Trout Fishing in America by Richard Brautigan

capsules we used to use with oleomargarine, in those good old days when oleo was white like lard.
    The huge black car pulled out and went up the street, bat-light shining off the top. It stopped in front of the ice-cream parlor at Filbert and Stockton
    An agent got out and went in and bought two hundred double-decker ice-cream cones. He needed a wheelbarrow to get them back to the car.

The Last Time I Saw Trout Fishing in America
    The last time we met was in July on the Big Wood River, ten miles away from Ketchum. It was just after Hemingway had killed himself there, but I didn’t know about his death at the time. I didn’t know about it until I got back to San Francisco weeks after the thing had happened and picked up a copy of Life magazine. There was a photograph of Hemingway on the cover.
    â€œI wonder what Hemingway’s up to,” I said to myself. I looked inside the magazine and turned the pages to his death. Trout Fishing in America forgot to tell me about it. I’m certain he knew. It must have slipped his mind.
    The woman who travels with me had menstrual cramps. She wanted to rest for a while, so I took the baby and my spinning rod and went down to the Big Wood River. That’s where I met Trout Fishing in America.
    I was casting a Super-Duper out into the river and letting it swing down with the current and then ride on the water up close to the shore. It fluttered there slowly and Trout Fishing in America watched the baby while we talked.
    I remember that he gave her some colored rocks to play with. She liked him and climbed up onto his lap and she started putting the rocks in his shirt pocket.
    We talked about Great Falls, Montana. I told Trout Fishing in America about a winter I spent as a child in Great Falls. “It was during the war and I saw a Deanna Durbin movie seven times,” I said.
    The baby put a blue rock in Trout Fishing in America’s shirt pocket and he said, “I’ve been to Great Falls many times. I remember Indians and fur traders. I remember Lewis and Clark, but I don’t remember ever seeing a Deanna Durbin movie in Great Falls.”
    â€œI know what you mean,” I said. “The other people in Great Falls did not share my enthusiasm for Deanna Durbin. The theater was always empty. There was a darkness to that theater different from any theater I’ve been in since. Maybe it was the snow outside and Deanna Durbin inside. I don’t know what it was.”
    â€œWhat was the name of the movie?” Trout Fishing in America said.
    â€œI don’t know,” I said. “She sang a lot. Maybe she was a chorus girl who wanted to go to college or she was a rich girl or they needed money for something or she did something. Whatever it was about, she sang! and sang! but I can’t remember a God-damn word of it.
    â€œOne afternoon after I had seen the Deanna Durbin movie again, I went down to the Missouri River. Part of the Missouri was frozen over. There was a railroad bridge there. I was very relieved to see that the Missouri River had not changed and begun to look like Deanna Durbin.
    â€œI’d had a childhood fancy that I would walk down to the Missouri River and it would look just like a Deanna Durbin movie—a chorus girl who wanted to go to college or she was a rich girl or they needed money for something or she did something.
    â€œTo this day I don’t know why I saw that movie seven times. It was just as deadly as The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari. I wonder if the Missouri River is still there?” I said.
    â€œIt is,” Trout Fishing in America said smiling. “But it doesn’t look like Deanna Durbin.”
    The baby by this time had put a dozen or so of the colored rocks in Trout Fishing in America’s shirt pocket. He looked at me and smiled and waited for me to go on about Great Falls, but just then I had a fair strike on my Super-Duper. I jerked the rod back and missed the fish.
    Trout Fishing in