Read Little Klein for Free Online Page B

I’ll be careful! It’s perfect, Ma.”
    The next day they set off for the river again. LeRoy and the Bigs gathered around Little Klein on the shore with instructions.
    “One: Don’t pussyfoot around when you get a nibble.”
    “Woof!”
    “Two: Don’t pull up too fast. Let ’im get the hook all the way in his mouth.”
    “Woof!”
    “Three: Set the line.” This with the yanking of an imaginary rod and a snap of wrists.
    Wagging tail.
    “And four: If you’re going to be a real fisherman, you have to bait your own hook.”
    “Woof! Woof! Woof!”
    Luke pulled a fat earthworm from the can they’d filled after dark the night before and tore it in half. “No use givin’ ’em a whole juicy guy like this if they’re not going to get a chance to digest it anyhow. All you need is a tantalizing sample. Want the other half, LeRoy?”
    With a clump of oatmeal suddenly squirming in his stomach, Little Klein held his breath and threaded his hook.
    “There you go! Toss it out.”
    LeRoy and the Bigs sat down on the bank to watch Little Klein and offer tips. The bamboo pole was twice Little Klein’s height and the line twice again as long, so a new method of casting was devised. Little Klein laid the line out along the edge of the water and the pole after it. He walked back to the hook end of the line and tossed it in the water then ran back to the pole end, lifting it from the middle and rotating it out over the water.
    When he grew tired of standing and jigging the worm, he sat cross-legged on the sand, his eyes not leaving the tip of his pole. The suspense of the first cast over, the Bigs argued over what new bait might tempt The Minister today, the merits of a cube of cheese being weighed against a wooden red spinner. LeRoy sauntered into the trees for a sniff around. The weight of the long pole having tired Little Klein’s jigging arm, he let the line float off downstream and his attention drift.
    The Minister was returning to his rocky den after his morning laps around the area and was surprised to see a snack resting right there on his floor. He rolled his eyes up to the ledge. No large-eared creatures peering over. A snack, free and clear, and he hadn’t had a worm in oh, so long. Ordinarily he would have been more cautious, but an annoyingly sociable carp had been dropping in lately and The Minister was not about to share, so with a greedy gulp he swallowed that half worm whole and settled in for a nap.
    At that same moment Little Klein decided to try his luck upriver a ways. He lifted his pole and turned to take it with him. Shoot. His hook must have snagged. He yanked. The Minister woke with a sharp pain in his belly and that annoying carp watching him with her watery lovesick eyes. He tried to burp the pain out and was nearly successful, but then it lodged itself in his lip.
    The Minister lurched about, trying to free himself of the pain. The carp came at him, wanting to help, and with a furious exhalation of bubbles The Minister showed her his back fin as he swam away in a panic. On the other end of the line, Little Klein felt not the pleasing tug of the fish he’d nearly caught on the stick but a yank that nearly stole the rod from his hands.
    “Bite!” he screamed, gripping his dancing pole. Little Klein dug his heels in the sand and skidded down the shore, caught as much by The Minister as The Minister was caught by him. And then he was in the water, skipping along the surface but not letting go.
    “Bite!” he called again when he could get his face out of the water. Ahead of him, The Minister sped toward a submerged tree root, braced himself, and snagged the line he knew was trailing him. With a rip he left the hook and part of his lip behind and was free. He swam unsteadily back to his den, snuggled himself under a rock, and, without the energy to dismiss the loitering carp, The Minister slept.
    As the line went slack, Little Klein sank. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and LeRoy ran along the shore