Assisi: An Online Journal of Arts & Letters Volume 4, Issues 1 & 2 | Page 45

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head under a pillow. At those moments he wished that he could die, but he didn’t
know how to make it happen, and besides, according to the Church, suicide was a
mortal sin that would only result in more pain in the everlasting fires of hell. It
would be better if his parents died –- well, at least his father -- but he wasn’t
supposed to even think that. But both his parents seemed oblivious to the effect
their vicious enmity had on him.
Mack sometimes wondered if his friends’ parents battled like his did, but
they never let on. He suspected that they didn’t, that there was something unique
about his home, something contaminated, but maybe he was wrong. Frankie’s
father was dead, and his mother worshipped him, and when he quizzed the
others about their family situations, they seemed to not know what he was talking
about.
Mack felt utterly alone on the little island, perhaps more alone than he’d
ever felt in his entire life. He often wanted to be by himself, but he knew that
something wasn’t quite right about it. Today he tried to imagine himself in the
wilds of Montana or Colorado or Idaho, where the trout were native and not
“stockies,” and not just outside the city limits of New Jersey’s capital, but the
drab factory buildings and belching smokestacks in the immediate distance
subverted that fantasy whenever he looked up. He shivered with cold and wished
he’d had a jacket instead of just a sweatshirt, which, before leaving the house,
he’d insisted to his mother would be enough. Once or twice he thought he might
have heard a yelp from one of his companions: maybe someone had gotten lucky
and caught a fish, which made him feel envious....
He pulled on his line, felt nothing and reeled in. The salmon eggs were
mysteriously gone and the hook was clean. How had they disappeared when he’d
been holding his rod the entire time and felt nothing except for the gentle tug of
the tide at the other end? Maybe he should have been more vigilant. But he’d
never been lucky when it came to fishing. He liked being out of doors, he loved
trying, but he rarely, if ever, caught anything. When he did, it was usually
something worthless, like a carp or a catfish or a sunny, never anything valuable

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