Lines on the Water (13 page)

“Stop sawing my head.”

As soon as we got to Castle Street he fled into the night. I never saw him again.

“You just haven’t seen him at his very best,” Henry said.

It was pouring rain by this time, and I never got fishing the next day, or the next. Then one day I went up and walked from Milk Jug down to Three Minute Pool, and back up. I hooked a grilse on the way back. Then it tore about, running with my line until I lost it. I never went back to the South Branch until some years later my dog Jeb Stuart and I saw a bear cub walking down to Teacup Pool.

Henry was caught later that year bringing three salmon out in the back of his car. He said he didn’t know how they got there and pleaded not guilty, even though he had a net wrapped up in a sleeping bag.

“What did you think when you saw the fish there?” his lawyer asked.

“It absolutely bowled me over—not once but a number of times,” Henry said. “I couldn’t believe it at all.”

“And you didn’t try to bite the warden?”

“Bite a warden—why would I want to bite a warden? You bite a warden, you’re biting off more than you can chew.”

I don’t know how to
explain
Henry other than the way I have. Just as I might wish there be a pill to cure him, I wish there might be a pill to explain him. One of the only other ways I can explain him is in his trying to justify what he was doing. One night after he and a friend of his had taken salmon, and then fought over them, Henry began to talk about his friend being greedy, unlike he was—that
he himself
was not greedy—and there was a great difference between
why
he wanted to poach and the poaching of his friend. After a while he became more and more upset and morally outraged. And I think that his dilemma, and dementia, is part of the larger dilemma of self-justification at the expense of others.

It is very hard to look at greed in the face of a poacher or anyone else.

In these woods I have met men who never care to speak, and men who just cannot shut up, men who dress like eighteenth-century farmers in old straw hats, and men who have the most high-tech equipment possible. All of them are seen on the river, following their own dreams, looking for the fabled fish that they dreamed about since they thought and spoke as a child.

I know a great guide who cannot stand to get into a canoe because he’s never learned to pole, and another who, on more than one occasion, parked his canoe halfway down the Norwest River and slept in it all night with his sport, so his sport could fish a pool at dawn. And all of them have one thing in common, and that one thing is the salmon. It is the great salmon that brings them together, that is inclusive in a way few other things in life are. No man or woman here minds if you haven’t read Henry James. And most don’t even mind if you have.

ONCE WHEN I WAS
fishing with my dog—the toughest little dog I ever had, a little river-water dog named after the rebel calvary officer Jeb Stuart—we met a bear and a cub on those hills above the South Branch. Unlike Peter’s bear, it was still very much alive.

Jeb was a good dog to have with me. And since I do much of my fishing alone now, I like having a dog. Old Jeb is gone now, and I have another dog with me, Roo, who is a great companion—she has also gotten me back to my truck quicker than I would have made it when fishing the Sevogle.

Some years back, when friends of ours were visiting at our cottage on the bay, I decided to get them a fish to barbecue. I left early in the morning with Jeb beside me, and travelled to the Norwest. All the morning I fished hard and saw nothing, and so disheartened I went back to the cottage in late afternoon with nothing to show.

“I will try it again tomorrow,” I said. “I will switch rivers—go to the Little Souwest.”

And so I did. The next day I fished three pools on the Little Souwest. But still there was no luck for me.

So home I went. My friends looked at me a little sheepishly and began to say they didn’t want any fish anyway. But that did nothing more than get my blood up.

“I’ll get a fish tomorrow,” I said, “even if I have to crawl to the river and back.”

Such was my statement—now to do it.

I left very early in the morning for the long drive to the Sevogle. This was in July; this is where the fish were. I was just being lazy not going there in the first place.

At that time I had not been at the Sevogle in a few years, and the road—the logging road Peter had found that night years before—was overgrown and swamped.

My old truck went into four-wheel drive, but even so, it was a hard road. My little dog Jeb bounced up and down on
the seat as I bounced along, the two mirrors flattened right out to the side of my windows, and I could smell the engine working overtime as the bush got thicker and thicker.

By the time I reached the path down to Milk Jug Pool I could go no further; I had wanted to travel into White Birch, but it seemed to me that there was no road left—not the road I once knew. And so I thought that Milk Jug Pool is a good pool too, and so is Teacup, and I’ve taken fish from them as well.

Jeb and I got out. I was a little excited because I knew we’d see fish here. I put on my vest, checked my lunch, Jeb’s dog biscuits, and my box of flies, told my dog to go ahead and down over the hill we went. On one corner going towards the river on that steep path there is a crooked tree people lean against where they can first see and hear the river, which looks to be about three stories beneath them. The rapids flow over brown rocks at the top of the pool, where you cross to fish down through from the far side, and there is no better sound in the world to a fisherman who is just coming on it.

The birds were singing and it was early morning when I made my way, with Jeb swimming beside me, across to the far side of that pool, got my fly box out, looked through it for a fly, and suddenly realized that I had forgotten my rod at the truck.

Of course I am an idiot—but I cannot tell you how being an idiot makes you feel.

“Dammit, Jeb,” I said. I could not believe that I had forgotten my rod leaning against the side of the truck, or that I was so excited to get to the pool I had not missed it anywhere on the steep climb down.

“Come on, Jeb,” I said, and back up we started. It was a long climb back and when we got to the top, my rod leaned against the front of the truck as if it was making fun of human effort.

Actually I was so angry I didn’t want to go back down.

“If I have to crawl to the river and back,” I remembered my Hannibalistic-sized boast the night before.

The sun was now high and it was warm.

“Come on, boy,” I said, and down Jeb Stuart and I went. The foliage was thick and green, the water inviting, when all of a sudden Jeb, who usually stuck close to me, veered off to the right and a small black animal started off in front of him. I thought it was a porcupine and wondered if I had any pliers with me to dig out the quills, or whether or not Jeb who was a tough mutt of a dog would allow me to touch his snout if that happened, when I heard the animal give a squeal and realized it was a bear cub.

“Jeb,” I said, in a short low voice, “you get over here.” Jeb
paid me no mind at all. And then I heard the mother. I was not in a great position. Jeb barked and barked, and then a minute later back he came, running. My major concern was that he would bring the angry female right to me. I heard the cracking of trees a short distance away. Jeb ran behind me, growling and wagging his tail.

“Let’s go,” I said. And down we went. When we got to that tree, I heard the bear and its cub crossing the path above us. They moved away, and down we went to the pool. When we got to the other side I stared back and could hear them again, and for at least five more minutes as the female, far above us, crossed the path once more and back to where it had come from. After a while the sound of them became faint, and then indistinguishable, with the slight waving of the trees.

The pool is small, and doesn’t look like all that much, but in the middle and along the far side there is a fine run of water and fish lay there. The water was brown-toned in the sunlight, and kept gurgling songs at me, as I waded into the rapids at the top of the pool.

I cast three or four times, with a number 8 bug with an orange hackle and white body, and suddenly, eureka, the line tightened, and I had on a grilse that I had no trouble landing. I often play my fish hard, grilse especially, and land them as soon as their nose is turned towards me.

I killed the grilse and made a bed, rested the pool, and had a cup of coffee and a chew of plug and fished down through the pool again. The trees were in great midsummer form, the water ripe for fishing, and there wasn’t a sound of a human being.

THE NEXT SEASON I
had a canoe, and went to the Norwest early, to go down and get fiddleheads in the soil above Wilson’s Pool. I was going to take some of these fiddleheads to Mr. Simms, and I remembered the story Premier Richard Hatfield once told me about fiddleheads—that the Micmac Indian believed the fiddlehead, and the way the top of the stem curled inward on itself, was a map of how moose travelled in the woods. It seemed a wonderful explanation to me, about how the gods linked moose and fiddlehead and river and province together.

The water that day was high, so the river was no trouble running, and it was swift and fun. I had a rod with me, but had little luck, so I picked a garbage bag of fiddleheads, and spent the day on the river alone, with homemade jam and bread and scalding coffee, feeling very comfortable and free (as Huck would say).

A man came along in an old-town canoe with his wife and little girl, winging through the fast water that flowed seemlessly near the gunnels. All around me were signs of the new world. Maples were leafing in the distance, and poplars. The air ticked with bugs, but the blackflies weren’t out yet to drive you crazy.

Further along a moose crossed the river in front of my canoe without even caring to notice me—except for a side glance. And further along still an osprey circled in the warm sun above its nest while here and there among the shadows small patches of resilient snow stubbornly hugged the rocks.

So I was free, I guess. That’s what we all want. And lucky too. For so much of our dealings with wilderness is taken up in trying to find it. Humankind has stretched itself to the ends of it all. David Carroll in his wonderfully poetic book on trout fishing talks about how pure the world was when the natives were here alone, and how the Europeans scorched the earth barren, so that you have to navigate dams and go fishing
with houses next to you and the smell of factories, mills, and gas. The Miramichi has not escaped this either.

Another observation Mr. Carroll makes that I cannot help but agree with is that lake fishing did not move him, like stream fishing. It was too vast and dark for him to get a feeling for. I have lake fished enough to know what he is saying. There is something about the movement of the water, pertaining to the movement and spawn of fish, that is missing in lake fish.

I met up with the canoe with the young family. They were hauled up on a small rocky beach just above Dennis Pool, and were free of the world, and all the troubles of the world, by being immersed in the natural one.

The little girl sat on a rock as the mother took out the Coleman stove and got it going. The man got his rod out and, putting on a Mickey Finn streamer, waded out and cast into the heavy water, and was soon around a bend hidden by some trees only to reappear a little later, walking through the snow-spotted and puddle-laden woods.

I pulled in along side them and we spoke for a while, while I had a chew of Red Man plug. The sun made shadows on the little girl’s clothing as she sat with a cup of hot chocolate, and there wasn’t another voice or sound for miles, except that of the river.

I made it down to Wayerton Bridge sooner than I thought
I would and waited for my brother to come along and drive me back around to my truck.

Then I went home and took some of the fiddleheads over to Mr. Simms, who was sitting inside the porch with a blanket over him. I thought of the little girl sitting on the beach above Dennis Pool and how many times Mr. Simms had poled down past it. How strong he was as a river guide, and how he would have managed to take care of parties of four or five fishermen or hunters all of his life.

But now he was suffering from Alzheimer’s, and it is a terrible illness.

His brother had noticed that there was something wrong first. When Mr. Simms retired all he spoke about was going into the woods in the spring, and spending his days on the river. But then he had found out he didn’t have riparian rights. And he had travelled with me to the South Branch and seen how much of it was clear-cut, which he said would destroy fishing for good. And then, the worst thing happened. That fall, when he was hunting, he lost his commemorative tin cup.

So he wouldn’t go to his camp. And his brother kept wondering why. His brother would come to visit him, and say, “Come on, let’s go.” And Mr. Simms would always make an excuse. The water was probably too high, or they hadn’t had rain, or there was too much work to do about the house.

The next fall he asked his brother to build him a tree stand for deer hunting, and when his brother asked where he wanted it, Mr. Simms pointed to a tree fifteen yards from their camp.

Then his brother knew that there was something terrible the matter and Mr. Simms was frightened of getting lost. Soon Mr. Simms gave up going to the woods, gave up driving, and did nothing but walk up and down the lane, while his brother had to take care to see he didn’t wander too far and get lost.

I gave Mr. Simms the fiddleheads, and spoke to him about fishing, but now I could tell it was an act with him more than anything else. And he was going over an old ritual with me that he would forget, and that all the dreams of the river, and his fifty years on it, were gone. They had drifted away to others, like myself, and he was alone.

I left him with some chewing tobacco—and I don’t believe I saw him again.