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hook on a string on the end of a stick and deposited Little Klein on a spot of sandy shore. They drifted off to the ledge that reached out over the river, LeRoy panting behind them. The Bigs dropped their lines with reels and real coated fishing line.
    In the river just below the ledge, a deposit of stones made an underwater cove where the fish of Klein dreams lived. The boys called him The Minister because they’d first seen him on a Sunday morning and he’d slapped the water loud as the preacher’d pounded the pulpit on Easter. Ten years ago someone had pulled a 137-pound catfish from this river. The Minister could be their fame.
    While the Klein Boys hadn’t caught a really large fish in the river, a baited hook had not gone uneaten until they met The Minister, an overgrown catfish that’d lost his traveling spirit and lived a hermit’s life in this shallow stretch of river bottom where he grew fat and lazy eating unsuspecting delicacies that floated by. The Minister had seen enough of his mates yanked out of the water by ugly mugs like those peering at him over the ledge that he proclaimed a diet anytime their shadows disturbed his watery den.
    Little Klein stood in the weeds dangling his line near the shallow shore while his brothers baited The Minister and forgot about him. They certainly did not expect him to catch anything. Distracted by a squirrel, LeRoy wandered into the woods.
    Little Klein held his line steady for a bit, then jigged it, making the dead worm wriggle in what he considered an appetizing way. He imagined himself mess cook, feeding worms to an army of fish. He’d reel them in, caught on his line like ribbons on a kite string. There’d be a town fish fry to cook up his catch. “Who caught all these fish?” people would ask and he would hear his name, Harold Klein, murmured through the crowds. “That’s my boy,” his father would tell people. “That’s my boy and his dog.” Little Klein pulled his line along as he walked the shore, then repeated his dangling, jigging, and dragging. He was rewarded with a tug on his line.
    “Got one!” he yelled, hanging on to his stick as he ran along the shore in the direction the fish was pulling his line.
    “Set your hook!” called Matthew, sliding down from the ledge on his bottom.
    “Pull your stick up!” added Mark.
    Little Klein yanked his stick, and with a snap he was left with a six-inch twig while his line and the rest of his stick followed the escaped fish.
    They went home with an empty net that day, but Little Klein was hooked on fishing. He relived that moment when the fish pulled at his line over and over. The stick had been weightless in his hands and then like a divining rod had jerked and pulled like a thing alive. In those few seconds a rush of excitement flew from his hands up his arms, through his body, and right out his toes, and he wanted more.
    “I need a fishing pole,” Little Klein announced at dinner that night.
    “Can’t one of you boys share?” Mother implored, looking from Matthew to Mark to Luke. They stared back at her as though she’d asked them to share their underwear. “Okay, all right. We’ll see.”
    After dinner, Mother Klein poked around in the garage. She sorted through shovels, rakes, and old brooms. Then, mixed in with a pile of skis, she found it — a tall bamboo pole. She wrestled it free and leaned it against the house.
    “There,” she said to Little Klein, who was watching behind her. “Have your brothers tie some fishing line on there and you’re all set.”
    “Man alive!” exclaimed Little Klein, picking it up and swinging it around, accidentally catching the back of Mother’s dress, then whapping LeRoy.
    “Oh!” he cried.
    “Careful! Don’t you go hurting anyone with your father coming home in eight days, no . . . seven. You’d better just leave that pole by the house until your brothers can help you.” She paused. “Maybe it is too big. . . .”
    “No!