The Sporting Club by Thomas McGuane Page B

below his ears. The stretched T-shirt formed clean and square around the Luckies and the red spot now looked like a wound under the cloth. “Let me put it this way, I was in the live bait business.”
    â€œLike what kind of live bait?” Quinn asked; something quite intense had fallen over the conversation.
    â€œWorms.”
    Quinn was conscious of the sound of the trees around them breathing in the wind.
    â€œWorms? How did you get the worms?”
    â€œLike everybody else,” said the man after a pause. “I got the worms like everybody else. Okay?”
    â€œI want something more specific than that.”
    â€œLook, you get a old crank telephone and cut off the phone part so all you got left is the box and crank. Then there is two wires and onto each one you hook a rod. Okay, you go out in a field and put the rods into the ground, right? And give the crank a turn, am I right? Then what happens?”
    â€œWorms…”
    â€œWorms pop out of the ground, big nightcrawlers, wrigglers, red worms, the whole bit. Now do you believe I was in the bait racket?”
    â€œI never said I didn’t believe … you.”
    â€œListen to me: here is how you work the grasshoppers. First, build you a frame onto the front of an old car. Next, make you a cheesecloth net for the frame which is longer on the bottom than on the top. Then drive across a field with the whole apparatus at top speed. Do you follow? It can get dangerous. Check the net ever couple passes, are you with me? Sometimes there is a ton of hoppers. Now I see you are looking for the dangerous part: oncet I was collecting hoppers when the car lit into a enormous chuck hole and I pitched over the hood and buried myself in about four feet of them slimy hoppers. If I had of been knocked unconscious I would have smothered under them bugs. As it was, it near spoilt the live bait business for my part.—Now do you believe me?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œSee how it was dangerous and could of kilt me?”
    â€œYou bet I do, Earl.”
    â€œI handled frogs and frog harness, crickets, June bugs and hellgrammites. I was in the live bait business hand and foot. I had to cater to every live bait need. One fella would fish for bass with nothing but live baby mice. I had to have them. Another fella made a paste out of fireflies which he used to fish for brook trout. I had to have fireflies.” He looked to Quinn as though for a long expected question.
    Quinn didn’t know what it might be but asked, uncertainly, “Where was this?”
    â€œBoy you are full of queshtons. Okay, this was a few mile north of Ishpeming on the Yellow Dog river.”
    â€œWas that … a good location?”
    â€œA bad location.”
    â€œWhat was wrong with it?”
    â€œWhat was wrong with it? Nobody knew where I was at. How was they to know where I was at?”
    â€œI don’t know; but these people that wanted all these different baits…”
    â€œOh, God! They was steady customers! That ain’t a living!” Quinn, buffaloed, felt compelled to say he was sorry. Earl Olive took it in good grace.
    â€œI was sorry too. I had a ton of live bait I couldn’t sell and I had to fish it all myself. I fished the Yellow Dog, the Escanaba, the Ontanagon, the Two Heart, come down here and fished the Pigeon, the Black, the Au Train, the Jordan and the Pere Marquette where, guess who I met?”
    Cautiously, “Who?”
    â€œJack Olson! I was fished out. I had fished bugs, frogs, hellgrammites, mice and worms. I hit the Jordan in the middle of the Caddis hatch and must have killed every trout in the river. I ran into your Jack Olson up to the tavern in Manton and told him all about it. I thought he fit to kill me. He said he hated any a man who would fish a trout with bait. I said it was all meat to me and he walked out the tavern. Next time I seen him was last night in the same tavern and he asked me did