The Other Side of the Bridge (35 page)

“Anyway,” Jake went on, “I reckon the communities up here are doomed. They’re being drained of their life blood.” He swiped the flyswatter at a horsefly and it wheeled away. “Meaning the likes of you and your friends.”

“You think they’re going to turn into ghost towns?” Ian said. He couldn’t imagine it. Couldn’t see Struan deserted, stores boarded up, dust blowing down the street like in a Hollywood western.

“Not necessarily ghost towns, but a lot smaller than they are now. Which…damn that thing! I’d forgotten how infuriating they are.” The horsefly was back, circling around him just out of range of the flyswatter. “Which will mean even fewer jobs, so even more young people will leave, and so on. A slow decline.” He ducked down and the horsefly came to Ian instead. Ian maneuvered himself so that he was within reach of Robert’s tail and the fly went back to Jake.

“Struan’s still growing,” Ian said. “My dad has so many patients, he’s going nuts. ’Specially in the summer—tourists rolling in poison ivy and getting fishhooks in their ears and stuff. And during the hunting season—rich Southerners shooting each other in the tail.”

Or during a measles outbreak. There were some pretty sick kids in Struan at the moment. Ian kept an eye on Julie and March but so far they’d both escaped.

“Catering to tourists is no kind of life,” Jake said. He abandoned the stump and went over to Edward and ducked down beside him. The horsefly landed on Edward’s shoulder and Jake brought the flyswatter smashing down on it. Edward swung his head around and gave him a baleful look.

“But it’s not only tourists,” Ian protested. Suddenly it seemed important to him that Struan continue to exist. He might not want to live in it but he definitely wanted it to be there. “There are other things. Like, people are always going to need lumber, so they’re always going to need the lumber mills, and if you’ve got a lumber mill you need men to work there, so you need the town.”

“Somehow, I don’t see you working in a lumber mill,” Jake said. He sat back down on the stump. “As for your dad, he’s way too good a doctor to be stuck up here. He should be down south. He could be earning three or four times what he’s earning here, working half the hours.”

Ian had thought the same himself, from time to time, but now that the idea was voiced by Jake he found he didn’t agree. His father would not be happy in some city down south, no matter what they paid him. “I think he just likes it up here,” he said.

“Well, maybe,” Jake said. “But it’s kind of a waste, don’t you think? Someone with that much ability, treating people’s sore throats?”

Ian concentrated on brushing the area of Robert’s shoulder where the collar was inclined to rub. He knew Jake meant it as a compliment but he was offended that anyone would see his father’s job in such a light. Being the only doctor in a huge area, on call twenty-four hours a day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year, handling every emergency, the nearest hospital hours away—how could anyone consider that a simple job? It took at least as much skill as being a specialist in a big city, with a hospital full of fancy equipment. His father was important to the people up here, he played a big role in their lives. Didn’t they deserve a good doctor? The more Ian thought about it the more offended he was.

But Jake must have sensed what he was thinking because he smiled suddenly and said, “Don’t get me wrong, I think your dad’s admirable, devoting his life to the people up here. He does a great job, I know that. I’m just biased. I’ve always thought that if God had meant us to live in the North he wouldn’t have given us the brains to find our way south.”

In the evenings Ian and Pete went fishing, like always. Sometimes they explored, testing out the bays along the western shore of the lake, but that wasn’t serious fishing, that was to find good spots to take tourists. Pete was having a busy summer. At the beginning of the season a lawyer from New York, who regularly hired Pete’s grandfather as a hunting guide, had asked the old man if he would take him and some of his friends pike fishing. Pete’s grandfather passed him on to Pete, and now the word had got around and Pete was in high demand. So high, in fact, that he was having to pass on some of the requests to his friends on the reserve, or he’d never have time to fish himself.

The tourists paid good money, which was great, of course, but according to Pete, the main reason he was happy to help them out was that then he could control where they fished. He wanted to keep them away from Hopeless Inlet. Hopeless was where the phantom muskie had his territory and Pete didn’t want anyone else to catch it.

He was still after that fish. They hadn’t seen a sign of it in more than two years but he was convinced it was there. Ian was starting to doubt it. The two of them had covered every inch of Hopeless—every marshy river-mouth, every point of land, every reef—and had worked their way along the shore for miles in both directions without a whisper of it. In that time Pete had caught several very big pike but he insisted none of them was the fish that had nearly pulled him out of his boat.

“How do you know?” Ian asked, more than once, clambering up onto the thwart, knees around his ears, trying to keep out of range of the teeth of the twenty-pound monster flailing about in the bottom of the boat. “How do you know this isn’t him!”

“He’s not big enough.”

“Not big enough! You’re out of your mind!”

Pete was up on a thwart too. He’d tried to subdue the pike with a paddle but it had knocked it out of his hand and now he was fending it off with an oar. There was blood and water flying all over the boat.

“This is just a pike, man. He’s not a muskie. He couldn’t pull me outta the boat.”

“Sure he could!” Ian yelled. “You were off balance!”

“I was sitting down! How can you be off balance sitting down?”

“He’s a figment of your imagination!” Ian said. “He’s taken over your brain!”

“He’s there, man. He’s right down there. I can feel him.”

In fact, it made no difference to Ian where or why or how they fished. He was in love with fishing, never mind that all he ever caught was snags and sunfish. There was something about being out on the water, the silvery ever-moving surface hiding God knew what life-and-death struggles underneath, the long stretches of peacefulness that might or might not be broken at any moment by a burst of savage excitement. You could think, during those long stretches—or better still, you could not think. Though lately he had to fight to keep the thoughts at bay. Always the same thoughts: his future, what he was going to do with his life. His own indecision was driving him insane.

He wished he could be more like Jake in that regard. Whatever his other failings, Jake did have an admirable philosophy of life. He summed it up in two words: “don’t sweat.” His life had been extraordinary, it seemed to Ian. He’d left home on the spur of the moment and with nothing at all: no money, no plans, no high school certificate—none of the things they told you were essential. He’d bummed his way around, to start with, getting a job when he ran out of money, leaving it when he’d earned enough to move on. He’d picked peaches in California, worked as a blackjack dealer in New Orleans, been a short-order cook, an encyclopedia salesman, the manager of a classy bar in New York. Most recently he’d had his own company, something to do with real estate, and had just sold it for a “tidy sum.” He wasn’t sure what he was going to do next, he said; he had a couple of ideas he was playing with. His whole life sounded like a fabulous game. And he made it sound so simple. “Just let things happen,” he advised, clapping Ian on the shoulder. “It’s the only way to live.”

As if it were easy to do what he had done, to leave the well-marked path, resist the pressures, defy people’s expectations. It took courage to do that. Courage and imagination. Ian was starting to think he didn’t have a grain of either.

“Could you get me a rabbit?” he said now to Pete, pushing the thoughts aside, yet again. The pike was subdued now, gasping in the bottom of the boat, occasionally smacking its tail against the floorboards. “Preferably a baby one?” Both Pete and his grandfather had traplines so it was feasible.

“What do you want a rabbit for?”

“For March. Arthur’s kid. I thought maybe I’d build him a hutch.”

Pete twitched the jig, waited a moment, then jerked it hard, and a smallmouth bass broke the water ten feet away, its body arcing gracefully. “I could get you a dead rabbit,” he said, hauling in the line. The bass fought furiously, showering them with spray.

“A live one was more what I had in mind.”

“If it was dead you wouldn’t need a hutch. He could carry it around. Hang it around his neck. It wouldn’t ever run away.” He caught the struggling bass in his hand, removed the hook, smacked its head on the gunwale, and dropped it into the bottom of the boat. “What did you say his name was?”

“March.”

“Is that like ‘March, April, May’? Or like ‘Forward march’?”

Pete was positively garrulous nowadays. The Mounties had given up trying to find whoever was responsible for Jim Lightfoot’s escape, and had finally left the reserve.

“He’s named after his grandfather. Laura’s dad was—is—Reverend March.” The poor old guy was still hanging on. He had everything the matter with him but Laura looked after him so well he was going to live forever.

Pete skewered a minnow on his hook and dropped it overboard. “What’s the kid want a rabbit for?”

“A pet.”

They fished. High above them four turkey vultures circled slowly on the last thermals of the day, waiting for something to die. The
Queen Mary
rocked gently in a swell that had originated hours ago and miles away, back in somebody’s past.

Pete said, “A dead one would be best, man. You could skin it and eat it and then stuff it with feathers. It would look just like the real thing.”

“I think he’d know.”

The previous night Ian had sat down and drawn up a list of every career he could think of, everything from a geologist to a chimney sweep. Then he started crossing them off, one by one (starting with “doctor”), the plan being that there would be a few left for him to think seriously about. The problem was, he’d crossed them all off. Every single one fell into one of three categories: predictable, boring, or ridiculous.

“Have you decided what you’re going to do?” he said to Pete, startling himself because he hadn’t intended to ask until he’d made up his own mind.

“When?” Pete said.

“For the rest of your life.”

“Oh. Yeah.”

Ian looked at him surprise. “You have? When?”

“A while ago.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I’ve been waitin’ for you to make up your mind, man.”

“Well tell me now. Maybe it will help me make up my mind.”

“Naw.”

“Why not?”

“You have to make up your mind first.”

“Why?” Ian was starting to get annoyed. “Have you told Mr. Hardy?”

“Nope.”

“Look, just tell me, okay?” He didn’t want to play games about it.

“Soon as you’ve made up your mind.”

They fished. Irritation scratched Ian’s insides.

There was a faint tug on his line. Pete said quietly, “You’ve got something.”

Ian held his breath. There was something there all right. He waited for the count of three…then jerked the rod backward hard. There was a savage yank from the other end, the rod arched over, the line screamed out of the reel and a second later a long, smooth, streamlined shape shot out of the water twenty yards away, sailed up into the air, twisted right around so that its head was almost touching its tail—and was gone. The slack line drifted on the water like weed.

“Shit,” Ian said.

“He was a nice one,” Pete said admiringly.

“I didn’t set it hard enough. Shit.”

“He was smart, man. He knew exactly what to do.”

Which was a generous thing to say.

They fished. Ian’s heartbeat slowly returned to normal. The evening air was fresh and cool. He felt better, despite losing the pike. That was the thing about fishing—it was almost impossible to stay wound up for long.

The shadow of a vulture sailed across the water. Pete said, “Did you know vultures piss on their legs to keep cool?”

“You’re kidding,” Ian said.

“Nope. It’s a fact.”

“How do you know?”