Hook, Line and Sinker

On the sun-scorched rim of a nameless lake, where cattails rattle like brittle bones, Snub Pollard—rubber-limbed dreamer in a boater hat—enters the annual angling bacchanal with the solemnity of a monk taking vows. Every cast he lofts is a prayer, yet the cosmos answers with slapstick blasphemy: his line snags boxers on a clothesline, hooks a constable’s badge, and once, mortifyingly, reels in Marie Mosquini’s Sunday corset while she sips lemonade three piers over. James Finlayson, walrus-mustached agent of chaos, stalks the shoreline like a dyspeptic Neptune, bribing perch with breadcrumbs and bribing judges with whisky. The fish themselves—carp the size of torpedoes, catfish sporting Van Dyke beards—seem to convene under moonlit weed canopies, conspiring against our hero. They nibble bait with forensic precision, spit hooks back like cherry stones, and orchestrate a synchronized tail-flip that capsizes Snub’s canoe. Yet defeat calcifies into obsidian resolve: he fashions a rod from a buggy whip, lures from popped champagne corks, and a net from Mosquini’s stolen hairnet. At dawn, when fog coils like ectoplasm over the water, he lands a leviathan bass that belly-flops onto the scales with the thud of destiny, shattering the trophy and scattering silver coins that skip across the pier like miniature suns. The crowd erupts, Finlayson’s mustache wilts, and Mosquini kisses Snub amid flapping gills and flapping hearts—victory extracted from a crucible of humiliation, as raw and radiant as a pearl pried from asphalt.