by Chris Offutt
He studied Botree’s hands in the glow of morning light. Her fingers were long and slim. She pulled onto a narrow lane and parked beneath a cottonwood near the river, and left the truck without speaking. Joe followed, his leg stiff from the ride. She assembled a flyrod, tied a fly to the transparent leader at the end of the yellow line, and demonstrated the three-stroke motion for casting. She gave him a pair of heavy black glasses like safety goggles. She stepped into the river as though it was grass.
Joe stood on a shoal and watched her work. Her posture changed, gaining fluidity and grace as if the act of fishing lent a greater purpose to life. She began walking upstream, weaving an S with the line in the air to keep it ready to cast. The swift whisper of the leader hummed about her shoulders. She jerked her head rapidly to maintain a constant surveillance of the water. She twitched the rod to place the lure beneath an overhang near the bank.
“There’s one over there,” she said.
“One what?”
“Fish.”
“Where?”
“By the log.”
The glasses reduced glare, but Joe was unable to see the fish, the lure, or the log. He walked downstream and prepared to cast. He moved his arm rapidly between the clock positions of ten and two, letting out line on each forestroke. It required both hands, but he couldn’t control the motion of the line. He made his initial cast, snapping his wrist and aiming with his hand. The line shot straight forward, then dropped over his shoulder and doubled behind him. He began reeling. The line zipped past him. He turned away from the river and faced the treeline. His lure was deeply tangled in a bush. He spent the next half hour retrieving his line while Botree caught three fish, gleefully holding each aloft for him to see.
He made a few casts that successfully landed in water, but was never able to see the fly, or a fish taking it. He went farther downstream and his bad leg sank in wet sand to his knee. He set the flyrod aside. Each time he dug with his hands, the sand flowed back into the hole. He had a moment of fear, which was quickly replaced by a determination not to ask Botree for help. He wiggled back and forth as if his leg were a posthole digger and he was trying to widen the hole. His leg rose slowly from the earth. When he regained his footing, the rod had floated away. The leader was wrapped around his other leg and the tiny hook was embedded in his pants. He began hauling in the line, hand over hand. He tried to coil it but soon gave up and let it surround him like a net. By the time he had reeled in his rod, his clothes were wet and cold.
Joe sat on a piece of driftwood beside a head-high stand of cane, watching Botree. She moved in an arcane dance of water and woman, fish and sky, her shadow flowing over the surface of the stream. She tracked fish like a bounty hunter, choosing the particular trout she wanted to stalk.
She waded to shore, casting as she moved, and joined him on the rocky bank.
“How’d you do?” she said.
“No luck.”
“I saw you catch your rod. They’re not that easy to land.”
“The bush was easier.”
She abruptly grabbed Joe and yanked him into the water. After three steps he tried to jerk away from her, but his leg buckled and he dropped to one knee in the swift water. He clenched his teeth as the cold water surged past his waist. The river strained at his legs as if a thousand tiny hands were pulling him downstream. He pushed her away from him and nearly fell.
“What are you doing?” he yelled.
“Look.” She pointed toward the bank.
A few yards behind where he’d been standing, a female moose left the brush and entered the river. Just beyond it came her calf, stumbling over the slick rocks that lined the riverbed.
“They’re damn near blind,” she said. “Lucky for us. She’d have killed you in two passes.”
“Because of the little one?”
“Yeah, they’re worse than bears that way. And faster.”
“Pretty tough mama.”
“They have to be out here.”
Joe watched the moose vanish in the brush. Botree helped him walk and for a short while they stood together, her hand around his waist. The wet clothes outlined her hips. The sun was hot and the river was cold. Botree jerked her rod upright, and Joe realized that she’d never given up her vigil of the water. The line pulled taut. She held the rod over her head, lowered it, and began reeling rapidly, the line spewing a crescent of water. The fish leaped from the water in a silvery arc. She handed the rod to Joe. He instantly felt the pull of the fish, as if the stream were a muscle of the earth. The fish changed directions and yanked his arm like a powerful dog reaching the end of its leash. He was no longer aware of Botree or the cold, the sky or the land. He’d entered the realm of the fish. It pulled one way and then the other, showing itself in a brief flash of silver.
The rod bowed nearly double and he heard Botree yelling for him to let out more line. The workings of the reel were incomprehensible to him, and he passed the rod to her. It was like releasing a wire that pulsed with electricity.
Botree waded toward the bank and brought the fish into her hands. It was long as Joe’s forearm and thicker, a gray sinew with fins.
“Westslope cutthroat,” Botree said. “A ready biter. Prettiest fish that swims around here.”
“I’d hate to see an ugly one.”
“I played this fish too long. It’s not doing too good.”
“What do you mean?”
“Not supposed to tire it out.”
“What’s it do, mess up the taste?”
She turned the fish upside down in the water and worked the hook, but it was embedded very deep. She cut the leader near the trout’s mouth, leaving the hook protruding through its body. She righted the fish, aimed its head upstream, and gently moved it back and forth. When the gills began moving, she released the trout. It twitched its tail and vanished into deeper water.
“What did you do that for?” Joe said.
“It was wore out.”
“I was going to eat that thing.”
“Not that one, you weren’t.”
“Meat’s no good?”
“Meat’s great. Just you can’t keep them because it’s protected. Catch and release is the only good law the government’s got.”
“You mean you get yourself wet and cold and don’t even eat lunch out of it?”
“Oh, we’ll eat lunch, Joe. I got sandwiches in the truck.”
“What about the hook?”
“It’ll rust out.”
“This ain’t fishing.”
“What do you mean?”
“You wear the fish down, leave the hook in its mouth, and nurse it back to health. Then you turn it loose.”
“That’s right,” Botree said. “About like we’ve done with you.”
Wind fluttered the surface of the river, making it glitter like fire. Water drained from the folds of Joe’s clothes.
“You saying nobody’d care if I took off?” he said.
“The kids would care.”
“Anyone else?”
“Coop and them don’t, if that’s what you mean.”
“I don’t know what I mean.”
“When you figure it out,” she said, “you tell me.”
“I guess I was wondering about you.”
“I don’t know, Joe. Not yet I don’t.”
“When you figure that out,” he said, “you tell me.”
The river eddied around their bodies, and Botree extended her hand, the skin red from cold. They shook hands as if to seal a bet. Her eyes were dark and large. He tensed his arm and tugged as gently as possible and felt an answering pull. He leaned forward and the water rose along his chest. He could see it darken her shirt as she moved toward him. Their heads brushed. She was smelling him with quick intakes of air. He pressed his forehead to hers and rolled his face across her face. Their lips moved over each other but they didn’t kiss, as if the skin of their faces needed to become familiar first. They leaned together like birds in wind. The river spread aroun
d them, Joe tightened his hand around hers.
“I don’t much care for catch and release,” he said.
Botree eased his hand away until he was holding water.
“There’s no catch,” she said.
They ate sandwiches on a log by the truck. His leg felt strong. The horizontal lines of Montana landscape lay before them—a stripe of blue water, the narrow brightness of a rock shore, a long chunk of green forest, the jagged gray mountains and a strip of blue sky. The only vertical lines were cottonwood trunks near the water, like bars to a prison of light and space.
“You’re sure good at fishing,” Joe said.
“Not much else to do around here.”
“I never seen anybody run around like that and catch so many.”
“You want shallow water,” Botree said. “The fish have less room and they become predictable. Like people in town.”
“Did you ever fish the other way?”
“I tried lake fishing, sure. You sit and wait for the fish to come to you. I like to go where the fish are. It’s easier with a raft.”
“It might be drier.”
“Just quicker. A raft gets you from place to place.”
“So rafting is for work. What’s Montana fun?”
“Break horses.”
She smiled easily, the sunlight glowing in her hair. Behind her the sky was thick and blue.
“You know,” Joe said. “I been here awhile now, on my own up Rock Creek, and with you all. I spent some time in town, too. But I always feel like I’m over my head. Like I’m in another country. It’s been that way since I got here.”
“What are you running from, Joe?”
He looked at her and away. A single cloud moved a patch of darkness along the valley floor.
“I know it’s something, Joe. Everyone does. They asked me to spy on you but I wouldn’t do it. So I’m asking now for myself only.”
“Why?”
“Once in Texas I opened the door and found a woman with three kids on my porch. Three of the prettiest little babies you ever saw. They looked familiar, but I couldn’t figure out why. I knew I didn’t know them. And she just stood there, staring at me. Then she started crying. I thought she was crazy. I asked her what was the matter, and she said she was crying for me. Me, I said, why for me? Because you don’t know, she said. Don’t know what, I said. Then she cried more and said, I’m sorry to have to tell you. What, I said. I was getting mad.
“She touched Abilene, and right then I knew why her kids were so familiar. They looked like Abilene’s daddy. We stood there staring and damned if he didn’t come home. When he saw us, he drove right on without even stopping. I never saw him again.
“I don’t want that happening again, Joe. I couldn’t stand myself if it did.”
“I’ve never been married and I don’t have any kids.”
“There was a time when the only thing that kept me alive was knowing my kids needed me.”
“Good thing you had them.”
“Yeah, but it was having them that made me not want to live.”
“I don’t think I understand exactly.”
“A woman alone with kids is hard is all.”
“I didn’t leave no wife and kids behind.”
“It better be that way.”
“It is. There’s something, all right, but not that.”
She looked at him for a long time. He felt as if she were gauging him, or maybe gauging herself. She had made mistakes. She was making one with him. He was stunned to realize that he loved her.
“How do you know when to move?” he said.
“Back home from Texas?”
“No, not that. Botree, it don’t matter to me what you did down there. I don’t judge a past. All we’ve got’s now.”
“Then what are you talking about?”
“Fishing. I seen you going back and forth from place to place,”
“There’s something they call the twenty-minute theory. When a fish is caught, all the trout leave that part of the water. Twenty minutes later, they come back.”
“Maybe it’s the other way around.”
“How’s that again?”
“Maybe the trout know a human will move on within twenty minutes of catching a fish,”
“Maybe,” she said. “Some men move on sooner than that.”
“I got nowhere to go, Botree. This is where I went to.”
“It’s going to take me a while to get used to a man who talk like you.”
“I didn’t used to be this way,” he said.
Rising, she offered a hand, but he pretended not to see it. He wanted to touch her again, but it was more important to work his leg. It had begun to stiffen. He followed her through the brush to the track, with the cane slung across his back, determined not to use it. He remembered how Boyd had quit smoking by keeping a cigarette in his shirt pocket until it crumbled to dust.
Botree drove uphill along a dirt road and slowed for a switchback carved into the mountain. Small stones thrown by the tires dropped over the steep edge and bounced down the slope. She steered with both hands, her head hunched between her shoulders, intent on the narrow road. The trees became smaller, Douglas fir and hemlock, and the ground held little grass. The road ended at a small plateau and Botree left the truck.
Joe followed her along a path that climbed at a gentle angle. Moss campion spread like a carpet along the rocky earth. After half a mile, Joe smelled rotten eggs. Botree stopped amid steam rising from a pool of water. She sat on the warm stone beside the water.
“Animals sleep here in the winter,” she said.
“What is it?” he said.
“Hot springs. This is a safe one. Some are real hot. The old mountain men who found them thought they were passages to Hell.”
“I never seen one before.”
“There’s a lot of them around if you know where to go. One at Lolo feeds a swimming pool.”
“Can you drink it?”
“No, I just thought it might be good for your knee.”
She leaned back on her elbows and stretched her legs. The jeans were taut to her skin. The spring sunlight gave her hair a red cast, her face a golden warmth. Her eyelids drooped. Joe walked to the edge of the rock and followed an animal trail that led higher up the mountain. He bent forward from the waist to keep his weight spread among his limbs. He remembered climbing a sheer rock cliff above the railroad tracks with Boyd as a kid. They’d spent an hour walking the tracks, searching for a loose railroad spike to use as a climbing tool. Boyd had always gained the summit first. He waved his arms over his head and bellowed his triumph and threw his railroad spike high in the air.
Joe reached a narrow flat space and rested against the side of the mountain. Orange moss on the rock was the color of salamanders in Kentucky, Beads of snow filled the creases of his jacket. Across the valley the sun gleamed like oil on the rock slopes. He wondered at what point in the air the snow melted.
Below and to the west four horsemen were climbing a narrow path. With a rifle he could pick them off easily, vulnerable only from the air. The timber was dense enough that he could elude a helicopter if he slept by day.
Botree’s dark head was a speck in the center of the pool. Steam rose around it like dust. He stood and yelled, waving the cane about his head. The sound of his voice echoed back and dissipated into the air. He yelled the way Boyd used to yell, and without forethought he tossed the cane down the mountain. It vanished among the treetops.
Joe left the ledge carefully to prevent rocks from falling into the water below. Descending the mountain was harder than climbing, something he’d forgotten. It occurred to him that wisdom was simply remembering what you already knew.
The air warmed. The snow was gone from his clothes and his hair lay wet against his head. When he stepped from the woods, he saw Botree’s boots and clothing stacked on the rock. She lay in the pool to her neck, drops of water glistening in her hair. Joe undressed, flinging his clothes in sweeping gestures
until he was clad only in T-shirt and shorts. He felt shy, even though Botree had seen him nude many times. She averted her head as he entered the pool. It was shallow and very warm, and the bottom was soft. A spatter of raindrops struck the surface like sparks.
She was reclining below the surface and he lowered himself until they faced each other. Heat surrounded his body. Steam rose from the rain, hiding the trees beyond the pool. He placed his hands on her ankles and held them there. The warm water relaxed his muscles and he slid his hands slowly along her legs. Their heads were very close. She was breathing through her mouth. Her collar bones held tiny circles of water and she arched her back gently until her breasts rose like islands. The rain was turning to snow. He eased forward, feeling her hands move over his hips. She shifted underwater and he felt himself brush against the soft apex of her thighs. They looked at each other, their faces very near. Her eyes were dark and scared. He waited for them to soften. Their lips brushed. She tugged his hips and he slid deeper into the warmth of water. They pressed themselves together and stayed that way a long time, holding each other in the hot water while snow cooled his back. He moved his hands to her face, the water the thinnest of skin between them. He began to move, watching her eyes.
The water rippled in rings around them. It lapped the rock shore like surf, as if a storm was coming from far at sea. Mist rose in swirls Mown by wind. The water pounded the stone, turning it dark in great splashes that hissed and ran with steam. Their bodies slowed the motion of the pool. The water hushed its splash. They lay still, their skin red from heat, taking air in panting gulps. Twilight moved through the trees. The air cooled as day faded behind the western hills. Night came down the slope and melded the water with the shadows of the firs.
They lay on their back in the heat. The sky was rich with darkness and stars. Snow landed on their faces, melted into the waters of the pool. She stirred against him.