Chapter 25

When he woke in the morning he looked out and saw the boats were fine and the river wasn’t much higher than usual. He hurried through breakfast, then took the box he had prepared and ran out toward the cage. He went first to the barn to pick up some burlap sacks to put in the bottom of the box. The morning was cold; a light frost was sifted¹ into all the shadows and the cow breath was like skim milk in the air. Hank pulled some sacks from the pile in the feed room, scattering² mice, and ran on out through the back door. The chill air in his lungs made him feel light and silly. He turned the corner and stopped: the bank! (About the time I went to nodding into my dream about the cats, Floyd and old man Syverson who used to run the little mill at Myrtleville had really got into it about something; they snapped me out of it, hollering back and forth³ at each other to beat hell.) . . . The whole bank where the cage stood is gone; the new bank shines bright and clean, as though a quick slice had been made into the earth last night with the edge of a huge moon-stropped razor. (“Syverson,” Evenwrite yells, “don’t be so dunderheaded; I’m talkin’ sense!” And Syverson says, “Bull. What you mean, sense!” “Sense! I’m talking sense!” “Bull. You talkin’ sign over t’ you all the say-so I got of my business is what you talkin’!”) At the bottom of this slice, in the mud and roots, the corner of the cage protrudes⁴ above the turgid surface of the river. Floating in the corner behind the wire mesh⁵ are the contents of the cage—the rubber balls, the torn cloth Teddy bear, the wicker basket and sodden⁶ bedding, and the shrunken bodies of the three cats. (“How much’s it want,” Syverson yells, “how much, this organization you tell us about?” “Dang it, Syve, all it wants is what’s fair—” “Fair! It wants advantage is what.”) Looking so very small with their wet fur plastered against their bodies, so small and wet and ugly. (“Okay! okay!” Floyd hollered, getting rattled⁷, “but all it wants is its fair advantage!”) He doesn’t want to cry; he hasn’t allowed himself to cry in years. And to stop that old scalding memory mounting in his nose and throat he forces himself to imagine exactly what it must have been like—the crumbling⁸, the cage rocking, then falling with the slice of earth into the water, the three cats thrown from their warm bed and submerged in straggling icy death, caged and unable to swim to the surface. He visualizes⁹ every detail with painful care and then runs the scene over and over through his mind until it is grooved¹⁰ into him, until a call from the house puts a stop to his torture. . . . (Everybody laughed when Floyd made that slip, even old Floyd himself. And for some time after folks kidded him about it. “All it wants is its fair advantage.” But me, not paying attention, nodding on and off; thinking about my drowned cats and my new Johnson outboard at the bottom of the drink, I kind of switched what he said to something else.) Until the pain and guilt¹¹ and loss are replaced by something different, something larger . . . After putting the box and gunny sacks down I went back into the house and got my lunch along with that bony little peck the old lady laid on my cheek every morning. Then I went out to where old Henry was readying the boat to ferry me and Joe Ben across to wait for the school bus. I kept still, hoping neither of them’d notice me not having the box of cats like I’d planned. ( ...replaced for good by something far stronger than guilt or loss.) And they might not of, because the motorboat wouldn’t start, it being so cold, and after Henry had jerked and kicked and cussed and raved¹² at it for about ten minutes he finally barked the hide off his knuckles¹³ and then he wasn’t in any shape to notice anything. We all got into the row boat and I thought I was gonna make it, but on the way across old bright-eyed Joe Ben gave a yell and pointed¹⁴ at the bank. “The cat cage! Hank, the cat cage!” I didn’t say anything. The old man stopped rowing and looked, then turned to me. I frigged around, acting¹⁵ like I was all wrapped up tying my shoe or something. But pretty quick I saw they weren’t gonna let me off the hook without I said something or other. So I just shrugged¹⁶ and told them, cool and matter-of-fact, “It’s a dirty deal, is all. Nothing but just a crappy deal.” “Sure,” the old man said. “The way the football bounces.” “Sure,” Joe Ben said. “Just a tough break,” I said. “Sure,” they said. “But boy, I’ll tell ya I’ll tell—you . . .” I could feel that cool, matter-of-fact tone slipping away, but couldn’t do diddle about it. “If I ever—ever, I don’t care when—get me any more of them bobcats—oh, Christ, Henry, that crappy river, I should, I should of—” And when I couldn’t go on I went to beating at the side of the boat until the old man took me by the fist and stopped me. And after that the whole thing was done and shut and forgot. None of the family ever mentioned it. For a while kids at school asked me how about them bobcats I was always blowing about, how come I hadn’t brought them bobcats to school? ...but I just told them to fuck off, and after I told them enough times and showed them I meant what I said a time or two, nobody mentioned it any more. So I forgot it. Leastways the part of a man that remembers out loud forgot it. But years later it used to wonder me just how come I’d sometimes get all of a sudden so itchy to cut out from basketball practice, or from a date. It would really wonder me. To other people—Coach Lewellyn or a drinking buddy¹⁷, or whatever honey I might have been necking with—I would say that if I waited too long the river would be up too high to cross. “Report of high water,” I’d say. “If she gets up too big there’s a chance the boat might be pulled loose and there I’d be, you know, up that ol’ creek¹⁸ without that ol’ canoe.” I’d tell buddies¹⁹ and coaches that I had to beat it home “on account of that ol’ Wakonda is risin’ like a wall between me and the supper table.” I’d tell dates just ready to tip over that “sorry kid, I got to up and hustle²⁰ or the boat might be swamped.” But myself, I’d tell myself, Stamper, you got deals going with it, with that river. Face it. You might’ve put all kinds of stories on the little girlies from Reedsport, but when it comes right down to it you know them stories are so much crap and you got deals going with that snake of a river. It was like me and that river had drawn²¹ ourselves a little contract, a little grudge²² match, and without me knowing exactly why. “It’s like this, sweetie-britches,” I might say to some little high-school honey we was parked someplace, steaming up the windows of the old man’s pick-up in some Saturday-night battle of the bra. “It’s like if I don’t go now, then it might be shiver all night long waitin’ to get across; it’s rainin’, look out there at it come down like a cow wettin’ on a flat rock!” Feed her any dumb tale but know what you meant was you had to—for some reason I didn’t know then—had to get home and get into a slicker and corks²³ and get a hammer and nails and lay on the timbers like a crazy man, maybe even give up a sure hump just to freeze a half an hour out on that goddamned jetty! And I never understood why until that afternoon in Wakonda at the union meeting, sitting there remembering how I’d lost my bobcats, looking out the window of the grange hall at the spot where my boat had sunk in the bay, and hearing Floyd Even-write say to old man Syverson: “All it wants is its fair advantage.” So as close as I can come to explaining it, friends and neighbors, that is why that river is no buddy of mine. It’s maybe the buddy of the brant geese and the steelhead. It is mighty²⁴ likely a buddy of old lady Pringle and her Pioneer Club in Wakonda— they hold oldtime get-togethers on the docks every Fourth of July in honor of the first time some old moccasined hobo come paddling across in his dugout a hundred years ago, the Highway of Pioneers they call it ...and who the hell knows, maybe it was, just like now it is the railroad we use to float our log booms down—but it still is no personal friend of mine. Not just the thing about the bobcats; I could tell you a hundred stories, probably, give you a hundred reasons showing why I got to fight that river. Oh, fine reasons; because you can spend a good deal of time thinking during those thinking times, when you’re taking timber cruises walking all day long with nothing to do but check the pedometer on your foot, or sitting for hours in a  stand blowing a game call, or milking in the morning when Viv is laid up with cramps—a lot of time, and I got a lot of things about myself straight in my mind: I know, for an instance, that, if you want to play this way, you can make the river stand for all sorts of other things. But doing that it seems to me is taking your eye off the ball; making it more than what it is lessens²⁵ it. Just to see it clear is plenty. Just to feel it cold against you or watch it flood or smell it when the damn thing backs up from Wakonda with all the town’s garbage and sewage and dead crud floating around in it stinking²⁶ up a breeze, that is plenty. And the best way to see it is not looking behind it—or beneath it or beyond it—but dead at it. And to remember that all it wants is its fair advantage. So by keeping my eye on the ball I found it just came down to this: that that river was after some things I figured belonged to me. It’d already got some and was all the time working to get some more. And in as how I was well known as one of the Ten Toughest Hombres this side of the Rockies, I aimed to do my best to hinder it. And as far as I was concerned, hindering something meant— had always meant—going after it with everything you got, fighting and kicking, stomping²⁷ and gouging²⁸, and cussing it when everything else went sour. And being just as strong in the hassle as you got it in you to be. Now that’s real logical, don’t you think? That’s real simple. If You Wants to Win, You Does Your Best. Why, a body could paint that on a plaque²⁹ and hang it up over his bedstead. He could live by it. It could be like one of the Ten Commandments for success. “If You Wants to Win You Does Your Best.”

1 sifted   

v.筛( sift的过去式和过去分词 )；筛滤；细查；详审

参考例句：

• She sifted through her papers to find the lost letter. 她仔细在文件中寻找那封丢失的信。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• She sifted thistles through her thistle-sifter. 她用蓟筛筛蓟。 来自《简明英汉词典》

2 scattering   

n.[物]散射；散乱，分散；在媒介质中的散播adj.散乱的；分散在不同范围的；广泛扩散的；（选票）数量分散的v.散射(scatter的ing形式)；散布；驱散

参考例句：

• The child felle into a rage and began scattering its toys about. 这孩子突发狂怒，把玩具扔得满地都是。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The farmers are scattering seed. 农夫们在播种。 来自《简明英汉词典》

3 forth   

adv.向前；向外，往外

参考例句：

• The wind moved the trees gently back and forth.风吹得树轻轻地来回摇晃。
• He gave forth a series of works in rapid succession.他很快连续发表了一系列的作品。

4 protrudes   

v.（使某物）伸出，（使某物）突出( protrude的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• My part that protrudes from the gum has a'skin" of enamel. 在我突出于齿龈的部分有一层珐琅“皮”。 来自辞典例句
• Hyperplasia median lobe of the prostate produces a polypoid mass that protrudes in the bladder lumen. 前列腺中叶异常增生，表现为息肉样肿物，突入膀胱腔内。 来自互联网

5 mesh   

n.网孔，网丝，陷阱；vt.以网捕捉，啮合，匹配；vi.适合； [计算机]网络

参考例句：

• Their characters just don't mesh.他们的性格就是合不来。
• This is the net having half inch mesh.这是有半英寸网眼的网。

6 sodden   

adj.浑身湿透的；v.使浸透；使呆头呆脑

参考例句：

• We stripped off our sodden clothes.我们扒下了湿透的衣服。
• The cardboard was sodden and fell apart in his hands.纸板潮得都发酥了，手一捏就碎。

7 rattled   

慌乱的，恼火的

参考例句：

• The truck jolted and rattled over the rough ground. 卡车嘎吱嘎吱地在凹凸不平的地面上颠簸而行。
• Every time a bus went past, the windows rattled. 每逢公共汽车经过这里，窗户都格格作响。

8 crumbling   

adj.摇摇欲坠的

参考例句：

• an old house with crumbling plaster and a leaking roof 一所灰泥剥落、屋顶漏水的老房子
• The boat was tied up alongside a crumbling limestone jetty. 这条船停泊在一个摇摇欲坠的石灰岩码头边。

9 visualizes   

在脑中使（某人或某物）形象化，设想，想像( visualize的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• He mentally visualizes a complex form all round itself. 他在脑海里从形体的各个方面来模拟复杂的形体。
• He is much older, but do you think he visualizes scenarios, exchanges? 他年纪大很多你对他可有想入非非？

10 grooved   

v.沟( groove的过去式和过去分词 )；槽；老一套；（某种）音乐节奏

参考例句：

• He was grooved in running errands for his neighbors. 他已习惯于为邻居跑腿。 来自辞典例句
• The carpenter grooved the board. 木匠在木板上开槽。 来自辞典例句

11 guilt   

n.犯罪；内疚；过失，罪责

参考例句：

• She tried to cover up her guilt by lying.她企图用谎言掩饰自己的罪行。
• Don't lay a guilt trip on your child about schoolwork.别因为功课责备孩子而使他觉得很内疚。

12 raved   

v.胡言乱语( rave的过去式和过去分词 )；愤怒地说；咆哮；痴心地说

参考例句：

• Andrew raved all night in his fever. 安德鲁发烧时整夜地说胡话。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• They raved about her beauty. 他们过分称赞她的美。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》

13 knuckles   

n.（指人）指关节( knuckle的名词复数 )；（指动物）膝关节，踝v.（指人）指关节( knuckle的第三人称单数 )；（指动物）膝关节，踝

参考例句：

• He gripped the wheel until his knuckles whitened. 他紧紧握住方向盘，握得指关节都变白了。
• Her thin hands were twisted by swollen knuckles. 她那双纤手因肿大的指关节而变了形。 来自《简明英汉词典》

14 pointed   

adj.尖的，直截了当的

参考例句：

• He gave me a very sharp pointed pencil.他给我一支削得非常尖的铅笔。
• She wished to show Mrs.John Dashwood by this pointed invitation to her brother.她想通过对达茨伍德夫人提出直截了当的邀请向她的哥哥表示出来。

15 acting   

n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的

参考例句：

• Ignore her,she's just acting.别理她，她只是假装的。
• During the seventies,her acting career was in eclipse.在七十年代，她的表演生涯黯然失色。

16 shrugged   

vt.耸肩（shrug的过去式与过去分词形式）

参考例句：

• Sam shrugged and said nothing. 萨姆耸耸肩膀，什么也没说。
• She shrugged, feigning nonchalance. 她耸耸肩，装出一副无所谓的样子。 来自《简明英汉词典》

17 buddy   

n.（美口）密友，伙伴

参考例句：

• Calm down,buddy.What's the trouble?压压气，老兄。有什么麻烦吗？
• Get out of my way,buddy!别挡道了，你这家伙！

18 creek   

n.小溪，小河，小湾

参考例句：

• He sprang through the creek.他跳过小河。
• People sunbathe in the nude on the rocks above the creek.人们在露出小溪的岩石上裸体晒日光浴。

19 buddies   

n.密友( buddy的名词复数 )；同伴；弟兄；（用于称呼男子，常带怒气）家伙v.（如密友、战友、伙伴、弟兄般）交往( buddy的第三人称单数 )；做朋友；亲近（…）；伴护艾滋病人

参考例句：

• We became great buddies. 我们成了非常好的朋友。 来自辞典例句
• The two of them have become great buddies. 他们俩成了要好的朋友。 来自辞典例句

20 hustle   

v.推搡；竭力兜售或获取；催促；n.奔忙(碌)

参考例句：

• It seems that he enjoys the hustle and bustle of life in the big city.看起来他似乎很喜欢大城市的热闹繁忙的生活。
• I had to hustle through the crowded street.我不得不挤过拥挤的街道。

21 drawn   

v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的

参考例句：

• All the characters in the story are drawn from life.故事中的所有人物都取材于生活。
• Her gaze was drawn irresistibly to the scene outside.她的目光禁不住被外面的风景所吸引。

22 grudge   

n.不满，怨恨，妒嫉；vt.勉强给，不情愿做

参考例句：

• I grudge paying so much for such inferior goods.我不愿花这么多钱买次品。
• I do not grudge him his success.我不嫉妒他的成功。

23 corks   

n.脐梅衣；软木( cork的名词复数 )；软木塞

参考例句：

• Champagne corks were popping throughout the celebrations. 庆祝会上开香槟酒瓶塞的砰砰声不绝於耳。 来自辞典例句
• Champagne corks popped, and on lace tablecloths seven-course dinners were laid. 桌上铺着带装饰图案的网织的桌布，上面是七道菜的晚餐。 来自飘（部分）

24 mighty   

adj.强有力的；巨大的

参考例句：

• A mighty force was about to break loose.一股巨大的力量即将迸发而出。
• The mighty iceberg came into view.巨大的冰山出现在眼前。

25 lessens   

变少( lessen的第三人称单数 )； 减少（某事物）

参考例句：

• Eating a good diet significantly lessens the risk of heart disease. 良好的饮食习惯能大大减少患心脏病的机率。
• Alcohol lessens resistance to diseases. 含有酒精的饮料会减弱对疾病的抵抗力。

26 stinking   

adj.臭的，烂醉的，讨厌的v.散发出恶臭( stink的现在分词 )；发臭味；名声臭；糟透

参考例句：

• I was pushed into a filthy, stinking room. 我被推进一间又脏又臭的屋子里。
• Those lousy, stinking ships. It was them that destroyed us. 是的！就是那些该死的蠢猪似的臭飞船！是它们毁了我们。 来自英汉非文学 - 科幻

27 stomping   

v.跺脚，践踏，重踏( stomp的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• He looked funny stomping round the dance floor. 他在舞池里跺着舞步，样子很可笑。 来自辞典例句
• Chelsea substitution Wright-Phillips for Robben. Wrighty back on his old stomping to a mixed reception. 77分–切尔西换人：赖特．菲利普斯入替罗本。小赖特在主场球迷混杂的欢迎下，重返他的老地方。 来自互联网

28 gouging   

n.刨削[槽]v.凿( gouge的现在分词 )；乱要价；（在…中）抠出…；挖出…

参考例句：

• Banks and credit-card companies have been accused of gouging their customers. 银行和信用卡公司被指控欺诈顾客。 来自辞典例句
• If back-gouging is applied, grinding to bright metal is required. 如果采用火焰气刨，则应将其打磨至可见光亮的金属表面。 来自互联网

29 plaque   

n.饰板，匾，(医)血小板

参考例句：

• There is a commemorative plaque to the artist in the village hall.村公所里有一块纪念该艺术家的牌匾。
• Some Latin words were engraved on the plaque. 牌匾上刻着些拉丁文。