Nothing but Blue Skies

by Thomas McGuane

  They stopped to watch. “Hm,” said Holly.

  “An embarrassment of riches.”

  As they watched, a fish rose about halfway up the pool, a quiet rise that displaced more water than the others, sending a tremor out toward the sides of the pool. Holly grabbed his arm.

  “See that?” she asked.

  “Mm-hm.”

  The fish rose again and, in a minute, again.

  “Has it got a feeding rhythm,” Holly asked, “or is it just taking them when they come?” The fish rose again, its dorsal making a slight thread against the surface.

  “I think it’s on a rhythm. There’re just too many bugs coming off now. What kind of leader have you got on?”

  “Twelve-footer, five-X,” Holly said. “You’re not going to make me cast to that thing, are you?”

  “Didn’t I thank you for that last rainbow?”

  “Can I get by with this tippet?”

  “You’ll have to. I hate to take the time to change it now. I don’t know if you could hold this fish with anything lighter, assuming you make the cast.”

  “Assuming I make the cast …”

  A light breeze moved across the water and turned it from black to silver, a faint corrugation that obscured everything that was happening. “Right-hand wind,” Holly said gloomily. Then it went back to slick black. “Am I going to line those little fish, trying to reach him?”

  “I think you’ve got to take that chance,” said Frank, easing over to the bank in a slight retreat to the ledge where the heron had stood. “If you think about them too much, it’ll throw you off.” The fish fed again. Even Frank had a nervous stomach. Holly stood and stared. Frank said, “I’m going to try to get up the bank where I can see this fish better. Why don’t you try to get in position?”

  Frank left his rod at the side of the stream and pushed his way through grass as tall as his face until he got up onto the top of the bank. He worked his way back through the brush until he could look back and see the pool glinting through the branches. Then he got on all fours and crawled to the slight elevation alongside the pool. By the time he reached it, he was on his belly and perfectly concealed. He could see right into the middle of the pool. “Ready to call in the artillery,” he said.

  “I can’t even see you,” said Holly.

  “Nothing going on.”

  “Do you think he’s gone?”

  “No.”

  Small fish continued making their splashy rises. Frank could see well enough to make out the insects. He rested his chin on the backs of his hands and didn’t have to wait long. He tracked a dun mayfly out of the bubbles at the head of the pool, then another, then another. When this one reached mid-pool, a shape arose, clarified into a male brown trout with a distinct hook to its lower jaw and sipped the fly off the surface. It was a startlingly big fish, leopard-spotted, with its prominent dorsal fin piercing the surface. The low pale curve of its belly appeared to grow out of the depths of the pool itself. It sank almost from sight, but even after it had fed, Frank could make out its observing presence deep in the pool, a kind of intelligence.

  “See that?”

  Instead of answering, Holly began to strip line from her reel. She had the fly in her hand and blew on it. “I’m just going to cast,” she said. “I’m thinking too hard. How big?”

  “Big.”

  “Oh, I wish I hadn’t asked.”

  “You have the fish marked pretty well?”

  “Yeah, here goes.”

  Frank could see her false casting, but the fly tailed the loop, turned over too soon and hooked on the line. “Shit!” Holly brought her line back in and cleared the fly.

  “You’re rushing, Holly. You’re turning it over too soon. Cast like you always do. Don’t press.” She started again. “Slow, slow.” And she did, resuming her elegant cadence. The curve of line opened. The fly floated down and the fish arose steadily from the depths. “Whoa whoa whoa,” said Frank. “Don’t strike, he’s taking one in front of yours. Let the current take your fly away.” The fish eased up, made a seam as he broke the surface, then sank. Frank heard a pent-up breath escape from Holly while he watched the heavy fish suck an insect down. The fish held just beneath the surface, both the dorsal and tip of his tail out of the water; his gills flared crimson and a faint turbulence spread to the surface from either side of his head.

  “Try again while he’s still up,” Frank said, and an instant later Holly’s fly fluttered down from above, right in the feeding lane of the trout. He could see the fly rock around on the bright hackles Holly had wound on the hook last night, slowly closing on the fish. The trout elevated slowly and the fly disappeared down a tiny whirlpool in the water. “There,” said Frank, not too loud, and the thin leader tightened into the air, a pale cool spray the length of it. “You’ve got him!”

  Frank stood straight up out of the brush as the trout surged across the pool. Holly held her rod high with both hands and said, “Oh, God God God God God.”

  “Let him go.”

  “I am letting him go.”

  “Don’t touch that reel.”

  “I’m not touching the reel!”

  Frank got back below the pool and waded out to Holly. The reel was screeching. She was looking straight ahead where the line pointed. There was a deep bow in the rod. She moved her face slightly in Frank’s direction. “I’m dying,” she said. The fish started to run and the click of the reel set up a steady howl. “I am going to die.”

  Frank wanted to take some of the pressure off Holly. He moved his ear next to the screeching reel and looked up at her. “Darling,” he said, “they’re playing our song.”

  “Daddy, stop it. This is killing me!”

  “I thought this was supposed to be fun.”

  “It’s torture. Oh, God.”

  The fish stayed in the pool. It might have sensed that Frank and Holly were at the lower end, and the rapids above were probably too shallow for a fish this big to negotiate. If it went that way, the light leader would have quickly broken on rocks. All Holly could do was keep steady pressure and hope the fish was well hooked and that none of its teeth were close to the tippet. She was doing her part perfectly. The fish began to work its way deliberately around the pool, staying deep. “I guess this is where we get to see if there are any snags,” she said gloomily. This fish swam entirely around the pool once, an extraordinarily smart thing to do; but it couldn’t find something to wind Holly’s leader around. And it was having increasing difficulty staying deep in the pool. Holly continued to keep the same arc in her rod and watched vigilantly where the line sliced the surface. Finally, the fish stopped and held, then slowly let itself be lifted toward the surface. For the first time, Holly cautiously reeled.

  Frank undid his net from the back of his vest and held it in the water to wet the mesh. The fish was coming toward them. “Let me be in front of you, Hol,” he said quietly. When the fish was closer, he held the net underwater toward the fish. He could hear the unhurried turns of the reel handle. He looked straight at the fish from above. It turned quietly around and went back to the center of the pool, accompanied by the steady whine of Holly’s reel. “Oh, how much of this can I stand!” said Holly. But when the fish stopped, she resumed her steady work.

  “We’ll catch this fish, Hol.”

  “Do you think so?”

  “I think so.”

  “You’re just saying that, aren’t you?”

  “No, I foresee the fish in my net.”

  When the fish reappeared, Frank stared hard and moved the net toward it. The fish seemed pressed away by the net. Holly brought it closer and the net pushed it away but it didn’t move off quite the same way. “I’m going for it,” Holly said, and pulled hard enough to move the fish toward Frank; the fish turned and chugged toward the other bank but was unable to dive. Holly brought it back once more, and this time the fish glided toward the pressure of her rod and Frank swept the net in the air, streaming silver and slung deeply with the bright spo
tted weight of the fish.

  “I’m so happy, I’m so happy!” Holly cried as Frank submerged the net to keep the trout underwater. “I never caught such a big fish!” He slipped his hand inside the net and around the slick underside of the trout, unveiling him delicately as the net was lifted clear. With his left hand under the fish and his right hand around its tail, he was able to hold it. The little pale yellow fly was stuck just in the edge of his upper jaw. Holly reached down to free it and the fly fell out at her touch. Frank held the fish head up into the current until the kicks of the tail became strong. “You want to do the honors?” he asked.

  “You.”

  “Grab,” he said. Holly took the wrist of the fish’s tail just above Frank’s hand.

  Holly let go, then Frank let go, feeling the weight of the fish with his left hand and the curve of the fish’s belly with his right. Underwater, the trout seemed to take its bearings and balance itself. Then it kicked free, gliding to disappear into the middle of the pool. They began hollering like wild hog hunters, gesturing at the sky, Frank with his fists, Holly with her rod.

  “I’m the champion of the world!” Holly yelled.

  There seemed little point in doing anything but contemplate the bewildering size of a trout that must have rarely let down its guard in a long life. They were confident it would never make that mistake again. It was strange to feel affection for a creature finning secretively, almost below the light, disturbing the gravel bottom with an outrush of water from its broad gills. They were silent in the glitter of cottonwood leaves.

  Later, as they drove home, they sang. Frank pushed off the steering wheel to belt out his small part and Holly twisted in her seat operatically.

  “Hey!”

  “Hey!”

  “You!”

  “You!”

  “Get offa my cloud!”

  And Holly’s visit home was over. When her plane went off in a shrinking silver spot that disappeared, he felt his chest go all fluid with emotion that rose up through his face before he controlled it. With so many of his family, people he had known, gone, to have someone he loved as much as he loved Holly poised early in her life, facing out onto the flat earth, was overwhelming. Today he had had her attention fully and he knew that wouldn’t always be true. It was hard to take that in.

  26

  Eileen was in the doorway of Frank’s office, brow furrowed and seemingly reluctant to disclose what was on her mind. She did a lot of this sort of telegraphing with her face and Frank got the sense she would love to go through life with these meaningful dumb shows, like an Indian in a cowboy movie, pointing at things, listening to the night wind, smoke signals from a nearby hill, message tapped out on the plumbing. It was very hard for Eileen to make a direct statement. This never annoyed Frank when Gracie was around, but now poor Eileen stood for business, and anything about business was slipping in Frank’s esteem.

  “Yes, Eileen.”

  “Someone to see you, Mr. Copenhaver.”

  “I believe this has happened before, Eileen. Any reason you can’t show him in?”

  “It’s Mr. Jarrell, Mr. Copenhaver.”

  This was the ranch, the unimproved heritage. “Have him come in,” he bayed. He looked at his papers without seeing them. For once, Eileen’s mugging amounted to something. Frank rested his hand on the phone. Boyd came through the door and closed it behind him on a glimpse of Eileen craning inward. Frank noticed that he was empty-handed. Boyd nodded. Frank nodded. For some reason he found himself saying, “Haven’t seen you since the night of the suds.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Skip a couple of showers after that, ay?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, today is another day, and what is it I can do for you?”

  “I went out to the ranch yesterday and had a look around. It don’t look very good at all.”

  “We haven’t found a new man. You kind of left us in midstream.”

  “Alfalfa all burning up, deer gone through the fence —”

  “I believe Mike has taken out an ad in the Agri-News.”

  “— place where the RV boys shot off the lock on the east pasture, just riding around in there and flattening the grass.”

  “Like I say, I’d have to check with Mike and see if we’ve had any responses.”

  “But when I got to the troughs and the salt was completely gone, I realized —”

  “What did you realize?” Frank asked because Boyd had paused.

  “I realized we’d got our deal backwards. It don’t matter about you and me. Cows have got to have their salt.”

  “So, what are you telling me?”

  “I’m starting back in today.”

  “And what about — what about our conflict, Boyd? Be honest.”

  “We’re going to have to set that aside, Mr. Copenhaver. Like I been trying to tell you, the cows are out of salt.”

  “One thing you should know. Mike and I have decided to sell the place.”

  “You ain’t gonna do no such of a thing.”

  Frank thought for a minute. Boyd was a perfect cowboy. All he cared about was cows, but he did care about cows. He could see a sore-footed one from almost two miles off, as Frank had one day found out. He was as kind to cows as he was unreasonable to people. Frank might well have been more assiduous in staying out of his way. Boyd once clobbered Mike with a frying pan, but Mike thought everyone was crazy anyway and didn’t take it personally, though his nurse complained that he staggered around the office for two and a half days and may well have suffered a concussion. Frank thought about the cows being by themselves, without Boyd tending to them. Big, easygoing, helpless creatures dragged onto this prairie by white folks, always pregnant and always out of something they needed. There had to be someone who tried to close that gap between cows and an environment not always friendly to them. He had to admit to himself that there was real satisfaction in seeing Boyd ride through a herd of cattle, knowing that when he got out the other side he’d have learned as much about them as the graduating class of the average veterinary school. If I knew that much about anything, Frank thought, I wouldn’t be nice to anyone. But I’m so ignorant I have to go on treating people decently.

  “We took you off the rolls. You’ll have to stop and let Eileen know. You deal with it.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And I’m not kidding. Mike and I are thinking about selling the place.” Why? thought Frank. Boyd could hold it together as an heirloom.

  “Check with me first,” said Boyd. “You don’t need to be selling good land like that. You’ll piss it away.”

  “You think so?”

  “Hell, I know so.”

  27

  He phoned Saturday to see if Holly had arrived safely in Missoula. A man answered. “Just say her father called.” Frank had a feeling he’d encountered this bird once, a transfer from Colgate, shoulder-length curls and a nose ring. He had made a sardonic remark at the time, something about Missoula, something about the West Slope. It fell on its face.

  Frank went outside and looked around at the street, with its operatic ascent to the south through shafts of light crisscrossing the maples. Cars seemed to coast around town, their motors ticking placidly. Their shapes and array of colors jumped and disappeared in the front windows of the houses. Students appeared at the crown of the hill on bicycles and plummeted heedlessly past, then on into town. The sidewalk climbed the hill in an erratic line, its track interrupted here and there by lilacs and caragana bushes.

  He enumerated his obligations with the feeling that they kept him from soaring into this vista as one of its colors. Holly, easy. And Gracie — what obligation? He did not know. He had let slide Holly’s notation that Gracie was doing less than well. Bad luck or stewing in her own juices, he didn’t know. But Holly was going to see Gracie and that was exciting. Maybe she could help finalize the divorce and they could start to get past the pain.

  He walked on down the street. Something useless about Saturday, a day o
f loathing to the self-employed. Eileen would be home taking care of her older sister, a woman afflicted with multiple sclerosis and a lack of funds. He passed St. Anne’s, his family church at the corner of Shoshone, and saw its door ajar, a dark band at the lintel with the glimmer of yellow interior lights. He stopped and went in, the old pull; he paused and was swept in as by a current. And then the smell of stone and old burnt incense, of the varnished pine pews, was comforting. He walked halfway up the middle aisle, genuflected and took a seat, gazing at the empty altar. He wondered if it was any different than the tumuli of Druids, fairie rings, sun dance circles, or if that in fact suggested a reduction. Maybe it expressed a zone of the subconscious that produced the murdering popes and ayatollahs. What if there was nothing there but the belief of many that there was something there? That certainly added to the importance of matters. He walked up and lit candles to his mother and father. He returned to his pew. Anybody here? Release the white bird now, please. Let a beam of light pass overhead. The faint voice of a bell. You see, we are desperate. We are here to say stone and water and sacrifice; house, crops, fish. And to say them plainly. To say Gracie.

  He was sorry he included “fish” because it started him thinking on a lower plateau. He left the church and went to his house and began gathering his tackle. Inside an hour’s time, he was standing waist deep in the Gallatin River. Swallows dove just above his head, catching mayflies. Trout moved among the current seams like phantoms. Darkness would overtake him only a few yards from here, deep in a mystery.

  Frank stopped at Valley News and bought the paper. There was a young man in front with long dirty dreadlocks. The well-bred golden retriever he held beside him on a length of clothesline looked hopelessly out into traffic.

  Lucy passed in front of Valley News just as Frank came out with his paper. He nodded slightly. She nodded slightly, passed, stopped and came back. She looked handsome in a blue cotton skirt and oversize gray sweater. She said, “Frank.”

  Frank said, “Lucy.” He wanted to be decent and let no smile cross his face. But he suddenly remembered going to a whorehouse in Livingston with Mike and hearing Mike’s voice boom out from behind a closed door, “Great Caesar’s ghost, it’s a cunt!” And now he began to laugh. He really ought not to remember any of Mike’s views on women, including the one that the only people who understood women were the Africans who practiced female circumcision, nipping off the clitoris with a clamshell. Mike would pantomime the action of the clamshell, like Señor Wences and Johnny.