She invited him to her house for dinner.  She named the town.  It was her parents’ house.  They exchanged names.  She was Ann McComb.

            “You get lost, just ask for the bee lady,” she said.

            He tried to imagine what she might serve him for dinner.  Fried chicken, steaks?   Then love in a four poster bed.

            “I’ve got to get on down to Frog Eye before dark,” he said.

            Now he wanted to get away from her as fast as possible.

            “Let’s drink one more beer,” she said.  “It’s hot out on that river.  You’re only a couple of hours from Frog Eye.”

            It was hard to say no, so he opened two beers.  As they drank she talked about the big farm house.  Her father had been a prosperous farmer.  The house had both front and  side screened porches.  She called them galleries.  The yard was filled with pecans.  The ceilings in the house were high.

            “I hardly ever have to turn on the air conditioning,” she said.

            He wondered how she would react if he just admitted to her that he had lied, but he saw no reason to humiliate himself for no purpose.

            Then he drained the rest of his bottle of beer in one long swallow.  She was still sipping hers.

            “I’ve got to go,” he said.   “The river’s tricky at night.”

            She walked to the riverbank with him.  Far away the engine of the Rome plow coughed and sputtered.

            “Keep clear of bees,” she said.

            They both laughed.

            He went down the bank and pushed the canoe out into the water. 

***

He tried to fish, but that no longer seemed interesting to him.  Instead he kept imagining how Ann McComb would react when he failed to show up for dinner.  Yet, he told himself, there was really no reason he couldn’t go.  After all, the brother was not going to come home for a long time.  He had never lived with any woman longer than a year.  By the time the brother came home, Prentiss might have completed his internet course and found work as a blaster.  But no, it could all unravel too easily.  Too many people in the area worked in strip mines.  Someone would ask a question he would be unable to answer.

            There had been a question in his mind whether the Rome plows had worked all the way to Frog Eye, that there was a chance he would find the banks of the river still timbered.  But he was disappointed.   Trees did appear on the east bank, but the west bank was stripped clean.  

He brought the canoe in close to the west bank where there was now a narrow strip of shade from the bank itself. One beer was left in the ice chest, nestled among the fish. He sat there in the shade and drank it slowly, trying to think of nothing. But the thought of the woman he had only brushed against kept intruding. If he were really a blaster, he would be driving over next week to have dinner at her house. He would be driving a new truck. He had never owned a new truck.