"He Sets Me In the Stream," a Story by David James Duncan

Photo: Thomas Ives

THE OLD STORYTELLERS OF INDIA, according to my brother Peter, said that when you reached the end of even the longest story you should still be able to remember all the way back to the beginning. I have to work to remember what I had for lunch yesterday. The only thing I remember from the paper this morning is the baseball box scores. But the one and only time my father took no one but me fishing I can still remember the smell of the hot gray cloth that lined my door of the Forty Ford, the motes of dust that burst from that cloth when I slammed the door shut, the stifling heat though all the windows were down; I remember Papa at the wheel, a warming beer between his legs, tuning in the radio (some announcer I’d never heard before, sounded like an Adventist preacher, I wished Dizzy Dean and Pee Wee did the play-by-play for radio and TV both); I remember Whitey Ford still pitching, the score still knotted at 3, Moose Skowron headed for the hospital to have his head examined, the Indians up again, top of the tenth. But for me the game had turned boring. All I wanted was to get to The Wind.

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