PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

Billy loved the slough and stank of rotten smelt and oily mud

most of the time. He tried to be normal like the other kids at school, once,

so took clarinet lessons for two weeks until one day,

quite by accident, he dropped his rented instrument on the classroom floor

and the teacher was so outraged he kicked him out for good.

Billy felt strange carrying the clarinet home. It was

of no use, now. He was a music class reject. He was 11 years old.

One afternoon, while running from bullies, he scaled the school's

chainlink fence and landed on the bank of the slough. As he did, he saw that the city

had drained most of the slough water into the San Francisco bay,

so all that remained was a stream of water the size of a small creek,

and to Billy's delight he noticed there were hundreds of very large striped bass

stranded in the stream. He rushed home, got a baseball bat, then ran back to what was left of the slough.

He made his way to the water through knee-deep, gray-black mud, reached a thirty-pound striper,

then smashed its head with the bat. Young Billy lugged the fish home, cut its guts out in the back yard,

and just as he tossed the guts into an empty milk carton his Chinese neighbor appeared and asked

if the bass was for sale. Billy thought he might get a dollar for the fish, and was delighted

when the guy offered $5. A candy bar cost only five cents, back then. The Chinaman wanted the guts, too.

Billy always wondered about that.