"Tom-Su, " one of us once said, "pull your pants down a little so you don't hurt yourself! It was a nice rhythm. Sometimes we'd bring anchovies for bait.
After we finished our doughnuts, we strolled to the back wharf of the Pink Building, dropped our gear, unrolled our drop lines, baited hooks, and lowered the lines. Kim watched the taxi head down the street and out of sight. On the right side of his forehead was a red, knuckle-sized bump. "He twelve year old, " she said. We tossed the chewed-into mackerel into the empty bucket and headed back to our drop lines, but not before we set Tom-Su up in his private spot. Crossword clue drop bait on water. As far as he was concerned, we were magicians who'd straight evaporated ourselves!
Sometimes we'd bring squid, mostly when we were interested in bigger mackerel or bonito, which brought us more than chump change at the fish market. When one of us said the word "drowned, " we all climbed down to pull Tom-Su from the water. The sky was dull from a low marine layer clinging fast to the coastline. Tom-Su spun around like an onstage tap dancer rooted before a charging locomotive, and looked at us as if we weren't real. The only word we were hip to, which came up again and again, was "Tom-Su. Drop bait on water crossword club.com. " As a morning ritual we climbed the nearest tarp-covered and twice-our-height mountain of fishing nets at Deadman's Slip. His teeth were now a train cowcatcher, his eyes two tar-pit traps, and his drool a waterfall. But a couple of clicks later neither bait nor location concerned us any longer. It never crossed Tom-Su's mind, though, to suspect a trick.
That whole week before school was to start, Tom-Su seemed to have dropped completely out of sight. Back outside we realized that Tom-Su was missing. IN the beginning it had bugged us that Tom-Su went straight to his lonely area, sat down, and rocked, rocked, rocked. THAT night a terrible screaming argument that all of the Ranch heard busted out in Tom-Su's apartment. It was the next day that Tom-Su attached himself to our group for the first time. The day after, a Sunday, we didn't go fishing. Then a taxi drove up, which made Mr. What is a drop shot bait. Kim grab her arm. THE next day Tom-Su caught up with us on the railroad tracks. Know what I'm saying?
The Kims stared at each other through the window glass as the driver trunked the suitcase, got into the driver's seat, and drove off. Our new friend, so to speak, had expressed himself. The last several baits were good only when the fish schools jumped like mad and our regular bait had run out and the buckets were near full. We would become Tom-Su's insurance policy. We peeked in and saw Tom-Su, lying on his side in the corner, his face pressed against the wall. He was new from Korea, and had a special way of treating fish that wiggled at the end of his drop line. At the last boxcar we jumped to the side and climbed on its roof, laid ourselves on our stomachs, and waited to be found. Its eyes showed intelligence, and the teeth had fully lost their buck. To top it off, Tom-Su sported a rope instead of a belt, definitely nailing down the super sorry look. And that's all he said, with a grin, as he opened the cupboard to show us a year's supply of the green stuff. Even the trailer birds had more success, robbing from the overflow. The water below spread before us still and clear and flat, like a giant mirror. Like fall to the ground and shake like an earthquake, hammer his head against a boxcar, or run into speeding traffic on Harbor Boulevard.