He put the rod back in Bud's hand, placing it with Bud's palm just back of the seated reel and arranging his thumb and each finger for proper balance. Bud remained afraid to move it, or to shift even one finger, for now he commanded the rod. If he made one wrong move, and any move he made might be wrong, the rod would again command him. Gramps stepped back for a critical study.
"It'll do," he pronounced finally. "I pondered on starting you out with one of the old seven-ounce rods but what the dickens. You're going to fish for trout, you ought to begin right and you can't begin right 'thout the right tackle. Four and a half ounces this rod weighs 'thout the reel, and you'll be put to it to find a better. It took me a solid six weeks, working every night, to put her together the way I wanted her."
"Do you make these, too?"
"Yup. Something to do on long winter evenings."
"Breakfast," Gram announced. "They're only good while they're hot."
Bud laid his rod across two chairs and sat down to golden-brown griddle cakes, bacon and milk. He couldn't help looking at Gramps. At the other meals they had eaten together, Gramps' table manners had been correct enough. Now he didn't even seem to be thinking about food, as he put two pancakes together, laid two strips of bacon on the topmost pancake and doused everything with syrup. Then he rolled the bacon in the pancakes and ate the rolled mixture with his fingers. It was plain that in his thoughts he was already out on Skunk Creek. Gramps was no blasé sophisticate who had tasted all he could stomach of life by the time he was thirty. His eye to the grassroots, Gramps had long ago understood that everything was as old as creation itself and yet was eternally new. Nothing ever lost its sheen; some eyes just couldn't see it.
Gramps finished and looked meaningfully at Bud's place. Bud hastened to finish as Gramps rose.
"It isn't polite to eat and run, Mother, but the day's getting no younger. Ready, Bud?"
"All ready," Bud said, forebearing this time to add "Gramps."
"Bring me back at least one to eat, Delbert," Gram said. "I haven't had trout in almost three weeks."