by Randy Kadish
The Fly Caster Who Tried to Make Peace with the World
by
Randy Kadish
Prologue
THE BEGINNING, FOR ME
Looking back, I still don’t know what I was after: A magazine article? A way to compete with Eric, my fiancé? A combination of both? But certainly not the life story of a long-distance fly caster, certainly not what I found.
Where did my hazy search start? I guess before I climbed the steps of the Wall Street station, before I saw the clear sky and again thought of the two-hundred dollar, turquoise Ferragamo shoes I had tried on a week before.
I smelled Ground Zero.
I wondered if it was the smell of death, as some described, or of decay? Or was I, an editor, just being too picky about the use of a word?
I stepped into the sunlight and onto the bright sidewalk. I walked alongside a high, black-bar fence. On the other side of the fence was the Trinity Church cemetery. Gray ash dusted the cemetery like fallen snow. Sprinkled on top of some of the ash were bread crumbs. Pigeons ate the crumbs, disrespectfully, I thought, even though I knew pigeons didn’t know anything about the three thousand people who were killed horribly.
I looked through the jail-like bars, at the old tombstones. Time had erased or chiseled off many of the letters—the dead people’s last testament on earth. Time was also disrespectful. One tombstone that wasn’t erased read: “Here lies interred the body of Katherine, late wife of John Crawler who departed this life.”
I asked myself, Could Katherine or John Crawler ever have imagined buildings over a hundred stories high and jet planes crashing into them?
No, of course not. Life was simpler then. God, like the dealer in a card game, held the answers. But was life better then? And what if a person didn’t believe in God? Well, at least there weren’t big questions, like how the Big Bang or 9/11 could have happened. But back then there were smaller questions, like my question: Should I tell Brad Mac Bride the truth? But don’t I want an article?
The shaded, curving Broadway was much narrower than the wide, two-way Broadway of the residential Upper West Side, or of the neon-lit Theater District. This lower Broadway had been changed by 9/11. It was lined with peddlers selling buttons, tee-shirts and photographs. The photographs showed different views of the World Trade Center bathed in bright-white or soft-orange sunlight. The buttons and the tee-shirts showed illustrations of the Center. Below the illustrations were phrases like: United We Stand, We Will Never Forget.
I walked past the peddlers and soon saw Bowling Green, a small park. In front of the park was a big brass statue of a running bull. Tourists took pictures of the bull. One man grabbed its horns and tried to climb onto the bull. But the statue was too big.
I laughed and looked for 26 Broadway. It was an old, white stone building that curved gently with the street and reminded me of the back of an old wooden ship.
I crossed in the middle of the street, walked into the lobby and got on an elevator crowded with “suits,” as I called them.
Again I wondered if I should tell Brad the truth; so when the elevator’s doors opened on the twelfth floor, I didn’t want to step off.
But I had to. Now I faced two glass doors and large gold letters. The letters read: The Law Firm of Miller, Kane & Weinstein.
I pulled open one of the doors. A middle-aged woman sat at a large, beautiful, antique, cherry-stained desk. The desk was right in the middle of an oriental carpet that covered most of the parquet floor. Light reflected off the polished wood. The light came from a large, mansion-like chandelier. Breaking up the light into bright, wide bands and soft, narrow shadows were small pieces of hanging crystal. Breaking up the old-world motif of the reception area were a tan leather couch, a glass coffee table, and copies—at least I think they were copies—of Impressionist paintings: Degas, Van Gogh, Renoir. I was impressed, but then I thought of my firm’s modest offices. Maybe there really were too many lawyers in the world.
“May I help you?” The receptionist’s upper-class British accent rubbed me the wrong way.
“Yes, I’m here to see Brad Mac Bride.”
“Your name?”
“Jennifer Kull.”
The receptionist announced me.
I sat down. On the coffee table was a line of magazines, but not the women’s magazine I worked for.
“Miss Kull,” a man called.
I looked up.
“I’m Brad Mac Bride.” He wore frameless glasses. His hair was straight and dirty-blonde. His chin was square and strong. His smile stretched from his lips to his oversized, blue eyes. Yes, he was good-looking, in an Ivy League sort of way, not in my way.
I stood up.
He was smaller than I expected, five-nine or so. All in all, he looked a lot more like a Wall Street lawyer than a long-distance, fly-casting champion.
He extended his hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.” His voice was soft and warm. His handshake was firm but not too strong. I wondered if he practiced handshaking as well as fly casting.
He wore a wedding ring.
“After 9/11,” he said, “a lot of my clients find it too traumatic to come down here.”
I didn’t want to seem insensitive. “It’s not always good to stay away from what we can’t change.”
He nodded. My reply impressed him.
“Let’s go to my office,” he said.
I followed him down a long, wide, oak-paneled hallway. He stopped in front of a doorway. “After you.”
His office was almost twice as big as mine. A beautiful oriental rug covered much of the parquet floor. On top of his antique, walnut-stained desk was a bound document, a small bronze statue of a fly fisherman landing a fish, and a photograph of his wife and two daughters, I assumed. His wife was blonde and pretty in a Vassar sort of way. And though I went to Vassar, I hated the look, the way I hated neat desks and men who, unlike Eric, seemed to be Mr. Perfect.
How long will Eric make me wait to have pictures of my children on my desk?
He held up the picture of his family. “Even girls are competing in fly-casting tournaments these days, so I guess I don’t have to wish for a son. Please sit.”
I sat in a leather winged-back chair and looked at the beautiful impressionist paintings on the walls.
“They’re copies,” Brad said.
“I assumed.”
“Impressionist paintings aren’t too modern or too old. They go well in offices, I think.”
His answer seemed a little strange, and so did the way his office matched the reception area.
Maybe he is a clone and not Mr. Perfect. I will never be a clone!
He closed the door. Hanging on the wall was a three-piece, bamboo fly rod in a glass case.
“That one isn’t a copy.” He smiled proudly.
“How old?”
“From the World War I era, which was the dawn of the golden age of American fly-rod building.”
I never knew there was such an age. I asked, “How much is a fly rod like that worth?”
His smile dropped faster than a falling stone.
Why did I ask such a stupid question? I asked myself. When will I ever learn?
“I couldn’t put a price on it,” Brad said. “It’s perhaps the only masterpiece built by an obscure rod maker, Billy Reynolds.”
“What makes it a masterpiece?”
“Its workmanship, its bamboo, but most of all, its design. By design I mean its taper.”
Taper? I wondered. Shouldn’t I know what that means? I won’t ask.
He opened the case.
I stood up. He took the rod out and handed me the bott
om piece. The cork handle, like the one on my fly rod, was shaped like a cigar. It seemed a little too big for my hand. The bamboo was tinted with a deep-orange, glass-like finish. Though orange was my least favorite color, the finish brought out the beauty of the bamboo.
“Even if you use a microscope,” Brad said, “you won’t see any blemishes in the finish. Now look at the top piece. The tip is thinner than other tournament rods of that era. That’s one of the rod’s secrets. Another secret is that the middle of the rod widens more quickly than other rods.”
He put the rod together and pointed it at the carpet. “Here take it.”
I did.
“Now push downward, slowly,” he said.
The rod bent easily.
“Push down more.”
The rod pushed back.
“Now you’re into the power section. With other rods, including those of today, you wouldn’t have reached that section so easily. Because this rod is probably one of a kind, its taper has, as far as I know, never been copied, the way Payne and Garrison tapers have. To me a great rod is a merging of great art and great science.” His eyes opened wide and seemed to glow with passion.
I handed the rod back.
“Another thing that makes this rod special is that some of the bamboo on the inside is hollowed out. Therefore it’s lighter, so when a caster stops his cast, the rod uncoils very fast. Years later other rod makers hollowed out their bamboo, but in 1917 no one else had perfected the technique.”
He took the rod apart and put it back in the case.
“Sounds like there’s a real story behind that rod?” I said.
He sat at his desk. “You really are an editor.”
“Should I take that as a compliment?” I sat down.
“Why not? Miss Kull, you didn’t come to talk about fly-rod design.”
I crossed my legs but then quickly uncrossed them. “Mr. Mac Bride—”
“Brad.”
“Okay. Brad, since more and more women are taking up fly fishing, we keep hearing how they wish they could cast farther. With your credentials—”
“Ms. Kull—”
“Jennifer.”
“Jennifer, I knew very little about your magazine, so maybe it was unfair of me to agree to meet with you. If so, I am sorry. Now I’ve looked through some of your back issues. I noticed the article on how women should act if and when they beat their husband or boyfriend in a sport.”
“I edited that article myself.”
“Really?” His tone was shaded with sarcasm. “The article you want was written a long time ago, by my grandfather. When it was published in a small, now defunct magazine, it didn’t attract the attention he had hoped for. He was disappointed and hurt. Jennifer, what do you think long-distance fly casting is about?”
The question was too simple. It had to be a trap. “Are you saying it’s like life in some way?”
“A reflection of life. Your smile tells me you don’t believe me.”
What should I say? I wondered. I don’t want him to see through me even more.
I gritted my teeth and tried to read Brad’s blank expression. Finally, I said, “If a person has special knowledge they should share it.”
“That’s one way of looking at it. My grandfather had help, in the beginning, at least. Jennifer, I owe you an apology for not spending more time with you on the phone. The truth is I’m not ready to sell my grandfather’s article.”
“I’m sorry if I angered you.”
“Angered?” He smiled.
“Disappointed, I meant.”
“I have to be in court soon.”
I stood up, thanked him for his time and walked down the long hallway, clenching my fist, cursing myself for lying and blowing an opportunity.
I left the building and again smelled death or decay. I looked at my watch. I had time to see the rubble of the World Trade Center, but did I want to get even more depressed?
I didn’t.
As soon as I walked into my small office my phone rang. I looked at the incoming phone number. It was Eric’s. I wondered if I should tell him that he was right, that I should have told Brad the truth all along.
The phone rang again. I didn’t answer it.
An hour later my anger at myself cooled. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine that I lay on a beautiful beach and listened to the melody played by gently breaking waves. How can long-distance fly casting be a reflection of life? I wondered. Yes, fly fishing is about a lot more than catching fish—but fly casting? Landing a small fly on the water is landing a small fly on the water, whether you do it thirty or seventy feet away. What am I not seeing?
I opened my eyes and took out my personal stationery. I wrote:
Dear Brad,
I want you to know I respect your decision about not publishing your grandfather’s article.
Now that I’ve had a chance to think about our meeting I realize that I might have been shortsighted. All my life I’ve been too attracted to the way things look.
The simple truth is, I’m intrigued by what you said. Now, well, I want to be enlightened.
Please call me if you will be kind enough to help.
Respectfully yours,
Jennifer
Day after day I waited for a reply. Finally, I immersed myself in editing and fixing a hiking article. My waiting waned; then my phone rang. Not recognizing the number, I asked my assistant, Leslie, to answer.
“It’s a Brad Mac Bride,” she said.
I flinched, then picked up the phone. “Brad, what a surprise.”
“I’m going to be in midtown later.”
I didn’t want him to see my small office, but did I have a choice? I invited him to stop by, then straightened up my desk.
An hour later Brad and I again shook hands. He didn’t look over my office.
“I don’t have any interesting antiques to show you,” I said.
“I brought my own, sort of.”
“Please sit.”
He took out a big envelope from his leather briefcase. “Many years ago my grandfather wrote a memoir. In it, he tells the story of the fly rod in my office and the story of what long-distance fly casting means to him. I made a copy for you.” He put the envelope on my desk.
I took the manuscript out and read the title out loud, “THE FLY CASTER WHO TRIED TO MAKE PEACE WITH THE WORLD.” I laughed. “You’ve got to be kidding. There I go again, opening my mouth. I’m sorry.”
“The title is supposed to be funny, I think.”
“I don’t think I ever saw an old-fashioned, manually-typed manuscript.”
I turned to the first page. It was a Xerox copy of a photograph of a man wearing a fly-fishing hat and vest. In the man’s face, especially in his big eyes and his strong jaw, I saw a partial reflection of Brad. I say partial because unlike Brad, the man’s hair was curly, and his cheekbones were high, making him a perfect fit for a Marlboro Man.
“So this is your grandfather?”
“Yes.”
“Thanks for dropping this off. I’ll start reading it tonight.”
“I hope you enjoy it. Sorry, but I have to run.”
We shook hands. His big eyes smiled warmly. He said good-bye.
I wondered why most of the really good guys were married, then called Eric and told him I wanted to cancel our dinner date so I could read Ian Mac Bride’s manuscript.
He understood, as usual.
After work I went straight home, poured a glass of red wine, ordered in Italian food, changed into pajamas and sat down on my soft, leather couch.
I began reading.
Book 1: New York