Anne set the phone down on the counter and went to the bottom of the stairs.
"Pam?" she shouted.
"What?" Pam answered, and stood in her doorway to look down the staircase.
"Mr. Thorn wants to know if you want to go fishing with him. He's going up to the lake this weekend."
"Yeah, I'll go," Pam said, suddenly feeling very excited. He did it. He figured out how to get her alone for a weekend.
"Ok. I'll tell him you'll be ready when he comes by to pick you up."
Pam rushed back into her room, filled with nervous excitement. She rubbed her legs together and stimulated her clitoris. Before she knew it, she was having an orgasm and Mr. Thorn wouldn't be there to pick her up for two more days.
By Friday afternoon she had packed everything she might need for the weekend, including spare clothes in case she gets wet, sweaters in case it gets cold, toilet paper just in case, her pillow, her swimsuit, her Walkman and tapes, spare batteries, a sharp knife, and a new jar of lube jelly, just in case. She set the two bags, along with her old fishing pole, by the front door, ready to be loaded into Mr. Thorn's truck when he finally arrived. She was all set for a weekend of fishing and fucking. She was dressed in hiking boots, heavy socks, old jeans, one of Ethan's old plaid workshirts, and her old wool sweater. If she had any luck at all, the weatherman would be right and she wouldn't need the long underwear or the down-filled jacket, but they were packed, just in case.
Five hours after loading everything into the truck, the sun was just dropping away when they arrived at the campsite. Down the dirt track through the woods, where the two of them drove in his pickup, towing his aluminum bassboat and trailer, it was already dark. The track led for two miles through the forest until it opened on Red Lake, Mr. Thorn's secret fishing hole, and the red sun setting just beyond the trees, which, from the reflection of it on the smooth water, gave the lake its name.
Where the wall of trees ended was a short stretch of land that reached down to the edge of the water. Along this piece of land, a good distance away from the track, was a flat, bare spot of dirt and a black fire pit beside it, surrounded by a stack of rocks, where Mr. Thorn set up camp, year after year. They pitched the tent on the bare spot, gathered wood, and built a fire, all before it got too dark to see.
All through the dinner of beans, ham, some apples, and a sandwich, Mr. Thorn told stories of his past fishing trips in that very spot. Some of them she knew to be true, and others she knew to be way over exaggerated. They stayed up until about eleven, smoking his strong, hand-rolled cigarettes, when Mr. Thorn decided it was time to go to bed if they were going to get up at six in the morning.
When he said that she suddenly got nervous. All through dinner and listening to his stories she had forgotten about having sex and it came right back to her all at once, like waking her from a sleepy dream. But she wasn't frightened. Anxious was more like it. She wanted him to screw her and she was nervous with anticipation. She didn't mention anything about it, though, because she knew that the way he wanted it was for her to do as he told her. So they rolled out their sleeping bags and stripped down to their underwear. She was on her knees on her open sleeping bag with her back turned to him, removing her bra, waiting for him to give her a command, or just say anything. She pulled off the bra and turned around, but he was already in his sleeping bag, looking at her, waiting to put out the lantern. She couldn't believe it. She was facing him in the flickering light, wearing only tiny panties, her nipples as hard as perfect diamonds, and he didn't even notice.
"Good night," he said, and blew out the lantern.
She was dumfounded, kneeling there on her sleeping bag in the darkness, still waiting anxiously to be screwed. It was so much unlike him. She climbed into the bag. Maybe tomorrow, after fishing.
She didn't hear anything else all night until Mr. Thorn woke her up. The sky outside the tent was still dark.
"What time is it?" she said, sitting up. Mr. Thorn was already dressed and carrying a mug of steaming coffee.
"Five thirty," he said and handed her the mug.
She took it with a grimace and a groan, then a yawn.
"The fish aren't even awake yet."
"The fish never sleep. Drink your coffee."
Less than thirty minutes later they were on the boat in the middle of the lake. Mr. Thorn sat at the front, Pam sat in the middle. He controlled the trolling motor that hung in the water off the front of the boat and tooled them around from spot to spot. He was using a spinner and she was casting with a purple rubber worm, but they couldn't hit anything bigger than baby bass and sunfish. After an hour they moved to a place around the bend in the lake, and after an hour there, they quit for the morning without a significant catch.
At around eight a.m. they had a breakfast of instant oatmeal and fruit, and prepared to wait until late afternoon, before dusk, when they would go back out on the lake and try to catch dinner. They settled into comfortable sand holes by the water, smoking his cigarettes, and drinking thick, strong, black coffee.
As the sun rose over their heads the air got warmer and they shed some of the warmer clothes they had worn on the lake. They talked about unimportant things and he mentioned something about landing a big old bass that weekend, but she was wondering when he was going to get around to doing it to her.
She had stripped down to her plain white t-shirt and old, faded jeans, the same as him, and if she could see his nipples through his shirt, then he could see her nipples through her shirt. She wasn't even wearing a bra. There was no one around, so why didn't he climb on top of her and bang her right there? She looked at him. He was staring off dreamily into the sky, thinking about that dumb old bass.
In the afternoon, when the day turned hot, she put on her blue bikini and went in the water to cool off. Mr. Thorn watched her silently from the shore, but didn't come in with her. She had hoped the bikini would finally turn him on, like it did when she was sunbathing, but nothing happened. When dusk came around and the sun was just over the trees in the west, she swam back to shore to find him and tell him she was hungry.
"Good. It makes you fish better when you know that you've got to have something to eat," he said.
By the light of the lantern, out on the lake, she changed from her purple worm to a spinner, since Mr. Thorn had already caught his dinner, a good three pound bass. She cut the worm from the line with her teeth, looped the line through the eye-hook on the spinner, wound it six times, pushed the end through loop in the line, pulled it tight, tugged it, then bit off the excess line hanging out. But her luck wasn't any better with the spinner. All she pulled up were weeds, she didn't even catch any sunfish. They cooked his catch, and, although there was just enough meat for one person and she ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, she had a few bites of the fish.
Later, after dinner and cigarettes, she expected him to tell her to go into the tent and undress, but all he said was, "Let's get to bed early tonight, and try to get out on that lake before the sun comes up."
And then it dawned on her, like turning on a light in a dark room and suddenly seeing clearly. The man loved fishing more than he loved fucking. Was that ok, or did the man have his priorities out of whack? She decided to be naked when he came into the tent, so she left him to put out the fire and went inside to undress.
