Tess pressed tightly against the old hickory's trunk, the fissured bark scratching at her back. The last remnants of the morning's storm still dripped from the tree, the moisture mingling with the rising afternoon heat, both soaking and warming her at the same time.

Her breath escaped, heavy and fast. He would hear her for sure. She tried to slow her breathing and remain as motionless as possible.

Nearby she could make out the gentle gurgle of the stream winding its way through the wood and between the sloping hills. Her daddy said it eventually fed into Sugar Creek, though her mother insisted it was part of Sinking Creek. As far as Tess was concerned, it was pretty and she liked the way it carried her paper sailboats down its tiny falls. Wherever it went from there did not matter.

A twig snapped nearby and Tess held her breath. He was coming.

As she breathed in deep, catching that one last solid inhale before she silenced herself steady and breathless against the tree, she caught the rich scent of the wet earth underfoot. The smell reminded her of earthworms, and of fishing with her daddy.

***

Her mother and father had been divorced as long as Tess could remember. She didn't know the why of it – she loved them both deeply and couldn't see any reason that they wouldn't want to be together – but she had learned long ago that the split was final, and had been repeatedly assured that she had nothing to do with it. She supposed that was nice to hear, though until her daddy had mentioned it she had never suspected she played a role in the affair at all. Again, the divorce had always been and that was as basic a fact of life as the color of the sky.

Her daddy had her every other weekend, and during the summers when the weather permitted, he often liked to take Tess out to one of his favorite fishing holes. Streams and creeks littered northern Missouri and her father had many favorite spots. She liked fishing off of the jetties most of all.

While her dad would cast the lines and crack a beer down by the shore, she'd scramble over the rocks pretending she was an explorer. As she'd crest the top of the jetties, often up to a road bank bordered on the other side by yet another scramble of rocks sloping down to yet another shore, she'd peer out over the water and wonder just what mysteries lay in the beyond where the sky and the water met.

It was one such summer morning in particular that came to mind as she breathed in the wet dirt there by the stream feeding into the mystery creek. The sun baked down on her rose-tinted skin as she leapt from alabaster rock to alabaster rock along the shore of the Thomas Hill Reservoir. As she approached the sidewalk that ran the crest of the jetty, her daddy called out to her.

"Tess, honey, be careful!"

She pirouetted on the last rock before the sidewalk, spinning around to her father.

"I am, daddy."

His eye roll intimated that he didn't believe her.

"What? I am!"

"Of course you are, sweetie," he said, with no hint of disagreement, although she knew he still didn't believe her. Daddy disapproved of a lot of things. Daddy could be a pain. Of course, he also knew heaps of facts about all Tess's favorite subjects, and those stories went a long way to make up for his tendency to reprimand.

"Now get down here, please. You're burning up."

No use fighting, she flitted over the rocks and plopped down into a lawn chair laid out beside her father on the dirt bank. Rummaging through his tackle, he pulled out a tube of sunscreen, and lathered his hands.

"Your mother will have my hide if I bring you back burnt to a crisp." He lifted her ponytail and slathered the sunscreen onto her shoulders and down her back.

"I'm sorry, daddy."

"It's okay. Just, touch up your face some, hon." He handed her the tube and let her apply the last of the lotion.

As she smoothed the sunscreen into her cheeks, she watched as her father checked one of the lines he had propped into a stand along the shore. He tugged a couple of times, watching as the red and white bobber did its bobbing up and down in the reservoir, sending out circular ripples of water as it did. Finally he reeled in the line, and checked the hook. The hook was empty, the bait gone.

"Shit."

Tess froze, as if she had been the one to say a bad word. You didn't say shit. Mommy and daddy had both made that clear after receiving a call from her kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Smith. Tess waited a moment to see if she was in trouble, even though it had been daddy that cursed, but no reprimand came.

"Daddy?" she asked.

"Yes?"

"You said shi.. you said a bad word."

"Shit," he stammered. "Er... yeah, you're right. I did." He paused looking at her, but still Tess said nothing. She didn't know what you did when mommy or daddy misbehaved. Did you reprimand them?

"Sometimes grown ups make mistakes, too, Tess," he continued. "It's okay. No one's in trouble."

He pulled out a Ziploc bag filled with dirt from his tackle.

"How about you help me recast the line," he said. "Would you like that?" As he said it, his fingers groped in the damp dirt within the bag searching.

"Mmm-hmm." Tess said, but she wanted to do more than cast the line. She often watched her dad prep the poles before casting the lines out into the water, and the part that had fascinated her the most had been baiting the hook. She'd never done it herself, and Tess thought she might like to try.

Her father's fingers pinched in on a small earthworm, gently lifting it from the bag. It wiggled, wrapping loosely around his forefinger and leaving a trail of dirt and wet skin it its wake.

"Daddy," she said.

"Yes?"

"Could I bait the hook?"

Her father had paused then, the worm half latched to his finger, half flailing in the open air beneath.

"Are you sure?" he asked. "That's a big girl job."

That cinched it. She hated it when daddy talked to her like she was little still. Tess was six years old then and she'd turn seven that November.

"Yes," she said. "I want to do it."

Her dad handed her the worm first. She reached out her cupped hands and it had dropped down into their waiting embrace with a soft, squishy plop. It lay there still for a moment, then began twisting and fidgeting. The end that she decided was the worm's head seemed to be probing into her sunscreen lathered hands hunting for dirt, a soft soil bed that it could call home.

As she watched it slipping across her palms, her daddy carefully swung over the line, holding to the shining, dripping hook.

"Okay, Tess," he said. "Pinch the worm here to get a good grip." He pointed then to the tail-end of the worm.

Tess did as she was told and gently grasped the worm lifting it up towards the hook.

"Now," her daddy continued, "thread the worm onto the barb, tail-end first, and up along the hook. That way it gets a strong hold on the worm and it doesn't slide off so easy."

She looked between the wriggling worm dangling from her grip to the hook waiting to be baited. Part of her questioned what should come next. The worm wanted an earthy home, not a hook, but her father had told her what to do and good girls did what they were told. Suddenly this didn't seem like such a good idea anymore and Tess didn't want to be a big girl.

"It's easy, honey? I can show you if you want."

"No," she said, swallowing back a lump.

Tess lifted the worm, and slowly pushed its tail-end onto the hook. As she did, the worm began to thrash violently, it's head-end darting to and fro, and finally it was as if it locked onto her, staring with its eyeless gaze and accusing her.

She felt its guts slip out as her finger shook, and she slipped ripping the worm off the metal trap. It fell to the wet shore, squirming a moment more, thrashing helplessly. It would never find a home again.

She wept then, and her daddy had held her, and had promised her that she never had to bait a hook again. As she cried, he teased his fingers through her hair, stroking her scalp until her wracking sobs grew soft and gentle, and finally were no more. She would still go fishing with him from time to time, but her daddy always used lures when they fished together now. When they left that day, she had looked back to the shore where the worm had fell and saw its baked tube-like form dried against the dirt.

***

That day by the jetty had been Tess's first and only experience with death, and now as she pressed against the white-grey bark of the hickory tree with her breath held tight, that scent of wet earth rummaged up that complicated tangle of hurt and shame of which she could not let go.

She could feel her eyes begin to water, and as they did, she reminded herself that she was a big girl now, and big girls didn't cry. A year had passed since that summer and she'd grown a whole two inches and her mommy said she'd grown on the inside as well, whatever that meant.

So she wouldn't cry, and she wouldn't think about that earthworm writhing and drying in the sun. Tess focused on holding her breath and staying still lest he catch her.