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In the style of an R Crumb underground comic Trout Fishing in Amerikkka (CCC Creek) We went trout fishing with Comrade Secretary Card Catalogue, who carried himself like an archive that had learned to walk. He wore a tie for no reason and carried a tin lunch pail labeled CIVILIAN CONSERVATION CORPS, though the letters were fading as if embarrassed by their own optimism. The creek was called CCC Creek because men once arrived here with shovels, dreams, and government-issued silence. They dug straight lines into crooked land and went home older than they arrived. The trout stayed. Comrade Secretary said the creek had been properly indexed. He removed a card and read: Fish, Ideological: slippery; see also Hope. Then he fell into the water. This was not symbolic; it was just how he walked. We sat on a log that had been a bridge during the Depression and watched the trout practice disbelief. One trout leapt, saw us, and immediately apologized. Another trout refused to bite on principle. A third trout bit everything, including the afternoon. Comrade Secretary poured tea from a thermos that contained neither tea nor thermos. “Amerikkka,” he said, spelling it with three Ks like fence posts. “A filing system where nothing is ever returned.” I caught a trout that looked exactly like my childhood memory of a trout. I released it, because nostalgia is illegal to keep. The trout swam upstream, which is what all documents do once they’re classified. A man from the past walked by wearing a CCC jacket and said, “You boys working or fishing?” We said yes. He nodded, having heard that answer before, and disappeared into reforestation. At dusk, Comrade Secretary stamped the air with a red seal and declared the day Inconclusive. The trout agreed. The creek kept its minutes. We went home lighter, carrying nothing but wet shoes and the sense that the river had briefly remembered us—and then, efficiently, filed us away.
We went trout fishing with Comrade Secretary Card Catalogue, who carried himself like an archive that had learned to walk. He wore a tie for no reason and carried a tin lunch pail labeled CIVILIAN CONSERVATION CORPS, though the letters were fading as if embarrassed by their own optimism.
The creek was called CCC Creek because men once arrived here with shovels, dreams, and government-issued silence. They dug straight lines into crooked land and went home older than they arrived. The trout stayed.
Comrade Secretary said the creek had been properly indexed. He removed a card and read: Fish, Ideological: slippery; see also Hope. Then he fell into the water. This was not symbolic; it was just how he walked.
We sat on a log that had been a bridge during the Depression and watched the trout practice disbelief. One trout leapt, saw us, and immediately apologized. Another trout refused to bite on principle. A third trout bit everything, including the afternoon.
Comrade Secretary poured tea from a thermos that contained neither tea nor thermos. “Amerikkka,” he said, spelling it with three Ks like fence posts. “A filing system where nothing is ever returned.”
I caught a trout that looked exactly like my childhood memory of a trout. I released it, because nostalgia is illegal to keep. The trout swam upstream, which is what all documents do once they’re classified.
A man from the past walked by wearing a CCC jacket and said, “You boys working or fishing?” We said yes. He nodded, having heard that answer before, and disappeared into reforestation.
At dusk, Comrade Secretary stamped the air with a red seal and declared the day Inconclusive. The trout agreed. The creek kept its minutes. We went home lighter, carrying nothing but wet shoes and the sense that the river had briefly remembered us—and then, efficiently, filed us away.
