It's Saturday morning,
March 11, 2006, and Clayton Olson and I are up to our elbows in breakfast at the Cornerstone. He's having #4, the eggs, hash, and toast; I'm having #5, sausage patty, eggs, and pancakes, just like in Curlew: Home, p. 13. Big Jim walks in and joins us. They call him Big Jim because he is, well, a big fella. You could call him Big Red, too, if you thought you could get away with it. What he has left of his hair has a reddish cast to it. Male pattern baldness is taking the rest.
Big Jim likes to tell stories. Yep, he has barely sat down and ordered his food and already he's telling one. He's a truck driver, and he hears a lot of stories on the road so always has one to tell. He's a good truck-driver, keeps a good log, and can make deliveries on time that other drivers often miss. Unlike a lot of North Dakota truck drivers, he doesn't mind taking loads to the east coast, so he has work.
We finish breakfast. Clayton thought he should buy, that it was his turn. I take Clayton back to Oakwood Inn and all of us go about our separate business. Jim and his son-in-law will be going ice fishing in the afternoon. I go back to my room and write.
On Sunday morning, Big Jim takes Clayton and me to breakfast at the Cornerstone. Jim is buying today.
Jim tells us about the ice fishing. Says I could have come along and not gotten worn out running out to check the tip-ups. There weren't many fish biting. Another fellow out on the ice was catching fish, but Jim says he was putting hot dogs and sausages on a big hook and pulling in these large northern.
Clayton says, "That fellow was just kidding you."
"No, no," Jim says, his hair a bit more reddish with the devil in him, "that's what he said he was using - hot dogs and sausages. We just had the wrong bait."
To be continued....
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