The Snowfly (37 page)

“Chase the trout?” a voice asked.

Eubanks was an old man with a bent back and a face spattered with liver spots.

“Now and then,” I said.

“You would be Rhodes.”

I did not apologize for barging in. “I want to talk to Raina Chickerman.”

Eubanks studied me with a tight squint. “The thing about trout,” he said, “is that some just aren't meant to be caught and chasing won't make it different. There are some people just like that as well.”

“I need to talk to her.”

He joined his hands in front of him. “Need's granite. Want's sand. Need stays put, centered and insistent. Want blows in and out, drifts between your toes. It takes a whole life to understand the difference. Most never do,” he added. “You'd best leave Raina Chickerman alone, Mister Rhodes. Infatuation is a long road from commitment and granite's not sand.”

“I saw her a while back in the U.P. near Grand Marais. She rented a house under the name of M. J. Key. Is that name familiar?”

“The trout writer.”

“Why would she use that name?”

He said, “Don't chase what can't be caught, son.”

I turned to the white fly displays and stared at them. “It's a fine room,” I said.

Eubanks nodded.

“Are those snowflies?”

The old lawyer looked at the case for a long time before he spoke. “If you're meant to know, you'll know. Good day, Mister Rhodes. Please don't intrude again.”

“Is that a threat?”

“I would never make a threat,” he said, turning his back on me.

“I understand you called the fire department about handling the Chickermans' affairs
before
the fire was in the news. How could that happen?”

“Get out,” he said, not bothering to look back at me.

Eubanks was a hard old man, raised in a generation that put great value on hard jaws and duty, and I knew there could be no argument, no wedge of logic that would move him off his course. I had been dismissed many times before and would be many times again, but Eubanks had cut me loose with the sure-handedness of a bomb maker. I mumbled an apology to the receptionist on my way out and walked numbly down to the street. I had but one image in my mind, the snowfly.

When I got outside, I lit a cigarette and tried to think. M. J. Key bought M. J. Key's manuscript from Bolt. Raina rented a house under the name of M. J. Key. Eubanks knew who the writer Key was and had a shadow box of snowflies. There was not enough to figure it all out, but it was all connected and eventually, I was going to put it all together.

I called Maria Idly at the prosecutor's office. “I met with Eubanks.”

“And?”

“He basically told me to take a hike.”

“Will you?”

“Not exactly.”

She laughed abruptly. “What can I do to help?”

“I'd like to get a copy of the autopsy reports.”

“I'm not sure I can do that.”

“Can you read them and tell me what they say?”

“That I can do.”

“There's something else. Vince told me that Eubanks called about taking care of the Chickermans' affairs before the fire was on the news. I'd like to know who tipped him off.”

“You want to meet later for a drink?”

“Name the place.”

“The Gander. Take M-22 north. You'll see it on the bay side. Nine okay?”

“Thanks, see you there.”

Maria Idly was an hour late and looked exhausted. She ordered a double martini and drank it down in one long pull. “I couldn't get the reports. The coroner said that the FBI came and took them. I called down to the federal prosecutor in Grand Rapids and he doesn't know anything about it. We went to law school together. He said it sounds to him like a witness protection deal of some kind. He said he'd nose around, but can't promise anything.”

Now I was really disconcerted.

She said, “I called the cops. There's a detective there that I see sometimes.” She looked to me for a reaction, but my mind was lost. “He said the chief announced that no foul play was suspected, but that the FBI would take care of the case.”

“What the hell is going on?”

“I don't know,” she said. “I'm getting another double. You want a hit?” I most certainly did. “My friend said that the cops in one county don't get called on fires in another county unless there is some sort of possibility of a spread. This time of year a fire isn't going anywhere. My friend thinks the chief got a call, but he doesn't know why.”

“From Eubanks?”

“Yes, and very quickly thereafter from the FBI,” she said. “It all seems connected.”

We had another round of doubles and my head was reeling.

“I don't understand this,” I confessed.

“Me neither,” she said. “And my friend in Grand Rapids didn't sound too happy. I'm going to see if he can get anything on Eubanks. Somebody has to know something about the asshole.”

I must've raised my eyebrows. She grunted. “I guess I've got the bug now too. The thing is, I work for the government, but we have a lot of lawyers in this country and they all have secrets, especially the feds. I don't like all these games. If there's something to be learned about Eubanks, or his clients, I'm going to nail it down.”

I decided Maria Idly would make a terrific prosecutor. I thanked her for her help and gave her Lilly's phone number.

“You headed back?”

“My sister lost her husband on Christmas morning. He was a cop. I've been gone long enough.”

“The state trooper, Roger Ranger?”

I nodded.

“Good cop. How the hell does a cop get hit up here?”

There was no answer.

“I'll be in touch,” she said.

13

Yetter finally called at the end of the month. There had been no word from Maria Idly. Yetter said, “It's a thirty, kid, the last take, end of chapter.”

“I'm out?” Yetter's silence only served to fuel my suspicions. Although for months I had tried to imagine it, the reality of being jobless came as a shock. I didn't take it personally when companies laid off thousands, which was news, but this was me and although not news, it wasn't fair.

“Hold on to your trousers,” he said. “This place is bloody. The personnel pukes say we're ‘adjusting to optimum workforce parameters.' What the fuck does that
mean?
When the corporate suits take their flensing knives to the language, you know it's bad news. We had a personnel veep here once who kept confusing T. S. Eliot and Eliott Ness. I don't think these guys have birth certificates. They hatch from eggs in sewer scum.”

“My job?” I said, trying to refocus him. Once Yetter got up his bile, he was tough to turn.

“Well, your days as a foreign correspondent are over, at least with this sorry outfit.”

Before I could reply, he added, “Take a deep breath, kid. With apologies to aka Twain, the rumors of your professional death are greatly exaggerated. The main thing is to keep writing.”

I had to sit down. “What the hell are you telling me? I'm canned?”

“Geez,” he said. “Not yet. Not if I can help it.”

I imagined my hands crushing his windpipe.

“You think I'd leave my star high and dry? You're my discovery, kid. I've got sweat equity in you. Have faith, for Chrissakes.”

I had no words. I felt my body temperature rise, then plummet.

“You still throwing those silly-ass feathers at fish?”

Another U-turn on the boulevard of Yetter. “Wrong time of year.” Where was he headed now?

“Bullshit. Gotta be the right time of year somewhere, am I right? You know, the equator flip-flop thing.”

“Jesus Christ, get to the point.”

“Here's the deal. There's this guy, Angus Wren. Heard of him?”

I had. Angus Wren was the Ernie Pyle of fishing writers. He wrote about factory workers and shoe salesmen and went with them to fish in the little places people without means always seem to find. He was the master of an invisible style. When he finished writing about someone, you knew the guy, and he did it with a vocabulary the average newspaper reader could understand. I had read Angus Wren's work since I was ten.

“You like all that feather-and-hook shit, right?”

I didn't answer.

“You've been picked to replace a legend, kid. You ought to be wetting your pants.”

My mind was racing. Who had replaced Lou Gehrig on the Yankees? Legends were by definition irreplaceable. I tried to remain calm.

“Picked by whom?”

“Who do you think? Me.”

I started laughing. “You?”

“Well,” he added, “there is one little detail.”

I had tears in my eyes. Every place I turned, the legend of M. J. Key cropped up, and now Yetter wanted me to replace Angus Wren. One of us had rounded the bend and at the moment I was in no condition to say which one of us it was.

“What detail?” I couldn't stop laughing.

“A technicality,” he said. “No big deal.”

His shift in tone suggested otherwise. “What is it, Grady?”

“He wants to meet you,” Yetter said.

“Angus Wren?”

“He wants to go fishing with you.”

It sounded like Yetter was walking barefoot through broken blue Mason jars.

“Is the job mine or not?”

“Sure it's yours,” he said. “I told you that, didn't I? He just wants to meet you and fish with you. You
do
know how to fish, right? You spent enough time dicking around with it.”

He was talking fast now and suddenly I understood. “I have to pass muster, is that it?”

“It's a technicality,” Yetter said. “Not to worry. It's a t to cross, an i to dot.”

“You bastard.”

“You want the job or not?”

“I want it,” I admitted.

I thought I heard him exhale.

“Tucson, April first.”

“You'll be there?”

He growled. “They got gila monstrosities out there.”

“Gila
monsters.
”

“Don't split reptiles,” he said. “And don't let me down.”

“I thought the job was mine.”

“Figure of speech,” he said and hung up.

Replace Angus Wren? It was preposterous. When Lilly came in, I was laughing.

“Want to share the joke?”

I laughed even harder.

 

•••

 

I called Maria Idly from Lilly's before I left for Tucson.

“Are you going to be at this number for a while?” she asked.

“Yep.”

“Stay put. Give me ten minutes.”

She called back from a pay phone. “Listen carefully. I am under orders to not inform you of the following, but you called me and in my book informing is reaching out, not just responding, so I am not breaking orders.”

“You're walking a fine line.”

“That's the law for you. Eubanks is a lawyer and a former fed, agency unknown. Chickerman was in some sort of new-identity program, details not specified. Eubanks was his keeper, is how it was put to me.”

“A new identity for a criminal or a witness?”

“I don't know the answer, but my guess is that it's something else. Spooks, maybe. That intuition thing again. That's all I could get. My curiosity is buzzing like a cat's back in a lightning storm, but there's no way I can chase it as long as the county pays me. I need to tell you that I called Karla and she said you are one hell of a man. Until then I'd followed orders, but at that point I decided that if you called I'd lay out what I knew. Karla's a great judge of men.”

“You mean their characters?”

She chuckled softly. “That too,” she said.

I thanked her for her time.

“One other thing,” she said. “Eubanks is gone.”

“Dead?”

“No, he moved. It's like he split town. His office has been sold and he cleared out. I managed to find out where he lived using the phone company, and his house is empty too. I think that whatever this is all about, you spooked him.”

Either that, I thought, or his work was done.

PART II

If the fool would persist in his folly, he would become wise.

—William Blake

 

14

There was no laughter and no talk as I walked through the terminal at Tucson. The air conditioning wasn't working and heat seemed to suck the life out of everyone, dry heat or not. I had never seen a photograph of Angus Wren. He had been old when I began reading him. And now? I had no idea and stood outside sweating in the sweltering spring heat, waiting for my ride.

An ancient Ford pickup rolled slowly past. When the brakes squeaked, I turned to look. A man about my age got out. He wore a dusty black cowboy hat and his jeans tucked into boots up to the bottom of his knees.

“Rhodes?”

“That's me.”

He jerked a thumb toward the truck bed. “Gear goes there. You go up front with me.”

As we drove away he said, “Bailey Wren.”

“Son?”

“Nephew. My uncle didn't shoot boy bullets. My daddy's his brother. You puke in pickups?”

“Not so far.”

He grinned. “There's a first time for everything.”

We drove northwest for three hours across high desert and into some barren hills along what amounted to the suggestion of a trail. The Ford swayed and rocked and bounced and I bounced with it, banging my elbow, my knee, and my head. When we finally began a steep descent into a canyon, I saw the glint of water below and was relieved.

There were several houses in the narrow valley. They had tin roofs, no paint, and no grass. The dirt around them looked like it had been raked smooth. Bailey Wren dropped me at a small house. There was an old man seated on the stoop. He had white hair, cracked skin, a prominent Adam's apple, scrawny legs, feet pushed into faded black high-top sneakers, and no socks.

“Rhodes?” he said by way of greeting.

“Mister Wren?”

He smiled. “Call me Angus. Could you use a beer?”

I thanked him.

“Your friend Yetter sent me your stuff to read,” he said. “Do you have to work hard at your writing?”

“No harder than most.”

“Kidder,” he said. “Let's talk straight, son. I don't expect anybody to replace me. Bully pulpit, Teddy Roosevelt said. This is like that. There are a lot of dudes and scam flashers in fishing. Flies attract money. Outside America it's a rich man's game, but here I always thought it should be a game for anybody who wants to try. I'm eighty-eight and I still fish nearly every day. This job's not about the Test or Patagonia, it's about right here. Some guy turns screws all day, goes home, does his chores, maybe gets a couple of hours a week to run off to his fishing hole. It's nothing fancy, nothing expensive. He works within his means and his limits. He loves his crick; takes care of it and follows the rules, just an everyday Joe who likes being outside and thinks an eight-inch brown is about the most beautiful thing in God's creation, even if it came from a hatchery. There's a heap of power in what we write. It draws people, but the ones we want aren't looking for fame. They just want to fish. Are you following me?”

“Yes, sir.”

“That feller Yetter. He talks a lot.”

I smiled and nodded.

“He's a city feller, but he thinks you're about the best thing since sliced bread. Says you head for rivers every chance you get. How many fish you catch last season?”

I had no idea.

“Biggest you ever caught?”

I showed him with my hands. “About like so.”

“You kill fish?”

“When I'm hungry.”

“You aren't real talkative,” he said.

“You seem to fill up most of the space.”

He grinned. “That I do, sonny. Are you a big eater?”

“I get by.”

“I eat like a buzzard,” he said. “Anytime, any place, any food. I've got all my functions and most of my teeth. I like my liquor the color of water, two packs of smokes a day, and a woman that squirms. You're not married.”

“No, sir.”

“That's a plus, if you ain't light in your boots. Not that I got a problem with that, but are you?”

“No.”

He nodded and continued talking. “I always liked women,” he said. “But most women can't stomach the trout bug or trout biz. I had four wives and they all tried, tried like the dickens, but they just couldn't deal with it. I've got me nine daughters and they all fish. Women're starting to do all the things men do. I think that's probably a good thing, but I'm also glad I grew up when I did. This job'll fill up your life if you let it. Take it from me, find a woman who wants the same things you want. Maybe you'll be luckier than me.”

A woman came across the dust toward us. Her scuffed red boots kicked up little puffs. “All set,” she said.

Angus said, “Hannah, meet Mister Rhodes. He can write like Shakespeare, but now we're gonna find out if he can fish like. . . .”

“M. J. Key,” I said.

Wren's head snapped sharply in my direction. I had the distinct impression I had just lost points. “Key don't set well with me,” he said. “Damn headhunter.”

The old man got up from the stoop. I heard his knees crack, but he took off at a fast clip and I had to hurry to keep up. Hannah fell in beside me.

“Trophy fishermen,” she said to me. “Headhunters.”

“New term,” I said.

“Angus hates Key and glory hunters like him.”

“I'll try to remember that.” Key a trophy hunter? This had never occurred to me. Was Angus wrong, or was I mistaken?

The river that flowed beside the ranch was fast, its shores strewn with flat boulders with pastel tints. The rubber raft was yellow with a green board bottom and a huge orange hand rudder.

Hannah steered us through several bends and beached the raft on a gravel bar with fast green runs on either side. The old man walked down the left run and began casting. I had expected some conversation about the idiosyncrasies of the river and its fish, but he ignored me and after a couple of minutes of watching him, I tied on a green nymph called a Patrickson and flicked it into the tail of the green pool on the opposite side of the gravel bar. As the fly started to swing back to me, I lifted and was rewarded with a sharp strike. I pulled the line and lifted the rod to set it and the rainbow came out of the water and skidded away and sounded, but I knew it was caught. When I knelt to release the fish, I saw that Angus Wren was watching me.

It was one of those days when luck lived in my rod. I took three fish out of the first run, one from the second, another from the third, and three more from the fourth and the old man had none I had seen. He looked increasingly morose as Hannah took us to the next bend, which she declared his favorite. When we landed, he scrambled out and headed straight to the head of the pool, leaving me the tail—a breach of etiquette, but I didn't object. When I hit a large fish on my second cast the old man angrily threw his rod into the raft, got in, and yelped, “Get me the hell out of here.” Off they went past me, Hannah giving me an apologetic look as she leaned on the rudder. What the hell, I thought, and started wading back upstream, taking fish steadily, wondering what Angus Wren's problem was.

It was well after dark when I got back to the ranch and there was no sign of the old man or Hannah or anybody else until I got to the cabin. Bailey Wren was sitting on the stoop and said, “I guess you'll be on your way.” I had no idea what he'd heard, or how, but I gathered I had failed my audition.

Minutes later we were headed out of the valley and I didn't know whether to get angry or laugh so I stared into the darkness and tried to keep from breaking my teeth as we bottomed out.

Bailey let me off at a generic motel near a town with no sign. I threw my gear in the room and went looking for a drink. What I found was a bottle of tequila and I drank until it was gone and some part of my brain with it. Facing rejection is idiosyncratic.

 

•••

 

I awoke to a room flooded with narrow shafts of red-orange light and Angus Wren sitting in a rickety chair beside my head, smoking a cigarette in an ivory holder.

“You always catch like that?”

“No.” What day was this?

“Damn good thing. Half-dozen fellers like you could empty the world's rivers. Didja have yourself a dandy bender?”

My brain felt the size of a watermelon. “Tequila.”

“Get the worm?”

“I think.”

He grinned. “Gives me the shits.”

I tried to sit up, but couldn't move. “What do you want and how did you get in?”

“I just walked on in. Your door was as open as a whore's legs. I came to apologize, which don't come easy. Nobody outfishes me on
my
water. What you did knocked me back. I couldn't fish for squat when I first started out. And the writing came even harder, and still does, but I worked like a dog at both of 'em. Then you come along, better at both than I'll ever be, and just a whippersnapper. I guess I threw myself a tantrum like when I was three. Didn't really understand till today, but my day's done and now it's your time. The job's yours, Rhodes, on one condition. We work together till next spring. Don't get this wrong, it's not a test, not that at all. I just thought I'd show you my ropes and we'll have us some fun. You'll do the job your way, but I'd like to be along one final season.”

I did not expect an apology, much less to get the job. “Guess I went off half cocked, too.”

Angus Wren grinned. “Hot fish in a cold river can make any man crazy. You want a lift out to the ranch?”

“I think I'd best stay here and heal.”

He nodded solemnly. “There's no substitute for common sense. Hannah will fetch you in the morning.”

He got up slowly and ambled to the door. “Want some advice?”

I tried to nod.

“In bed and on the river, eight inches is all that counts, son. Any more is pure wastage.”

 

•••

 

I awoke the next morning tired and without a headache, but my limbs were heavy. The bathtub had rough-textured turquoise and pink plastic footprints glued on the bottom. The water was rusty and came out in a trickle; it left my skin slippery even before I used soap, which was mostly pumice and peeled off a layer of skin. The towels were tiny and threadbare and did not wrap all the way around. When I walked into the bedroom, the door was open again and Hannah Wren was sitting where her father had sat twenty-four hours before.

“Um,” she said.

“Don't they teach people around here to knock?”

“And miss the sights?” she said.

“Enjoy,” I said, removing the towel. I was in no mood for modesty.

“I surely am, cowboy,” Hannah said with a hoked-up twang. “Glad to hear you got the job. I've never seen my father the way he was on the river the other night.”

“He's been Angus Wren a long time,” I said as I pulled on my jeans.

She smiled and nodded. “He dearly loves his work.”

“Who wouldn't?”

“Guess you'll get the opportunity to know. What fly were you using? I saw green.”

“It's called a Patrickson.”

“Does it make a buzz sound or do you drag it over the top of the water?”

“You put it in the right spot and let it do the job.”

Hannah grunted. “You tie it yourself?”

“Got it in England.”

“But you do tie?”

“No. I buy them where I am. I'd rather spend my time on the water.”

“Just like Angus,” she said. “Do you collect?”

“Nope.”

“Angus has a thing for whites.”

I perked up. “White flies?”

“He's got a room full of them. Big fluffy things, in double-oughts and ones. I used to sneak in to look. I asked him once what they were for. He said, ‘Fools.' He put extra locks on after that.”

I remained silent. White flies. Again.

“My jeep's outside,” she said. “Ready when you are.”

She watched me finish dressing, and when I had gathered my stuff we drove out to the ranch. She was thirty-four, Wren's youngest child by his fourth wife. Hannah had an ex-husband, no children, a degree in fish biology from Arizona State, and a daughter's unswerving admiration for a legendary father.

“Angus showed me your writing,” she said as we drove along. “Don't you think fishing stuff will be a little tame for you?”

“We'll see,” I told her.

“Are you always so frank?”

“It tends to be situational.”

She smiled. “I doubt that.”

Lunch was all business. Technically I would be an employee of Angus Wren Enterprises (AWE), not UPI, which only contracted for the column. Yet another Yetter prevarication. AWE included a print and publishing business, a video production company, two lines of trout-fishing tackle, including a famous red spoon called the Wren Wobbler, a half-dozen fly-shop franchises in Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona, and a small ad agency in Phoenix. AWE had twenty employees, all of them Wren's relatives and offspring. The other businesses employed about a hundred more. I would be employed by Angus Wren Adventures, a new unit.

I could write under my own name or another, if I wanted it that way, but until Angus actually retired the column would be called “Angus Wren with . . .” Line drawings of both of us would appear on the column's header. The salary was more than I was making at UPI, and the operating budget to cover our travel expenses was generous. Income was based on the number of subscribing papers. Angus would not allow himself to be bought by the big fishing enterprises. His focus, our focus, was the little guy, which meant we covered our own expenses and the little guys' too when that was necessary.

After lunch, we spent the afternoon going through his files. He had several Rolodexes and card files, all full. Story ideas were kept on three-by-five cards tacked to a cork wall. Our contract called for forty-two columns a year. What we wrote about was our business. The contract was renewable annually. All we had to do was to keep our readership, which UPI tracked with more interest than its own fiscal house. One-off assignments were negotiated separately. My AWE contract did not preclude me from taking freelance assignments from magazines and newspapers. I liked the setup.