The next morning, the narrator's lawyer, Mr. Shine, visited their home looking weary and downcast. Despite his appearance, the narrator's mother trusted Mr. Shine, having previously hired him to help with legal troubles involving the narrator's father. After some hints from their mother to leave the adults alone, the narrator took his fishing rod and biked to Snake Creek, where he enjoyed fishing under a bridge. Previously, he had helped a homeless woman he found there by giving her a fish, but she was gone this time. While fishing, he encountered Jasper Jr. and his friend Bull, who approached in a johnboat. Jasper Jr. playfully taunted the narrator, leading to an unexpected fight where Jasper punched him in the face. Despite the pain, the narrator chose not to retaliate, sensing Jasper's surprise at his resilience.
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The next morning the lawyer stopped by our house. Mr. Shine looked about a thousand years old, but Mom said he knew his way around the courthouse. She had hired him twice before to get my father out of trouble.
Mr. Shine put his briefcase on the kitchen table and sat down. He looked mopey and gray, and his eyelids drooped. Abbey said he reminded her of Eeyore from Winnie-the-Pooh.
My mother made a pot of coffee and began dropping hints that Abbey and I should leave them alone. Abbey grabbed a bagel out of the toaster and ran off to play on the computer. I got my spinning rod from the garage and biked up to the drawbridge at Snake Creek.
The police won't let you fish from the top of the bridge because of the traffic, but you can go down underneath and cast from the sandbags, in the shade. Sometimes homeless people sleep under the bridges, but they usually don't bother anybody. The last time I'd been to Snake Creek, some woman in an army jacket had made a campsite high on the bank, under the concrete braces. She'd even started a small fire, burning the wood slats from a broken stone-crab trap. I
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gave her a nice mangrove snapper that I caught, and she had it cleaned and cooking over the flames in five minutes flat. She said it was the best meal she'd eaten in a year. The next day Abbey and I went back with some homemade bread and a pound of fresh Gulf shrimp, but the lady was gone. I never even got her name.
On the day Mom was meeting with Mr. Shine, nobody was under the bridge when I got there. The tide was run- ning in from the ocean, and schools of finger mullet were holding in the still water behind the pilings. Every so often they'd start jumping, trying to escape some bigger fish that was prowling for lunch. I started casting a white bucktail and in no time jumped a baby tarpon that wasn't even ten pounds. Then I hooked something heavy, probably a snook, that ran out a hundred feet and broke the line.
As I was tying on another jig, I heard an outboard engine—it was a johnboat, maybe twelve feet long, motor- ing along Snake Creek. Two people were in the boat, and as it drew closer I recognized them as Jasper Jr. and an older kid named Bull.
They spotted me right away. I probably should have taken off, but I was really enjoying myself, fishing under that bridge. So I set down my spinning rod and watched Jasper Jr. nose the johnboat into the shallows.
Bull was in the bow. He climbed out first and looped a rope around one of the pilings. He's a hefty guy, but that's not how he got his nickname-people call him Bull because you can't believe a word he says. For instance, he told every-
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one at school he was dropping out to play double-A ball for the Baltimore Orioles. This is at age sixteen, right? We all knew that Bull couldn't catch a pop fly if it landed in his lap, so we weren't exactly surprised to see him bagging gro- ceries that spring at the Winn-Dixie.
After Bull tied off the johnboat, he called up to me: "Hey, buttface, better run for your life. Jasper's got a speargun!"
"Yeah, right," I said.
When Jasper Jr. hopped out of the boat, I saw that he didn't have a speargun or any other weapon. Even so, run- ning away would have been an excellent idea. I just didn't feel like it.
Jasper Jr. walked up and asked, "What're you lookin' at?" "Absolutely nothing," I said with a straight face.
"I told you I was gonna find you, didn't I?"
I knew that Jasper Jr. wasn't looking for me at Snake Creek-he and Bull were heading out to poach lobsters or pull some other mischief.
But I played along. "Well, you found me. Now what?" That's when he socked me in the right eye. It hurt, too. Jasper Jr. seemed surprised that I didn't fall down.
So was Bull. He said, "You got a hard head, for a buttface."
The way my cheekbone was throbbing, I figured that Jasper Jr.'s knuckles weren't feeling so good, either. He was trying to act like a tough guy, but I noticed that his eyes were watering from the pain. I probably could have knocked him flat, but I didn't.
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