Explore "A Gathering of Old Men" by Ernest J. Gaines on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Me and Mat was down there fishing. We goes fishing every Tuesday and every Thursday. We got just one little spot now. Ain’t like it used to be when you had the whole river to fish on. The white people, they done bought up the river now, and you got nowhere to go but that one little spot. Me and Mat goes there every Tuesday and Thursday. Other people uses it other days, but on Tuesday and Thursday they leaves it for us. We been going to that one little spot like that every Tuesday and Thursday the last ten, ’leven years. That one little spot. Just ain’t got nowhere else to go no more.
We had been down there—oh, ’bout a hour. Mat had caught eight or nine good-size perches, and me about six—throw in a couple of sackalays there with the bunch. Me and Mat was just sitting there taking life easy, talking low. Mat was sitting on his croker sack, I was sitting on my bucket. The fishes we had caught, we had them on a string in the water, keeping them fresh. We was just sitting there talking low, talking ’bout the old days.