Bait

Four inches beneath the surface of a crisp New Hampshire lake, a fleet of minnows plies the water in search of food. A dozen of them, fast, silvery, speed along the shaded shoreline, where the trees hang dark and canopylike, toward the open water of a beach. Slowing, the formation loosens. Bright sand and a giant air-breathing creature lie before them.

Joe, a pudgy boy nearly twelve, is bent over at the waist, scanning the shallow water at his feet. His hands are cupped, poised. A rock, a stick, a smooth expanse of sand; then he sees it: a cloud of dark little dashes, gills rippling.

"You gonna stand there like that all day?" asks Annie from a few feet away, annoyed. "Let's take the boat out. You said we were going to take the boat out."

"Not now," he says, not looking up.

But she stays, as she has all morning. This was supposed to be a fun vacation, her mother told her, when she would get to know her new stepfather and her new big brother. Now, she sets her arms akimbo, slides one foot up over the other and twists herself slightly, thinking, I'm stuck here in the middle of nowhere with this bozo. It least it's almost over.

"You'll never catch one," she tells him. "They're way too fast."

Joe lunges. The group scatters but too late; one wiggles furiously against Joe's cupped palms as he raises them, water draining away.

"Got one?"

"Course," he says.

He drops it into a bright green plastic bucket, filled and strategically placed nearby. Annie drops to her knees, her face only inches from the plastic rim.

"Let's squeeze 'em down his sides till his guts pop out," she says.

"Shut up, idiot," Joe tells her. "That's bait for when me and Dad go fishing."

"You'll need more than one teeny little minnow." She looks at him and laughs.

"I know that, moron."

Their beach is encircled by a dense forest, and their cottage, with its wide deck and many windows, faces a peaceful expanse of Lake Winnipesaukee. The building is dark and shingled and seems to grow amid the trees. To one side, a path winds out to a dock, where in the luxurious afternoon sun, Joe's father is reading the newspaper.

"Daaaaad!!" yells Joe.

Down comes the paper; Joe hoists the bucket.

"Got 'em with my bare hands! Bait!"

"Good job!" His father hoists the celebratory thumb and Joe beams in the acceptance of victory. Up goes the paper, and Joe bends again to the hunt. Annie shakes her head.

"I never thought a big brother would be so annoying."

"I'm not your big brother, OK?" Joe snaps.

"You will be. I mean, when they get married you will be," says Annie.

"Yeah, whatever," he says.

"You're so boring. All you been doing all morning is walking around with your head down, looking for stupid little fish. I'm gonna go see Mom," she says, and sprints off across the beach before Joe can explain how important it is, how much bait he'll need to go fishing. Nothing against her. But he doesn't want another lecture from Dad about getting along with Annie. He hears his father coming down the path.

"With your own bare hands, 'eh? You must be fast."

"Dad, can we go fishing?" Joe watches for clues of an answer. "Before it gets real dark?"

"Oh, I don't know. We're leaving tomorrow. We have a lot to do."

"Yeah, but look." Joe proudly holds up the bucket. "Bait. I got one, anyway. I'm working real hard to get more."

"I'm not sure. Let me see what Marjorie's doing. I think we're supposed to go for a boat ride when Charley goes in for his nap."

"Awww, Dad, come on."

"Hey, come on yourself. You kids have been doing cool stuff all week. The water slide, the arcade, the elephant ride. We've been to the video store every day."

"Yeah, but that's all of us. Not just you and me."

"We went out for a ride Tuesday morning. Remember?"

"Yeah, but we didn't go fishing. Just for a ride. Mom would take me fishing if Mom were here."

His father smiles and musses Joe's hair. "Yeah, I'm sure you would pester her into it. Look, let me see what's going on inside.

"Oh and by the way, you could try to be a little nicer to Marjorie and Annie."

Joe shoots back: "Whattya mean?"

"You know what I mean."

"What?'

He knows. He didn't want to come here in the first place. That was their first argument about it. A week on a picturesque New Hampshire lake with his new mom and sister and brother. Big deal. Not only had he lost his mother, but he was about to lose his father, too. A big part of him, anyway. Why did he have to pay such attention to Marjorie? Joe was his real kid, after all.

Marjorie had tried with Joe. Once she asked him to go for a walk to look for wildflowers, which she loved, and once she asked him to come to the store with her for groceries - a sure invitation for a handful of treats. Both times he refused, and both times his dad got really mad at him. It didn't matter. He didn't want to know her that well. She was background, like the forest that surrounded their cottage.

Joe watches his father walk up the stairs to the deck, seeing how his shoulders had rounded some and how his gray hair looked against the sunburned back. His mother used to marvel each summer at the depth and smoothness of that burn. Used to. His mother always lathered Joe up pretty good, and he always felt so safe against the sun's rays. She would help him build sand castles when they went to the Jersey Shore, and the sun would burn away without effect. Used to. She had a long blond braid that tick-tocked across her shoulders as she walked, and they joked about what kind of music it should make. They even made up silly songs. Used to. Then one day his father told him his mother died in a car accident on her way home from work, that a man in the oncoming lane had fallen asleep at the wheel and had plowed into her. His father started crying, but Joe didn't. Joe had never seen his father cry and just stood there blankly staring at him. Joe never cried through it all - the funeral, the burial, the hordes of anguished friends and family. Even now, almost two years later, he has still never cried about it.

He walks over to the bucket. His captive lies near the bottom, still facing the lake. Joe wonders if the fish would just stay there without moving until it ran out of air-in-the-water or until someone grabbed it out for bait. Or if his family, and maybe his mother, was just off shore horribly upset and helplessly watching the bright green plastic bucket.

He looks up at the cottage and the impenetrable wall of trees behind it, then out at the lake and the high trees beyond that. A complete circle. He wonders if a fish could possibly miss its family. He again scans the lake, walks in up to his knees, but can see nothing.

"Joe." His father is coming down the stairs and with one glance he knows he is not going fishing anytime soon.

"Hey listen, let's try for later. I promised Marjorie a nice, romantic row around the lake before it gets too dark."

"Awwww, Dad, come on. That's not fair. I've been working for hours to get this bait."

"I'm not saying no, just not now. Maybe later."

"You know we'll never go later."

"I'm doing the best I can, Joe. You can help a little too, you know."

"Whattya mean by that?"

Up on the deck, the slider opens slowly and quietly and Marjorie and Annie slip out. Marjorie has a small picnic basket and smiles at Joe.

"Pfew, that kid is tough," she says of Charley, her three-year-old son. "He's finally asleep."

Joe nods. "Me and Dad might go fishing later, when you guys get back. I'm working on getting bait."

"I heard."

"He's only got one teeny little minnow," says Annie.

"So far," says Joe.

Joe's father drags the canoe off the beach while Marjorie issues detailed instructions about what they are to do and not to do, eat and not to eat, and what to do when Charley gets up. She is a widow, and Joe never paid much attention to her or any of the other women Joe's father has been going on dates with for the last year. Except, of course, the one he called Juliette with the Corvette, who was really pretty and had big boobs and paid a lot of attention to Joe the few times she came over the house. But soon, Joe's father could never get her on the phone, and he eventually stopped trying. They would talk about her outfits and flashy car, like two guys. Joe always felt real grown up when they did that.

Annie was another story. She was really annoying. They met at a dinner at Monto's Pizza Palace and between slices of the house special, she talked and talked about herself. Joe said little and looked down a lot. Getting little response, she finally lapsed into a sullen silence.

Parents and children saw each other with increasing frequency, occasions that Joe and Annie looked upon with dread.

"She talks about herself all the time," Joe told his father.

"He never talks to me at all," Annie told her mother.

Then there was the big weekend in Philadelpha when all five of them went sightseeing and stayed in a hotel - three kids in one room, Dad and Marjorie in the adjoining room. Joe knew it was serious after that and although he didn't like it, he knew Dad was happy. Now, leaning on the railing of their deck, he watches his father steady the canoe as Marjorie steps in. She is pretty and slender and wearing a long T-shirt. She laughs at something Joe's father is saying as he pushes the canoe out and hops in at the stern.

"Wanna play checkers?" asks Annie.

"I gotta get more bait."

"Not that again!"

"O.K. O.K. I'll play."

Joe watches as the canoe glides into the lake, around the point and out of sight. The soft hand of a summer afternoon quiets everything but the occasional far-off burr of an outboard motor. The tips of the trees sway slightly as an errant wind slips through them.

After rounding up checkers, sodas and the one bag of cookies not hidden, they arrange their pieces and begin. They alternate winning and chatter away, laughing about what a pain Charley was at dinner the night before, when he dumped a whole cup of soda into Joe's dad's lap. Annie laughs quickly and a bit too loudly, and Joe keeps looking down at the checkers or at the cookie he has just fished out of the bag. They each know it's the longest time they have been together without fighting. Annie tells a long and animated story about Eleanor, her best friend, but Joe keeps noticing the bright green bucket down on the beach. He knows he needs more bait if he has any chance of going fishing alone with his father. Besides, he didn't care about her best friend. Why did she have to tell him all this dumb stuff?

"I really have to get back to getting bait," he finally tells her.

"Not again."

"I need more than one minnow to go fishing."

"You just don't like me. You just want to get away from me."

"What? Who said anything about that? Can't you just go and watch TV and leave me alone for a while?"

"I hope they don't get married." Annie's eyes start tearing. "Who'd want to be around you all the time anyway?"

"Whaddya talking about?"

"Yeah, me and my mom tried to be friends with you all week. All week. She's a pretty neat person, you know. You just don't give anybody a chance."

"Who's saying anything about that?" Joe is standing. "I just want to go fishing with my dad. Sheesh. What's so wrong about that?"

Annie glares at him.

"My mom says you never cried at your mother's funeral. You out looking for bait then, too?"

Joe takes a step back, involuntarily, as if struck. He slams his fist onto the table, which sends the checkers flying, then yells, "Damn you, Annie! You shut up about my mother!"

He turns and stomps across the deck, down the steps and up the gravel driveway, which crunches angrily under his feet.

He storms along the parallel wheel ruts, the only road that connects the colony of cottages along the lake with the asphalt road to the larger world. The forest bends over him like a net that is shades of green and a mottled bright blue. The lake lies at his right, but he barely notices any of it. That little bitch, he thinks over and over, that ugly little dorky bitch. I hate her. She has no right to talk about Mom like that.

Around the corner and further down the road walks a woman briskly and by herself. She has a long blond braid that snaps back and forth as she moves. Joe looks closer and can't believe it - the same hair, the same walk, even the same T-shirt, the green one she used to wear around the house all the time. He feels a funny feeling in his chest, speeding up his pace, his gaze fixed, not able to stop the torrent of thoughts: See? It's her. It's Mom! You're not gone. You didn't leave me alone!

Before he can stop himself, Joe yells "Mom!" The woman turns and for an instant he's surprised that it's really someone else.

"'Fraid not," she says with a smile.

"Oh, sorry. She's around here somewhere."

"Are you OK? Do you need help finding her?" The woman stops and seems concerned. Joe fights to maintain his composure.

"Oh, no. She went for a walk with my dad. I'll catch up with them."

"Oh, OK. Well, good luck."

The woman turns and disappears around another bend in the dirt road. Joe stares numbly through the tangle of branches at the lake.

"Mom," he whimpers, unable to stop himself. "Mom, come back to me, Mom."

He steps off the dirt road and something heavier than gravity is pushing him down. Sitting, he cries and cries amid waves of anger and sadness.

"Momma." With the tears come great wrenching sobs. "Don't leave me, Momma."

His hands are dirty from the forest floor and when he rubs the tears away, mud streaks on his face. Joe doesn't try to stop it as he did when her death was a terrible slashing wound, when he feared that tears would acknowledge the worst thing ever to happen to him. His face goes down into his hands. She's gone. She's gone.

"Joe?"

It's Annie.

"Leave me alone, dork."

"I shouldn't have said that, Joe. I shouldn't have. I didn't cry when my father died either. I was too afraid."

A film of tears clouds her eyes and she takes a step trembling through the brush toward him. He stares at her and wipes the tear-streaked mud caking his cheeks and nose, smudging it further.

She stretches out a hand. "Please don't hate me, Joe."

"My mother really is dead," he tells her.

She nods. "My dad is, too."

Late that night in the cottage, he stirs in his bunk. A bright moon paints everything in grayish milky white. Through the open window flows the brisk night air and the hushed, intermittent roll of the lake. He thinks of nothing but the evenly spaced holes in the grid of faded ceiling tile an arm's-reach above him. He sees his mother, her arms folded across her chest and her head on that small satin pillow, and then he sees his father and Marjorie, who are asleep side-by-side in the next room. And, of course, Annie in the lower bunk and Charley in his crib. And then there is that fishing that he and his father might do in the morning, after the car is packed but before they leave.

Joe smiles and rubs the sleep from his face. They may if they had the time, but, with Marjorie and Annie and Charley and all the packing that was left, they probably wouldn't. He sits and swings his legs over the side of the bed, grabs his T-shirt and hops down. The living room is dark, with suitcases and boxes of kitchen utensils and beach toys stationed near the sliding glass door.

He pulls it open ever so quietly and the cold and the deck lie before him. Down on the beach, awash in moonlight, is the bright green plastic bucket. Maybe some other kid can get him out for bait next summer, he decides, and empties it slowly into the lake. For a moment, the minnow is a dark, still mark in the water. Then it shudders and swims off.