Fishing the Sloe-Black River by Colum McCann Page A

four foot tall, running down to the creekbed where Natalie found that rattler one time. When the sun fell on it right and the wind blew from up along the creek, the field looked like someone had given it a real good haircut.
    I wished I owned it, but we were renting it from Cunningham. It was going to take about three days, what with all the cutting, crimping, and swathing. We’d have ourselves about forty, fifty round bales and we were going to make a nice little profit, I could tell. Kevin figured on maybe buying some wallpaper for Natalie’s bedroom—she’s gone outgrown that pink kind—or maybe just him and Delicia having a little easier living, put their feet up some for a day or two. I was wanting to get a valve job done on my pickup.
    We were only able to work the field at the weekend, Kevin and me, seeing as how we were at the State School during the week. That Friday evening Kevin was hollering to fill the tractor with gas so we could get a start. He’s a hard worker, Kevin is, with big ropy arms. He’s always itching to get going. You watch him, even at lunchtime, and his foot’s tapping. I was ready too. I had my new boots that Ellie bought me at Reid’s. We wanted to cut as much as we could, up until it got dark. We were filling the tractor right enough, but then we started getting into all that stuff about Stephen Youngblood, the kid that murdered that guy over near Nacogdoches. Kevin, he got the chills when I told him what that boy had said. He started shivering, Kevin did, and he went on home to gather up mine and his family. That night we hardly got nothing done.
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    I been doing the grounds maintenance at the State School for the best part of three years now, and in all that time I never seen a man want to know something so bad. Ferlinghetti, he come down from the University of Texas, like they sometimes do, for his work study. He got assigned the juvenile capital offenders. He wasn’t young like the rest of the students. He was about my age. He was kind of fat, and once I heard one of the boys say that he was nothing but ten pounds of shit wrapped in a five pound bag. Which made me laugh. But he wasn’t that fat, and he had these blue eyes, blue as the blue you get on a winter’s morning. And, boy, could he get those kids to talk.
    Truth be told, most of the staff at the State School don’t like the social work students much. They come in on their work placement, thinking they can save the world. There’s nobody can save the world except maybe Jesus, but even Jesus must have had an off day when He made most of the kids at the State School. And maybe when He made the place itself, because it don’t much look like a prison. It’s like a complex with a fence around it and cottages where the kids live. But it’s big and open, with grass and trees and flowers, which I guess is good because it gives me and Kevin a job. There ain’t no uniforms on the kids neither. The thing that shocks people the most is that the place doesn’t shock them. It just looks ordinary. The kids out there, walking in double-file groups along the sidewalk, with the security guards going around in vans and station wagons. And no guns, not a one.
    Most of those kids—even the ones in there for murder—look like the sort you see hanging out down by Sonic or skateboarding outside the 7-Eleven. I thought Stephen Youngblood was just another one that got caught up in a mess and couldn’t get out. But Ferlinghetti, he thought he was onto something big for him and his head-shrinking business.
    Stephen was small and blond and wiry with acne all over. You could drown him just by spitting on him. He had eyeglasses, but kept them hid in his back pocket. Embarrassed, I guess. He always walked with his head down, like he’s hiding something. You wouldn’t believe that he’d done what he done. Most days him and Ferlinghetti would