When Is a Man

by Aaron Shepard

  6

  The grey body being pulled from the water, a man on each flabby arm, the head and chest sagging toward the water. The men’s faces both straining from the weight and recoiling from the touch of dead flesh. If only he hadn’t seen that. The memory cast an insistent shadow, made it impossible for him to forget the wildness of where he was, the vast, unforgiving space. It had left the traces of its horror on the water like a film, like oil or fish slime.

  By noon of each day he’d run out of things to do, even if he took his time cleaning the fence or entering the morning’s data. There was nothing to do but wait for night. Sometimes, in the idle time while he sat by the river or in the shade outside the trailer, minutes went by with his mind gone wonderfully blank. But then the image of the corpse would flicker into sharp focus and cut through his reverie. When it faded, he’d find himself trailing after a gloomy thought, and the river would become something menacing.

  He was angry, too, about pissing himself again, this time in the simple act of bending to scoop a fish out of the weir. His underwear hung on a line by the trailer, rinsed in the creek. He thought he’d gotten the humiliation out of his system—the humiliation of surgery, of the catheter. He’d been invaded by people who knew more about his body than he did. When they sent him home, he’d known even less about his body. Not technically, because since the diagnosis he’d learned more about his inner workings than he’d ever wished to know. No, the surgery had made him ignorant on a gut level—disconnected him, as if part of him had been left behind, a part that now belonged to clearer, higher minds.

  After his diagnosis in the late winter, the possible repercussions of his approaching surgery laid out before him, he sent Christine an e-mail: I won’t miss it. Sex, that is. I feel like I’ve been drifting away from sex these past months—I don’t know whether it’s a case of testosterone collapse or just too much on my mind. The doctors had told him it was not a symptom of his cancer, nor had there ever been a connection between loss of desire and the disease. It’s purely mental, or hormonal, or whatever. But (how to put this) my desire to feel desire isn’t there anymore. It’s a relief, in many ways. Maybe for you as well, though I guess it’s a bit late for that.

  So many of life’s decisions were based around sex. Consciously or otherwise. Hilarious, really, how pliable a man’s life was, how easily it was tipped and upended, blown off course by lust. Before Christine there was Naomi, a participant in his study of the cyclists. Bubbly, idealistic—and young, bordering on too young, that was his first mistake. She was the one who’d complained to his department about unethical behaviour. They’d been sleeping together for weeks already, but then he’d made some suggestions, a little high or drunk or both, maybe pressured her to do certain things. Or she’d found out about other women—there’d been a strange sexual dynamic within the cycling club that any sensible person, a good researcher, would have avoided or documented from afar.

  There had also been Sweden. Christine had not been around when he arrived home from the excavation, a small mercy—she missed the spectacle of Tamba openly mocking him at the pub, the final blow to Paul’s rapidly diminishing reputation in the department. She was away writing her paper at a cabin she’d rented (she did not say exactly where) and had plans afterwards to climb in Squamish with friends. He couldn’t tell her over the phone about his night in Skinnskatteberg, in the alley behind a bar. He would later, in person, after she’d returned from her trip with her hair cut short and a torn ligament in her wrist. With or without his confession, their end was inevitable. Chasing whims, chasing women: she found them equally distasteful, equally damning. They sat on his bed one last time and tried to look back on things with a fondness they didn’t feel. Their relationship had become so coldly physical. “We had good sex,” she said, as if that were all, and he said that was true. After the breakup, Paul had gone to his parents’ place on Salt Spring and prepared to teach another semester. Tamba and Christine became a single person in his mind, a figure of disapproval who made him feel crass and low.

  Fall semester came and dragged on. He reached a plateau in his parkour training and couldn’t push himself any higher. He had hit his peak, and it was underwhelming. This shouldn’t have affected his research, but it did. Around the same time, urinating became a painful, difficult, and frequent adventure. Or, really, hadn’t it been a little difficult for a long time, a year or more, and he’d just been ignoring the faltering, stop-start stream? Then there was blood and he wondered if he’d caught something in Sweden. Avoidances, tests, finally the Centre. Patients he met there identified themselves with their Gleason Score, the results of their biopsy—his was a Score 7, mildly aggressive. This earned him a solemn high-five from Tim Holcomb, Score 8, whom he met in the waiting room. “You’ll do well,” Tim said.

  After the night count, unable to sleep, he looked for distractions. The things Tanner had left behind in the trailer were the dregs an old roommate leaves behind: half-empty packs of matches and melted-down candle nubs, playing cards stained with cola, a wine cork. There was a book of local history, published twenty years ago by a press he’d never heard of, the last several chapters water-damaged and unreadable. He warmed water on the stove and then washed himself with a cloth, tracing the scars that furrowed his perineum. He was the sum of his body’s failings, and he was well within the age at which failure mattered.

  He slept heavily and woke before his alarm only because a door had slammed. He peeked through the curtain to see an old blue pickup, parked as far from his own truck and camper as the site would allow. He slid out of bed and dressed quickly. When no one came to knock on his door, he opened all the curtains in the camper and looked out each window. No doubt the visitor was a fisherman, here to cast for cutthroat—Tanner had said to expect some anglers—and desired human company no more than Paul.

  As he put on his waders outside, he heard a sharp crack. He pulled the suspenders over his shoulders and started down the path to the fence. Another shot echoed—a gun, he was sure now—ahead of him. He brushed his way past the wolf willow and alder and stumbled onto the gravel bar beside the measuring station. A broad-shouldered man in a ratty purple fleece stood over the upstream weir, the creek pouring into his rubber boots. Water had wicked up his jeans past his knees. A mess of grey and white hair stuck out of a stained ball cap that sat too high on his head. He looked vaguely familiar, but Paul was distracted by the small rifle the man was pointing into the weir, the butt tight against the inside of his shoulder.

  “Stay fuckin’ still, will ya.” The man’s growl was coarse and phlegmy. He swung the gun barrel in wild circles, then fired a shot into the water.

  “Whoa!” Paul yelled, not meaning to. He had already turned to dash back to the camper, but the cleat of his left foot slid on a rock, and he stumbled two steps toward the creek instead. The old man spun and pointed the rifle at Paul’s head. The man’s eyes widened, and his mouth contorted and worked soundlessly, trying to get words out.

  “Garbage fish,” he stammered finally. “That’s what they are!” The man turned toward the trap, about to take another shot, but then began to lurch downstream to the Immitoin. “Fuckin’ garbage fish!” He shouted it again as he scrambled up the bank, water spilling from his boots, and disappeared into the trees.

  Paul’s knees buckled, and he collapsed heavily onto the gravel. Almost as quickly, he rolled back on his feet, unsure what to do. He went down to the fence and saw two bull trout, male and female, floating on the surface of the upstream weir, their bodies pressed by the current against the back of the trap. The male had its eye shot out, the upper part of its skull split open. The other bled from a hole in front of the dorsal fin; she was still alive, flicking her tail fin as she tried to right herself. He heard a truck engine start. The waders made running nearly impossible, but he managed a straight-legged reel back to the site and arrived in time to see the truck tear onto the main road in a sepia cloud of dust, skid a hard right, and head south.

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nbsp; He paced frantically, in and out of the trailer, and then finally returned to the fence to carry on the morning count. The other fish couldn’t be left in the weirs all day. The dead male he scooped out and kept on the measuring table. He’d freeze the trout in a Ziploc as some sort of—what, evidence? There were three more trout, but he couldn’t process them properly: the tagging gun trembled dangerously in his hand, he couldn’t get the angle right. He returned them to the creek. Maybe he’d get them on their way back down.

  The last fish, the injured female, hugged the bottom of the stream. When he netted her, she came alive, wiggling in short frantic bursts. She was the biggest female he’d seen so far, a little over the length of his forearm, her fins and sides weathered and scarred. The bullet wound looked bad, an ugly divot in her back. She was tagged already, red from last year. The plastic nub was buried under thick algae, like something from an ancient wreck. He scraped the green algae away, and for a moment he could almost picture the gloom and murk of the lake bottom where she’d come from.

  A host of purple spots danced in front of his eyes, and he sank to his knees, trying to keep the netted fish from hitting ground. He took a few deep breaths, and his vision cleared, his stomach settled. What to do with the fish—she’d be too weak, the anesthetic would do her in. He took a guess at her length and weight and remembered the tag number before he released her. No doubt her body would end up pinned against the fence sometime later today. Too bad you can’t bandage a fish, he thought.

  Tanner on the satellite phone: “Explain again what happened.” Static or a breath of exasperation. He’d told Paul to use the phone only for the direst of emergencies. He’d been uncharacteristically sour when he said it. Paul realized then what the most important part of his job was: to let Tanner focus on the festival. So the phone had sat in a cupboard, and Paul had resented the mere presence of it—an unwanted lifeline. He enjoyed the way his cellphone would signal to him, the icon flashing and spinning in futile circles, searching, searching, and coming up empty. On any other occasion, he might have disliked hearing Tanner’s voice as much as Tanner probably disliked hearing his.

  He repeated his story. “Garbage fish. What the hell does that mean?”

  “Some old-timers say that. The bulls aren’t as much fun to catch, you see, and the big ones eat cutthroat. Was a time some fishermen used to kill them and throw ’em out. That was mostly back in the late seventies, before people realized bulls were the endangered ones, not the cutties or rainbows.”

  “That’s a very strange vendetta.”

  “Probably drunk.” There was noise in the background, a television, laughter. “I’ll give the conservation officer a shout, or maybe the cops. That’ll put the fear of God into him.”

  “Whichever. I just don’t want to get shot.”

  “Sounds like you scared him off. I’m sure he’s gone for good.”

  “Give me a break. If he wants to kill trout, what better place to do it?”

  “Like shooting fish in a barrel.” Tanner laughed suddenly. “Nice.”

  “Glad you’re enjoying this.”

  He spent the rest of the day pacing around the rec site or sneaking through the brush to Basket Creek, expecting the man to be there with his gun. It was worse after sunset. While he sat inside the camper waiting to go down to the fence, something moved outside the window. He recoiled, then swore—it was the underwear he’d hung on the line.

  At the measuring station, none of the equipment had been disturbed, and there was nothing wrong with the fence. Eight fish were in the weirs, the flick of tail and dorsal fins catching the light of his headlamp. He worked with one eye toward the forest, his ears straining to hear over the water and the lantern hissing on its hook. He struggled to find his rhythm: he bungled a couple of tags and measurements, and re-entered the data into his notebook with quick, furious scribbles.

  When the traps were empty, he dumped the used-up water from the cooler, closed the lid, and sat down. He’d only rested for a minute or two before he heard a splashing. A cutthroat hovered near the surface of the downstream trap, and he released it into the main current. He peered in again and saw two other fish, bulls that swam near the bottom. They flashed colour—both tagged, thank God. The first was a male with a blue tag, the number perfectly familiar. “I saw you an hour ago, you sonofabitch.” He marked the number in the notebook and then released him.

  He lifted the last fish and saw the red tag and then the bullet wound. She’d come back. “Gave up, did you?” he said. “Or got confused, poor girl.” He let her go, as he had the male, but didn’t expect to see her again.

  The RCMP showed up late the next morning after Paul had finished his morning count. Paul recognized the driver as the officer who’d stood with Tanner on the road. The other, younger than Paul, had a cocky swagger, good-looking but rugged, a hockey player who’d somehow avoided breaking his nose or losing any teeth. The older cop greedily sniffed the fresh air as he approached, his face lifted to the warm breeze.

  “Pretty sweet set-up you’ve got. I haven’t been this far up the mainline since a fishing derby two summers back, I think.” He introduced himself as Cliff Lazeroff and the younger man as Davis.

  “Coffee?” Paul asked.

  “Please.” Lazeroff looked a little apologetic. “Should talk about yesterday, but it’ll wait. Let’s pull up some chairs here.”

  They grabbed two log ends near the fire pit and dragged them close to the camper. Paul kept the door open and listened to the men talk idly while he brewed coffee and herbal tea for himself. Lazeroff was saying something about dry fly casting. The younger cop owned a powerboat and spent most of his time on the lake. “New motor on it. Hauls ass out to my favourite spots and back in an afternoon. Have to watch out for deadheads, though, especially the north end,” he told Paul. “Sometimes an old snag that’s been standing underwater comes loose and pops straight up and out. Like a rocket.”

  “It’s a spooky thing to see,” said Lazeroff.

  “There’s a whole forest underneath the reservoir,” Davis said. “It’s gotten better over time, but it’s best to stay out of certain areas.”

  They went quiet, as men do when they’re given an image of danger, envisioning deadly scenarios, savouring, in a way, the possibility of disaster.

  “So about yesterday,” Lazeroff said, once Paul sat down. “Going by the description you gave Tanner, I’m pretty sure we know who it is.” Davis shook his head and smiled into his coffee.

  “Oh?”

  The constable gestured downriver. “His name’s Hardy Wallace.”

  “Hardy Wallace,” Paul repeated.

  “You know the day you came up with Tanner?”

  “You were directing traffic.”

  “That man who drowned. An older fella, Caleb Ready, not that the name’s going to mean much to you.” Lazeroff coughed. “Hardy spotted the body from his kitchen window.”

  Davis interjected. “He was pretty shaken up.”

  “I remember him now. He was standing on the deck.”

  “He’s got a history. Gone off the deep end before,” Lazeroff said. “Lives alone. Always has, from what I understand. A Lambert local, as they say.”

  “Lambert? Is that the place with all the shacks and summer homes?”

  “No, that’s Bishop. Lambert was a village across the lake from Bishop, before the dam. Lambert folks were given property in Bishop as compensation for getting flooded out. From what I understand.”

  Paul nodded impatiently. “So what do you mean he’s got a history?”

  “This isn’t the first body that’s ended up below his house,” said Davis.

  “First time, a young woman, a rafting accident upstream,” said Lazeroff. “He took that okay. A real tragedy, was all he said. Then that child on the May two-four weekend.”

  “That’s right, three years back,” said Davis. “Horrible. Fishing trip near the falls, kid stumbled off the bank.”

  “Threw him for a major lo
op. Some folks had to look after him until he got his head back together. And now, Mr. Ready.”

  “That’s—that’s a lot of bodies,” said Paul.

  “It’s the current,” said Davis. “If the corpse doesn’t get caught on a sweeper upstream, or stuck in spin cycle beneath some falls, it’ll end up in that eddy.”

  “Bad luck, the house being where it is,” Lazeroff said.

  “This Ready guy we haven’t figured out,” said Davis. “He certainly wasn’t a kayaker, or fishing.”

  Lazeroff gave Davis a quick glare, then shrugged. “Damned shame. Bottom line is, maybe Hardy’s still a bit rattled. It’s partly up to you, of course, but we’d like to not make much trouble.”

  Paul shook his head, confused. “Trouble for whom?”

  “I’m just saying, there’s not much to gain. Did he, in fact, threaten you with his firearm or point it at you?”

  “More or less,” said Paul. This was all because he wasn’t a local. If he was someone like Tanner, things would be handled differently. “I don’t know.”

  “Hard to say he did anything on purpose?”

  “Except shooting the fish.”

  “Any dead?”

  “One. He wounded a female too, but it looks like she might make it.” Which made him laugh a little crazily. The cops looked at each other. He went inside and brought out the killed trout he’d kept in the freezer. They hummed and hawed, and finally said they’d take it back with them. “We’ll probably end up eating it,” Lazeroff said.

  Paul sighed, irritated. He didn’t want complications either—or more visitors. But he didn’t want to be shrugged off.

  “Look, I’m willing to let it go,” he said. “But I need to know I’m safe. I need to work in peace.”

  “You will.” Lazeroff looked relieved. “We’ll go talk to him right now. Maybe turn things over to the conservation officer. He’ll likely get a fine.” Or nothing, Paul thought.