13)

About that time the other two kids came wandering in complaining they were bored. Which I think in kid terms meant lonely.

“Alright, time to go fishing, we got a whiny teenager to feed.”

Sara protested “I wasn’t whining, I just want to eat something that isn’t going to give you a heart attack old man, you’re in the risk group.”

Brat. “I’m a creature out of legend, the only risk group I’m in involves going up against the Lone Ranger.”

All three of them looked confused. Ami asked “Who?”

I pressed my hand against my chest. “Now that hurt, more than the door did kiddo, I’d tell you to watch the movies, but both of them sucked, so I’ll just tell you the story instead while we fish, now follow me.”

The girls got two of the cheap rods I had gotten for family, along with another a nice one for me and a little kid’s one for Aran, the boy got to carry my old zip up lunch bag with a frozen ice pack, four bottle of water and a cheap plastic bowl with a clear cover from the colonel’s full of dirt and sawdust, the sight of which made him raise his brows in curiosity.

He looked up, “What’s that?”

“Worms.”

He smiled.

“Don’t name them, they’re for the fish.”

He nodded solemnly “I know, for the hooks.”

“Good boy” I messed his hair, he kicked me in the ankle, I laughed and decided to that was going to be our thing until he got big enough for the kicks to hurt.

I led the kiddos out to the dock, ignoring their exchange of concerned looks, and questions.

“Are we really going to catch fish?”

“Did you say worms, I’m not touching worms?”

“Should we have life preservers on, what If Aran falls in.”

I got them to the dock, it was pretty short as the lake wasn’t that big, in fact it wasn’t even really a lake but more of a very wide, swampy section of the river that had gotten dug out and shored up on my side to make a spot deep enough to swim in and launch a boat with out having to wade out in the muck and swamp plants, over the years it had sat abandoned some of the retaining wall had collapsed and cat tails and other plants had grown in, but the dock was long enough to get you out to were the water was deeper.

I had decided to not repair the retaining walls because every estate needed some picturesque ruins, and having them built from scratch seemed like cheating.

A folly on the other hand, well I did have the money, just needed a idea, maybe a tomb?

“We are going to catch fish, or at least try, I will bait your hooks since my dad, your great grandfather, did the same for when I was a kid, and I will even clean what ever we catch, but you will have to watch if you plan to eat, so next time you can do it yourself, and if Aran falls in, I will toss one of you in to save him as all you have to do is stand up.”

I thought about it while they considered all that. “You do know how to swim right?”

Sara was still giving me a dirty look from the toss them in part, but Ami had started to pick up on just ignoring anything that was obviously just teasing, “We had a pool, an in ground one, but it just had a liner in it so we couldn’t jump in.”

“Well you can jump in mine, it even has a diving board, but don’t go in unless I'm there, and I’m serious enough about that I'm going to need you all to promise me on the no unsupervised swimming.”

The oldest rolled her eyes but nodded, the younger promised and repeated it to the boy so he could promise as well, the look in his eyes making it clear he hadn't been following the conversation.

The girls were horrified seeing the still squirming worms put on the hook while the boy watched in fascination, but he did run, wide eyed, off the dock as Sara pulled up a blue gill and starting whipping the pole around to keep the fish dangling in the air as she tried to keep it from touching her, nearly going off the dock as she did so until Sara grabbed her, and got a fish upside her head for her efforts.

She screamed in disgust. Good times

Ignoring her scream I stated in. “So back in the old west their was a bad man named Butch Cavendish...”

We got in a few hours of fishing, a origin story, and enough fish in the bucket to feed at least the oldest girl before I got the call that my new door was about twenty minutes out.

“Time to head in kids, next time we’ll talk about Zorro.”