Scott's Books

“The following excerpts are taken from fragments of what many scholars believe is a fishing journal kept by John, who was the son of Zebedee and favorite disciple of Jesus of Nazareth.”

...state of near numbness, her only feeling of late a gnawing sense of starvation, as if she is living off old toast and dried fruit--enough, maybe, to keep her alive, but she can feel parts of herself grown weak from malnutrition, her mind and heart atrophied at the edges...

It feels like a damn cliché: can’t get a fish, can’t get a date. At his age, however, he understands the perils of pressing on either front. He’s a patient man. You have to be.

There’s a reason, I conclude, that these same partnered, go-along individuals will almost always end up putting away their rods at some juncture, leaving the fishing--and all it requires--to the person in the relationship who cared about the sport in the first place. They quit for lack of love.

When I was a boy my father had horses, over a hundred of them. He believed that horses were to use and that boys were nothing if not used.... I went to work for him when I was eleven. I was paid thirty dollars a month, had my own bed in the bunkhouse, and three large, plain meals each day. (p 1)
...It was my daily job to remind our horses of the union of man and horse, to gather them, halter them, grain them, doctor them, handle them, ride them, to ride the younger ones again and again until they became convinced that I was part of them and other men a part of me. They were my father’s horses. I was my father’s son. (p5)

I was a boy and I believed in the sightedness of horses. I believed that to have a horse between my legs, to extend my pulse and blood and energy to theirs, enhanced my vision. Made of me a seer. I believed them to be the dappled, sorrel, roan, bay, black pupils in the eyes of God. (p7)

I think that walking is different from riding. I am connected to the earth differently, more aware of the strike of my bones against the land, more aware of the surface. My breath comes sharp and strong. I think that when I am walking it is as though I am speaking each word of myself to the mountain’s ear. Aloud. I like the sensation. I also like being on a horse. When I am mounted it feels as though I must draw my breath through half a tone of animal to fill my lungs. My breath comes fuller, hotter; the breathing expanded, drowsy, and meditative. When I am older I will think of the difference between walking and riding to be the difference between prayer and the effect of prayer.(p36)

It is the sound John makes with the knife. It is the sound of flesh slippery against flesh. The sound of a man’s arms working against his sides in the sun. A shirtless man bent into his work, Loading hay. An old sound. The sound that n animal makes at the end of a day. A sigh. Again and again. Metronimic. I pause. There is always a pause. I bring the blade away from the stone, examine it, reverse the stone and spit again. (pp50-51)

I hold it to the light. I think of it in the sun: the small curved white reflection it casts; a thing become so polished that it mirrors the heat of the sun, and if held steadily to the dry, bent underfluff of the grasses it could ignite a fire simply by throwing the curve of that reflected heat. It feels hot and right in my hand. (p51)

I stare at the reddish brown mound seventy-five yards in front of me. I have killed Socks in good place. Close to the timber that borders the meadow. A bear will safe in his approach. …And then I remember that I should have cut a window in his gut. Sawed through the hair and opened him to decay. A sore that coyotes and ravens can worry. A place that will help him rot. My father will be disappointed….I wonder suddenly why I am not crying. I think a boy would cry. I think maybe I have begun to be a man. I feel only quietly blunt, and desperate. (pp107-08)

My mother has brought us to the river to further our instruction. It has never occurred to us to wonder why she knows how to fish. She is our mother. She teaches us how to manage in the world. We watch her smooth hands grip the rod’s cork above the reel. We watch the rhythm of her arms paying out the line in arcs over the river, working into the length of her cast. We follow the last presentation of line and breathe out as the fly settles on the river’s surface. If she were not our mother we would be struck by her beauty. We would argue to stand close to her. We would become nervous at the scent of her clean, sun-warmed skin. We would not have learned to fish. (pp240-41)

I think about my sister when my mind is quiet; almost always when I am watching water. I see my sister as an encyclopedia of feminine advice. I see my sister as a doorway to the second half of the world. I wish I could call her name and have her turn her face to me and smile. (p27)