Halloween and Other Seasons Read Online Free PDF

the rod, but already his father had turned away from him, tending his own two good rigs. With a plop his father dropped one sinker into the water, snugging this untended rod into the oarlock before dropping the other rigged line into the ocean. Davy heard the thin scream of the filament and then its sudden stop as the weighted end hit wet sand far below.
    His father turned around and said, “Well? You going to fish it or not?”
    Davy nodded and then looked away, out at the tip of his fishing pole. An old sinker was tied there like a rutted lead teardrop, the thin green filament of the hook’s line angled sideways and then curled down to the barbed hook imbedded in the struggling red bloodworm thrashing this way and that—
    Davy lay the pole down and heaved his empty stomach. He held his straining face over the side of the boat. A thin acidic line of bile dripped from his mouth into the water.
    “Christ’s sake!” his father said behind him. Davy felt the hard dry hands on his shoulders as he was pulled back, his teary eyes looking into the angry red face above him, the hard hand now pulled back as if to strike.
    “I’m…sorry, father—” he blurted out, between sobs.
    His father’s hand stayed, then lowered, and his father turned away, shaking his head.
    “Nothing to be done about it now,” he said, ignoring the boy once more, but pausing to grab the old rig and let out the bail, dropping the sinker and thrashing worm over the side of the boat and into the blank cold waters, before thrusting the pole into Davy’s hands once more.
    ~ * ~
     “Ho! A good one I’ll bet!” his father cried, straining against the sudden fight in his pole. He began to turn the reel’s handle furiously, half standing to stare over into the water, watching the tightened line for signs of the caught beast.
    “A fighter!” he laughed—but then the line went abruptly slack. He sat down, scowling once more.
    “And you, boy?” he called back, not looking around. “Checked your bait?”
    Davy stared at the rod tip, saying nothing, and in a moment his father had forgotten about him, whistling once more, as he pulled his own hook from the water and cut a fresh blood worm in half to replenish it.
    ~ * ~
    Off in the distance, at the hazy edge of the world, Davy heard the long, sad call of a foghorn. In the sky, the sun had turned a sour lemon color as it now sank toward the growing fog. At the limits of vision, gulls wheeled out on the water, diving one after another to hit the waves and then rise again. One of them clutched something long, black and struggling in its beak. Davy turned to stare again at the tip of his own fishing rod.
    His father spat over the side of the boat. “Damned fog’ll be here in a half hour or so. Thought I’d get the whole day in but it was not to be.”
    Without another word, he went back to his own equipment, checking the extra rod that laid in the oarlock before turning his full attention to his other pole.
    A sudden tremble shot through Davy’s hands. The edge of his fishing pole flicked, and then the pole end bent down, straining toward the water.
    The pole nearly leapt out of Davy’s hands before he tightened his grip on it. His fingers fumbled for the bail as line unraveled with a thin high screech. “By God, boy, you’ve got something!” his father shouted. “Keep the tip up, dammit! And don’t let so much line out!”
    Abandoning his own pole, the old man made his way back to Davy, his face flushed with excitement.
    “The way you’re holding that pole, he’ll get away, damn you!”
    His father reached out angrily to take the rod from Davy’s hands.
    At that moment the bale caught and the tip of the pole bent down into the water, lost in the waves. His father’s face flushed in surprise as he tore the rod from Davy’s hands and fought with the line.
    “By God! What have you got on here, boy?”
    Standing in a crouch, his father managed to get the pole out of the water and then