by W.P. Kinsella
I was wandering in the International District in Seattle, heading vaguely in the direction of the ballpark where a team called the Mariners play in a musty, dusky basement of a stadium. I stepped into an alley to toss my Pepsi Light can into a heap of cloth and paper. A rat scuttled, like a house shivering in the dark.
Trout Fishing in America Shorty sat grimy and stubble-faced in a ratty old wheelchair, a cheap wheelchair with the chrome worn off; it was a fast-food-restaurant-of-a-wheelchair, cheap and easy and tasteless, full of empty calories and Trout Fishing in America Shorty.
Trout Fishing in America Shorty was wearing a pair of floppy khaki-colored work pants which were badly in need of a steelworker to fill them out. The stained, filthy pant legs trickled across the seat of the wheelchair and groped toward the ground, thin and empty, bitter at never having known the feel of a foot or a leg.
Trout Fishing in America Shorty clutched a brown-bagged bottle, tightly as if it were a faithful pet, and stared at me from his rotting face which was the color of ripe strawberries.
"You're a famous literary character," I said.
Trout Fishing in American Shorty tipped up the brown-bagged bottle. His dirty hand was small and blunt as a child's, the same color as the brown paper.
"Don't you know that you are a hero of literature?" I went on. "A General MacArthur of storytelling. A Black Beauty, a Rin Tin Tin, a Nick Adams, a Garp."
"Fuck off," said Trout Fishing in America Shorty, his eyes tiny as ants in his alcohol-poisoned face.
"No wonder Richard Brautigan wanted to put you in a packing crate and ship you to Chicago to live with Nelson Algren. You're not very polite, you know?"
"There is some that is crazier than winos," said Trout Fishing in America Shorty, and with the hand that was not holding the bottle he turned his fast-food-restaurant-of-a-wheelchair to the side so he would not have to look at me.
And why not? Sitting in a moist alley in Seattle in the summer with a brown-bagged bottle for company is not all bad. Richard Brautigan is in Montana. Nelson Algren is dead. So dead that Trout Fishing in America Shorty might go unclaimed for months at the Chicago Railroad Terminal if someone shipped him there.
"There is some that is crazier than winos," a profound thought. Perhaps it could replace "In God We Trust" on our currency. A phrase like that would tend to keep America humble. And if Lincoln were alive I'm sure he could work it into the Gettysburg Address.
From: The Alligator Report
Coffee House Press, 1985
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