by Jeff Vrolyks
Theo sighed. “It would mean a lot to you, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes, but more than that it would mean the world to your father. Imagine his shock when on his birthday he wakes up to a new truck, new rod, and his son asking him if he’s ready to go fishing. Tell me that wouldn’t be the best day of his life.”
“It would. It most certainly would. I’ll do it, Mom.”
She gasped, tears welled up in her eyes as she hugged Theo on the couch. “Thank you, Theo. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.”
“I know why this is so important to you, and I’m a little upset with you both.”
She pulled away, wiped her cheeks.
“Jessica told me,” he pursued. “She said she wasn’t supposed to tell me, but how could she not?”
Lea hung her head, greater tears came. “We would have told you if the operation didn’t get it all, honestly. We didn’t want to worry you. You have a lot to focus on, you’re an important man.”
“But it’s Dad’s health, Mom. How’s he doing?”
“He’s great. They caught it early enough, that’s the important thing. There’s always the chance it will return, but we’re staying on top of it.”
“I wish you guys would have told me. Promise me if something like this ever happens again you’ll tell me. I don’t care if I’m playing in the Super Bowl, I want to know.”
She nodded. “I promise.”
“What day does his birthday fall on this year?”
“Friday. The second Friday of March.”
He considered his schedule. “Shouldn’t be a problem. If we drive out of here early Friday morning, we’ll be there by Saturday morning, sleeping in shifts along the way. We can probably get some fishing in on Saturday, Sunday, and drive home Monday.”
“Two days driving and two days fishing? Couldn’t you stay longer?”
“I have school, Mom. As it is, I’ll be missing school two days.”
“Don’t your professors give you any leeway? Being a big-shot quarterback?”
“They are understanding, to say the least. Yes, I am lucky in that aspect. I don’t think they’d have the nerve to fail me or even give me a C. I suppose once word gets out that I’m dropping out of college they won’t be so easy on me. But I want good marks because I suppose one day I’ll return to school and get my degree. Down the road. Okay, what I’ll do is ask my professors for my assignments in advance, and take them with me to Montana. What do you think, come home Tuesday? Wednesday?”
“The longer the better.”
“Okay, Wednesday. Leave Friday, come home Wednesday morning. That’s four days of fishing.”
“He’ll love it. Four days is perfect. A chance to bond with your father again. I think he’ll cry when he finds out, I really do.”
“He’s not going to find out until his birthday, correct?”
“That would be nice. A surprise.”
“I’ll be here at four AM.”
“Great. I’ll have his new truck, and I’ll park it down the street. I’ll move it to the driveway before he wakes up. And the rod will be in the cab. What do you think?”
“He’ll be overwhelmed, ecstatic. I look forward to it.”
* * *
The ten day forecast in Montana was promising. Partly cloudy Tuesday and Wednesday, sunny otherwise, with the highs reaching sixty-two to sixty-five degrees, lows in the thirties. But they’d be inside the cabin during those freezing hours. It hadn’t snowed there in three weeks—Theo had been watching the weather reports for the past several weeks—so there shouldn’t be any snow drifts at the river.
Theo pulled up beside a Ford F-150 four wheel drive with paper-plates. It was beautiful. Titanium with tan leather interior. Theo whistled at it as he headed for the door. He didn’t knock, never knocked. It was home and always would be home. Inside Lea was scrambling eggs and sipping coffee.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Good morning. Hungry?”
“I usually don’t eat till much later. Thanks anyway. Is Dad up yet?”
“No. I was hoping you’d wake him.”
“Okay. Now?”
“Sure. You two need to be on your way soon.”
Theo headed into the hallway with his mom at his heels. He opened the door to the sound of light snoring. “Happy fiftieth!” Theo cheered. His dad sat bolt upright, looked beside him to where his wife should be, then to where his wife stood, beside his son.
“What’s going on?” he said groggily.
“What’s going on is it’s your fiftieth birthday!”
James looked at the digital clock. It was five minutes past four AM.
“Are you out of your minds? It’s four.”
“Yeah, sorry I’m a few minutes late,” Theo said jocularly and sat at the edge of the bed. “Get up, old man. Time to open your presents.”
“What’s going on? Why are you here so early?”
“Because we have a long drive ahead of us. Very long.”
James had only been awake for a few seconds, but it was enough to deduce what was going on here. Why else would his son be here at four AM? That was the time they had always left for Montana. But it seemed too good to be true.
“You don’t mean that… we’re going fishing?”
“No, we’re not fishing today. We’ll be too busy driving to Montana.”
He smiled like a boy with a shiny new toy. He scooched out of bed, pajama legs hitched up to his knees. “Do you mean it? This isn’t a gag?”
“I wouldn’t kid about something like this. Mom’s cooking eggs. Eat up and let’s hit the road.”
“Yes sir!” He hugged Theo, then kissed his wife on the lips.
“Happy birthday, honey,” she said.
“Thank you, baby. You don’t know how much this means to me.”
“I most certainly do.”
James took a brief shower, ate his eggs in under a minute, poured coffee into a travel mug, and said he’d need a few minutes to pack some clothes. Lea said to pack about five days worth, and that made him smile.
Ten minutes later, roughly twenty minutes after he had awaken, he had a suitcase in his hand and was kissing Lea goodbye. She said she’d see him out and followed him and Theo outside. James saw the truck which was illuminated under the garage’s flood light and said, “You got a truck, Theo? Wow, it’s beautiful.” Then he saw Theo’s Mustang parked beside it, and became confused.
“Happy birthday, James,” she said.
He turned to her, eyes wide, mouth ajar. “This is mine?”
“Yes. You deserve it. You work hard.”
He circled around the truck, appreciating every square inch of it. He opened the driver’s door and jumped in, marveled over the instruments and leather appointments. He looked in the cab and found a long canvas bag. Almost like the one he used for his fly rod, only this one was red instead of brown. He reached back and grabbed it, then stepped out of the truck into the wash of the flood light.
“Happy birthday, again,” she said.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he breathed as he unzipped the bag, removed a rod in three sectional pieces. “I just can’t believe it! Do you know what this is? This is a Darby Sanders Elite. Oh my God…”
“Yes, I’m aware, hon.”
“How did you know? These are the best rods on earth. Cost a fortune.”
“How many times do you turn fifty? You deserve the best, because you’re the best husband a woman could ask for.”
With that he was misty-eyed, stepped to Lea rod in hand and hugged her. “I am so blessed, honey. I am the richest man in the world.”
The highways were empty at a half hour till six. It was still full-dark out, and the new Ford was quietly propelling them along. Though it had been ten years since Theo had been to Montana, and eleven was an age much too young to remember much in great detail, he remembered things surprisingly clearly. Memories which prodded his stomach like a hot wire. He and his father were driving in the old F-150 on this same s
tretch of road…
Chapter One
It wasn’t yet sunrise when they arrived at Fallbrook river. The eastern horizon, seemingly a billion miles away, was layered in orange, pink, and periwinkle. It was the third consecutive Memorial Day in which Theodore’s father took him fly fishing, always at this spot on the river, and always at such an ungodly hour that Theo wondered if the fish were awake yet. He was bleary eyed as he got out of the gray Ford F-150 and plodded to the tailgate where their gear awaited them.
“I think the weatherman was right for a change,” his father said, “it’s quite warm already.”
“It’s freezing,” Theodore whined and rubbed his hands together, blowing warm moist air at them.
His father dropped the tailgate and said, “If we were in San Francisco I’d agree with you. Trust me, for Montana, this is warm. Grab the canvas bag and the tackle-box, I’ll get the ice-chest and backpack.”
Theodore wondered if this had become tradition. Not the fishing part, his father loved fishing and brought Theo along as often as he could, but vacationing in Montana for such an extended period of time. The cabin ten miles away had been passed down from generation to generation as a summer home, and although his grandfather was very much alive, he encouraged his two sons and daughter to utilize it as much as they desired. Until three years ago they only made trips to the cabin once a year, during the fourth of July, and stayed for a week. His mom and sister Jessica went with them during those trips, but not these. His father, being an artist, with his oil paints and brushes doing just as fine a job in Montana as they did in Frisco, concocted the idea three years ago to take a sojourn at the cabin in Montana for inspiration (not to mention some world-class fly-fishing). The sojourn, as his father had called it, would be from Memorial Day weekend until the weekend following the fourth of July. School would be on Summer vacation so Theodore wouldn’t be missing any school, and he’d get a chance to bond with Dad. And according to Dad, bonding was best achieved with a fly rod and countless acres of remote pristine wilderness. His mother and Jessica would fly into Helena from Frisco before the fourth and stay for a week before flying back. The girls loved this, as flying was far more ideal than driving in the Volvo for two days. Theo agreed, but didn’t have much of a choice in the matter. He supposed if he whined enough his father would excuse him from the trip, but it just meant so darned much to him that he couldn’t get himself to break his heart and admit the truth. So he’d grin a bear it, take the trips which meant so much to his father. And he did have fun, it wasn’t as if he didn’t enjoy fishing or spending time with his father. It’s just that… well, a month or so is an awful long time away. Last year he did ask his father if they could take the more comfortable Volvo instead of the F-150, but his father reminded him that the ladies would need it back in Frisco. Why can’t the ladies drive the pickup? He had asked.
“Trucks are a guy thing,” was his response. “And besides,” he said with a grin, ruffling his son’s mop of fine brown hair, “with all that bed space to hold sundries, your mother would shop us into destitution.”
Theo and his dad had arrived in the town of Lotton two days ago, a town with a population sign reading 185, and today was their first day of fishing. There would be more, many more. That you can take to the bank, as his father would say. His father abided by the golden rule of employment, which was Monday through Friday were work days and the weekends were for fishing, barring any holidays which were also spent fishing, such as today, though today was both a weekend and a holiday. Maybe he’d fish twice as voraciously because of it.
“How about a little competition, Theo? What do you say to a wager? For the biggest fish.”
“I never catch anything. It wouldn’t be fair.”
“I didn’t raise you to be a pessimist, son. And besides, this year will be different. Take a look at what’s inside the canvas bag.”
Theodore unzipped it, pulled out one-by-one sectional pieces of bamboo fly rods. He was staring at not one but two fly-fishing poles. The previous two years his father had Theo fishing with a traditional pole, casting a wet nymph with a bobber two feet above it. He had caught a couple fish over the years, but they were always small fish, as if the population of trout in Montana were somehow aware that the boy casting those wet nymphs was but a boy of nine and ten and didn’t want to overwhelm him with a fish too large. But now he was staring at two fly-fishing poles, and he grinned up at his father.
“It’s time I taught you how to fish like your old man.”
“Cool!” Theo said, pulling the other pieces of the rod out of the tote.
“It isn’t easy, son. It will take a lot of practice. I was eleven when I learned how to fly fish, too. Any younger and it is too difficult to whip the rod back and forth adequately enough.”
“Thanks, Dad,” he said, still smiling, and slid the pieces back into the bag.
“You bet, Theo. Let’s get going.”
They had parked the Ford off the shoulder of the road, a road simply named 17. Theo had asked his father two years ago why the roads were numbers instead of names, and the answer was simple enough: they aren’t driven on much. What sense is there in naming a bunch of roads hardly anybody drives on?”
They sauntered from the road’s dirt shoulder into the knee-high grass. Little golden flowers topped some of the stalks, and boy did they smell good. Theo had on more than one occasion contemplated plucking one such little flower and licking it, to see if they tasted as pleasant as they smelled. But he didn’t, as he could all but hear his father reproach him and say they are poisonous—he’d probably know them by name, too, he knew everything.
The terrain sloped down gradually, which meant they were almost there, though the tall grass, shrubs, and trees prevented them from seeing the river just then. The sun broke the horizon directly before them, casting warm rays upon their faces, which felt wonderful to Theo, whose cold cheeks put up a lot of resistance when he smiled. And today there was plenty to smile about. Summer vacation was in its infancy (calendar pages stood between him and fifth grade), his father had said they’d be barbecuing baby back ribs for dinner (his favorite eats), and he’d be learning how to fish like his dad this morning. And, to top it off, he brought his Playstation to Montana with a new game (Madden ’01).
Fallbrook river was high this year, and moved quicker than he’d ever seen. Montana had a good winter, his father had said, and it showed, as the river at this bend was at least forty feet wide, maybe ten feet better than it had been last year. Typically there was a bank of five feet or so of dirt and rocks between the water and grass, but this year there was none. The water stretched all the way to the grass, shoots stuck out of river’s edge like needles.
Theodore’s father stamped out a clearing near the river, asked his boy for help in achieving this, and minutes later they had a ten-foot by ten-foot picnic area, where they would eat ham sandwiches and talk about things like the Forty Niner’s chances at going to the playoffs next year and academic interests, which there were few. Last year his dad had for the first time in Theo’s life brought up girls in the context of… well, you know. Not quite the birds and the bees, but where there any girls at school he thought were kind of neat. Sure, there are some neat girls and neat guys, Theodore had replied. He was great at evading answers.
“Are there any cute girls?” his father had amended.
“No, Dad, I don’t like girls like that,” he said with pink cheeks. It was mostly true. His friend David had an actual girlfriend, Marissa, and Theo thought she wasn’t too bad at all. She loved sports, even played them with Theo and his friends, and wasn’t squeamish at things like bugs and lizards. And, lastly, she was even kind of fun to look at.
“You will soon enough,” he said.
Theo didn’t reply to that and instead asked what he’d be painting next.
With a nice patch of broken grass ready to be enjoyed for an early afternoon lunch, they set up camp (Dad’s phrase) and got to tying flies on their two-foot l
eaders. The flies were hand-made by his father. If you squinted your eyes nearly shut they did look like bugs, but he thought fish had keen eye-sight and couldn’t begin to imagine them being fooled by threaded metal bugs with a hook jutting out their keesters. But results spoke for themselves, his father caught lots of fish, some of them were very large, which was synonymous with very wise (fish don’t grow big and old by being tricked easily). His father unzipped his backpack and pulled out two pairs of rubber waders with suspenders. They donned them. Theo was pleasantly surprised that they fit almost perfectly this year (last year they were a little baggy and long). They waded into the shallows of Fallbrook up to their knees, just past the reeds, with only one pole between them. A deep red bamboo rod, brand new, and the property of Theodore. He thought he might purchase an identifying sticker or two when he got back to San Francisco to mark his pole.
“It’s all in the wrist, son.” With his son’s pole he fed out some line before showing him the motions. He whipped it back and forth a few times, the fly at the end of the line arcing from above and behind their heads to just inches above the glinting surface of moving water. Water which murmured in passage, something new this year. It was a lot more water than usual, and it was headed somewhere in a hurry. He looked into the distance at snow-capped mountains and wondered if this water came from that snow. Didn’t all moving water come from mountains somewhere? Theo thought his father had said that once before but couldn’t remember. He wondered if Marissa would know. She knew a lot of stuff too, for a girl.
“Before the fly reaches your targeted spot, you have to be pulling back already, it’s purely rhythmic. Don’t over-think it. It’s like dancing, let your body move to the rhythm instead of thinking it out methodically. See…?” He whipped it back and forth a few more times.
“How do you know when to pull it back?”