I dreamed about the lake, and those fish. When I woke up early they were on my mind.
Also had an erection again, but I fixed that in a hurry with another quick, cold shower.
Made a cup of instant coffee, and ate some toast. What was needed to catch those fish, I figured, was a wet line as opposed to the dry line I’d been using, and a freshwater shrimp fly. Searched through my collection, but couldn’t find anything that really resembled those shrimp. It being Sunday, the sporting goods store would not be open. And I’ve never acquired the knack of tying flies myself, so I had to go with what I had and hope for the best.
When I reached the lake, and first saw the green water again through the windshield, I felt even more excitement than the day before.
It was just about 7:30 a.m. when I set out in the canoe. The last of the night’s mist was lifting off the two small bays at the west end of the lake. A good hour for fishing. Once out on the water I began to hear those high-pitched hums from underneath again, sometimes passing near the canoe. In the green shallows I caught glimpses of beautiful big trout. Found myself watching the water closely and each time I saw one of those babies swimming by down there a thrill went through me.
They paid no attention to the would-be shrimp-like hook I jigged through the water. But I didn’t get frustrated. It was a pleasure just to be out on the calm lake, drifting slowly with some invisible current. I fished until the sun was high, reflecting off the flat water, and the day’s full heat began to bake me. Then I put in to shore, fetched a blanket out of the Suburban, and took a good long nap in the shade. Which turned into the soundest sleep I’d had in about twenty-five years. I was submerged in a very long and gentle dream about the fish, their rainbow colours glimmered, their voices all hummed together like a girls choir, and I swam after them breathing the clear, water-like air. There were few people in my dream, and their faces were blurred by the space of water between us, and when they tried to speak their words were lost in bubbles. I was naked and healthy, and swimming strong. At one point I arrived at a very large cave mouth, and someone informed me that God was inside the granite temple, and I felt the powerful rhythm of his breathing through the water but did not of course see his face. Surfaced from the dream, woke up starving hungry and ate the ham sandwiches I’d brought along, and drank coffee. Fished the lake from late afternoon to near dusk. Made my casts, felt the wet line between my fingers — but never even a playful tug from a trout, although I could see and hear them passing near the canoe. I didn’t mind.
It was only later when I left the lake that the sense of everyday needs and frustrations came over me again. Again I got lost on my way out to the highway, this time worse than the night before. Two different tracks I took only led me in a circle, back toward the green lake. But I was still determined to get home that day, which eventually I managed.
“Ah, hi there, Eileen, this is Blake. Listen, ah, I don’t think I can make it in to work today. … Must’ve caught some bug or something. I can barely stand up, plus there’s other problems, hell of a headache, you know.”
“Nausea, diarrhea?” inquired Eileen, the sales manager at Hardiman’s Supply, who is always very interested in unfortunate details of anyone’s life.
“Yeah, some of that too,” I groaned.
“That’s not like you, Blake, to miss a day of work. … Sure you’re not just having a wild party with some little thing while Peg is away? Ha ha ha!” she laughed loudly in my ear.
“No, Eileen, I’m serious. … In fact, you know, it’s a bit of a strain even talking …”
“Got to get to the toilet?”
“You guessed, I’m feeling awful. …” Meanwhile, of course, I was sitting there with my sunny morning hard-on, not having got to the cold shower yet.
“Okay. Don’t be a stranger though, we’re short staffed, seeing as how you switched your holidays with Bob. He’s gone, and without you now, there’s no experienced warehouse personnel. Try some Pepto-Bismol, that sometimes works.”
“You bet, sorry about this, thanks Eileen,” I said, and carefully set down the phone receiver. Then I hopped right up in the air and clapped my hands. I’d never called in sick in my life before. Well, only once when I had appendicitis, and okay, one other time when I cracked my ankle playing baseball. But I mean, I’d never cheated before, calling in sick without a serious reason. And this was a serious reason, in my mind, but maybe my employer would not see it that way. Suddenly I felt free as could be, like I could take off to anywhere in the world with a good head start, and no one would ever find me. Of course, there was only one place I was itching to get to.
I packed a whole box of food, coffee makings, etcetera, some camping gear, and while I was doing this, two separate voices were arguing inside me. One was asking: Just what the hell do you think you’re doing, Blake? You’re a family man with responsibilities to attend to, such as a job. The other was smiling, and said: Don’t listen to him, Blake, this is the best idea you’ve had in a long, long time. First Voice: What’s got into you, man? You’ve never even liked fishing all that much! Second voice just chuckled to itself.
I was waiting in my truck outside A-1 Sporting Goods before Andy had opened the door. Soon as he did, I stepped inside to look over his fly collection.
“Took the day off, did you, Blake? … Help yourself to a coffee if you like.”
“Thanks, Andy, but I want to get out there fishing, you know. I’m just looking for a few different flies, got anything like a shrimp?”
“Shrimp? Around here? Where you plannin’ to fish?”
“Ah, nowhere special, just one of those ponds out toward Dog Creek I thought I would check out. Hey, I’ll take a couple of those little brown fuzzy ones, Andy, and one of each of those other three grub types.”
“Sure thing, Blake,” said Andy, rising from his stool, but clearly not used to doing business before he’d finished his first pot of coffee. After a minute he squinted at me, and said, “Say, whereabouts exactly is this pond? I can’t think of where you’re headed.”
“Well, I don’t have time to explain right now, Andy. I’ll take a few of those Sprightly Six Legs, too, and — ah hell, tell you what, just give me one of each kind, okay. You take MasterCard?”
“Usually,” Andy said, frowning slightly. “You sure you’re feeling all right?”
“Never felt better in my life,” I said, suddenly realizing that this was true, but unexplainable even to myself. I grinned at Andy, and laid down my credit card.
Kind of reluctantly, he did up my bill and handed me a large paper bag full of flies. “That’ll be three hundred and seventy-four dollars.”
“And a deal at that,” I beamed. Andy’s face was perplexed as I headed out the door.
Two hours later I was out on the lake, letting my line trail in the water, listening to the morning humming of the beautiful trout.
As in my dream of the previous afternoon, the sound was somewhat similar to that of a choir of young voices, then again it had a quality that was more than human, sometimes a bit eerie. It came only for moments at a time, as one of the fish passed near enough for me to hear. And not frequently, sometimes just once every hour or so. At first I was jittery with anticipation. Waiting constantly for the sound. But, after a while, after hearing the hum often enough to reassure me, I grew calm and accepted the sound like the smell of the water and reeds, the temperature of the air.
I made a few casts with the fly rod now and then, tried a half-dozen or so flies, then gradually gave up the fishing business altogether. I couldn’t think why on earth I’d bought any of those flies from Andy, let alone four hundred dollars worth — but this didn’t worry me either, in fact, I grinned thinking about the look on Andy’s face as I’d left his store. For the first time in my working life money didn’t matter the least bit to me, and I was happy enough to contribute some to Andy’s sales. When I thought about the town, the streets and stores, Hardiman’s Supply, about the normal, yet unpredictable life that m
y family and I and many others live, it all turned into something like an enormous, electrified net in my mind. But somehow, I was now outside that mesh. I could look back at most of the thing, seeing what I’d never seen it for.
Above me there were high waves of cloud across the blue sky, and as the sun climbed upwards these waves seemed to crest with gold light. I heard that clear humming, looked down into the lake and there saw the reflection of the sky, and at the same moment an amazing rainbow trout, so that the fish appeared to be flying between the waves of cloud in the sky, and a lone osprey passing over seemed to soar beneath the water.
What about old Walt, who had given me the map to get to this place? When had he been here? For how long had he stayed, and what had ever caused him to return to the world and the life in which I met him? Why are moments presented to us that contradict, outshine the way of life we’re normally expected to live? So that going back to the grind seems quite a ridiculous option, as it suddenly did to me — although I still thought I was going back, and fairly soon.
One thought after another breezed through my mind, stirring up questions, blowing the dust off ideas I’d shelved long ago. All this mental activity and the midday sun tuckered me right out. So I had another nap, which, like the one before, was continuous with dreams. When I woke up, I found that I’d stretched out and fallen asleep in the belly of the canoe, and that it had drifted almost the length of the lake in that time. I sat up, looked over the gunnels of the boat and saw a mother lynx and her kittens playing in the sun on the beach. It is a rare thing to see a lynx, especially for any length of time, and here was this whole family of four wild cats, playing. The sun was inching down toward the timber along the horizon. Not wanting to disturb the lynx, I just laid still for a good long while, as the canoe slowly drifted down the lake. Even after the cats were out of sight I did not pick up my paddle. Just drifted. Studied the shore, the bird life and the water, listened to the passing trout. Drifted finally into one of the little bays at the lake’s far end, into the reeds. As the air cooled off in the evening, a bit of a breeze came up, which seemed to carry the dusk with it.
By the time I got around to paddling back up the lake, the daylight had faded. I could no longer make out details on the dark wooded shoreline. The night colours of the sky merged with the lake.
I had camped out four or five nights, as I remember, before it occurred to me that people might be wondering where I was. Peggy and the kids would be home by now, and I realized they’d be worried. So, next morning I packed up the Suburban, not without some reluctance, and then headed out for the highway, and home.
At least I tried. About two hours after leaving the lake, the back road I was travelling began to look very familiar, and sure enough, the truck nosed through the overhanging alders into the meadow by the green lake. Though this was frustrating in one way, I also had to chuckle because I was quite happy to be back. Ate my last chocolate bar for lunch and then, like a responsible man, decided I’d best try again. Altogether that day I made four attempts to find my way back out to the highway. It was the damnedest puzzle. On the last trip the wagon ran out of gas and there I was, stranded. But I put some essential gear in my backpack and started hiking, and a half-hour later I came to the lake. Next day, I retraced my steps to the Suburban, and lugged the canoe back here.
When the helicopters passed over, several times during the following week, I must admit, I hid from them.
No searchers or other fishermen have yet reached this lake. Sometimes I wonder how they’d react if they did. I like to think that some persons might understand what is here, and why I haven’t just lit a bonfire and waited for help to come. I don’t feel I need any help. I’ve still got provisions, at least six pounds of vacuum-packed coffee and a hefty sack full of rice. I’ve got a beard now, my hair is longer than it’s been since 1976. And I feel about as young as I did way back then. I do think of Peggy and the kids, but I expect they’re doing fine. It’s seldom that I feel at all lonely. My dreams are truly miraculous.
The days drift one into another, as peaceful as can be. I paddle my way slowly around the lake, listening to the trout, observing the rare wildlife, the pelicans and the family of lynx. Most of the time I am silent. Once in a while I’ll sing a song, or even shout nonsense out loud to recall the sound of my voice — it passes away into the air, like the call of a bird or an animal, and disappears.
Early mornings I swim naked in the cool green lake. Often I catch glimpses of the big beautiful trout passing underneath me, and I hear them so clearly then. Their humming sends slight sound waves through the water, and I feel this energy in my muscles as I swim.
Two Sundays at Soda Creek
Half this story was written the day it took place — or, rather, later that night. He wrote it with a felt pen on yellow foolscap, in the first person and present tense, as a sketch of a Sunday brunch shared earlier by five new friends. After midnight, when he’d got it down in note form at least, he stepped outside. Because Kate had to get to work early next morning he eased the door shut like a cat burglar. Writing fiction can feel almost criminal at times, Ian thought, like an activity of the underworld. He took a deep breath of the spring night air. The lake rippled with waves, and lamps along the highway cast stripes over the water like the ivories of a barroom piano.
Usually he wrote in the mornings, before going to work afternoon shift at the sawmill. Lean belly and hungry for stories, to date he had published exactly one in a literary journal. He and Kate had been married less than a year. She was a social worker newly hired by the ministry office in Williams Lake.
Kate worked with a fellow named Dan, who had recently moved out to Soda Creek with his partner Gordon. Their house was located in what is called the old townsite, which dates back to the Cariboo gold rush in the 1860s. They had invited Kate and Ian, and another social worker named Bea, out to their place for brunch. Kate offered Bea a ride.
“Good morning!” she lowered herself in the passenger seat of Kate’s Volkswagen. She balanced a shallow dish of salsa bean dip in one hand. When the Rabbit lurched into gear, the dip spilled onto Bea’s white pants. “Oh nooo!”
“Do you want to go back and change?” Kate asked.
“Yes please.” And when she came back out in jeans, they all mimicked their greetings from five minutes before, as though nothing had happened, and they had a good laugh while driving out of town, north on 97.
Ian sat in the back so the women could talk. They were both keen and committed to their work, just a couple of years out of university, now front-line social workers focused on child protection. Or protecting the public from certain children. Both had forty or more files at any given time. One of Kate’s involved a twelve-year-old girl who was a criminal prodigy. They discussed her latest exploits, then office politics, matters that left Ian free with his own thoughts.
Bea reminded him of a former girlfriend. She was not as tall as X, but the resemblance was there in her green eyes and smile, and somewhat in mannerisms. This caused him mixed feelings: on the one hand he was attracted to these qualities, but on the other, quite unnerved when he recalled the disastrous end of his previous relationship.
“How is the writing going, Ian?” Bea asked at one point, speaking back over her shoulder.
“Oh, it’s like a slow roller coaster,” he replied. “But I’ve got a new story in progress that I’m keen on.” From the driver’s seat Kate glanced back at him with a smile, reading his mind. She knew he looked forward to seeing the old jailhouse at Soda Creek that day.
While the car hummed along past greening hay fields and budding aspens, Ian recalled what he knew of the jail so far. It dated from the 1890s, in a second wave of the gold rush. By then Soda Creek was an established community, and required a gaol, which was constructed by a man named William Lyne. As soon as Lyne was paid for the job he got drunk, got arrested, and became the jail’s first overnight occupant. After Ian first heard the tale, he did some research in the local library arc
hives. He wondered if he could do it justice in a story.
The jail was located only a stone’s throw from Dan and Gordon’s place. Ian studied it as they drove past, and thought he must have a closer look after brunch.
Trenches for drainage were dug by shovel, filled with coarse rock, then four stout foundation logs, stained dark from creosote, were laid in place and notched together. In the hottest part of the afternoon Billy Lyne took a rest. He filled his pipe. He sat in the shade thrown by a grove of young cottonwoods, savoured his tobacco as he studied the first tier of the gaol, his first axe marks stark blonde in the sun, and he knew that the building would last.
Flying ants were bad that year, wreaking blight. On the trees, in the grass, in the dirt ruts of the main street the little devils ran. Perhaps a few would lodge in the fresh peeled wood of the timbers. Nevertheless, before their zeal did any damage Lyne knew that he would have long departed this Earth; for however long his work stood afterward, a few people might remember who built the gaol at Soda Creek. Made no difference.
Another plague in the Cariboo was gold fever, which had begun forty years earlier. The rich strike in 1862 incited the first frantic migration up the Fraser River and ever since, they kept coming. The settlement of Soda Creek sprang into being as the southern terminus for a sternwheeler that ferried the ongoing, rag-tag legion of prospectors fifty miles farther upstream to a junction called Quesnel. From there they hoofed it out to the boomtown of Barkerville, or into the Cariboo Mountains, seeking any of a thousand secret creeks that surely held their fortune.
Some of these prospectors, especially those from California, were short on manners. So the founding fathers of Soda Creek, namely Dunleavy and Wright, along with their appointed constable, eventually decided the community was in need of some place to store unruly characters, until such time as they could be rid of them.
All Those Drawn to Me Page 10