Rascal

by Sterling North

  We had wandered far up the stream, and now the sun told us we should be getting back to camp. A pleasant breeze was tempering the August heat as we retraced our path—sometimes in and sometimes out of water. Rascal fished the river’s edge feasting on minnows. I was seeing enough big trout where the sun struck deep into the pools to know that here was a stream to rival Isaak Walton’s River Dove.

  When we arrived at camp we were astonished to find a robber in the process of gnawing his way into the wooden box which contained our salt, flour, and other dry groceries. I had never before seen a porcupine, although my father had told me about them, and this could be none other than the very animal—clumsy, pug-nosed, and bristling with quills. Porcupines can’t throw their quills. These barbed harpoons, however, leave the original owner at a touch, but stay in the flesh of his enemies like fishhooks.

  Rascal had raced ahead for a closer look, but suddenly grew cautious. All of his ancestors seemed to be whispering in his ear—“Careful! It’s a porcupine!”

  I didn’t want to kill the intruder. Using a long stick, I nudged him gently toward a small tree up which he scrambled until he looked like a hawk’s nest in the highest crotch. Then I went to examine the damage to our stores. It was our salt he had craved. He had ripped the salt box wide open and eaten enough to make him thirsty for the next six months. He wouldn’t stay up that tree very long, I concluded. He would have to come down and go to the river for a drink.

  Rascal and I lay on our backs drinking cold pop from a case we kept in a nearby spring.

  “I’ll bet he wishes he had a bottle of pop,” I said to Rascal, as we gazed up at the thirsty porcupine. But Rascal was too busy to pay much attention.

  Holding his bottle with both hands and both feet he drank as fast as a little raccoon can. He had no intimation that this free life would not go on forever or that he would soon be headed homeward to captivity.

  One loses sense of time in the woods. I had no watch to replace my broken Ingersoll and could only guess at the hour of the day by looking at the sun. I had even forgotten what day it was—and it certainly didn’t matter. No schoolbell or churchbell rang to remind us of the dutiful passage of time. One day blended into the next and could only be remembered as the day we saw the porcupine or the day we found Lost Lake.

  It may have been the second or third day that Rascal and I followed one of the larger upstream branches of the Brule far into the woods in search of its source. I had brought my fishpole, a can of worms, and a creel, but I wasn’t having much luck with trout, only two eight-inchers which I unhooked carefully and returned unharmed to the stream. Brook trout are almost too beautiful to keep, being, in these waters, dark above with rosettes of filtered sunlight along their sides, some as red as wintergreen berries and some almost golden. They are amber pale beneath—part of the water itself, and of the spirit of the woods.

  As usual the pine squirrels scolded; and once a ruffed grouse burst from cover with an explosion of wing music, burrowing off through the slanting sunlight of the forest. Rascal turned to me for protection and asked his usual questions. I assured him there was no danger, and laughed at him for being afraid of a grouse. Somewhere in the neighborhood there were grouse chicks hiding, all but invisible in the pine needles and old leaves. I didn’t want Rascal to find them, so I told him to come along. On we went, up and up that rushing woodland stream.

  It seemed a miracle that anything as young as fingerling trout or grouse chicks or my small raccoon could move along this watercourse among boulders as old as the world—the new life of this very season amid granite predating even the first life on the globe.

  My mother, before she died, had revealed a few simple facts about the earliest forms of life on earth, and had tried to explain the story of creation in the Bible as a means by which a primitive and poetic people sought to record the beginning of things.

  This does not mean there is no God, she said, or that He didn’t create heaven and earth, darkness and light, and the seas and the land—yes, and millions of suns and planets, whole galaxies of distant stars. His spirit does move upon the face of the waters.

  Then patiently, like the very good teacher she was, my mother had explained in words I could understand how the plants and animals had evolved from the simpler forms of life to the wonderfully complex flora and fauna of our present era. And I had thought there was no one more gracious or knowing than my mother, and nothing more pleasant than the sound of her voice. She seemed very close to me now as Rascal and I made our way up this branch of the Brule.

  The stream came winding toward us over and under mossy logs. It tumbled through the remains of an abandoned beaver dam, and ran like quicksilver across the beaver meadow where meadow larks added their music to that of the water.

  Then, half a mile farther upstream, we came upon it suddenly—a little lake which was the very source, as round as a big drop of dew and as clear. Its shores were of clean sand and gravel, and it was cupped among low hills, forested with evergreens, with several white birches standing in sharp relief against this background of dark firs.

  There were water lilies in the shallows, their floating pads large enough for little frogs to sit on, and blossoms the size of saucers, where green and scarlet dragonflies held court.

  We had come so quietly over the pine needles that the bathers had not seen us, and they were withers-deep in the lake—the first white-tail doe and the first fawn I had ever gazed upon, except in nature books. Then Rascal saw them, and was smitten by one of his crazy ideas. He slipped into the water and took the shortest route toward the deer, creating no more disturbance than an otter, and causing the doe and fawn no concern. The fawn and little raccoon had almost touched noses when the doe sensed me, blew a note of warning to her fawn, and lunged from the lake, calling to her offspring to follow. For a moment she hesitated and looked back toward me with great liquid eyes. Then doe and fawn went bounding off through the willows, throwing their white flags into the sunlight.

  Rascal came paddling back very pleased with himself—thinking he had performed a brave service by frightening these intruders from a lake which now was ours by right of discovery and conquest.

  On another day Rascal and I turned downstream on a fishing expedition. Because I did not own a fly rod, and had never had an opportunity to master the difficult and delicate art of manipulating a dry fly, I substituted the next best lure, a wet fly which I cast as one does a bass plug, retrieving this streamer in short jerks as though it were a wounded minnow.

  In a likely pool half a mile downstream I felt a powerful lunge as a hungry trout struck that old bucktail. But the fish had missed the hook, and refused to strike again. More than ever I yearned for a fly rod and an assortment of dry flies to fish these trout as they should be fished.

  Rascal was having better luck than I. He examined the river’s edge with contemplative fingers, turning over small rocks in search of crayfish. The past and future meant nothing to Rascal; he lived completely in the present without ambition or worry, a very comfortable fishing companion.

  Beyond a bend in the river we came upon the first human habitation I had seen in days. I experienced a shock of recognition that was almost uncanny, as though I had lived here in a previous life; and yet I had never seen anything exactly like this big cabin with its huge stone fireplace, rambling veranda, and green lawn sloping to the water. If Rascal and I were determined to live in the woods, here was the home we wanted.

  I realized sadly, however, that wishing won’t make it so. This cabin must belong to someone, and a fairly wealthy owner at that. As we came around a clump of willows, there he was, fishing his own trout pool with a split bamboo fly rod which he handled as gracefully as an orchestra conductor handles his baton.

  He was a tall, spare man, browned by the sun and quietly intent upon his fishing. His old felt hat was decorated with trout flies. He was smoking a pipe and seemed completely at peace with the world.

  I held Rascal in my arms so that he
would not interrupt the performance, and we watched for several minutes, unnoticed by the fisherman.

  It is fascinating to watch a good fly caster, and this man was an expert. It seemed almost impossible that with his wand of split bamboo he could direct a weightless lure with such precision that he could drop it on the water fifty feet downstream, within inches of any target, the fly lighting upon the pool as gently as though it were indeed a living insect.

  On each back cast he lifted the lure and line high behind him, then with split-second timing brought forward the tip of his rod, sending the fly swiftly downstream to its destination. On each forward cast he stripped extra line from the reel until his fly was reaching the edge of a boulder at the foot of the pool, a good sixty feet below the gravel bar on which he was standing.

  Then it happened, just as the fisherman had planned. There was a heavy swirl as the trout left his haven below the boulder, a tremendous surge, then a leap clear of the water.

  I suppose we should have been cheering for that fish, making such a gallant fight for his life. But Rascal and I were primitive, as eager as the fly caster to bring the big trout to net. We ran down the path to the gravel bar to be nearer the scene of action as the tall, calm fisherman patiently played the fish. The rod bent like a bow during the lunges, easing to a gentle arc as the trout ran upstream.

  Although busy with his fish, the angler looked up and smiled when he saw his visitors. But I knew enough not to talk at such a moment. The line cut swift figures across the surface of the water like an ice skater in motion, and once again the trout broke water, throwing spray into the sunlight.

  “Pretty fair brown,” the fisherman said.

  “It’s enormous.”

  “Not for a brown trout; get them anywhere up to twelve pounds in the Brule.”

  When the fish began to tire, the fisherman pointed to his long-handled net lying on the bar. “Want to slip it under him, son?”

  “But I might lose him!”

  “Wouldn’t matter much—lots more where he came from.”

  I had used a landing net often, and knew that one must be careful not to scare the fish. The technique is to slip the net very gently behind and below him, and bring it forward and upward with a swift, smooth movement.

  But Rascal knew none of these subtleties. In his eagerness he paced the beach, and when the trout showed his back above water, Rascal pounced. This sent the fish surging to the bottom of the pool. I gave Rascal a light slap on the nose which sent him whimpering up a little tree, talking and scolding about the injustice of it all.

  Instead of being angry, the fisherman began laughing until he had to take his pipe from his mouth.

  “It might have cost you your trout,” I said apologetically.

  “What’s one trout more or less?”

  “Well, this one’s a beauty,” I said as I brought the net under him. “I’ll bet he weighs almost three pounds.”

  “Would you like him, sonny?”

  “I couldn’t take your best fish.”

  “Best fish?” The big man started laughing again. “You and your ’coon come up to the cabin. I’ll show you a real trout.”

  As we went in through the big plank door of the cabin, I again had the weird feeling that I knew this place—the great room with its granite fireplace, the shelves of books, the bearskin rug! If I hadn’t lived here (and of course I hadn’t) I must have dreamed it in detail.

  Bert Bruce—for that was his name—wanted to show me the eleven-pound trout mounted above the mantel so realistically that it seemed alive, rising to the brilliant Royal Coachman—the very fly which had been his undoing. When I held Rascal up to see this magnificent brown trout, he reached for the splash of crimson which had also lured the fish. My raccoon was proving much too interested in trout flies.

  What struck me immediately about this cabin was its air of livability. The great pine logs—some of them forty feet in length—had been peeled and varnished. The pegged plank floor was of white oak, easy to clean. Comfortable chairs, a long table beneath windows overlooking the river, gasoline lamps—everything perfect for an evening of reading beside a birchwood fire.

  Mr. Bruce hung his fly-decorated hat on a peg, well above the reach of Rascal, and, while my raccoon investigated at floor level, showed me his cabinet of flies. I had never seen anything like it—jars of preserved insects, netted from this valley, filled an entire shelf. These were the models for the artificial flies which this angler tied himself.

  The small drawers, containing the many materials used to make the flies, might have been those of a jeweler. Within each drawer he kept a separate treasure, well protected from moths with balls of camphor. The hackles for his flies were largely from game cocks, red, ginger, and grizzled. These he imported from England. He trapped his own red foxes and rabbits, to make from their under fur the thoraxes or bodies of his flies, which were firmly banded to the hook with gold or silver wire as fine as a cobweb. The tails of the flies were the slenderest of feather barbs, and the wings were usually small feathers from a starling.

  Then, with slight hesitation, he showed me the contents of the only drawer which was locked. I immediately realized it contained the feathers of a wood duck.

  “I’ve shot only one in my life,” he said. “I need these feathers—can’t tie some flies without them.”

  There they lay, gleaming and radiant, the plumage of the most beautiful bird in North America.

  While I was learning about the art of tying flies, Rascal had found the bearskin rug. The head was mounted with the ferocious mouth wide open, and Rascal was sidling up, as cautious as a cat, ready at any moment to leap back if the rug attacked him. I twitched the rug just once and Rascal nearly fell over backward. But his curiosity outweighed his caution and he soon returned, touching the bear’s nose, running sensitive fingers over the fierce glass eyes. Convinced at last that the bear was not alive, he climbed aboard the massive head, proud to have won such a dangerous battle. Soon he was curled in a comfortable position on the skin of this great cousin. In another moment he was asleep.

  “Do you live here all alone, Mr. Bruce?”

  “Call me Bert,” my host said. “Everybody else does. . . . Yes, I live alone. Can’t stand womenfolks around—cranky clean.”

  “That’s the way I feel,” I said.

  “Now you take my older sister. I live with her winters, and I like her. But when she comes up here she dusts and scrubs and changes curtains and moves furniture. Can’t lay a book down on the table, she puts it right back on the shelf.”

  “I wish I had a cabin like this,” I said.

  “Well, son,” Bert said, “you can’t get anything in this world without working for it. I ran a sporting goods store in Chicago for thirty years. Sold out and retired. I come up here from early May to late October. But I had to earn the money first.”

  “I’d work all my life for a cabin like this,” I said wistfully.

  “How about a ham sandwich for you and your ’coon?”

  “That would suit us just fine.”

  “Well, come along to the icehouse and we’ll cut a big slice of ham.”

  I took Rascal with us to be sure he wouldn’t get into mischief. And while we were in the icehouse, Bert had a good idea. He wanted to see how much Rascal weighed.

  Taking his trout creel, he hung it from a scale permanently attached to one of the beams. Discounting the weight of the creel, he now lifted the amiable little raccoon into the wicker basket. Rascal weighed exactly four pounds and three ounces.

  “How old is he?” Bert asked.

  “Just about four months, I think.”

  “Coming along fine,” Bert said, relighting his pipe. “Gaining just about a pound a month. He’ll be a big husky fellow before he goes to sleep for the winter.”

  There wasn’t any doubt about it. Bert Bruce was our friend.

  It seemed scarcely possible that two weeks had fled so swiftly. But one afternoon my father returned to tell me that the c
ourt case had been settled and that the following day would be our last on the Brule. For the first time since we had come to the north woods, I lay awake for a while that evening, listening to the soughing of the wind high in the pines, realizing sadly that we must now return to civilization.

  I went to sleep with the happier thought that we still had one precious day, and I was determined to make the most of it.

  Next morning we took our fishpoles and started downstream to Bert’s cabin. It was cool enough to make us grateful for our sweaters. The grass and low bushes in the little clearings were hung with spider webs, seeded with pearls of dew, and a few birches were exchanging their summer green for the pale gold of early autumn.

  My father and Bert had become good friends. On several evenings they had talked about Indians—a mutual passion: the Winnebagos, the Chippewas, the Crees, the Teton Sioux, and many others. While Rascal and I lay on the bearskin rug, Indians swirled noiselessly around us through the flickering firelight—dancing their war dances, hunting and fishing, moving forlornly to their reservations.

  For our pleasure on this final day, Bert had offered us the use of his canoe, and we were eager to try it. The Brule is mostly navigable by light craft from this cabin down to Lake Superior, and there are several excellent trout pools on these lower reaches almost certain to produce big fish.

  Bert saw us safely afloat, bid us farewell and good luck, and waved from his gravel bar. We rounded a bend in the rapids below his pool, and cascaded through a tunnel of evergreens.

  My father was at the stern and I in the forward seat. Rascal was convinced that he was the pilot. He stood at the prow, peering downstream as might an animated figurehead, sniffing the breeze, watching the river, and occasionally turning to give us brief instructions. As always, he loved speed and a slight sense of danger, chirring with the most satisfaction when we were running white water.

  My father had purchased his first canoe nearly half a century before from a Winnebago Indian. He was excellent, guiding us with swift strokes, or the rudderlike action of the trailing paddle. I was also a competent performer, but less adept at the stern than near the prow.