Rock Springs (20 page)

Nola turned and looked at me. The thought of fishing was seeming like a joke to her, I know. Though maybe she didn't have money for a meal and thought we might buy her one. Or maybe she'd never even been fishing. Or maybe she knew that she was on her way to the bottom, where everything is the same, and here was this something different being offered, and it was worth a try.

“Did you catch a big fish, Les,” she asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“See?” Troy said. “Am I a liar? Or am I not?”

“You might be.” Nola looked at me oddly then, but I thought sweetly, too. “What kind of fish was it?”

“A brown trout. Caught deep, on a hare's ear,” I said.

“I don't know what that is,” Nola said and smiled. I could see that she wasn't minding any of this because her face was flushed, and she looked pretty.

“Which,” I asked. “A brown trout? Or a hare's ear?”

“That's it,” she said.

“A hare's ear is a kind of fly,” I said.

“I see,” Nola said.

“Let's get out of the bar for once,” Troy said loudly, running his chair backwards and forwards. “We'll go fish, then we'll have chicken-in-the-ruff. Troy's paying.”

“What'll I lose?” Nola said and shook her head. She looked at both of us, smiling as though she could think of something that might be lost.

“You got it all to win,” Troy said. “Let's go.”

“Whatever,” Nola said. “Sure.”

And we went out of the Top Hat, with Nola pushing Troy in his chair and me coming on behind.

O
n Front Street the evening was as warm as May, though the sun had gone behind the peaks already, and it was nearly dark. The sky was deep blue in the east behind the Sapphires, where the darkness was, but salmon pink above the sun. And we were in the middle of it. Half-drunk, trying to be imaginative in how we killed our time.

Troy's Checker was parked in front, and Troy rolled over to it and spun around.

“Let me show you this great trick,” he said and grinned. “Get in and drive, Les. Stay there, sweetheart, and watch me.”

Nola had kept her drink in her hand, and she stood by the door of the Top Hat. Troy lifted himself off his chair onto
the concrete. I got in beside Troy's bars and his raised seat, and started the cab with my left hand.

“Ready,” Troy shouted. “Ease forward. Ease up.”

And I eased the car up.

“Oh my God,” I heard Nola say and saw her put her palm to her forehead and look away.

“
Yaah. Ya-hah,
” Troy yelled.

“Your poor foot,” Nola said.

“It doesn't hurt me,” Troy yelled. “It's just like a pressure.” I couldn't see him from where I was.

“Now I know I've seen it all,” Nola said. She was smiling.

“Back up, Les. Just ease it back again,” Troy called out.

“Don't do it again,” Nola said.

“One time's enough, Troy,” I said. No one else was in the street. I thought how odd it would be for anyone to see that, without knowing something in advance. A man running over another man's foot for fun. Just drunks, you'd think, and be right.

“Sure. Okay,” Troy said. I still couldn't see him. But I put the cab back in park and waited. “Help me, sweetheart, now,” I heard Troy say to Nola. “It's easy getting down, but old Troy can't get up again by himself. You have to help him.”

And Nola looked at me in the cab, the glass still in her hand. It was a peculiar look she gave me, a look that seemed to ask something of me, but I did not know what it was and couldn't answer. And then she put her glass on the pavement and went to put Troy back in his chair.

W
hen we got to the river it was as good as dark, and the river was only a big space you could hear, with the south-of-town lights up behind it and the three bridges and Champion's Paper downstream a mile. And it was
cold with the sun gone, and I thought there would be fog in before morning.

Troy had insisted on driving with us in the back, as if we'd hired a cab to take us fishing. On the way down he sang a smoke jumper's song, and Nola sat close to me and let her leg be beside mine. And by the time we stopped by the river, below the Lion's Head motel, I had kissed her twice, and knew all that I could do.

“I think I'll go fishing,” Troy said from his little raised-up seat in front. “I'm going night fishing. And I'm going to get my own chair out and my rod and all I need. I'll have a time.”

“How do you ever change a tire?” Nola said. She was not moving. It was just a question she had. People say all kinds of things to cripples.

Troy whipped around suddenly, though, and looked back at us where we sat on the cab seat. I had put my arm around Nola, and we sat there looking at his big head and big shoulders, below which there was only half a body any good to anyone. “Trust Mr. Wheels,” Troy said. “Mr. Wheels can do anything a whole man can.” And he smiled at us a crazy man's smile.

“I think I'll just stay in the car,” Nola said. “I'll wait for chicken-in-the-ruff. That'll be my fishing.”

“It's too cold for ladies now anyway,” Troy said gruffly. “Only men. Only men in wheelchairs is the new rule.”

I got out of the cab with Troy then and set up his chair and put him in it. I got his fishing gear out of the trunk and strung it up. Troy was not a man to fish flies, and I put a silver dace on his spin line and told him to hurl it far out and let it flow for a time into the deep current and then to work it, and work it all the way in. I said he would catch a fish with that strategy in five minutes, or ten.

“Les,” Troy said to me in the cold dark behind the cab.

“What?” I said.

“Do you ever just think of just doing a criminal thing sometime? Just do something terrible. Change everything.”

“Yes,” I said. “I think about that.”

Troy had his fishing rod across his chair now, and he was gripping it and looking down the sandy bank toward the dark and sparkling water.

“Why don't you do it?” he said.

“I don't know what I'd choose to do,” I said.

“Mayhem,” Troy said. “Commit mayhem.”

“And go to Deer Lodge forever,” I said. “Or maybe they'd hang me and let me dangle. That would be worse than this.”

“Okay, that's right,” Troy said, still staring. “But
I
should do it, shouldn't I? I should do the worst thing there is.”

“No, you shouldn't,” I said.

And then he laughed. “Hah. Right. Never do that,” he said. And he wheeled himself down toward the river into the darkness, laughing all the way.

I
n the cold cab, after that, I held Nola Foster for a long time. Just held her with my arms around her, breathing and waiting. From the back window I could see the Lion's Head motel, see the restaurant there that faces the river and that is lighted with candles, and where people were eating. I could see the welcome out front, though not who was welcomed. I could see cars on the bridge going home for the night. And it made me think of Harley Reeves in my father's little house on the Bitterroot. I thought about him in bed with my mother. Warm. I thought about the faded old tattoo on Harley's shoulder, victory, that said. And I could not connect it easily with what I knew about Harley Reeves, though I thought possibly that he had won a victory of kinds over me just by being where he was.

“A man who isn't trusted is the worst thing,” Nola Foster said. “You know that, don't you?” I suppose her mind was wandering. She was cold, I could tell by the way she held me. Troy was gone out in die dark now. We were alone, and her skirt had come up a good ways.

“Yes, that's bad,” I said, though I couldn't think at that moment of what trust could mean to me. It was not an issue in my life, and I hoped it never would be. “You're right,” I said to make her happy.

“What was your name again?”

“Les,” I said. “Lester Snow. Call me Les.”

“Les Snow,” Nola said. “Do you like less snow?”

“Usually I do.” And I put my hand then where I wanted it most.

“How old are you, Les?” she said.

“Thirty-seven.”

“You're an old man.”

“How old are you?” I said.

“It's my business, isn't it?”

“I guess it is,” I said.

“I'll do this, you know,” Nola said, “and not even care about it. Just do a thing. It means nothing more than how I feel at this time. You know? Do you know what I mean, Les?”

“I know it,” I said.

“But
you
need to be trusted. Or you aren't anything. Do you know that too?”

We were close to each other. I couldn't see the lights of town or the motel or anything more. Nothing moved.

“I know that, I guess,” I said. It was whiskey talking.

“Warm me up then, Les,” Nola said. “Warm. Warm.”

“You'll get warm,” I said.

“I'll think about Florida.”

“I'll make you warm,” I said.

W
hat I thought I heard at first was a train. So many things can sound like a train when you live near trains. This was a
woo
sound, you would say. Like a train. And I lay and listened for a long time, thinking about a train and its light shining through the darkness along the side of some mountain pass north of there and about something else I don't even remember now. And then Troy came around to my thinking, and I knew dien that the
woo
sound had been him.

Nola Foster said, “It's Mr. Wheels. He's caught a fish, maybe. Or else drowned.”

“Yes,” I said. I sat up and looked out the window but could see nothing. It had become foggy in just that little time, and tomorrow, I thought, would be warm again, though it was cold now. Nola and I had not even taken off our clothes to do what we'd done.

“Let me see,” I said.

I got out and walked into the fog to where I could only see fog and hear the river running. Troy had not made a
wooing
sound again, and I thought to myself, There is no trouble here. Nothing's wrong.

Though when I walked a ways up the sandy bank, I saw Troy's chair come visible in the fog. And he was not in it, and I couldn't see him. And my heart went then. I heard it go click in my chest. And I thought: This is the worst. What's happened here will be the worst. And I called out, “Troy. Where are you? Call out now.”

And Troy called out, “Here I am, here.”

I went for the sound, ahead of me, which was not out in the river but on the bank. And when I had gone farther, I saw him, out of his chair, of course, on his belly, holding on to his fishing rod with both hands, the line out into the river as though it meant to drag him to the water.

“Help me!” he yelled. “I've got a huge fish. Do something to help me.”

“I will,” I said. Though I didn't see what I could do. I would not dare to take the rod, and it would only have been a mistake to take the line. Never give a straight pull to the fish, is an old rule. So that my only choice was to grab Troy and hold him until the fish was either in or lost, just as if Troy was a part of a rod
I
was fishing with.

I squatted in the cold sand behind him, put my heels down and took up his legs, which felt like matchsticks, and began to hold him there away from the water.

But Troy suddenly twisted toward me. “Turn me loose, Les. Don't be here. Go out. It's snagged. You've got to go out.”

That's crazy,” I said. “It's too deep there.”

“It's not deep,” Troy yelled. “I've got it in close now.”

“You're crazy,” I said.

“Oh, Christ, Les, go get it. I don't want to lose it.”

I looked a moment at Troy's face then, in the dark. His glasses were gone off of him. His face was wet. And he had the look of a desperate man, a man who has nothing to hope for but, in some strange way, everything in the world to lose.

“Stupid. This is stupid,” I said, because it seemed to me to be. But I got up, walked to the edge and stepped out into the cold water.

Then, it was at least a month before the runoff would begin in the mountains, and the water I stepped in was cold and painful as broken glass, though the wet parts of me numbed at once, and my feet felt like bricks bumping the bottom.

Troy had been wrong all the way about the depth. Because when I stepped out ten yards, keeping touch of his line with the back of my hand, I had already gone above my knees, and on the bottom I felt large rocks, and there was a loud rushing around me that suddenly made me afraid.

But when I had gone five more yards, and the water was on my thighs and hurting, I hit the snag Troy's fish was hooked to, and I realized then I had no way at all to hold a fish or catch it with my numbed hands. And that all I could really hope for was to break the snag and let the fish slip down into the current and hope Troy could bring it in, or that I could go back and beach it.

“Can you see it, Les?” Troy yelled out of the dark. “Goddamn it.”

“It isn't easy,” I said, and I had to hold the snag then to keep my balance. My legs were numb. And I thought: This might be the time and the place I die. What an odd place it is. And what an odd reason for it to happen.

“Hurry up,” Troy yelled.

And I wanted to hurry. Except when I ran the line as far as where the snag was, I felt something there that was not a fish and not the snag but something else entirely, some thing I thought I recognized, though I am not sure why. A man, I thought. This is a man.

Though when I reached farther into the snag branches and woods scruff, deeper into the water, what I felt was an animal. With my fingers I touched its hard rib-side, its legs, its short slick coat. I felt to its neck and head and touched its nose and teeth, and it was a deer, though not a big deer, not even a yearling. And I knew when I found where Troy's dace had gone up in the neck flesh, that he had hooked a deer already snagged here, and that he had pulled himself out of his chair trying to work it free.