The Cypress Trap

Chapter 10

Within the hour, Owen and Darryl were on the lake fishing. Neither spoke. They just fished. Owen watched his cork jerk under the water. He yanked up on his pole. A bare hook jumped into the air and plopped back into the water. He said something under his breath and Darryl looked over his shoulder and grinned.

“Give them time to take the bait,” Darryl said.

Owen lifted his pole and caught the hook swinging back toward him.

A few seconds later, baited again with a minnow, the hook disappeared into the water. The cork ran out away from the side of the boat, tugged twice, then slowly came back in line with the others. 

“This is what happens when you take your wife fishin’.” Darryl scratched the gray stubble on his protruding chin and pushed his ball cap back on his head. He wiped his sweaty brow with the back of his hand. “Now she’s all mad at you and--.”

“She stays mad at me.”

“Still, I don’t feel good about leav’n her in the truck,” Darryl said.

“She didn’t want to go out on the boat and she didn’t want to stay in town,” Owen said. “What could she do.”

“I don’t know.” Darryl seemed to be thinking about it a moment. “Is she really mad about some kids harassing you or is this more about losin’ your job?”

“That and a hundred other things.”

Darryl turned his head and pushed his glasses up further along the bridge of his nose. Sweat dripped down his forehead.  “Let me give me you some money. Just until you find another job”

“I don’t need it. I don’t want it.”

“Is she making you sell the boat?” Darryl wiped his brow again. “Let me buy it from you. That way it stays in the family.”

“I’m not sellin’ my boat.”

“Okay. Well, then I want to do something. Things have been going great for me. Business been--”

Owen cut him off. “I don’t want to hear it.”

“And I’m still dating that Puerto Rican woman.”

“Who does that? Who just picks up a woman while they’re buying Cap’n Crunch and a six pack of Corona’s?”

“It was raisin bran and Corona Light,” he said. “And, she’s a model, you know.” 

“Yeah, you told me.”

“All her friends are models too.” Darryl tucked the rod and reel under his arm and pulled a half eaten Snickers bar from his tackle box. Taking a step as he unwrapped the bar, he slipped and fell to his knee, nearly dumping all his lures and hooks across the bow of the boat.

Owen ignored it. Giving Darryl a chance to cast his line, he finally said, “I know. You told me.”

Darryl tossed the candy wrapper into the tackle box and shut it. “Did I tell you they grow ‘em in hot model farms?”

“What?”

“I heard it on the news. These promoters pluck these girls out of obscurity and send them to these farms where they, I don’t know, give ‘em plenty of sunshine and water ‘em once a week.”

“That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard.” Owen reeled in his line. “Where are these farms?”

“All over.”

Owen looked over at his buddy and watched him hook another lure then cast it over the side of the boat. After a couple of minutes of silence, he cleared his throat. “I’m thinking about moving away.”