Max's fish
Max’s fish
Max moved to Las Vegas (New Mexico not Nevada). His place was a storefront next to the jail from the movie Easy Rider. He was in the process of building an apartment in the back of the building. Doing the work himself, doing a good job at it.
We were sitting under a bridge down the road from his place. It went over the stream where he took baths. He hadn’t sorted out plumbing at his spot yet.
I mentioned the people fishing. That got him talking about this contraption he said he was planning to build. The idea was to take a long piece of wood and run a thin rope along it, at the end of the rope he would have a piece of wood that he’d cut into the shape of a fish and painted. Max said since he didn’t fish, but wanted to assimilate, he could just come down to this stream with his prop and make like he was fishing and talk to the fisherman, become acquainted.
Shortly after he finished telling about his plan I heard a pop. Something sliced through the leaves above our heads. It happened again. Someone was shooting their gun at us. After a few more shots it stopped. We waited. We climbed up the embankment. In the distance someone jogged down a side street stuffing a gun in their waistband.
Later, sitting on a train we watched the desert moving past us. Saw some buffalo. Saw fence posts dried out and older than god. I brought up the shots.
“They weren’t shooting at us,” he said. “They were shooting near us.”