by Jeff Vrolyks
“Not too bad.”
“Let me get out of the water. I’m afraid I’ll drop it and ruin it.” He sloshed toward shore saying, “James, can I offer you a beer?”
“Sure.”
“Follow me. Let’s leave the kiddo’s alone to catch us more food for the barbecue, huh?”
James looked at his boy and grinned at him. “Sounds good to me, George. Son, let’s see if you can catch one as large as Carmen’s.”
“I doubt it,” Carmen said playfully.
“Oh do you?” Theo said. “I bet I can catch one twice as big as yours.”
“Do all boys from California lie?” she quipped.
“It’s not a lie,” he said haughtily, “it’s optimism.”
She giggled. “Well you’d need to be one optimistic boy to think you can catch one bigger than mine.”
His father was now on land, following George to a clearing of their own farther upstream.
As Carmen fed some line out of her rod, Theo watched her to see if she did it the same way. He began pulling feed out of his reel now and took a few steps downstream of her. “Georgette,” he said, not so much calling for her as much as he was repeating what he had earlier heard.
Carmen ceased pulling line from the reel and scowled at Theo. It was a menacing scowl indeed! He wondered how much of it was an act, and guessed mostly it was. She was too pretty to have such an ugly expression.
“Theodore,” she said spitefully, grinned, and began whipping her rod back and forth.
“It’s Theo,” he said and began fishing as well.
“And mine’s Carmen.”
“I like that name.”
“Which, Georgette or Carmen?”
“Carmen. It’s nice.”
“Good. If you said Georgette I’d have dunked you in the water.”
From his standpoint he could only see the side of her face, but the corner of her mouth was upturned and Theo was glad. “Why do you have two names?”
“Georgette is my real name. Carmen is what I prefer. I made it up. I never liked Georgette, just as you don’t like Theodore.”
“Georgette…” he pondered, “after your father George, right?”
“Yeah. He thought I was going to be a boy and had George picked out. Turns out I’m a girl and his name wouldn’t work. So Georgette is was. My mom goes along with anything Dad wants, so I’m sure she didn’t put up much of a fight. I like the name Carmen. It’s not fair that people don’t get to pick their names, don’t you think. Why should a couple of old people decide for us? Maybe they should pick a temporary name, but when the kid grows up, like you and I have, we should be able to pick a name. You don’t like Theodore so you chose Theo. I don’t know why you wouldn’t like Theodore, it’s a great name, but I’m sure you have your reasons.”
He nodded and chucked his fly at a spot upstream and watched it float down a ways before whipping it back into flight. “Do you hunt also?”
“Yep. I have my own gun, too. A Remington .22 caliber rifle, with a scope and everything.”
“Cool. Have you ever shot anything?”
“A boy once. He kept staring at me.” She peeked over at him and giggled.
Theo humored. “Well I hope you never shoot me!”
“As long as you don’t give me a reason to, I think you’ll live to catch another fish.”
“Carmen?” She looked at him. “I won’t pretend that it’s my fish. My dad caught it.”
She landed her fly on the rolling surface of the river and watched it drift. “Oh? Why did he say you caught it?”
“I have no idea.” He did have an idea.
“To impress my dad, probably.”
“Yeah, that’s probably it,” Theo said.
“Or…” she bit her lip and looked over at him. “Or… to impress me.”
Theo felt his face burn hot. Surely it was red. “I doubt it.”
“Do you?” she said dryly.
“So what have you shot? Animal wise.” Theo thought he was pretty great at evading topics.
“A bear.”
“A bear!” Theo’s fly landed in the water and went unchecked. “You killed a bear? Seriously?”
“Yeah, is that so hard to believe? It’s a lot easier than shooting a deer. I’ve tried to shoot a deer and missed. They’re fast, and spook easily.”
“And bears are slow?”
“No, it’s just different. My dad has a friend in the community, he has a pack of dogs. They are trained for bear hunting. Each has a role. One tracks them, a couple surround the bear and bark at him, confusing him, and the bear climbs up a tree, and we shoot him.”
“Poor bear,” Theo said quietly.
“I know. It is sad. I cried the first time I saw one shot. But we eat them. They go to use. We eat for weeks, months from the meat of a bear.”
They continued fishing for a moment, conversation dead in the water. Finally Theo said, “A friend in the community? Earlier your dad said something about outsiders. What do you mean?”
“Our community,” she said plainly. “You aren’t a Mormon?”
“No. I’ve never met a Mormon.”
“Really? I’ve rarely met anyone who wasn’t a Mormon.”
“Are there a lot of them in Montana?”
“I don’t know about that, but we’re all Mormon in Cedar Hills.”
“That’s why you call it your community?”
“I suppose. Don’t you believe in God?”
“I guess. I don’t pray or anything. We go to church on Easter. Christian church.”
“Did you know Christian God and Mormon God is the same thing?”
“I did not.”
“Yep. So we aren’t as different as you might…”
Just then a fish struck at Theo’s fly, a loud splash, stealing Carmen’s attention.
“You got one!” she wailed. “Reel it in!”
Theo couldn’t believe it. He wasn’t even trying to catch a fish. He emulated his father’s motions of pulling the rod back into a dramatic arc, then lowering it and reeling in quickly, again and again. Carmen rushed to his side and waited in anticipation.
“Shoot, my dad has the net,” she said. His did too, he said. “I’ll just grab him. We might lose him, but I’ll try my best, okay Theo?”
“Yeah.”
A couple feet before them the water splashed and then stilled, splashed and stilled. Theo still couldn’t see the fish. Carmen ran her fingers along the line, down into the water. She was bent forward, chest almost to the water, face forward, and blindly felt her hands to the fish. Theo respected her just then. Not only was she about to grab the fish with her bare hands (something he’d have never guessed a girl would do), but her arms were in the water above the elbow, which was soaking her sweatshirt, and she didn’t seem to mind.
“Got it,” she said triumphantly and pulled the fish out of the water with both hands. It was a rainbow trout, at least as big as his father’s brown, but not nearly as large as Carmen’s.
It was a moment Theo would never forget. Not his first fish caught fly-fishing, per say, but the way Carmen smiled at him, holding the fish up between their chests. There was a flutter in his stomach as their eyes locked and held there for a timeless moment. She broke it by looking down at the fish.
“Thank you, Carmen.”
Her brow creased. “For what?”
“For grabbing the fish.”
“Any time. Can you take the hook out of its mouth or do you need me to do that for you too?” A playful grin, she had a great one, and he was grateful that she was liberal in showing it.
“With a daughter like you, I imagine your father doesn’t need any sons. If you hold the fish like that, I’ll take the hook out.”
“Okay,” she replied. He tucked the rod under his right arm and tinkered with the fly protruding out the corner of the rainbow’s mouth. “And yes, I’m the son of the family, so to speak. I have two sisters, ten and six. They think fishing is icky.”
He
was having trouble getting the barb free from the webbing of the trout’s mouth. “Yeah, you are very manly,” he said with a straight face. “My friends would like you.”
“I get along better with boys. And no I’m not manly.” She added, “And I doubt very much you have any friends at all.”
He finally got the hook out, opened his basket for her to lower the fish in. They rinsed their hands in the water together.
“You kid a lot, don’t you?”
“I suppose I do.”
“Kids!” James said from afar. They looked over their shoulder to their parents. They had a beer in hand. James waved them in.
They worked their way to shore. The two men were speaking to one another, more easily than they had been, as if the beer was their ice-breaker. When he was close enough to his dad, he reached into the basket and scooped up the rainbow, held it up under its fins. It squirmed.
His father’s jaw dropped. “You caught a fish!” He quickly amended, “You caught another fish.”
Carmen was at his heels and poked a finger deep in Theo’s side and said, “Yeah, he caught another fish.”
“Way to go, Theo,” George said.
“Thanks.”
“George and Cheryl have invited us over for supper, son. How’s that sound?”
“Great,” Theo replied, and he meant it.
Chapter Two
It was a short drive back to the cabin. Theo was dreading it, and when his dad turned off the radio he knew he’d be asked some embarrassing questions. They pulled onto road 17. James reached over and patted his son’s knee, keeping his eyes on the road.
“Can you believe I caught a fish, Dad? Biggest one I’ve ever caught, too. And a rainbow, at that.”
“I’m proud of you, son. We’ll cook them up for lunch tomorrow. I’ll show you how to clean them when we get to the cabin.”
“Alright.”
“So what do you think of George and Carmen?” He still didn’t meet eyes with Theo.
“They seemed like nice people.”
“Carmen seemed like a sweet child. A little feisty, but sweet.”
“I don’t know if I’d call her sweet. She’s one of the guys.”
James laughed heartily. “One of the guys? Is that so?”
“It is. She is. She doesn’t act like a girl.”
“Oh, well then that’s good, huh?” He leered at his son.
Theo nodded.
“Since when does me calling you Theodore bother you?”
“Since today, I guess. I’m growing up. I’m almost twelve. Too old for the name Theodore.”
“But it’s your name.”
“Well Carmen’s name is Georgette and she gets to be called what she wants.”
“You can’t seem to stop talking about this Carmen. What gives?”
This was his father’s stab at humor and it made Theo blush. “We’re on the topic, that’s all.”
“Are you sure you don’t think she’s a little cute? Heck, I think she’s a dear.”
“Eww, dad. That’s gross. You’re like a hundred times older than her.”
He sighed. “Not like that, bubba. I think your sister Jessica is a dear, too.”
“She’s a rascal.”
“And you love her as much as I. So answer me, do you think she’s a little cute?”
“She’s alright looking. Her teeth are crooked.”
“They’re baby teeth probably. She won’t look like a circus sideshow freak her whole life, you know.”
“She doesn’t look like a circus freak!”
James bit down on a smile. “My boy is turning into a man. Just don’t make me a grandpa until I’m like sixty.”
“Oh my God, Dad. Please stop it.” Theo switched on the stereo and welcomed the noise.
The cabin was a traditional log cabin, built in the ‘20’s. There was no paint and a low arched roof, one bedroom and a bathroom. The main room constituted most of the cabin’s meager size, and had a fireplace with a deer’s head mounted above it, an old flintlock rifle mounted below the deer. The gun wasn’t just old, it was a valuable antique, over two-hundred years old. The kind used by George Washington’s army. There was a couch, a recliner, a rocking chair with an ottoman. The room’s brown carpeting was a recent addition. The kitchen was open and tiny. Above the steel basin was a window overlooking acres of grass and trees and not much else. Their nearest neighbor was a five minute walk down the nameless dirt road.
In the steel double-basin were the trout. Father and son stood side by side, each with a filet-knife in hand. Theo was making the same incisions into his fish as his father.
“Never wait long before cleaning the fish, or they go bad.”
“Okay.” He ran the tip of the knife up the white belly to the gills.
“Now cut here,” he said, showing the narrow strip between the gills. “Then set the knife down and grab hold of the gills, pull them down like this.”
Theo did it, and seconds later both were holding a pile of guts with a gill handle. James dropped the guts into a gallon-sized Ziploc, and had Theo do the same. “Gotta be careful with entrails or bears will come. Now run water through the fish, using your thumb to scrape the bloodline from the spine.”
“Ick.”
“Yes, ick. It’ll put hair on your chest.”
“I don’t need hair on my chest.”
“Chicks dig it.”
“I don’t care. Hey, did George tell you that they were Mormons? They live in a community of Mormons.”
“Oh really? Interesting.” He considered a moment. “Huh, I heard that there are communities of fundamentalist Mormons living in Montana, didn’t know we lived so close to one.”
“What’s that mean? Fundamentalist Mormon.”
“They are more strict in their beliefs, almost Puritanical.”
“What’s that mean?”
“I thought they dressed like Puritans, but after meeting George and Carmen, I’m not so sure. I know they believe in plural marriages.”
“Like divorce?”
“No, like multiple wives at once.”
Theo thought he had to be kidding. “Come on, Dad.”
“Seriously. Sometimes they have several wives, like six or eight or who knows.”
“Really? Why?”
“It’s just the way it is. Their religion isn’t very old. Not by comparison to our own, which is thousands of years old. I may be mistaken but I believe Mormonism was founded in the eighteen hundreds. I could be wrong. Maybe the eighteenth century. They have had plural marriages from back then. I think Brigham Young was one of the main guys who was behind that. I’m not the best person to talk to about Mormonism.”
“Dang, I had no idea.”
“Considering becoming a Mormon now?” He nudged his son. “Huh? You could have a few Carmen’s, how great would that be?”
Theo grinned shyly at his dad. “Well, I suppose if I had to have a wife, she wouldn’t be such a bad one to have. She knows how to fish.”
“Yeah, I’m sure that’s why you like her. It has nothing to do with how she looks.”
“Do you enjoy embarrassing me? I think you do.”
“Perhaps. I love you, son, and I only kid you out of love. I wouldn’t embarrass you in front of people.”
“I know. Thank you for telling Carmen I caught your fish.”
“We men gotta stick together. I’ll put these trout in the fridge for tomorrow. Go play some Madden if you’d like, we’re leaving here in about…” he checked his watch, “two hours.”
Chapter Three
They stopped by The Country Mercantile in the business district of Cedar Hills and picked up a bottle of merlot and a peach pie. James followed the directions written by George on the back of a receipt, which began at The Mercantile. They made the first turn left and idled along slowly.
“Dad, I swear if you try to take a picture of Carmen and I…”
“Why do you think I’d do that?”
“I heard you
talking to mom on the phone.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, oh. I heard you tell her about Carmen and how I like her. I wish you wouldn’t have told her that.”
“When you have kids someday you’ll understand.”
“Did she ask you to take a picture? You said I don’t like getting my picture taken, so I assume she did.”
“Yes, she did. I promise you I won’t embarrass you, okay?”
“Thank you.”
James parked at the curb in front of a sizeable two-story house. It was the last house on the cul-de-sac. James awed over the contrast of this neighborhood and the one back in Frisco. The properties were huge; land was evidently very cheap. There could easily be another house built between each house on this street. And these weren’t wealthy people, as evidenced by their domestic cars, none which seemed to have been built in the last ten years.
Theo carried the pie, James had the merlot. They arrived at the front door. A wooden sign above the door read The Handles. Carmen Handle, Theodore mused. Before he could knock the door opened and George greeted them. He wore slacks and a blazer, attire too nice for their company, James thought. They shook hands and entered the house.
The living room was vast with heads of bears, deer, and even a ram mounted on the walls. Even though it was in the seventies this afternoon, there was a fire blazing in the fireplace. Theo looked for the television and couldn’t find one. Strange. Where would they watch the Super bowl?
Cheryl whisked out of the kitchen in a casual dress with a white apron, looking quite matronly. Her hair was curled, makeup flawless, and she was smiling from the onset. George introduced them, asked if they’d care for some iced tea and they accepted.
“Have a seat,” George said, gesturing to the couch in the living room.
They sat beside each other, George across from them in a recliner. “Mighty fine house you have, George.”
“Thank you, James.”
“What do you for a living, if you don’t mind me asking.”
“Insurance broker. Yourself?”
“I paint.”
“Houses or pictures?”
“Pictures.”