2007 FRQ #2

         The campfire was built in front of a tent and the 

     tent was under an enormous pine. When you slept 

     inside the tent it seemed always that it was raining 

     outside because the needles from the pine kept falling. 

5   Sitting across from him and staring into the fire was 

     his father. Each summer they came to this place 

     which was nine thousand feet high and covered with 

     pine trees and dotted with lakes. They fished in the 

     lakes and when they slept at night the roar of water 

10 from the streams which connected the lakes sounded 

     in their ears all night long.

         They had been coming to this place ever since he 

     was seven. Now he was fifteen and Bill Harper was 

     going to come tomorrow. He sat in front of the fire 

15 and looked across at his father and wondered just how 

     he was going to tell him. It was a very serious thing. 

     Tomorrow for the first time in all their trips together 

     mind I’ll get up early in the morning and meet Harper 

     and he and I will go fishing. 

35 For a little while his father didn’t say a thing. Then 

     he said why sure go along Joe. And then a little later 

     his father said has Bill Harper got a rod? He told his 

     father no Bill hasn’t a rod. Well said his father why 

     don’t you take my rod and let Bill use yours? I don’t 

40 want to go fishing tomorrow anyhow. I’m tired and I 

     think I’ll rest all day. So you use my rod and let Bill 

     use yours. 

         It was as simple as that and yet he knew it was a 

     great thing. His father’s rod was a very valuable one. 

45 It was perhaps the only extravagance his father had 

     had in his whole life. It had amber leaders and 

     beautiful silk windings. Each spring his father sent the 

     rod away to a man in Colorado Springs who was an 

     expert on rods. The man in Colorado Springs 

50 carefully scraped the varnish off the rod and rewound 

     it and revarnished it and it came back glistening new 

     each year. There was nothing his father treasured 

     more. He felt a little lump in his throat as he thought 

     that even as he was deserting his father for Bill 

55 Harper his father had volunteered the rod. 

         They went to sleep that night in the bed which lay 

     against a floor of pine needles. They had scooped the 

     needles out to make a little hollow place for their hips. 

     He lay awake quite a while thinking about tomorrow 

60 and his father who slept beside him. Then he fell 

     asleep. At six o’clock Bill Harper whispered to him 

     through the tent flap. He got up and gave Bill his rod 

     and took his father’s for himself and they went off 

     without awakening his father.

     he wanted to go fishing with someone other than his 

     father. On previous trips the idea had never occurred 

20 to him. His father had always preferred his company 

     to that of men and he had always preferred his 

     father’s company to that of the other guys. But now 

     Bill Harper was coming up tomorrow and he wanted 

     to go fishing with him. He knew it was something that 

25 had to happen sometime. Yet he also knew that it was 

     the end of something. It was an ending and a 

     beginning and he wondered just how he should tell his 

     father about it. 

         So he told him very casually. He said Bill Harper’s 

30 coming up tomorrow and I thought maybe I’d go out 

     with him. He said Bill Harper doesn’t know very 

     much about fishing and I do so I think if you don’t