, I hadn't caught a thing and I wasn't in any kind of friendly mood, and it just went all over me like a bad dose of wood ticks. When I got to the front porch I was even madder, because the rockers were empty. The Bible that thumper always toted was lying on the seat of one of them, but they weren't anywhere to be seen.

  "Guess I was thinking it right then, but I was hoping that I wasn't going to find what I thought I was going to find. Wanted to think they had just went in to have a drink of water or a bite to eat, but my mind wouldn't rightly settle on that.

  "Creeping, almost, I walked up on the porch and slipped inside. The noises I heard from the bedroom didn't sound anything like water-drinking, eating, or gospel-talking.

  "Just went nuts. Got the butcher knife off the cabinet, and . . . I don't half remember.

  "Later, when the police came out there looking for the thumper, they didn't find a thing. Turned out he was a real blabbermouth. Everyone in town knew about him and Amy before I did—I mean, you know, in that way. So they believed me when I said I figured they'd run off together. I'm sure glad they didn't seine the river, or they'd have found his car where I run it off in the deep water.

  "Guess that wouldn't have mattered much though. Even if they'd found the car, they wouldn't have had no bodies. And without the bodies, they can't do a thing to you. You see, I'd cut them up real good and lean and laid me out about twenty lines. Fish hit that bait like it was made for them. Took me maybe three days to use it up—which is about when the police showed up. But by then the bait was gone and I'd sold most of the fish and turned myself a nice dollar. Hell, rest of the mess I cooked up and ate. Matter-of-fact, them officers were there when I was eating the last of it.

  "I was a changed man after that. Got to smiling all the time. Just couldn't help myself. Loved catchin' them fish. Fishing is just dear to my heart, even more so now. You might say I owed it all to Amy.

  "Got so I started making up more of the bait—you know, other folks I'd find on the river, kind of out by themselves. It got so I was making a living off fishing alone."

  That's Old Charlie's story, fella . . . Hey why are you looking at me like that?

  Me, Old Charlie?

  No sir, not me. This here on my right is Old Charlie.

  What do you mean there's no one there? Sure there is . . .

  Oh yeah, I forgot. No one else seems to see Old Charlie but me. Can't understand that. Old Charlie tells me it used to be no one could see me. Can you believe that? Townsfolks used to say Old Charlie had gone crazy over his wife running off and all. Said he'd taken to talking to himself, calling the other self Ned.

  Ain't so. I'm Ned. I work for Old Charlie now. Odd thing is, I can't remember ever doing anything else. Old Charlie has got to where he can't bring himself to kill folks for the bait anymore. Says it upsets him. So he has me do it. I mean, we've got to go on living, don't we? Fishing is all we know. You're a fisherman. You understand, don't you?

  You sure are looking at me odd, fella. Is it the smile? Yeah, guess it is. You see, I got it, too. Once . . . Wait a minute. What's that, Charlie? . . . Yes, yes, I'm hurrying. Just a minute.

  You see, once you get used to hauling in them fish, using that sort of bait, it's the only kind you want to use from then on. Just keeps me and Charlie smiling all the time. So when we see someone like yourself sitting out here all alone, we just can't help ourselves. Just got to have the bait. That's another reason I keep the end of this cane pole so sharp.

  Author's Note on Billie Sue

  There's not much I can say about this story that it doesn't say for itself. I don't really remember the source that well.

  Now and again I'll see something that sticks in my mind but has no story with it, just a resonance. I think it's like songwriters who find one line, and then find the rest of the song months or years later.

  It was resting in my head on the to-be-
used shelf, gathering dust, when one day the idea popped into my awareness again, and I took it off the shelf, dusted it, and found the connection I had been looking for.

  I like it.

  I think it's fun.

  It fits in with a kind of story I had been writing years earlier. Many of which appeared in Twilight Zone Magazine or certain anthologies of that nature.

  Billie Sue

  About a week before the house next door sold to the young couple, Billie Sue and I broke up. It was painful and my choice. Some stupid argument we'd had, but I tried to tell myself I had made the right decision.

  And in the light of day it seemed I had. But come night when the darkness set in and the king size bed was like a great raft on which I floated, I missed Billie Sue. I missed her being next to me, holding her. The comfort she had afforded me had been greater than I imagined, and now that she was gone, I felt empty, as if I had been drained from head to toe and that my body was a husk and nothing more.

  But the kids next door changed that. For a time.

  I was off for the summer. I teach math during the high school term, and since Billie Sue and I had broken up, I had begun to wish that I had signed on to teach summer school. It would have been some kind of diversion. Something to fill my days with besides thinking of Billie Sue.

  About the second day, the kids moved in, the boy was out mowing their yard, and I watched him from the window for a while, then made up some lemonade and took it out on the patio and went over and stood by where he was mowing.

  He stopped and killed the engine and smiled at me. He was a nice looking kid, if a little bony. He had very blond hair and was shirtless and was just starting to get hair on his chest. It looked like down, and the thought of that made me feel ill at ease, because, bizarrely enough, the downlike hair made me think of Billie Sue, how soft she was, and that in turn made me think of the empty house and the empty bed and the nights that went on and on.

  "Hey," the boy said. "You're our neighbor?"

  "That's right. Kevin Pierce."

  "Jim Howel. Glad to meet you." We shook hands. I judged him to be about twenty. Half my age.

  "Come on and meet my wife," he said. "You married?"

  "No," I said, but I felt strange saying it. It wasn't that Billie Sue and I were married, but it had seemed like it. The way I felt about her, a marriage license wasn't necessary. But now she was gone, and the fact that we had never officially been hitched meant nothing.

  I walked with him to the front door, and about the time we got there, a young woman, his wife, of course, opened the screen and looked out. She wore a tight green halter top that exposed a beautiful brown belly and a belly button that looked as if it had been made for licking. She had on white shorts and thongs. Her black hair was tied back, and some of it had slipped out of the tie and was falling over her forehead and around her ears, and it looked soft and sensual. In fact, she was quite the looker.

  It wasn't that her face was all that perfect, but it was soft and filled with big brown eyes, and she had those kind of lips that look as if they've been bruised and swollen. But not too much. Just enough to make you want to put your lips on them, to maybe soothe the pain.

  "Oh, hi," she said.

  "Hi," I said.

  Jim introduced us. Her name was Sharon.

  "I've got some lemonade next door, if you two would like to come over and share it," I said. "Just made it."

  "Well, yeah," said Jim. "I'd like that. I'm hot as a pistol."

  "I guess so," said the girl, and I saw Jim throw her a look. A sort of, hey, don't be rude kind of look. If she saw the look, she gave no sign of it.

  As we walked over to my house, I said, "You folks been married long?"

  "Not long," Jim said. "How long, honey?"

  "Eighteen months."

  "Well, congratulations," I said. "Newlyweds."

  We sat out on the patio and drank the lemonade, and Jim did most of the talking. He wanted to be a lawyer, and Sharon was working at some café in town putting him through. He tried to talk like he was really complimenting her, and I think he was, but I could tell Sharon wasn't feeling complimented. There was something about her silence that said a lot. It said, Look what I've got myself into. Married this chatterbox who wants to be a lawyer and can't make a dollar 'cause he's got to study, so I've got to work, and law school isn't any hop, skip, and a jump. We're talking years of tips and pinches on the ass, and is this guy worth it anyhow?

  She said all that and more without so much as opening her mouth. When we finished off the lemonade, Jim got up and said he had to finish the lawn.

  "I'll sit here awhile," Sharon said. "You go on and mow."

  Jim looked at her, then he looked at me and made a smile. "Sure," he said to her. "We'll eat some lunch after a while."

  "I ate already," she said. "Get you a sandwich, something out of the box."

  "Sure," he said, and went back to mow.

  As he went, I noticed his back was red from the sun. I said, "You ought to tell him to get some lotion on. Look at his back."

  She swiveled in her chair and looked, turned back to me, said, "He'll find out soon enough he ought to wear lotion. You got anything stronger than lemonade?"

  I went in the house, got a couple of beers and a bottle of Jack Daniel's, and some glasses. We drank the beers out on the veranda, then, as it turned hotter, we came inside and sat on the couch and drank the whiskey. While Jim's mower droned on, we talked about this and that, but not really about anything. You know what I mean. Just small talk that's so small it's hardly talk.

  After about an hour, I finally decided what we were really talking about, and I put my hand out and touched her hand on the couch and she didn't move it. "Maybe you ought to go on back."

  "You want me to?"

  "That's the problem, I don't want you to."

  "I just met you."

  "I know. That's another reason you ought to go back to your husband."

  "He's a boring son of a bitch. You know that. I thought he was all right when we met. Good looking and all, but he's as dull as a cheap china plate, and twice as shallow. I'm nineteen years old. I don't want to work in any goddamn café for years while he gets a job where he can wear a suit and get people divorces. I want to get my divorce now."

  She slid over and we kissed. She was soft and pliant, and there were things about her that were better than Billie Sue, and for a moment I didn't think of Billie at all. I kissed her for a long time and touched her, and finally the mower stopped.

  "Goddamn it," she said. "That figures."

  She touched me again, and in the right place. She got up and retied her halter top, which I had just managed to loosen.

  "I'm sorry," I said. "I let this get out of hand."

  "Hell, I'm the one sorry it didn't get completely out of hand. But it will. We're neighbors."

  I tried to avoid Sharon after that, and managed to do so for a couple days. I even thought about trying to patch things up with Billie Sue, but just couldn't. My goddamn pride.

  On the fourth night after they'd moved in, I woke up to the sound of dishes breaking. I got out of bed and went into the living room and looked out the window at my neighbor's house, the source of the noise. It was Sharon yelling and tossing things that had awakened me. The yelling went on for a time. I got a beer out of the box and sat down with a chair pulled up at the window and watched. There was a light on in their living room window, and now and then their shadows would go across the light, then move away.

  Finally I heard the front door slam, and Jim went out, got in their car and drove away. He hadn't so much as departed when Sharon came out of the house and started across the yard toward my place.

  I moved the chair back to its position and sat down on the couch and waited. She knocked on the door. Hard. I let her knock for a while, then I got up and answered the door. I was in my underwear when I answered, but of course, I didn't care. She was in a short black nightie, no shoes, and she didn't care either.<
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  I let her in. She said, "We had a fight. I hope the son of a bitch doesn't come back."

  She took hold of me then, and we kissed, and then we made our way to the bedroom, and it was sweet, the way she loved me, and finally, near morning, we fell asleep.

  When I awoke it was to Jim's voice. In our haste, we had left the front door open, and I guess he'd seen the writing on the wall all along, and now he was in the house, standing over the bed yelling. Sharon sat up in bed, and the sheet fell off her naked breasts and she yelled back. I sat up amazed, more than embarrassed. I had to learn to lock my doors, no matter what.

  This yelling went on for a time, lots of cussing, then Jim grabbed her by the wrist and jerked her out of the bed and onto the floor.

  I jumped up then and hit him, hit him hard enough to knock him down. He sat up and opened his mouth and a tooth fell out.

  "Oh my God, Jim," Sharon said. She slid across the floor and took his head in her hands and kissed his cheek. "Oh, baby, are you all right?"

  "Yeah, I'm all right," he said.

  I couldn't believe it. "What the hell?" I said.

  "You didn't have to hit him," Sharon said. "You're older, stronger. You hurt him."

  I started to argue, but by that time Jim was up and Sharon had her arm around him. She said, "I'm sorry, baby, I'm so sorry. Let's go home."

  Sharon pulled on her nightie, and away they went. I picked up the panties she'd left and put them over my head, trying to look as foolish as I felt. They smelled good though.

  Dumb asshole, I said to myself. How many times have they done this? There are strange people in this world. Some get their kicks from wearing leather, being tied down and pissed on, you name it, but this pair has a simpler method of courtship. They fight with each other, break up, then Sharon flirts and sleeps around until Jim discovers her, then they yell at each other and he forgives her, and he's all excited to think she's been in bed with another man, and she's all excited to have been there, and they're both turned on and happy.