“But what?”
Eddy fingered her squirt gun, watched me like a hawk, and said, “But I stepped on a bag of oranges.”
I gulped. She said, “Sound familiar?”
“Hnnh? Huh? What? Whaddya mean?”
She shook her head. “You’re a terrible actor, Gust.”
“Actor? Whu, whrnhh, what huh?”
She laughed. “Do I have to spell it out?”
“Spell? Out what hnnh? Whoon-er, huh?”
She laughed harder.
“What’s funny? Speel who? Whaddya? oranges? I don’t, hnnh?”
Her laughter stopped. Abruptly. She said, “Listen: the oranges were fresh; they weren’t mine; I hadn’t seen a soul in three days—except you. But you were upstream from my alder when you came crashing along and charmed me with phrases like ‘Flutblut?’ and ‘AWrg! Yore Rock Hown!,’ and those oranges were downstream. And it doesn’t take Peter Bloody Wimsey or Philip Friggin Marlowe to figure out that you started out where your oranges were, or that you acted like you acted because you’d been spying on me for I don’t know how long while I, while… you know!”
She had me cold. I didn’t know what to say. There was nothing to say—but she was waiting.… I gave up: I opened my heart and my mouth and let fly, come what may. “OK. All right, I saw you. And I’m sorry. I’m sorry but.… But goddammit I’m just not sorry! That’s the trouble!” I jumped up and started pacing. “I mean, what’s wrong with it? Hell, it wasn’t my fault or my blasted bag of oranges’ fault that we were walking along minding our business when all of a sudden there’s this girl up in a tree, and, and she’s fishing! You don’t know me, Eddy. I mean you can’t know about me and fishing—what it’s been to me, how long and hard I’ve done it, how I’ve tried to understand it, penetrate it I mean, I mean, shit I can’t explain it, but if you knew how many fishermen I’ve seen on how many rivers fishing how many lamebrained or boring or seen-one-seen-’em-all ways and then to see you up there fishing like that! Hell, if you’d been a hag or a whore or a zitty kid up in that alder fishing like that I’d have fallen for you! I’d have fallen for a one-eyed toad-faced frump in a Ronald McDonald outfit if she could fish like that! Because, I don’t know, that huge nut-tree pole squirrels and birds used to sit on, and the insane way you handled it, and the Here-goes-nuthin’ way you threw it, and the way you dove and swam… it showed you had a way of looking at things—not just at fishing but at the whole world—and it’s a way of looking that’s how I’ve been trying to look too, and all my life I only met one old Indian and one little kid and one scholar and his dog and one old convert that looked at things anywhere near that way and it was love at first sight with them too—that’s how I am about that. So dammit, how can I help it if out in the middle of nowhere I stumble into someone who looks at things that way and is about my age and is a girl and is, well, beautiful, hell I’ll say it, and maybe it’s bad manners, but stop and think how you might feel if I was that beautiful and you stumbled into me! Maybe you wouldn’t have talked no better’n I did! I mean the last thing a person does when they’re seeing the best thing they ever saw is stop looking or scare it away or tell it to cover itself up! I mean when you’re stunned you’re stunned. You can’t think what’s right or polite. You watch. You’re helpless. And, and I know I don’t make sense and I’m sorry all I ever do is scare you and, but I just, I just had to try and tell you how it was for me before you go off and, and disappear again or something.…” I flopped down on the hearth, stared at my shoes, and waited for the sound of her walking away forever. For a long time it was silent. Then, sure enough, she walked away. Then there was a thud…
it was the orange squirt-gun landing in the trash. And there stood Eddy, grinning! She said, “Who said anything about disappearing? I have to tell about me spying on you!” Utterly awash, I listened.
“You know,” she began, taking up her rocker and wine, “when you look like me you get a lot of attention from a kind of guy I think it’s safe to call ‘a Jerk.’ But I never met the Jerk yet who, if he saw he was scaring me, would pick up a boulder, disappear on a river bottom, reappear on the river’s far side, barge through salmon berry and devil’s club, climb a huge tree to the top, and start spouting stuff like ‘Let me tell you, scholar, God never made a better berry than Angling!’ I liked that, Gust. I didn’t know what you were, but I knew you weren’t a Jerk. I figured you busted out of some Bug House, or robbed some bank, or maybe killed somebody—but I thought you were a pretty nice deranged murderer-thief!” She laughed. “The next few days I kept thinking about you, and realized I might even be a little sweet on you—which was embarrassing, in light of your profession. But I thought I’d never see you again, so it didn’t matter.…
“But a few weeks later I happened by my old man’s warehouses—they’re on the waterfront in Portland—and I happened to look down at this crummy creek that runs into the Willamette there, and this guy was sitting in the garbage with a board between his knees, so I pulled out my birdoculars—and it’s ol’ Gust, dressed like a meter reader, busy pulling threads out of a slimy drowned coat! I thought, ‘Whew! Really buggy!’ But then you stuck a hook in the board, tied a fly with the thread, carved a boat, stowed the fly on board, lowered the boat downstream, and bang! you caught a trout!” She passed me the jug, clinked her glass against it, and said, “Here’s to a fancy piece of fishin’!”
We drank, then she went on: “I started wondering why you’d picked on a poor slum-dwelling trout like that one, but you stuck it in a milk carton, ran to the river, set it free, and sat for a bit. Then you started making weird gyrations in the air like you were some druid or shaman or something. And now I was curious. Real curious.
“So curious I drove to the Tamanawis the next weekend to see what I could see. And by a pool on an amazingly ugly dairy near here I met this little kid, called himself Hemingway, who without me saying boo launched off on some epic about this giant steelhead he’d caught thanks to a sage named Gus who was the greatest fisherman in the world and he’d knife anybody who said otherwise. He pointed to the deepest darkest part of the pool and told how this Gus of his dove in, wrassled the fish out with his bare hands, spent seven minutes down, one breath, came up grinning…”
“Bull!” I laughed.
“Sure,” said Eddy. “But I could see in his eyes what little Hemingway thought of you, and his eyes made me more curious yet.” She glanced at me. I felt like I had a tail and it was wagging like crazy and I couldn’t make it stop. “Speaking of bull,” she said, “a couple weeks later a fisherman friend of mine stopped by with a sports page and read me the Legend of Antoine Chapeau, and we were laughing our heads off—till he got to the last part, the message, and I realized it was you.” She paused for more wine. “I read it about eight thousand times. I wanted to come, but, well, those oranges.…
“What I did instead was start fishing the Tamanawis, thinking maybe I’d bump into you and could pretend it was an accident. One trip I stopped by this candle-maker’s house and bought some of his stuff, and the guy—Steve his name was—saw my fishing gear when he followed me outside, yelled ‘Wait!,’ ran back in, came back out, shoved a tiny little fly in my face and kept it there till I finally said, ‘Looks like a flea.’ He said ‘You flashed heavy on it, didn’t you!’ Then he said this friend of his had what he called a tackle shop up the road, but what it really was was a gallery of piscine artwork—‘anadromous masterpieces’ he called them—and I’d flash heavy on a lot of them and maybe on the friend too, who wasn’t yanged out even though his diet was. And before he even got close to saying it, I knew what name was coming… Gus this, Gus that, I was starting to feel surrounded! And to top it off, that same day I saw this guy across the river with a split-cane pole and a belly basket and a big fish on, so I pulled out my trusty birdoculars, and it was you!”
I laughed. “I knew I’d seen that bus before!”
She nodded. “Well. By this time I was thinking about you an awful lot, thi
nking how I’d kind of hoped I’d meet somebody like this Gust person, thinking how if I never got brave I might miss my chance to meet somebody like that for a long time, thinking maybe the oranges were an accident, or not even yours—and so what if they weren’t an accident and were yours… so I decided to trick or treat. And tonight I drove clear from Portland and took a hell of a long time because every few miles I’d change my mind and turn around and change my mind and turn around again. But when I got here there were kicked-in jack-o-lanterns all the way down the driveway, and it was dark, and the cabin was black, and at long last I made up my mind once and for all: NO WAY! and I turned around so fast I killed the engine, pumped it so hard I flooded it, turned it over so fast so many times the battery croaked. And that did it. When my machine died at your door I figured we were doomed to meet. So in I came—it was unlocked—and lit lights, needed wine, waited and waited, and finally you came, dressed like a goon, and gave me this stuff that was the right sort of stuff, and said those things that were the right sort of things, and you seemed, seem like somebody I, um, we might, well, I think we…”
I took the glass from her hand and kissed her.
Then she took the glass from my hand and kissed me. I said, “Then what happened?” And she kissed me again. More than once. And vice versa. For a long, long time.
In the morning we slept—me on the couch, Eddy in the loft. At noon we milked Charles the Second, then Eddy fed peanuts to the chipmunks while I made breakfast: goat-milk custard, oranges, and tea. The tea was oversteeped, the oranges dry, the custard unmentionable—and it was by far the best breakfast I ever had, there on the bluff overlooking the river where kingfishers fished, wrens flitted, ouzels dipped, and salmon rolled. In the afternoon we went walking along the Tamanawis, and Eddy said the name of every bird, shrub, tree, flower, and mushroom we saw. In the evening I showed her how to use the cane pole and belly basket. By dusk she wielded it more skillfully and far more gracefully than I ever will. That night we sat by the fire again, and I told her about my brother and dreefees and the mouse that sang, and taught her to whistle its song; and she told me about a grandfather she’d loved the way I love Bill Bob, how he’d lived and died, and about two friends—an old professor who lived in a mice-and-bat-filled attic (Eddy lived in her downstairs), and a fiddle-maker (named Thomas!) who carved cedar dugout canoes, and who showed her how to make the hazel poles. Then we told some secrets, and the best was Eddy’s: the squirt gun was orange because of the oranges, was full of lemon juice, and had I misbehaved she’d have shot me in the eyes! Then we talked about animals and rivers and mountains we knew while her eyes shone like a lake in a vision or dream, and we went walking in the middle of the night, and when the sky grayed and lightened we took it for a second moonrise, and when we realized it was sunrise we were astonished. Then Eddy said, “Let’s say grace and fall to breakfast.” Which we did.
On the second day we slept till sundown—she in the loft (which she’d taken to calling “my house”), me on the couch (which she called “your house”). But when the last auburn light of day came sifting in through the cedars she came and woke me, and kissed me, and placed an orange in my hand. I looked at it, then at her—and saw that she was naked. She whispered, “Come with me to my house.” And we went together to the loft, and scarcely spoke, and didn’t sleep till daylight.
8
The Line of Light
Like brass inlay in ebony
a single leaf off one of sixty alders
pulls downriver,
as by six rowers rowed from death,
glides a handspan deep in black water,
the spectral pink and pearl and green
sheen of scales and wings from the timely
dead dragonflies dissolved in the eddies.
And the leaf pulls, down the black canal
dug by somber thought between walls of basalt
feathered and furred by herbs and mosses
—dark or holy as if it were
the ship of the silence
swimming the night sky to daybreak,
carrying grateful light in its closed eyes.
—Alice Likowski
Late the third day we went to the river. The sun looked wintry, but was still warm. Eddy was barefoot, blue-jeaned, wearing an old gray cotton pullover she’d found in my closet. I kept gaping at that pullover: I’d fished in it for years, wiped blood and slime on it, sweated in it, smelled in it—and Eddy wore it now like Ocean wore her cloud daughters.… But I was no bloody Sun. Pullovers aside, I was miserable. I was carrying the split-cane pole and belly reel; I was stifling in waders, winter coat, and fishing vest; and I was sick at heart. When we reached the river I leaned the pole against a boulder and would have taken off the coat, but Eddy put her arms around me, stood on my boots to keep her feet warm, assaulted my glum face with kisses, and thanked and thanked me for cooperating with her plan.
This “plan” was the problem. It had sprung into existence an hour before, in the loft, when she told me she had to return to Portland, alone, by nightfall. I said nothing, but evidently it changed my appearance when my heart slithered out my mouth, rolled off the bed, and landed with a squishy splat on the floor. She hugged me, said she was sorry, said not to worry, said to be happy, said Wait! Listen! she had this plan! So I listened. Part of the plan—the crucial part—was her promise to come back the very next evening. The next-best part was that when she did come back she could probably stay a solid week—“to fish the chinook run” (she winked), “at least that’s what my father is going to hear.” Then came the last part of the plan—the curve Mohammed the Prophet warned about: for the next two hours (after which she had to leave) I must do everything she asked me to do, provided it was “within reason, and within your power.” Of course this sounded outrageously suspicious, but I agreed to it for two reasons: the first was that I was prepared to do anything, however chivalric, illegal or inane, to ensure the first two parts of the plan; the second was that as she proposed it she was straddling my belly, and she was naked as the sky. Who was I to argue?
The plan commenced: she had me put on warm fishing clothes, waders, winter coat, and fishing vest; she asked for the shower, a towel, shampoo (she settled for Ivory soap), and the old cotton pullover; she had me fill my pockets with bread, fruit, cheese, and nuts; she had me fetch fresh salmon roe from the cellar; she had me help take her things to the bus, then help her jump-start it. She dried her hair in the sun while the battery charged, shut off the engine, took my hand, and said, “Now for the fun part.” And she led me down to the river,
which brings us back to my glum face, to Eddy’s bare feet on my boot tops, to Eddy’s bare Eddy in my pullover, and to bare sunlight in Eddy’s Ivory-soap-tousled hair. She turned to a river still green from the week’s rain. Now and then a salmon rolled. She squinted at the sun and the horizon. She said, “The sooner I leave the sooner I’m back. Let’s get on with it.”
“On with what?”
She nodded toward the river. “The fun part.”
I thought the hug was the fun part, but didn’t argue. She said, “What’s the lightest leader you’ve got?”
“Three-pound.”
“Tie on a three-pound leader. Use a blood-knot. Tie on a #4 hook and bait it. Give me the pole.” She grinned. “God this is fun!”
I didn’t agree, but did as she said, baiting the hook with fresh red roe, tying the rainbow lamb’s wool round her waist, handing her the pole. She stepped down to the fishiest part of H2O’s drift, took a deep breath and a long look at the lay of the water, then laid out an arcing cast that would have carried itself into the alders overhanging the far shore, but she braked it at the last instant and the bait fell with almost no splash into a deep slot.
“Would it damage the Plan if I asked what you’re doing, Eddy?”
“I’m fishing,” she said. And she was. Was she ever. She stood on a driftwood log, her toes sunk in new green moss; the red sun bathed her and her back was ar
ced in the same sloping curve as the curve of the line sweeping down the current. I no longer recognized my old lifelong pastime: Eddy transformed it into an irresistible dance that pulled the entire world and sky down to dance with her, and it was inconceivable to me that there could be a fish within range of her hook—be it baited or bare—that would refuse to become part of that dance.
But there was one thing I didn’t understand. I said, “There are chinooks in this drift now, Eddy, and not much else.”
“I know.”
“Some of them weigh fifty pounds.”
“I know.”
“But you’re using three-pound leader.”
“I know.”
She stripped in her line after the first cast tailed out. I said, “Even if it was possible to hook a chinook without breaking that leader, you couldn’t land it if you played it all night.”
“I know.”
“But you said you had to leave by dark.”
“I do,” she said. “But you don’t, Gust. You have to carry out the Plan!” Looking pointedly at my warm clothes, food-filled pockets, and waders, she smiled the trick-or-treat smile…
… and a bright salmon boiled in the slot.
She shot me another grin, then sent out another arcing cast: the bait landed perhaps forty feet upstream from where the salmon had shown. And this time Eddy stood on tiptoe, her body taut as a drawn bow, her eyes alight with water-shattered sun. My native intelligence didn’t just whisper: it shouted; it sang. It said not only that the take was inevitable, but that the fish, the river, the trees, rocks, light, and sky—all of it was made, in accordance with Immutable Laws, for beings such as Eddy, and for moments such as this.
And the line stopped drifting. The rod-tip twitched. She lowered the tip almost to the water, letting the fish take, then she swept it back with a quick but gentle motion: the cane plunged downward. The impossible dance began.
The River Why Page 34