Orrin Pettibone

Orrin Pettibone is 61 and a charter boat captain and circuit veteran. Short and pot-bellied, with a wrinkled, sun-reddened face, a gray horseshoe mustache and thick hands with grease under the nails, he is grumpy and proud, speaks of the lake as of a home and of newcomers with contempt. He was circuit champion in 1998, when fish were weighed on a spring scale.

He lives in a house of light-blue painted boards, beside the old marina, with a living room of worn flooring, a brass spring scale hung on the wall beside a dusty trophy, a canvas-covered armchair and a wood stove he lights in September. He knows every stone on the lake bottom, and has lived on it for forty years.

He wears a worn yellow waterproof jacket, with a patch on the elbow, and a faded captain's cap. His thick hands have grease under the nails, those of someone who prefers to repair rather than ask for help. He speaks slowly, chewing his words, and ends his sentences with a grumble, like someone disapproving of his own subject.

About the day, he says he stayed on the south bank all day and the fish wanted nothing. He never even went to the scale. It happens, he says, even to those who have fished for forty years. Of the pair that won, he remarks that nobody wins four straight on that lake, not even God. And he recalls that he was circuit champion in 1998, when they weighed on a spring scale.

When the question suggests he put lead in Brock's fish to bring him down, Orrin answers that he was lake champion when the boy was in diapers and that he doesn't dirty his hands over a kid. He scrapes the grease from his nails with his thumb and lets out a grumble: a veteran's contempt at a ridiculous accusation or the pose of someone too proud to explain?