This is the Part Where You Laugh Read Online Free PDF

tacked to three consecutive telephone poles. I stop and dribble in place while I read the sign. It says:
LOST DOG
    MINIATURE TERRIER—NAMED MILO
    LAST SEEN NEAR AYRES LAKE
    CALL (541) 521-3574
    I guess I should feel bad, because I’m pretty sure I know what happened to that dog, but I don’t. People lose dogs all the time, and usually to nothing as exciting as South American crocodiles. I lost a dog once, and it was messed up, and I was really sad for a while, but then I thought about it and realized that losing is all there is in life sometimes. Sometimes we just lose and lose and lose and there’s nothing we can do about it, so I guess I’d rather be eaten by a crocodile than get dog leukemia or have old-age dog hip problems or some shit like that. At least this dog got to go out fighting for his life.

FISHING
    I walk down to the lake and look at the water. It’s greener lately. More algae. I haven’t seen or heard anything since I released the caimans, and I’m just guessing they ate that dog, but I’m pretty sure. I read online that they need warm water and warm weather year-round, that they don’t live this far north even in captivity, so I know that they might not survive for too long. But it’s hot now, hot every day, and they have a chance to do well, at least for the summer, and this summer’s all I need: a couple of evenings in the boat with Grandma, a few stories, something for Grandma to hear about, something interesting for her neighbors to tell her this last year.
    We keep a canoe locked up near my tent. I undo the combination lock, take the chain off, flip the canoe over, pull fistfuls of clump grass to wipe out the spiderwebs. Then I go up to the porch to grab paddles, tackle, and my fishing pole from the trunk by the back door. Grandpa left half a bag of Doritos out on the picnic table next to his pipe, and I grab the chips too.
    I strip off my shirt and throw it in the bottom of the canoe before dragging the boat to the water. I don’t want to sweat through my shirt right before dark, before the day cools off.
    I slide the bow of the canoe into the water, then the rest of the hull, weighting the stern on the shore rocks. I put my left foot in and kick off, easing over the shelf into the deep. That’s my favorite moment of canoeing, the moment when the boat is floating for the first time and the whole thing rocks back and forth to find its center of balance. I like to wait and see how far the canoe will drift in a line, where the wind is blowing, and what’ll happen if I don’t paddle. It reminds me of that feeling I’d get when I was a kid and my mom was passed out and it was nighttime, and I knew she wasn’t waking up for a long time. I’d sneak out of the motel room, down the hall to the stairwell, and out the front lobby. Then I’d walk down 7th Street, past the women in short skirts and fishnet stockings, the men drinking 40s out of paper bags. I knew some of them, and sometimes they’d wave at me or give me a look like I wasn’t supposed to be out after dark.
    I’d go in the 7-Eleven and wait until the clerk wasn’t watching me. I’d walk up and down those aisles until I could slide something in my pocket and walk to the door without anyone seeing me. Then I’d be back out on the street, cruising along in the dark, more traffic at night, with the smells of car exhaust, motor oil, Subway, and Taco Bell mixing together in the night’s air.
    —
    This evening, the lake is still, no wind, and the canoe cuts straight and slow across the deep. I paddle out to the center, looking across to the east side, to the long lawns behind the big houses, the wooden gazebos, and the plank-board docks that run 50 feet out into the water. Five of them have small sailboats tied to their moorings, but nobody else is out on the lake with me.
    I eat handfuls of Doritos and wash them down with water.
    I tie a rubber worm on and jig for smallmouth. Every once in a while, I paddle and watch the tip