The Walk by Lee Goldberg

bathroom,” Marty whined for the sixth or seventh time, rocking on his bench, sunburned and uncomfortable, his arms wrapped around his stomach.
    His Grandfather, Poppa Earl, held out a rusted MJB coffee can to him. It was full of cigar stubs and ashes, fish guts and peanut shells. “Piss in this. The fish are biting.”
    “I can’t,” Marty smelled like a coconut, sweating off the gobs of Coppertone his Mother made him put on every time he went on the lake. “It’s number two.”
    “Then you can hold it a while longer,” Poppa Earl decided, absently picking dried fish scales off his pants, while keeping his eyes on the line. “We’re on top of a school of silvers. They’ll be hopping in the boat soon.”
    They’d have to. The last fish they caught was three hours ago, and it was a thin, sickly one that probably swallowed the hook on purpose to end his miserable life. They hadn’t had a bite since.
    “We can go in for a minute and come right back out,” Marty argued. “The fish will still be here.”
    Poppa Earl shot him a furious glance. “You can’t catch fish with your line in the boat.”
    That was Poppa Earl’s all-purpose observation on everything in life, from his brother’s impotence to the invasion of Grenada, a line of inarguable wisdom that took on even greater, almost religious significance when, in fact, he was actually fishing. When Poppa Earl made that statement, ten-year-old Marty knew no amount of whining, begging, or cajoling would change his mind. So Marty just sat there, staring at the dead fish in the Styrofoam cooler, floating in the bloody ice water.
    When Marty couldn’t hold it any longer, when he was sobbing with shame as his bowels emptied into his bathing trunks, Poppa Earl was too busy to notice. He’d gotten a bite. Poppa Earl was standing up in the boat, reeling in the leaded line, giving his standard play-by-play the whole time.
    “It’s bending the pole in half, look at that! It’s a monster! It’s got to be the killer mack, biggest fish in the lake. They’re hungry bastards. I once caught a thirty pound mackinaw on ten-pound test line. Did I ever tell you that? Nearly pulled me out of the boat. But I got him. Oh yes, that fish met his match in me. I’m the nightmare of the dark waters, you know that? For sixty years, I’ve been coming and killing. They fear me. It’s instinct in them now, part of their fish DNA. Whoa, this one is fighting! Don’t he know who he’s up against?”
    And on and on it went, Poppa Earl oblivious to Marty’s plight until the six-inch silver, every bit as thin and sickly as the one they caught hours ago, was in the boat and Poppa Earl was back on his bench, yanking the hook out of the fish along with most of his internal organs.
    “Lookee there,” Poppa Earl held up the fish’s stomach between two fingers. “He’s been eating somebody’s white corn. Who the hell uses white corn for bait?”
    Poppa Earl tossed the fish into the cooler and the guts overboard, and was washing his hands in the lake when he sniffed something foul. “What the hell is that smell?”
    Marty couldn’t look at him. He just hugged himself, trying to become as small as he could, sobbing quietly.
    “Did you just shit yourself?” Poppa Earl yelled, rising to his feet. “God-damn it, the fish are biting!”
    Poppa Earl picked up Marty under the armpits and threw him into the lake. His grandfather sat back down in front of the outboard, wiped his hands on his pants, and steered the boat back the direction they came.
    “You can’t catch fish with your line in the boat,” his grandfather said, shaking his head disgustedly as the boat chortled off.
    The water was cold and light as mist. It smelled of pine and hospitals and clean counter-tops. He was swimming in a lake of Lysol.
    Marty opened his eyes and was blasted in the face again with disinfectant. Someone was holding a can of Lysol out of the window above the hedge, dousing the bush with spray. Before