If Catfish Had Nine Lives(3)

            Jerome squinted and thought a moment. “I surely don’t know, then.”

            I pulled my attention away from the water and peered at him from under the brim of my hat. Though we were in shaded woods, a few stripes of sun were able to shoot through the high limbs and new spring leaves. Jerome was patterned; the parts of him in shade were more solid than the parts that were being hit by sunlight. In the dark—and when I was in the general vicinity—the ghosts became dimensional and touchable, though they didn’t feel like people as much as they just felt like something solid.

            “You’re just going to hang around, then?” I said.

            “I don’t have much choice,” Jerome said, but then he cleared his throat. “I mean, if I had a choice, Isabelle, of course I’d want to . . . what were the words you used? Hang around? I’d want to hang around with you, but my coming and going isn’t something I control, you know that.”

            I smiled fully and tipped my straw hat back. It was a gesture I’d seen him do many times with his own hat. Suddenly, I felt a tug on the line.

            “Oh, here we go.” I stood from the fallen tree trunk I’d been sitting on. I pulled the pole and wound the line.

            “That was quick,” Jerome said as he stood and moved next to me.

            “Much better than real worms,” I said, but I was startled by the strong pull from the sunken end of the line. “Hey!”

            “Don’t lose him,” Jerome said as he crouched down and peered into the murky water.

            The water was too dark and just slightly too deep to see the fish until I got it a little closer to the surface. But as I wound and pulled some more, it fought hard.

            “It’s a big one,” I said.

            Jerome looked up and tipped his hat back, just like I had done a moment before. “Once I caught a catfish that was so big it might have wrestled me back into the water.”

            My forearms already felt twinges of pain up to my elbows.

            “This one might be related to that one,” I said.

            “I don’t know. I bet mine was bigger. I used a real worm.”

            I laughed, but only for an instant. I had to pull and wind some more.

            “I might have to let this one go,” I said. Those were words I’d never uttered before and never thought I would, but this creature was besting me quickly.

            Jerome stood and put his hands on his hips.

            “No, you can pull him in. Don’t give up yet.”

            As much as I didn’t want to give in to any fish, this one was rapidly becoming not worth the effort.

            “I don’t know,” I said.

            “Here, let me help,” Jerome said.

            Neither of us took a moment to consider that it would be impossible for him to help. Though he’d been striped in shadow and slightly more opaque in parts, we weren’t surrounded by darkness, so he couldn’t be completely solid.

            Nevertheless, he put his hands over mine and together we pulled, yanked, and wound the line.

            An eternity of about half a minute later, the fish was at the surface.

            “That is the biggest fish I’ve ever seen,” Jerome said. “Keep bringing him in.”

            The Loch Ness Catfish Monster, as I’d suddenly decided to name him, fought, writhed, twisted, yanked back, and might have growled, if such a thing were possible.