We drove up to Curt’s uncle’s cabin for the July 4th weekend. Curt bragged that he was going to catch us a fish for dinner. “Have you ever caught a fish before?” I asked him. “Uh, not in real life,” he admitted, “but online, ha ha, on line, get it?” He said not only had he caught plenty of fish on the Internet, (“Inter-Net, get it?” he chortled), he’d studied the instruction videos.

So we went out pretty early in the morning, nothing but OJ and love for breakfast, though the OJ was good and the love was fantastic.

Curt decided that the best spot to fish was from the bridge. He showed me the fly he’d use as bait. I liked the look of it, bright and feathery, and if I were a fish I’d surely consider taking a bite. He dropped the line into the stream. We watched it float there for a while. Then we saw some ripples. Then, oh my god, something bit!