Chum 
by Jerry Oltion
Changing the nature of life and death also inevitably changes attitudes toward them. 

The third time Todd scraped the aircar over the top of a granite boulder, Doug could no longer hold his tongue. 
“You want to give ‘er a little more lift, there, dude?” He tried to keep it casual, but Todd heard the irritation in his voice. He could feel it over his neural link, too. Doug was masking it as best he could, but you didn't know somebody for fifty years without picking up on their thoughts. 
“Hey, chill,” Todd said, easing the car up a notch. “It's my car. I'm just scrapin’ the rust off.” 
“Scraping the lifters off, more likely,” Doug muttered. “You wreck those and we're in for a long walk home.” 
That much was true. They were in the Bighorn National Forest, somewhere between Battle Park and Lily Lake. The last sign of civilization had been a laser-shredded beer can five or six kilometers back, and the last sign of a trail even farther. But Todd was pretty sure he knew where they were, at least within a kilometer or two. He'd been here once when he was a boy, nearly three-quarters of a century ago, back when the road was still a road and the forest was a bunch of stumps. It looked a lot different now, but he remembered remembered the terrain. He also knew what his car could handle. He'd low-glided over a lot worse than this and brought it home in one piece. 
“If we wreck the car, it'd be closer to walk to the lake than back home,” he said, grinning when he saw Doug stiffen. Doug wasn't a whole lot younger than Todd, and while he exercised all the time in a gym, the idea of actually using his muscles for real work hadn't crossed his mind for decades. 
“Just kidding,” Todd said. 
Doug ragged on it anyway. “Oh, yeah, that'd be smart. Then we'd have to walk out from there. There's no taxi service in the wilderness area.” 
“No, but there's fish. Big mothers, with huge, gaping mouths!” Todd squeezed the car between a couple of lodgepole pines, tilting it a little to starboard so it would fit. All the loose gear in the back seat slid over to that side, and Doug turned around to make sure it was OK. Not that it should have mattered to him; his stuff was bundled tight and tied down in the trunk. Sort of like the Doug Todd used to know. 
“Lighten up, man,” Todd told him. “We're supposed to be having fun.” 
“Is that what we're doing.” Doug somehow managed to turn the question into a statement of fact and a condemnation of everything Todd stood for at the same time. Todd wondered-not for the first time-why he'd chosen him for a companion on Todd's first fishing trip in nearly a decade. Doug didn't even like fishing all that much. 
That was probably it. Doug hadn't won a license. He hadn't even put his name in the lottery. Todd had figured he would be the least likely of all his friends to be jealous when they got there and he had to stand back and watch. 
Plus he was a total digit-head. He had a brand new, state-of-the-art Thinkman cranial implant with full sensory sweep and compartmentalized storage. When Todd latched onto a monster rainbow, Doug could tap into Todd's neural link and record the whole experience from Todd's point of view, preserving the moment with perfect fidelity, untainted by his own lack of enthusiasm for it. 
Provided they ever got there. The map showed a road all the way to Lily Lake, but by the looks of the vegetation, nobody had come this way since the days of four-wheelers. The greenies loved the way the forest was coming back, and Todd had nothing against trees, but was it too much to ask for a path wide enough to squeeze a car through? 
He reached out as they glided past a low-hanging branch and let the needles brush across his palm. A puff of yellow pollen billowed up from the tiny male cones at the end of the branch. It smelled a little like yogurt, the plain vanilla kind with maybe a little oregano sprinkled in. The whole mountain smelled like oregano to Todd; oregano and rosemary and basil. It was a discovery that kept him sane between trips. When he needed a mountain fix, he would open a bottle of Italian seasoning and take a big nose hit. It was a pale imitation of the real thing, but that and a memory playback was better than nothing. 
He sneezed. The car jerked to the left, the skidplate clanging off another rock. Doug tensed up, and Todd increased the lift another notch, but he watched the power gauge quiver on the redline as he did. His car really wasn't designed for off-roading. The repulsors were only good for half a meter, and they sucked power like a short circuit at that. 
“It'll be easier going up ahead,” he said, pointing beyond the windshield to where patches of light brown grass peeked between the tree trunks. “That's the bald ridge. Smooth as silk from there.” 
Doug leaned forward and looked up at the sky, which had been growing grayer over the last hour. “Good timing. Looks like a thunderstorm coming.” 
“There's always thunderstorms up here in the summer. We'll be fine.” 
The last fifty meters or so of forest were clogged with bushes. It was always that way, because more sunlight could make it through the canopy there, but it still felt like some vegetable conspiracy to keep them from getting through. Todd nosed the old flyer into thicket after thicket, trying to find one that would let him through, but he finally had enough of it. He backed off a couple of car lengths from the last one he'd tried and said, “Hang on to your hat; we're going through!” 
“Wait a minute,” Doug said automatically, but Todd tromped the juice pedal and the car shot forward. Branches slapped at the windshield and snatched at their arms through the open windows, and the smell of crushed leaves and splintered sticks rose all around them. There was a jouncy moment of total green-out, then they blasted through to the other side, bobbing like a cork in rapids until Todd brought the car under control again and coasted out into the open meadow. 
Yellow grass stretched away up the slope ahead of them and off to the left, where little patches of forest were slowly reclaiming an old clear-cut. To the right, the ridge fell away into a wide, U-shaped glacial valley. They could see a chain of lakes down there, and a glistening silver stream meandering between them. 
“Whoa,” Doug said. “Nice.” He stared down at it, panning left and right, then turned his attention to the snow-capped peaks at the head of the valley. Recording the sight. Good. Maybe now he'd start getting into the trip a little. Todd considered asking him to record his impression of it, too, but he decided not to push it. Besides, he'd actually rather keep it to himself. It wouldn't be quite as pure in natural storage, but it would be his very own. And somehow, not having it available for digital recall would make him treasure the memory all the more. 
Besides, there were already more sensos of that canyon available on the net than a guy could download in a lifetime. It was one of the most popular spots in the Bighorns. “It's pretty,” Todd admitted, “but there's probably not fifty fish in the whole drainage. They let twenty people a day up there, summer and winter. Place is practically a park. We're going to Lily Lake, on the other side of that.” He pointed up and to the left, where the road zigzagged over the top of the bald ridge. 
“Huh,” Doug grunted. 
Todd concentrated on driving. The road was easy to find out here; the weathered remains of wayposts stood in the ground every hundred meters or so, but the old four-wheeler ruts were just as easy to spot. Erosion had worn gullies that might never smooth over, even now that grass had grown over them again. 
The sky to the west was slate gray. Wet slate at that, and the underside of the clouds roiled like a sheet in the wind. Todd loved mountain thunderstorms, but Doug had been right: this one was going to come uncomfortably close. That was cool, though. Part of the excitement. Like mosquitoes and bears; you took what the mountains threw at you, or you stayed home. 
The ozone in the air bit at his nostrils. No oregano now! This was more like fresh-filed metal, sharp and crisp and hot. Sudden gusts of wind blew in through the windows, and Todd found himself struggling to keep the car from being blown toward the canyon. He lowered the lift and that helped a little, but it was getting a little hairy. 
“I think I'm going to cross-country it down into that swale there,” he said, nodding out to the left where a little fold in the mountainside sheltered a stand of stubby trees. Hiding under a tree during a lightning storm might not be the safest thing to do, but it sure beat hanging out on the ridgeline. 
“Good idea,” Doug said. 
Todd turned the wheel and tilted it left a little for a smooth bank, and the car had just begun to swerve when a flash of light lit up the interior like a pack of paparazzi at a celebrity wedding, and their teeth rattled to a boom like God's teenage son slamming his bedroom door after a bad date. 
“Whoo!” Todd yelled. “Close one!’ 
“Get us the hell out of here!” Doug yelled back. 
“I'm trying!” Todd floored it, and the car surged ahead, but they only made it a couple of dozen meters before the world lit up even brighter than before and the thunder smashed them to the ground. The car skidded, slewed sideways, and caught an edge on a rock, tipping up far enough for the side air bags to blow. It teetered there for a second, then slammed back down on its skidplate, raising a cloud of dust both inside and out. 
“Holy shit,” Todd said over the ringing in his ears. “I think that one hit us!” The car reeked of ozone and smoke. 
“Duh!” Doug shouted. “Get this hog back in the air! Now!” 
“Yeah, good idea.” Todd hit the lift button, but nothing happened. He punched it off, then back on again, but still nothing. 
“Must've blown a breaker,” he said, reaching for the panel under the dash, but the moment he touched it, he yanked his hand back in pain. “Yow! It's hot!” 
Doug leaned over into the back seat and grabbed one of Todd's loose shirts off the floor, then bent forward to try the access panel again, but when he yanked it open, smoke poured out and hot drops of molten metal spattered to the floor. 
“Yow!” Todd squirmed away before they could burn his feet, but a moment later it didn't matter. The sky opened up and hosed a deluge through the windows, flooding the car so fast that the floor mat hardly even got singed. 
* * * “Well, at least the lightning's moved on,” Todd said a few minutes later. They could hear it snapping and growling over the canyon now, probably scaring the bejeezus out of today's score of wilderness tourists. 
He and Doug had scrunched into the center of the car to escape the rain. It was way too close for comfort for a couple of guys who didn't swing that way, but the windows wouldn't roll up and the back seat held as much of Todd's gear as they could sweep into the middle. It was looking like a dry sleeping bag and dry food might be more important than personal space, because the windows weren't the worst of the car's problems. The lifters wouldn't lift, the lights wouldn't come on, and not even the gauges worked anymore. The power pack was fried. 
That meant the weblink was toast, too. The only functioning electronic devices left to them were the neural links in their heads, and those had about fifty meters of range at best. That was plenty to maintain a web connection in practically any civilized part of the planet, but the whole point of a wilderness area was to get away from that sort of thing. The car's uplink would have connected them if they'd needed it, but now it was as dead as the rest of the car. “You didn't pack a spare link, did you?” Doug asked. 
“Nope. Did you?” 
Doug shook his head. “So what now?” 
“Well, Lily Lake is only a couple more klicks,” Todd said. 
“You're totally hacked. If we walk anywhere, it's out.” 
Doug reached down and felt the rectangular bulge of his wallet in his left hip pocket. His fishing license was in there. It hadn't blown in the lightning strike, ‘cause there was nothing but plastic to blow. It was coded and forge-proofed twelve ways from Tuesday, but it was just an inert certificate-one granting him the right to catch any fish in the Tensleep Creek drainage that would take a hook during the fourteen hours of daylight between dawn and dusk tomorrow. It had been eight years-eight years of running sims and backseating other people's sensos-since he'd had one of those in his wallet, and he'd be damned if he'd let a little lightning keep him from using it. 
“Maybe you could walk out and call ... no, forget it.” Doug would just as likely get lost or get himself eaten by a bear if he tried getting out of here by himself. 
“We'll have to start a signal fire,” Doug said. “In this rain?” 
“When it's over, idiot.” 
“Hah. Good luck.” 
Doug grunted and leaned away for a few seconds, but the rain drove him back again. 
“How about we go down the canyon?” Todd asked. “There's an actual trail there, and it's a straight shot down to the ranger station. Plus there's lakes and streams the whole way down. We can fish our way out.” 
“I thought your license was only good for tomorrow.” 
“Yeah. So we spend the night at one of the lakes. It'll probably take us the rest of the day to get there anyway. There's no trail between here and there.” 
“There's no trail anywhere from here,” Doug pointed out. 
“So we might as well take the easiest route back,” Todd said. “All our bushwhackin'll be downhill.” 
Doug looked out at the storm. Todd followed his gaze, and saw the band of light in the eastern sky. The thunderstorm was moving on, but there would be more of them this afternoon. Hanging out on the ridge and hoping someone spotted them from the air would be a bad idea. Doug either picked up his thoughts through the link or he was smart enough to figure it out on his own. 
“All right,” he said. “Downhill is good.” 
* * *
“To think,” he said a couple hours later, “I gave up a weekend in Hawaii to doc your fishing trip.” 
“You recordin’ now?” Todd asked. He didn't turn around. He was breaking trail, but Doug was right on his ass; they could hear each other just fine. 
“Are you serious? Who wants to remember sweat? ” 
When they'd been soaked and shivering, neither of them could have imagined being too hot again today, but the sun had come back out and baked them dry-and continued to beat down on them without mercy. Todd was wearing out his forehead with the back of his hand, and his shirt was starting to get soaked again, too-this time from within. 
The first kilometer across the ridgetop had been a piece of cake, but as soon as they started down into the canyon they hit a wall of brush, and it was no easier to bull through on foot than it had been in the car. Even after they got into the trees again, the understory was choked with fallen logs and bushes and rock outcrops. The footing was treacherous even without sacks of provisions slung over their shoulders like Santa's toybag, but the awkwardness and the weight made them work twice as hard for every step. 
All the same, the chest pain took Todd completely by surprise. It felt like he'd whacked into a tree or something, but then the pain shot down into his left arm and zapped his thumb and forefinger like a short in a virt-suit. His vision blurred, and his stomach gave a warning lurch like it was about to send lunch back up for a refund. 
He dropped his bag and sat down on a log before he could fall on it. 
“You all right?” Doug asked. 
“Yeah, I-ow! No, maybe not.” He rubbed at his chest, just under his left nipple. “Son of a bitch, that hurts.” 
“You're spammin’ me, dude.” 
“I ... wish I was.” Now it felt like somebody was running a lit torch up and down his arm, except for his fingers, which had gone numb. 
Doug dropped his sack and knelt down in front of him. “Oh, no. No! You can't be havin’ a heart attack. Not here!” “Good,” Todd said through clenched teeth. “I was ... startin’ to get worried.” 
Doug stood up again and looked away, turning his head from side to side. He was trying to link with the web. Todd wished him luck. They'd been trying it off and on without success ever since they started walking, but maybe this time he'd snag some signal skip or something. 
Or maybe not. Doug knelt back down and said, “What can I do?” 
“Water,” Todd croaked. His throat felt like a baseball had lodged in it. Doug snatched his canteen off his belt and handed it over, and Todd took a cautious swallow. It didn't help much, but it didn't make him hurt any worse, either, and it sure as hell couldn't hurt to replace some of the water he'd sweated out. 
He took another swallow. The clamp in his chest seemed to ease up some, so he took another. 
“That's better.” He flexed the fingers of his left hand. The tendons or blood vessels or whatever still felt like they should be incandescent with the heat, but at least he could feel his fingers again. 
“You gonna live?” Doug asked. 
“Yeah.” Todd concentrated on proving himself right, taking deep breaths and rubbing his chest and arm. The pain slowly eased. At last he said, “So that's what that feels like. Let me tell you, it's even less fun than gettin’ hit by lightning.” 
“I know.” 
“You've had a heart attack?” Todd couldn't imagine it. Not Doug. Mister Exercise himself? 
“No, no,” Doug said, waving his right hand dismissively. “But you were broadcasting, and I didn't want to shut you down if it was your last gasp, you know?” 
“Oh.” That was more than he'd expected of him, actually. Then a thought hit him and he narrowed his eyes. “You didn't record that.” 
“Well, yeah,” Doug said, “I was thinking last will and testament, you know? But if you're not going to snuff it just yet, I'll delete it.” 
“Yeah. Thanks.” Once through that kind of agony was enough. At least it was short-lived. Todd kept taking deep breaths, and within a couple of minutes, he felt surprisingly good again. He tried standing, and that worked OK, too. 
Doug stopped him when he reached for his bag. “Oh no you don't. You're staying right here until I can get you an ambulance.” “Screw that,” Todd said. “Even if you make it out, you'd never find me again in a million years. We've got to get down to the stream, at least.” 
Doug didn't like that idea at all. He turned once around like a tourist looking for an information kiosk, then suddenly said, “Wait a minute. Neither one of us has to go anywhere. It's dry enough now, we can start a fire. That'll attract somebody.” 
Todd shook his head. “It would if we could, but fires are illegal in the national forest.” 
“So we pay a fine. If it gets you-” 
“I mean neither one of us brought any matches, and we don't have a laser or a camp stove, either. Unless you know how to twirl sticks or strike a spark off granite, we're not lighting any signal fires.” 
Doug frowned and kicked at the log Todd was sitting on, but at last he said, “OK, you're right, but you're going to rest for a good half hour before you even take a step, and you're not carrying anything when you do. Clear?” 
* * *
It was a long half hour. It was an even longer two hours down to the stream, and an interminable fifteen-minute argument over whether or not to walk on down to whatever lake was next in the chain and see if they could find a camper with a weblink. At last Doug relented, mostly to keep Todd from blowing an artery over being pampered, but when they got to a rock-rimmed pond maybe fifty meters across, they found it deserted. 
“That's ‘cause this ain't a lake,” Todd said. “Nobody wants to camp by a puddle. Hell, I could piss halfway across it.” 
“That's against forest regulations, isn't it?” asked Doug. 
Todd chuckled. “Yeah, so it is.” He looked at it again. In truth, it was a pretty nice little camp site, and the west rim of the canyon was already in shadow as the sun set behind it. It would be dark before they could make it to the next lake in the chain. Then he heard a splash out in the water and turned to see ripples spreading out from a spot just a few meters off the bank. “All right!” he said, “I stand corrected. Let's make camp.” 
They laid out the tent on a patch of grass across the trail from the water. It was still too close for regulations, but Doug insisted they be near enough to hear anyone walking by. “And if a ranger tries to give us a ticket, fine. At least he can call for help.” 
“I don't need rescuing,” Todd said. 
“Like hell you don't.” 
“I feel fine.” He slapped himself on the chest. 
It felt like he'd stabbed himself with a knife. His heart gave a twist that felt like it really meant business this time, and his legs buckled beneath him. He couldn't even raise his arms to keep from smacking his head on the ground. 
“Todd!” He could hear a tent pole clatter to the rocks as Doug dropped it and came running. 
He tried to raise himself up, but none of his muscles would obey his commands. It took a supreme effort of will just to breathe. Liquid fire poured though his entire body. He bit down on a scream, then managed to croak out, “Those ... are the ... stupidest last words...” 
“Don't you die on me, you stupid shit!” 
“Sorry. I don't ... think I've got a choice.” 
His ears were ringing like a bad weblink, but he heard Doug say, “Core dump! Core dump!” 
“What?” 
“Uplink into my implant! It'll hold you.” 
Todd sincerely doubted if it would. Not even a partner-swapping sex rig could hold a person's entire psyche psyche, but at the moment he didn't see that he had much choice. A thousand little dwarves with hammers and chisels were smashing their way through his body, and it wouldn't be long before they made it to his brain. He hated the idea of taking the pain along with him, but he didn't have time to edit; he just threw open the doors and spewed everything he could through the link before he passed out. 
* * *
“We've got to hike out now,” Doug said. It was different being in the same head with him. The implant was a completely separate system, but it used the same peripherals as Doug's natural brain: even though the body's lips didn't move, the input came in as audio, and Todd's response went out as voice. 
“We'd trip on a rock and bust our necks,” he said. “Or get lost and wander around for a week until you have a heart attack. Forget it. My body's already dead. Let's get some rest and walk out in the morning.” It surprised him how dispassionate he could be about it, but he supposed that was an effect of being digitally stored. Another cool effect was the ability to edit; the pain that had blasted him down had been sent where laps go when you stand up. “If we get help soon enough, we might be able to revive you!” Doug insisted. Todd saw his arms wave, then his head tilted down and he saw himself lying face-up on the ground. He looked ... well, he looked dead, and smelled like it, too. 
He looked away. “Hah. Body's already startin’ to stink, and it's at least four hours to the trailhead. It'll be bear bait before we even get there.” 
“All the more reason to get the heck out of here then,” Doug said. 
Todd snorted. “Bears've got radio collars. One gets within sniffin’ distance, we don't have to walk at all.” 
Doug fumed silently for a while, but he eventually gave in. Todd was right, and he knew it. 
It took them a couple of hours to get used to sharing his body, but as long as they didn't both try to use the same muscles at the same time, they managed OK. While the Sun set and the sky turned from blue to red to purple, they opened a pack of self-cooking turkey dogs and washed them down with a can of beer, which turned out to be a disappointment to Todd. He could taste it just fine, but it didn't do anything else for him. 
“Damn it,” he said. “You'd think a guy who'd just croaked could at least get drunk afterward.” “Don't complain,” Doug said. “If I hadn't had this implant you'd be croaked for real.” 
“Might as well be,” Todd said. “It'll be years before I can get a clone up to age. I'll probably wind up in a parrot body ‘til then.” 
“You don't have a clone in storage?” Doug asked incredulously. 
“No.” Todd felt the shame wash through him, and he almost deleted it, but he decided maybe he deserved to live with it for a while. It was pretty stupid not to have a backup in this day and age. He wasn't that old, and he'd thought he could get away with it for another decade or so and save the storage costs, but he'd gambled and damned near lost. Maybe a little shame would keep him from doing it again. 
What an idiot. And right before his fishing day, too. 
On the other hand, he was still here, wasn't he? And they didn't exactly have a pressing need to go anywhere at the crack of dawn, now, did they? 
He reached over to the pile of equipment they'd carried with them and rummaged around until he found his fishing gear. 
“What are you doing?” 
“Puttin’ together my rod.” “What the hell for?” 
“I know there's at least one trout in that lake. I aim to catch him at first light.” 
“No way! I'm not going fishing with your dead corpse watchin’ me from the bank. Besides, if they catch me fishing without a license, I'm screwed even worse than you.” 
“We've got a license. We got the body if they want a retina print, and I'll be running the arms here if they want to get technical. We're OK.” 
“OK? Jesus Christ, Todd! We are so fucking far from OK we couldn't find it with a goddamned map! You're dead. Can't you get it through your thick ... well, I mean...” 
“Yeah, yeah, I'm dead. Big deal. That's no reason to ruin a fishing trip.” 
Doug tossed up his hands in disgust, but Todd caught the rod on the way back down and finished threading the line through the guides. He took a white-winged Royal Coachman out of his fly box and tied it to the tippet, then tried a few practice casts. “Yeah, this'll do,” he said. “You've got good arms.” 
“You're totally insane,” Doug replied. 
* * * He was still singing the same song in the morning, but Todd noticed his ghostly presence in their arms when he made his first cast out over the lake. The Sun was just peeking over the flank of the round-topped mountain to the east, and mist rose off the water as the morning air started to lift with the first heat of day. The water's surface was mirror-smooth, except for the single ripple where the fly had hit. 
“Here, fishy, fishy, fishy,” Todd whispered. 
“Oh, give me a break,” Doug grated. 
“Hey, everybody's got their rituals.” 
Doug didn't reply. Todd tugged the fly into the air, whipped it behind him, then cast again a little to the left. Nothing struck at it this time, either, but he heard a splash and saw a ripple spread from the other side of the lake. 
“Think you can hit that, hot shot?” 
“Maybe.” Todd cast again, stripping out a little more line as he did. “Let's see.” He let the fly settle and waited a few seconds, then stripped out another couple of meters and cast again. It was like riding a bicycle; you never forgot how. 
He had a pretty good stretch of line out, but his rod was a nine-foot spun diamond; it had flex enough to load the whole reelfull if he could keep from snagging it in a tree or looping it back on itself. He was already reaching three-quarters of the way across the lake. Just a couple more casts and he'd land the fly right on target. 
But Doug had to get in on the act. Just as Todd whipped the line back, he felt the ghostly extra hand beside his own, and he twitched just enough to send a ripple down the line. He snapped his wrist forward, but it was too late: the line bellied out and lost its tension, then came flying forward in a huge snarl that slapped into his back and draped over him like a net. He felt a sharp sting in his right earlobe and reached up to find the fly hooked there, the barb all the way through the flesh. 
“Ow! Damn it! That's my Why don't you keep your goddamn earlobe! hands out of my business!? ” 
“Your business? It's my body!” 
“Serves you right for messing with my cast. Hold still.” Todd pinched the earlobe hard with his fingers and with one quick tug yanked the fly out. Doug tried to stop him as soon as he realized what he was doing, but it was too late. “Ow! Damn it, you could have at least mashed the barb.” 
“Jesus, how long has it been since you've fished? Flies don't have barbs anymore. Just a bump to keep ‘em from falling out.” Todd held the Coachman up in front of Doug's eyes so he could see the thick spot just behind the point. The white wings were tinged red with blood, and the iridescent green body was soaked in it. 
“Gah,” Doug said. He tried to toss it in the water, but Todd stopped him. 
“Blood is good. It'll attract the fish. Wait ‘til I'm ready.” 
Doug gurgled something incomprehensible, but Todd ignored him. He reeled in the snarled line, then started false-casting, whipping the fly forward and back without letting it touch the water, stripping out more line each time until he had enough to reach the middle of the lake. Then he snapped it forward one last time and let it settle gently through the rising mist onto the water. 
Nothing. No ripples anywhere, except for the ones from the fly and the line. Todd gave it a few minutes, but when the fly started to sink, he pulled it back and cast again. 
“Give it up,” Doug said. “You're not going to catch anything.” 
“Says you.” 
“Yeah, says me. It's my body you're using, and I'm getting tired of hanging out here with my metaphorical thumb up my metaphorical butt while you waste time trying to prove what a hot-shot fisherman you are.” 
“Oh, come on. I just got started. Give me a chance here.” 
“No. It's time to go.” Doug took control of the arms and started to reel in the fly, dragging it across the water like a boat under tow. 
“Stop it! You'll spook the fish!” Todd struggled to whip the fly out of the water, but with Doug still grappling for control he managed to yank it straight at his face. Instinct made both men throw their hands up to ward off the incoming fly, but it managed to slip past their fingers and slap them on the nose before it fell to the ground at their feet. 
Doug picked up the rod and held it in both hands, ready to bring it down on his knee and snap it in two, but Todd fought him, and slowly Doug let up the pressure. 
His voice was cold as ice. “All right, buddy. You want to catch a fish? Let's catch a fish.” 
He turned away from the lake and set the rod on the bank, then walked across the trail to their camp, taking out his pocket knife on the way. When he got to Todd's body, he bent down next to the head, and before Todd could react, he sliced off Todd's right earlobe. 
“Hey!” Todd winced with sympathetic pain, but in fact he had felt nothing. 
“Hey what? You want to catch a fish; well, this is you catching a fish.” He marched back to the edge of the lake, picked up the Coachman, and stabbed the hook through the earlobe. Then he reeled in about half the line, whipped the rest behind him in a passable back-cast, and lobbed it out into the water. It made a soft splash when it hit. Not bad, Todd had to admit. Just enough of a disturbance to attract the fish's attention, but not enough to spook him. 
Still. His earlobe! “It's illegal to use bait,” he said. “Not to mention desecrating a corpse.” 
“So sue me.” They stood there on the bank, fuming and fishing, while the last of the steam rose off the water. 
“He's not going to take it.” 
“Give him time.” 
“So now you're the one with all day to kill?” 
“I don't want you to go home empty-handed. I'd never hear the end of it if you did.” 
“Oh, come on, I'm not that-” 
There was a swirl of silver, and the line twitched. 
Todd tugged at the wrist, but Doug held it firm. “Don't set it yet!” 
“I know how to catch a fish.” 
“Yeah, with a fly. This is bait. Let ‘im swallow it.” 
“He'll spit it out as soon as he realizes what it is.” 
“It's meat. He'll eat it.” 
The line pulled tighter, loosened, then tightened again. “Now!” Doug said, just as Todd could take it no longer. They both yanked back on the rod at the same time, and a silver rainbow trout the size of their forearm arched out of the water, shaking its head against the sideways tug in its mouth. 
“Got him!” 
“Let me do it!” 
“No, it's my ear; let me do it.” “Fifty-fifty. You take the pole; I'll reel.” 
“All right.” 
The fish rose again. Together, they played it toward shore. 

Copyright © 2002 by Jerry Oltion.