The Snowfly (38 page)

In the late afternoon we went out to the verandah and had cold beer. Angus said, “You know Ray Kroc?”

“Of him.” He had invented McDonald's.

“Ol' Ray says, ‘Feed the rich and die poor. Feed the poor and die rich.'”

I understood. Angus was talking about our audience.

“You can live where you want,” Angus said. “The job will take you all over hell and back and we can meet on location. We can put you up right here for as long as you want, or go on your own. It's your choice. Shall we wet a line tonight?”

“You bet.”

I was even hotter this night than our first time, but now Angus was smiling and full of questions. “Why'd you put the fly over there?”

“Felt like a fish,” I said.

He cackled happily. “You
do
have the gift.”

The next morning I worked my way though story ideas and made some telephone calls and roughed out a schedule.

Yetter called just before lunch. “So?”

“I got the job.”

“Told you.”

“It's not with UPI.”

“What's your beef? I hear he's a quirky old coot.”

“He doesn't bullshit people.”

“That hurts.”

“I guess I should say thanks.”

“Damn right you should. Stay in touch, kid.”

I remained at the ranch for three weeks, fishing every evening with Angus and Hannah and other members of the clan until one cool afternoon it was just Hannah and me.

“Just us today?”

“Dad's on his way to Denver. We don't have to fish,” she added.

“We're here,” I said.

She said, “Great. Want to see some new water?”

Few trout chasers could pass up such an offer. “You're the captain.”

We floated several miles to where another stream dumped into the river, and we dragged the raft onto the stony shore. The feeder came down a canyon with sheer sandstone walls, leaving only a crack of sky above. The water was as clear as crystal. The current moved but not all that fast. A quarter mile up the canyon there was a one-room shack. Inside were stacked bunks, a woodstove, kerosene lanterns, shelves with cans, some fishing gear, and a two-way radio with a small gas-powered generator, which Hannah cranked up.

“Base, this is Hannah.”

“Base here.” The base was the ranch.

“Bowie and I are at Rathead's. We'll take the raft down to Carlysle's Bridge tomorrow afternoon. Can you fetch us there?”

“Three o'clock?” the voice at the base asked.

“That should work,” Hannah said.

“Seen Rathead?” the voice asked.

“Not yet,” Hannah said.

“Who's Rathead?” I asked when she had finished.

“You'll see,” she said mischieviously. “Let's lasso us some trouts, cowboy,” she added with a grin.

We did not have to go far. A short walk above the shack, the stream cut along the base of the cliff. There was a run close to two hundred yards long.

“Nice,” I said.

“And how,” she said, stripping line and loading her rod for her first cast.

We fished for nearly three hours, into the darkness. The fish were small, ten to twelve inches, but thick bodied and strong. They were bright gold with orange and black spots and fought hard and long.

“Gilas,” she said when she caught the first one. “Pure strain. Left in only three or four places. And here, which even the Fisheries people don't know about.”

The fish weren't finicky, but neither did they come easily to the net. They seemed hungry for anything and everything, but our casts had to land on top of them or they let the flies pass. There was no vegetation along our shore or in the water. In Michigan such fish would never have been caught. Too little cover. They would've come out only at night.

“Beautiful,” Hannah said, releasing a perky twelve-incher.

“It looks barren,” I said.

“Looks can be deceivin', cowboy.”

I laughed.

“It has good temp, steady year-round inflow from lots of springs, the right pH, enough food, and there's great cover under the ledge so the birds can't get at them. Fish are where you find them,” she said.

“Thank you, Professor.”

“You're quoit welcome, I'm shu-ah,” she said with a mock accent and a laugh.

I liked watching her. She handled the rod with a minimum of effort and had lightning reflexes and soft hands. She also filled out her waders in a memorable fashion and her long brown hair hung loose and free.

We were both tired when we decided to call it quits after nightfall. We did not talk during our walk back up to the shack. It was clear that we both enjoyed being ourselves together and we were content. There was no need for conversation. It felt like a friendship in the making.

But when we neared the shack she said, “You'd better wait out here.”

I heard her open the door. A shriek shattered the silence and I ran for the shack and found her in the doorway with a flashlight.

She was mumbling. “God dang you, Rathead. You sneaky little
bitch.
”

“What was
that?
”

“Wait,” she said, blocking my way with her arm. “Rat, it's me, Hannah.”

I tried to see past her.

“There,” she said, steadying the light.

I saw two tiny green eyes. A throaty growl sent a chill up my spine.

“She's mostly show,” Hannah said. “Let me get a light on.”

Hannah went inside, lit two lanterns, and wicked them up. The room glowed yellow. The eyes were gone.

“What was it?”

Hannah held her hand out to me. “Come on.” She took my hand firmly and said, “Be still and don't move.”

Something brushed firmly against the back of my leg.

“Steady,” Hannah whispered.

The thing pressed against me again, growled low, and sidled between us.

The animal was a foot high and two feet long, not counting a two-foot-long tail. It had a tiny conical head with triangular ears on a long neck. The body was thick with short fur marked with spots and smudges of stripes.

“What is it?”

“Rathead, meet Bowie.”

“Jesus,” I said.

“She's something, isn't she?”

“Is ‘something' a species?”

Hannah laughed and Rathead hissed menacingly and leapt effortlessly to the top bunk where she stood staring down at me, ready to pounce.

“Cat?” I asked.

“Mostly,” Hannah said. “The Apache called them devil cats. Officially they don't exist.”

“Extinct?”

“Rumored, but unproven. She fits with the gilas, I think, things that cling to life where they aren't supposed to be and science says isn't possible.”

The creature extended a paw and flashed her long claws.

“Strangers make her edgy,” Hannah said.

“The feeling's mutual,” I said.

“Be glad she's here. When she's around, there're no snakes, no scorpions, no mice, no rats, and no gila monsters.”

The animal growled and stared.

“She's fine now. She thinks this is her place. She's territorial and typically female,” Hannah added.

“It's hers, if she wants my vote.”

“Let's rustle up some grub,” she said.

“I love cowgirl talk.”

“You'd better hope that between you and me, you can cook. Angus ­didn't push us anywhere except toward rivers.”

“We'll make out,” I said.

She laughed. “We just might, cowboy. We just might.”

But we didn't. Instead we talked almost all night about everything and anything. Her marriage, she said, had been a “dumb-ass” mistake. She had married a “pretty boy,” but beauty was only skin deep and there wasn't much inside him and what was inside was only interested in his needs and money.

“Figured I'd better divorce him before I killed him.”

We didn't sleep much. Rathead growled and purred contentedly from the top mattress on the bunk bed across the room. I imagined her saying, “Anything is possible.” My Lurp pals from Vietnam would understand that.

It was a memorable start to a new phase of my life. Lessons had been learned as they are always learned, and observations made as they are always made, all of it sinking quietly into that primordial swamp called the subconsciousness, there to meld and perhaps to rise as something new.

15

Munchhausen Sink was less than a hundred yards across, a hole filled with black water inside the Cincinnati city limits, a curious wet spot in the center of Floating Rose Salvage, a twenty-acre compound piled with two-foot rust cubes that had once been Volkswagens and Pintos. Our host was Parley Finger, who operated the compactors that rendered discarded automotive produce into dense steel blocks. There was a trail through the mounds, but only our intrepid guide could see the way. It was Independence Day and Mr. Finger promised we'd have the best junkyard trout fishing we'd ever known. We went in before sundown because after dark, we'd risk breaking a leg on the trail, our host said.

On the water's edge cubes of steel had been assembled into benches and draped with army-surplus tarps. Finger put long-necked beers into a metal milk basket and lowered the basket into the dark water. He built a small fire in a trash barrel with a grate on top, filled a huge pot with water, which he set to boil, and threw some other ingredients into another cast-iron black pot.

“Sun's gotta get below the mounds,” he said, taking a seat.

Angus and I unsheathed and assembled our eight-foot four-weights and slid the reels into place.

“These are sorta like them English rules,” Parley Finger said. “Dry flies to rising fish and no damn priests. I run a sustainable fishery here.”

Priests were wooden clubs used to kill large fish, a form of last rites.

The sun hung on for a long time. Angus dozed and snored evenly in the lingering heat.

Parley Finger watched his pots and when the water boiled, he dumped in spaghetti. “Cincinnati specialty,” he explained. “Spaghetti and chili. Ain't he kinda old?” our host asked with a nod toward Angus.

“He gets younger when the fish rise.”

Parley Finger nodded. “Ain't that the truth. Johnny Bench come here once, him and that Pete Rose, but Ol' Charlie Hustle, he can't sit long. Never caught a thing and the next day Pete went oh-fers and swore off fishin' forever. There was a city councilman come over once, diddled his administrative assistant over there.” He pointed. “It was night and dark, could see the stars on the water, and she squealed all the time he was pokin' her. No fish that night, neither.”

There were lessons in the stories, I assumed, but they weren't immediately apparent.

When the sun was low enough, Parley Finger turned his grimy baseball cap backward and picked up his own fly rod. “Twelve-foot leaders, fine as hair. My trout are partial to teensy skeeters.”

I tied a size twenty mosquito on my line and nudged Angus, whose eyes fluttered. “What'd I get?”

I laughed at him. “Forty winks. Put on a mosquito.” At age eighty-eight he could tie on a small fly in near-darkness and do it in a wink.

We were ready, but no fish rose. The sky went from blue to lavender to pale blue to gray to black.

“Watch for rings,” Parley Finger said. “They come up quieter than daydreams.”

Two hours passed. No rises. I dug a thermos out of my day pack and poured coffee for Angus. “Nothing,” I said.

“Patience,” Angus said. “Man like this wouldn't bring us if there wasn't something. Learn to trust people, son. Enjoy the stars.”

Silence virtually in the middle of the city. The steel rubble blocked sound or absorbed it.

Parley Finger made his way around the pool of stars at our feet. “Soon,” he whispered when he passed us.

Then it began.

Soft rises.

Whisper sips.

Rings expanding, crossing others. Stars jumped on the mirror, changing shapes, moving inward, shimmering, retreating, dancing.

Parley Finger squatted and patted his hat. “Every man for hisself,” he called over to us.

I watched him make a short roll cast. There was a small splash. His pole bent and stayed that way. I heard the drag clicking like an angry cicada, watched him strip it in, heard him crank, heard the line go out again. Five minutes turned to twenty. Angus poked me. “What's taking him so long?'

“Big fish maybe?”

“In this spitwad?”

After another fifteen minutes Parley knelt at the water's edge, dipped his hand into the stars, and stood up.

“What was it?” Angus called across.

“What we come here for, a fish,” our host said. He sat down. “Your turn.”

Fish were still rising.

“Age before youth,” I told Angus.

“Can you swim, sonny?”

We both laughed, but he stepped up, stripped out some line, and threw a short cast. The fly landed without a trace. Then a plop. Angus set the hook. The little rod arched.

“Jesus H.,” he said. His reel clacked and screeched. “Jesus H.,” he said again.

I sat down and lit a cigarette. Thirty minutes passed. “My arm may fall plumb off,” Angus said through gritted teeth. I had fished with him enough by then to know he wouldn't quit. It was more than forty minutes before the fish gave in. We both knelt. I had a penlight in my shirt pocket and aimed the beam into the water.

“Horse,” Angus said.

It was more than two feet long with shoulders as wide as the back of my fist. I caught the fish's tail and turned it on its side. “Brown.”

“Female,” Angus said. “Look at her belly. Weight?”

“Seven, eight, maybe more.”

“Jesus H. This magnificent creature, from a spitwad in an Ohio dump.”

When the fish swam away, Angus sank heavily beside me. There were more ripples on the surface.

“Thick with them,” Angus said. “Horses.”

My fish wasn't quite as large as his, but it hit just as various fireworks exploded around the city, splashing our pond with reflected color.

We stayed at it into the morning and when the stars went away and the eastern sky showed milky gray, the fish stopped and the water glassed over and we trekked stiff-legged back through the rust hills to Parley's truck.

We had coffee in his filthy workshop. “Whaddya think?” our host asked.

“We can't write it,” I said.

“I thought that was the idea.”

“If we write it, somebody will figure it out, and pretty soon you'll have people all over the place.”

“Probably right,” Parley Finger said. “At least you fellas had some good fishin'.”

“Where'd these fish come from?” Angus asked.

“Brood stock come down from Wisconsin. They was to close a hatchery up there. I had this pal and he got me some. I studied up, got the temperature just right, alkalinity, you name it. Perfect.”

“How old?” This from Angus.

“Some big mamas pushing twenty,” Parley Finger said.

Angus blinked. “Are you sure?”

“I oughtta be. I put 'em here myself.”

On the way to the airport Angus was uncommunicative. We flew coach, and each had a beer.

“Twenty years,” he said, fumbling with a pack of beer nuts. “Twice the age what most books and science say.”

“Controlled conditions. No stress.”

“Still,” he said. “That's one of the things about trout. About the time you think you know it all and have seen it all, you see something else and the whole damn shebang gets discombobulated. Trout aren't supposed to live that long, junkyard nirvana or not.”

“You've seen.”

“Sometimes seeing ain't enough for believing. What's the biggest brown you've ever seen?”

“Twenty-eight pounds. Hanging on the wall of a fish market in northern Michigan.”

“Lake Michigan fish?”

“Yep.”

“Not twenty years old, though. Ten max. Big lake, unlimited chow. Big water grows big fish. Small water, lives and fish are shorter. Nature's way, son.”

“They've taken bigger in the White River.”

“Big, deep water. Rule holds. Eight, ten years. Odd one might go a bit older. Genes and habitat set the limits. Hard ceilings.”

We were silent for a moment.

“Rathead,” I said.

Angus stared at me.

“Hannah showed me. We only know what we know. We don't know what we don't know.”

“I were you,” he said, “I'd stay off the road of what we don't know.”

“Snowflies?” I asked.

“Think I'll grab some shut-eye,” he said, abruptly ending the conversation.

We flew to Minneapolis, where we took a boat up the Mississippi and caught small rainbows in a deep river hole using canned corn kernels.

From Minneapolis it was on to South Dakota, where we fished with a mother and daughter using nymphs made of old pantyhose.

In Elko, Nevada, we visited a sporting ranch where hookers had built a trout pond and fished between johns. Some customers were there only to fish.

In Merced, California, we caught small cutthroats from a large ditch that ran through fields of produce. A man named Jesus was our guide. His wife and five kids wintered in Texas and summered in California and he made fly rods out of small willows glued together and taught his kids about hatches. They lived in a trailer and worked migrant camps. Jesus made flies out of those materials he could get, cheap and easy stuff from ducks, chicks, songbirds, yarns, threads. They were works of art. The column I wrote about him helped him launch a mail-order business, which is now run by his sons.

I called Grand Marais from Fresno and talked to Fred Ciz. The club was going well. Karla Capo was seeing a dentist from Munising. Father Buzz had made his way through a bout of pneumonia, but was out and about again. Janey Pelkinnen was doing a “bang-up” job managing the club. Fred said they all wanted to know when I was coming home, but the best I could say was not soon.
Home:
I was taken by surprise by the emotions the word provoked.

Hannah met Angus and me in Tucson. It was hot beyond words and she was wearing a halter top, gauze skirt, and gold sandals.

“You go out in public like that?” Angus asked her.

“Daddy, I went butt-naked on a beach down the Baja one time,” she said. “I like being looked at.”

“I didn't hear that,” he said, opening the tailgate of the jeep to stash his gear.

“You heard.” She planted a kiss on my cheek and patted my left buttock. “How was the trip?”

“Exhausting,” I said. “I don't know how he does it and I'm not even half his age.”

“It's because he can sleep between two thoughts,” she said.

Which Angus promptly did before we were out of short-term parking. “I rest my case,” she said. “How long are you back?”

“A week, give or take.”

I spent the first three days catching up, writing columns. Yetter called. “Great stuff, migrant making flies outta horsefeathers.”

I laughed.

“See, I told you this would work out.”

“You never said that.”

“But I knew it. You okay?”

“Terrific.”

“That's what I like to hear.”

Angus read the stories and was a solid editor. Hannah was gone, guiding. The days were unbearably hot, the nights cool.

Hannah returned on Thursday. We ate steaks with Angus, then the two of us retired to the porch with gin and tonics.

“Got a lake I'd like to show you,” she said. “Spend the night?”

“Fish?”

“That too,” she said with a come-hither grin. She liked to flirt and I liked it too.

 

•••

 

Ten-Glass Lake was four hours northeast of the ranch, deep into a small mountain range. We parked at a forest service line shack in a saddle at seven thousand feet and hiked a thousand feet or more down to the lake. It was horseshoe shaped and small, bent around a huge, gently tapered black rock outcrop. There were small, gnarled Ponderosas around the shore and a lot of timber under the clear water.

“Should've brought tubes,” I said.

“Don't need them.”

We had nine-foot six-weight rods.

“Dries?” I asked.

“I've never seen a hatch here,” she said. “Try streamers and short leaders. Two or three feet long, and no longer. Work the outer edge of the timber.”

“For what?”

“You'll see.”

On new water it made sense to first watch somebody else. I sat down, but Hannah shook a finger. “No way, cowboy. This is just for you.”

I made several casts and stripped in the retrieve. Nothing moved. “Are you sure there's fish in here?”

“There's fish, all right. The question is, can you catch them?”

“What is this, a competition?”

“Not between us,” she said, smiling.

I went back to work but still got no strikes, not even a follow. I walked back to Hannah to change flies.

“Your fly is fine. They'll hit any streamer.”

“Ghost trout?” I said.

“They're all ghosts if you can't figure them out.”

“You're a fountain of information.”

“You're supposed to be the expert.”

After two more hours, I still did not have a hit. I had tried several places. “I surrender,” I said.

Hannah grinned. “Varying your retrieve?”

I had done everything I could think of. “Yep.”

“Do something you've never done before.”

“You mean with the fish?”

She shook her head. “Maybe you gotta earn your way, cowboy.”

“This isn't a lot of laughs.”

“ 'Course not. It's work.”

Do something I had never done before? I cast out, let the line carry the fly to the bottom, and let it lie. After a few seconds, I gave the tiniest twitch on the line, just enough to make the fly move a fraction forward and up. I did this every few seconds with no results. Then I stood and retrieved the fly with a series of bounces, like a bass jig. Still no takes. I let the line sink to different depths on the next few casts and pulled the fly back quickly. Still nothing.

“You're getting there,” Hannah said from behind me. I ignored her. She had said streamers, meaning we wanted to mimic minnows. She had said to work the outer edge of the timber. I studied the water. The lake became dark where it dropped off at the edge of the sunken trees. The fish, if there were any—and at that point I had no reason to believe there were—had shown no interest at any depth or retrieve speed. I walked along the edge of the lake, turning over stones, lifting drowned timber and rocks. Nothing. No insects, no crustaceans. I waded in the shallows looking for minnows. None in sight. From the other side of the lake I saw Hannah put down a large towel and lie down.