Medicine Walk (15 page)

When the kid alit he could smell the fecund bog of the meadow, the seep of it just below the grasses. There were hints of cedar on the breeze. The sun splayed across his face and he closed his eyes against it and he could hear the creek jostle its way through the outcrops of rock at it shore and from somewhere to the east a steer bawled and the song of redwing blackbirds rose all around him.

His father assembled the rods, explaining as he went. The kid watched as he set the reels in the reel seats, tightened the screws that held them in place, and then threaded the line through the eyelets and tied on tiny brown flies. He grinned at him. “Trick is to not use strength,” he said. “The whole deal is about bein’ graceful. Savvy?”

“Not really,” the kid said.

“Don’t know a whole lot about it neither except for this. You kinda wave insteada throwin’. I’ll show ya.” He laid one rod down in the carpet of moss and coarse grass away from the trees and walked the end of the line out a dozen yards. “Ya gotta let the rod do all the work,” he said. “She’ll bend and pick up tension and when yer ready you lay the line out smooth.”

He walked back to where the kid stood and picked up the rod. He held the tip out in front of him and gripped the handle with his thumb laid out along the length of it. Then he slowly raised his forearm at the elbow and lifted it almost ninety degrees. The line was pulled off the grass. It peeled
toward them in an arc and the kid ducked but it sailed past his father’s head in a deep U-shape and when it straightened he pushed the arm forward again and the line followed. He let it flow out and brought the rod tip down gently and the line straightened, held in the air a fraction of a second, and landed in the grass.

“Easy,” his father said. “Well, easy enough, anyhow. You wanna try?”

The kid took the rod in his hands. His father stood behind him and he could feel the length of his body along the back of him. His warmth. The smell of soap and tobacco. He took the kid’s forearm and raised it. The line caught. “One, two, three,” he counted in his ear. “Tick, tick, tick,” he said. “Think about the face of a clock.” Then he pushed the kid’s forearm forward and held it when it hit the ten o’clock position. The line floated out and settled on the grass. “Do it like that. Easy. Gentle and count it out like I did and push her forward again.”

“By myself.”

“Hell yeah. I’m gonna set up the picnic.”

While his father set out a blanket and the stuff in the basket in the shade, the kid worked the line. It was hard at first. He wanted to force it but when he did the line cracked like a whip behind his ear. “Easy there, jimbo. You’ll knot the line,” his father said.

It took a while before he could mimic his father’s delivery. He looked at him now and then as his father lay on the blanket, sipping from a thermos. He launched a dozen perfect casts.

“All right then,” his father said. “Got a feel for it? The rhythm?”

“Yeah.” The kid smiled.

“Good. Now let’s hit them pools.”

They carried their rods and strode across the meadow. His father pointed downstream where the creek widened and picked up speed before sweeping into a wide curve that bellied into a long pool. He motioned with his hand and the kid followed him and they skirted the length of the pool. “Gotta get the sun in front of ya so ya don’t throw no shadow. Spooks ’em.”

They walked in a semicircle and approached the pool quietly, bent at the waist. When they could see the surface of the water, his father motioned him down to kneel in the grass. He raised his arm and followed the length of the pool with a finger. “See where the current comes in and follows through her?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s what ya gotta work. Go down to them rocks where it’s shallow and cast up into the current. Watch your fly and pull the line in with your free hand. Slow. Let it ride the current.”

“Where’s the line go?”

“Let her drop at your feet. She’ll float in the water. When ya get a hit raise the rod up and tighten the line. Keep the line tight and reel the bugger in.”

“That’s it? What if I lose him?”

“Then ya lose him. Only way to learn this is to learn it.”

“Where you gonna fish?”

“I’m gonna head down to the next pool. If ya break off a fly, come down and I’ll show ya how to tie on another.”

“How do I get the line out. Can’t walk it out on the water.”

“Be a trick if ya could. Here. Lemme show ya.”

Once he knew how to get the line out and cast his father walked away. The kid stripped line off his reel to prepare and turned his head and watched his father walk along the side of the stream. He seemed different here. There was nothing
of the shambled man he’d first seen at the farm. This man seemed assured, confident. Happy almost. He heard him whistle as he walked, then he leapt across the creek on rocks and turned to walk the opposite bank, the thermos hooked to his belt and bumping along as he strode forward. The kid turned to the pool and made his first cast.

He bellied the line on the water. But the tension of it coming back off the surface helped him get a feel for the next cast and it landed straighter but with a light slap. He focused on being easy. His attention was rooted to the act of casting and he never noticed time slipping away. When he was finally able to make soft casts and watch the fly settle into the current and drift, it was mid-afternoon. The sun was arched toward the west and the shadows thrown by the willows were longer. He felt cool. He was hungry. He dipped his hand into the stream and drank then splashed some on his face and neck. He looked downstream to where his father had disappeared but could see no motion. So he stretched and returned to the process of casting.

The first thing he heard was his name being yelled. It was rough and frantic and he dropped the rod on the bank and clambered up it. His father was splashing through the water with a large trout cradled in his hands. He fought to hold the fish and he stumbled, reeled, and the kid thought he’d fall but his forward motion kept him upright.

“Hoo hoo!” he yelled. “Got me the granddaddy of ’em all.”

He made it as far as the end of the pool the kid had fished before he fell. His foot slipped on a rock and he crashed headlong and the fish flew out of his arms, turning a lazy circle before landing on its flank in the shallows. The kid watched it right itself and then flash its tail hard and disappear into the trench where the current ran faster. His father fought for
footing then fell again. The kid leapt off the bank and waded to him and caught one flailing hand. He tugged on it. He could feel his father’s weight and he braced his feet against the rocks and held fast. It took his father several minutes to right himself. The kid helped him to the bank, where he collapsed, and the kid could smell the rank cut of whisky on his breath.

“Son of a bitch!” Eldon said. “That sucker went three pounds or I’m fucked.”

“Drunk is what you are,” the kid said.

“Hell, it’s your birthday, kid. A little celebratin’ is all I done.”

“Shoulda known when I seen the thermos.”

“Yeah well, lost the damn fish but we still got a picnic. Let’s do ’er up.”

The kid shook his head and went to retrieve the rod. His father scrambled up the bank. He tripped at the top and almost fell backwards into the stream but the kid caught his shirt tail. “Where’s your rod?” he asked.

“Last I seen she was headed west.”

“You lost it?”

“Fish too. Don’t forget that.”

The kid stomped off toward the trees where the truck was parked. His father weaved along behind him and he could hear him stop and unscrew the thermos cap. He spun around and watched him drink. His Adam’s apple bobbed crazily. He lowered the thermos and looked at it puzzled and turned it upside down and shook it. “Fuck,” he said. The kid walked hard to the trees and sat beside the basket. His father tottered right by and went to the truck and rooted around under the seat. He stepped away with a small bottle. There was the leer of a smile on his face.

“Figure to drink that too?” the kid asked.

His father tumbled down onto the blanket. “Waste not, want not. Ain’t that the rule?”

“Yer already wasted.”

“Got you a mouth, don’tcha?”

The kid shook his head. His father reached across to the basket and yanked out a sandwich wrapped in wax paper. He set about to eat it. The kid watched while he crammed in a huge mouthful and chewed at it savagely. Crumbs and bits of meat and slices of cheese tumbled out and he smacked his lips, breathing hard and wiping at his mouth with the back of his hand. He swallowed. Then he tipped the bottle and gulped. The kid got up and walked to the truck. The keys were still in the ignition and he turned them and the motor caught and he sat there, staring out the windshield at his father.

His father struggled to his feet and ran toward him. He lost his balance and careered forward. He barely managed to catch himself with outstretched hands on the hood of the truck. “Fuck ya doon?” he asked.

“Get in or walk,” the kid said.

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“You can’t friggin’ drive.”

“Been drivin’ tractor since I was eight. This truck ain’t no account. Get in.”

“What about the picnic?”

The kid slapped a hand on the wheel. Then he got out and walked angrily to the blanket and tossed everything together in a heap and walked to the truck and laid it in the bed. “Get in,” he said again.

“Fuck’d ya do that for?” his father asked, fighting to climb into the passenger seat.

The kid glared at him. His hands were shaking. He felt hot. “Waste not, want not,” he said.

His father slammed the door closed. The smell of whisky was high in the air. The kid rolled down his window and backed the truck into the grass and then pulled out into the rut of the road. He took it slow, but the truck still bucked along. His father held one hand out on the dashboard and gripped the door handle with the other. His head swung back and forth. When they got to the gravel road the kid turned back the way they came and his father settled into his seat. “Happy birthday,” he slurred.

The kid let out a breath long and slow and focused on the road. His father passed out halfway back to town. He drove slow and carefully and found his way back through town to the rooming house and parked in the driveway. It was full evening. Jenna and two men had been strolling along the sidewalk and the kid went to them and handed her the keys. The two men walked to the truck and hauled his father out, bracing him between them and dragging him to the house and up the stairs while the kid stared at his feet.

“Got a paper and something to write with?” he asked.

“Yes,” Jenna said. “Come in and I’ll get it.”

“Rather be out here, ma’am.”

“All right,” she said and went into the house. She came back a moment later with a sheet of paper and a pen. She gave it to him and he took it and leaned on the hood of the truck and wrote. When he was finished he handed it to her and turned and walked away.

You lied to me!
was all it said in big childlike letters.

He didn’t see his father again until he was twelve. Those two years passed without a word. At first he felt disappointed when a birthday came and went without a present or a card. But as the months went by he learned to forget about expectation. For a time he could allow the notion of having a father somewhere in the world gradually slip away and he was comfortable in his life on the farm. He didn’t mark time by occasions. He marked it by the seasons like a farmer and when the letter came inviting him to visit his father again, he wanted to shrug it off. It was the old man who talked him into going.

He made the journey to Parson’s Gap alone for the first time. What he would always remember about it were the hours spent on horseback and the feel of the open country all around him. When he’d arrived in town his father was with a woman. He wasn’t drunk but he was drinking. They had supper at a diner downtown and then his father and the woman had left him. They’d gone off and left him with a radio for company and headed down to the mill workers’ bar. He’d fallen asleep in the rocking chair his father kept as the only furniture in his room except the single bed and a battered fridge. Sometime in the early morning they lurched in and fell onto the bed. He sat huddled under a thin blanket in the chair, a shadow among shadows, barely able to breathe. They thrashed around and there were moans and curses and a sound like growling and the bed banged against the wall and he could feel the floor shake. He could see the moon of his father’s buttocks rising and falling and the soles of the woman’s feet like the flats of white paddles kicking against the current of the air, the room dense with the smell of them: liquor, cigarettes, sweat. It didn’t last long. Her arms gyrated wildly in the air and she hit him on the back and shoulders.
They finished in a paroxysm of curses, wet kisses, and laughter before his father rolled to the side and flipped on the light. He didn’t see him at first but the woman did. A thatch of hair tumbled over her eyes and she brushed it away and bit her lip. She elbowed his father. He turned with a crock of whisky in his hand. They both stared at him. The kid swallowed hard, his heart hammering in his chest and wanting to flee into the night. But he stayed where he was. Waiting.

“Jesus,” his father said.

The woman cupped a breast and leered at him. He turned his head. There was a long silence before he heard the scrape of a match and then a breathy exhale. When he looked his father was handing the smoke to the woman, who continued to look at him with one forearm propping the bulge of her breasts.

“Son of a bitch,” his father said. “Sorry,” he said to the woman.

“I kinda like it,” she said.

“Well, I kinda like that ya like it.” They laughed and both took a hard slug of the whisky. His father smoked and squinted at him. The kid looked away toward the window.

The woman whispered something in his father’s ear and gave the lobe a lick and he turned and flipped off the light and the kid could hear them rustle about. Then the light came on again. “Chevy says she wants to see ya watchin’,” he said. He was grinning crazily. The woman smiled through blackened teeth. He pulled the blanket up over his face and they laughed and there was the sound of wrestling and few light slaps and then the wet slop of drunken kisses. He stood. They didn’t notice. He gathered his shoes and crept to the door and turned and all he saw was a tangle of flesh so he stepped out
the door and walked out of the rooming house and down the street to get the horse. He rode out of town in darkness. It was supposed to be a camping trip.