Trout Fishing in America Read Online Free PDF Page B

of the car with wood for the fire and I caught a mess of those leaves for dinner. They were small and dark and cold. The autumn was good to us.
    When we got back to our camp, I saw the shepherd’s wagon down the road a ways and on the meadow I heard the bellmare and the very distant sound of the sheep.
    It was the final circle with the Adolf Hitler, but friendly, shepherd as the diameter. He was camping down there for the night. So in the dusk, the blue smoke from our campfire went down and got in there with the bellmare.
    The sheep lulled themselves into senseless sleep, one following another like the banners of a lost army. I have here a very important message that just arrived a few moments ago. It says “Stalingrad.”

Trout Fishing in America Terrorists
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Long live our friend the revolver!
Long live our friend the machine-gun!
      —Israeli terrorist chant
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    One April morning in the sixth grade, we became, first by accident and then by premeditation, trout fishing in America terrorists.
    It came about this way: we were a strange bunch of kids.
    We were always being called in before the principal for daring and mischievous deeds. The principal was a young man and a genius in the way he handled us.
    One April morning we were standing around in the play yard, acting as if it were a huge open-air poolhall with the first-graders coming and going like pool balls. We were all bored with the prospect of another day’s school, studying Cuba.
    One of us had a piece of white chalk and as a first-grader went walking by, the one of us absentmindedly wrote “Trout fishing in America” on the back of the first-grader.
    The first-grader strained around, trying to read what was written on his back, but he couldn’t see what it was, so he shrugged his shoulders and went off to play on the swings.
    We watched the first-grader walk away with “Trout fishing in America” written on his back. It looked good and seemed quite natural and pleasing to the eye that a first-grader should have “Trout fishing in America” written in chalk on his back.
    The next time I saw a first-grader, I borrowed my friend’s piece of chalk and said, “First-grader, you’re wanted over here.”
    The first-grader came over to me and I said, “Turn around.”
    The first-grader turned around and I wrote “Trout fishing in America” on his back. It looked even better on the second first-grader. We couldn’t help but admire it. “Trout fishing in America.” It certainly did add something to the first-graders. It completed them and gave them a kind of class.
    â€œIt really looks good, doesn’t it?”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œLet’s get some more chalk.”
    â€œSure.”
    â€œThere are a lot of first-graders over there by the monkey-bars.”
    â€œYeah.”
    We all got hold of chalk and later in the day, by the end of lunch period, almost all of the first-graders had “Trout fishing in America” written on their backs, girls included.
    Complaints began arriving at the principal’s office from the first-grade teachers. One of the complaints was in the form of a little girl.
    â€œMiss Robins sent me,” she said to the principal. “She told me to have you look at this.”
    â€œLook at what?” the principal said, staring at the empty child.
    â€œAt my back,” she said.
    The little girl turned around and the principal read aloud, “Trout fishing in America.”
    â€œWho did this?” the principal said.
    â€œThat gang of sixth-graders,” she said. “The bad ones. They’ve done it to all us first-graders. We all look like this. ‘Trout fishing in America.’ What does it mean? I just got this sweater new from my grandma.”
    â€œHuh. ‘Trout fishing in America,’” the principal said.“Tell Miss Robins I’ll be down to see her in a little