A Wife and a River - A Christian romance

by Sherri Schoenborn Murray

  The rural area was too closely knit for these women to not know that the accident had also robbed Mae of her mother. Trevor reached over and gave her hand a brief squeeze. Though he longed to give her hope, he’d promised her father that he’d keep their future outing a secret.

  Clara’s voice broke the heavy silence. “Mine is praise for our pastor. For a couple of sermons earlier this year, we were concerned that he was bordering on theatrical. I want to lift up his return to humility and his focus on the Word.”

  Many in the room nodded.

  There appeared to be no other requests. Gladys reached her arms out to both sides, and then everyone clasped hands to form an unbroken circle. After she’d covered the prayer needs of the elderly in the group, she prayed for Jack and his retirement, and lastly for Mae. “May we be bold and ask that You renew her father’s love for fishing and give him hope in his present circumstances.” Gladys sighed. “In Your Son Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.”

  Mae sniffled, rose, and exited the room. Trevor thought about following her, and then thought it best to give her space. The hymnals on the coffee table were passed around the circle.

  “We haven’t sung “Rock of Ages” for, at least, a week,” Trevor said. Leaning back in his chair, he glanced toward the hallway. He’d give Mae one hymn before he followed her.

  The room filled with the chorus of sweetly aged voices. Halfway through the third chorus, Mae returned and sat down. The remaining hour was filled with hymn after beautiful hymn.

  Evelyn had made dessert—apple crisp served with dollops of freshly whipped cream.

  Jack spent much of the evening with Clara, assisting her from room to room, filling her tea cup, and finding her Bible when it was time to leave.

  “Jack,” Clara giggled as she approached the door, “you’ve spoiled me so much tonight. I hope you come again.”

  “I will, as long as he,” Jack nodded over at Trevor, “doesn’t mind sharing you ladies.”

  “You know I don’t.” He chuckled.

  Chapter 16

  Ten days later . . .

  Trevor set a large spool of fifteen-pound test line and a small glass bowl of steelhead-sized hooks near Mae on top of the front counter. “Now’s a good time to show you that Okie Drifter rig that I’ve been telling you about,” he said.

  “Okay.” She set aside the box of Rooster Tails she’d been pricing.

  “I tie three per package and sell them for fifty-nine cents. It’s nice to get ahead on them since they fly out of here. Has Fletcher taught you an egg loop yet?”

  “Yes, it was the second knot he showed me.”

  “What was the first?” He threaded several inches of line through the hook’s eye, gripping it near the bend.

  “A clinch knot.”

  She watched closely, her shoulder pressed against his as he threaded the Okie body onto the leader. “The Okie slides freely on the line.” He talked simply to fill the air. “And the current pushes it against the hook. You can use this with or without eggs for bait.” He glanced over at her and found himself staring in her eyes. Did she know that she made him feel like he’d put ten cubes of sugar in his coffee?

  “Now, what knot are you working on over there?” Fletcher asked, pouring himself a cup of coffee.

  Why in the world had he hired him? All this time, he could have been alone with Mae.

  “An, uh . . . a steelhead rig.” Trevor slid the first rig that he’d managed to complete into a thin plastic sleeve. “Fletcher, have I told you my dad’s Flatfish story?” He attempted to get his wits about him.

  “No, can’t say you have.”

  “Years ago, my dad caught a brook trout at East Lake over near Bend.”

  “Yeah, I’ve fished there once.”

  “Well, he caught a brook trout that already had an F-3 Frog Flatfish in the right corner of its mouth and another in the left corner. And believe it or not, my dad caught it on an F-3 Frog Flatfish in the center of its mouth. Three Helin F-3 Frog Flatfish. Same size, same color. One fish.”

  “You’re kidding!” Fletcher shook his head.

  “No. And, to top it off, he was able to use the other lures. Don’t repeat that, because I don’t make much money on Flatfish.”

  Beside him, Mae hummed softly under her breath like she couldn’t be any happier anywhere else in the world than to be standing beside him, tying steelhead rigs. If he wasn’t careful, he’d soon be humming, too. He had to get his wits about him.

  The front bell jingled, and in walked Larry, carrying his old metal fishing rod and followed by his dog Rags. He stopped just inside the door, sniffled and ran a hand across his cheek.

  Trevor made his way to the aisle and saw the reason for the boy’s tears: The line from his fishing rod was visibly attached to Rags’ mouth.

  “Larry, what happened?”

  “Rags!”—the boy sniffled. “I was carrying my pole on my shoulder, and Rags ate the bacon off my hook. Now, it’s stuck inside him.” The white-haired, little dog didn’t appear to be in any pain.

  Trevor knelt down for a closer look.

  “Is he gonna die?”

  “No.” Trevor used both hands to gently pry open the dog’s mouth. The line went straight down the center of his throat. “It’s okay, Rags.” He stroked the dog behind one ear and then focused on the boy’s tear-welled eyes. “You did the right thing, not trying to pull the hook out. That would have hurt him. A couple of years ago, the same thing happened to Kevin Olson’s dog. Do you know Kevin?”

  Larry shook his head.

  “Well . . . we cut the line back as close as we could. Kevin said his dog never complained of a tummy ache or anything. What do you think? We could try the same thing with Rags.”

  Wide-eyed, the boy nodded.

  “Mae,” Trevor glanced over his shoulder, “could you bring me my fly-tying scissors?”

  “Yes.” She hurried toward the rear of the store and soon returned with the small, sharp scissors, Trevor carefully reached inside Rags’ mouth and clipped the line.

  “Only problem is . . . that was my last hook.” Larry sniffed.

  “Go pick yourself out one size eight baitholder hook.” Trevor suppressed a chuckle and held up an index finger for emphasis.

  The youth scampered through the store, followed closely by Rags.

  “Walk, Larry.”

  “That was the sweetest thing I’ve ever seen.” Fletcher stood in the main aisle, shaking his head.

  “Now, where were we?” Trevor followed Mae to the counter and returned to his prior task of showing her how to package steelhead rigs, which really should have taken all of one minute. It was the same as before. Due to her nearness, the smell of her lavender soap, and the brush of her shoulder against his, he had a difficult time focusing on the task at hand.

  Several minutes passed before he saw Larry, straight ahead in the third aisle, the boy stood with his arms folded on top of the wooden display.

  “Larry, what’s taking you so long?”

  “There’s too many,” he said, studying the small glass bowls of size eight hooks.

  "Excuse me for a moment,” Trevor told Mae as he rounded the side of the counter. “What do you mean there’s too many? You only get one.” He chuckled.

  “I don’t know which color to choose,” Larry said, a pensive look on his freckled face.

  “For Butte Creek, I’d go with a bronze hook.”

  “I have Balls O’ Fire, too.”

  Someone must have given him a jar of Pautzke’s salmon eggs. “Well, then you either want a size ten gold egg hook, or if you’re going to fish a worm, you’ll want one of these.” Trevor held up a size eight bronze baitholder hook.

  Larry’s pursed his lips. The tip of his nose was peeling from too much sun.

  “What’s the problem?” Fletcher asked, dusting a nearby end base.

  “Larry’s torn between fishing a worm or fishing a single salmon egg.”

  “A big decision.” Fletcher grinned.
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  “What would you use, if you were me?” The boy looked up at Trevor.

  “Ask her.” He tilted his head toward Mae, curious what her answer would be. “Her name’s Mae.”

  “Mae, what would you use?” Larry asked, loudly. “A gold hook or a brown hook and a worm?”

  “A bronze hook and a worm,” Trevor clarified.

  “That’s easy; girls always prefer gold,” she said.

  Larry took one gold hook. “Thanks, Mr. Dawber!”

  Trevor glanced over at Mae, and sure enough a blush brightened her cheeks. She was giving him plenty of encouragement. Someday in the very near future, or as soon as he summoned the nerve, he and Mae were going to visit the backroom. Somehow they were going to sneak past Fletcher’s watchful gaze.

  Halfway to the door, Larry spotted something shiny on the floor. “Oh, look, Rags, a penny! It’s our lucky day.”

  Trevor chuckled and returned to stand next to Mae.

  “You were really good with him,” she said as the bell above the door announced Larry’s exit.

  “He’s a swell kid. Once in a while, he’ll sweep the floor to earn a lure or two. He lives with his grandmother here in town.” Trevor tied an egg knot and pulled the line tight, weighing his words. “Two years ago, his father dropped him off at Molalla Ford, and that was the last time anyone has seen him.”

  “Ahhhh, the poor kid.” Fletcher’s shoulders dropped as he stared toward the front of the store.

  “Yep. Helen, the elderly woman who delivered cookies the other day;” he met Mae’s concerned gaze, “she’s Larry’s grandmother.”

  “Oh, Trevor . . . I don’t understand your dream for Walt’s Place.”

  “What do you mean?” He tried to not jump to conclusions.

  “You have this small town behind you, all these people who care about you. Won’t it be hard to leave?”

  He let his relief sink deep. “A tackle shop belongs closer to the river.”

  “He’s right,” Fletcher said. “Scotts Mills is too small a town, too far from good fishing. It’s a wonder he’s been able to make a go of it.”

  “My reel repair business helps me make ends meet,” Trevor said, hoping she’d understand the larger picture.

  »»»

  Jack poured himself a cup of coffee. The store was busy for a Tuesday afternoon. Mae was at the cash register with two customers in line, and Trevor was busy with Oscar Bennett at the line counter. To top it off, a fellow that Jack didn’t recognize wandered in, and looked like he needed help.

  “Someone will be right with you,” Trevor said, and then he glanced over at Jack and bobbed his head for him to help the fellow.

  Where was Fletcher? Jack sighed and set down his cup of coffee. Sometimes coffee was the only benefit of working here.

  “You need help?” he asked the middle-aged fellow.

  “No; I know what I’m after.” He grabbed a baking pan and headed down the lure aisle.

  Jack returned to the coffee counter and topped off his cup.

  The bell above the door jingled. Fletcher propped the door open and then disappeared again outside. Jack didn’t think much about it, and then Fletcher walked backward over the threshold, for some reason, before he swiveled James Bucknell inside in his wheelchair.

  Jack’s knees locked. He glanced over at Trevor, who was busy in the middle of a sale. If only one of the old ladies were here to see this. Too bad he didn’t know any of their phone numbers by heart. Not even Clara’s.

  “Forty-nine cents a dozen and you have nine.” Mae slid swivels into a small envelope. “You’re just trying to make this difficult for me, Mr. Geister, aren’t you? That’ll be thirty-eight cents.” Her fingers flew across the register keys. “You never buy a full dozen or even a half. I know you purposefully pick odd numbers just for me.”

  “I’ve got my money’s worth today.” He chuckled.

  “Good luck fishing.” She smiled.

  When the line at the register finally cleared, James rolled his wheelchair toward the counter.

  Eyes wide, Mae stared at her father. “Dad, what are you doing here?”

  “Trevor and Fletcher are taking me fishing on the Molalla in a couple of days. Thought I better buy a fishing license first.” He opened his wallet and set a bill on the counter. “Fishing without a license gives us Bucknells a bad name.”

  Jack’s shoulders felt heavy and his mouth dry.

  Mae turned her back to her dad as she grabbed a licensing form. And for a moment like Trevor often did, she paused to look out the west-facing window. Then she turned and readied her pen. “Your full name?”

  “James Wade Bucknell.”

  She filled in the rest without asking another question. “Sign here.” She turned the form to face him and wiped her hand across her cheek. “When I went to Trevor’s prayer group a while back, this was my prayer, Dad, that you’d start fishing again.”

  He nodded and reached up to sign it. “I’ve been doing exercises that Trevor told me about, getting the feel for it again. My casting arm was mush.”

  Mae, just standing there gazing at her father, was too much for him, so Jack sat down and lifted a Field and Stream magazine to hide behind.

  “Good luck fishing, Daddy.”

  Not two weeks had gone by, and God had answered the old ladies’ prayers. Jack sniffled softly and shook his head. He’d left university life to be a tough old fisherman with his cabin on the creek, and here he was tearing up in Trevor’s Tackle Shop.

  Nearby, someone poured a cup of coffee.

  Jack sat up and kept the magazine unusually close.

  “Trevor, what’s Gladys’s number?” Mae asked.

  “Three, seven, seven, four.” Trevor, still busy with a customer, answered off the top of his head.

  “Gladys, it’s Mae Bucknell, Trevor’s cashier girl,” she spoke into the mouthpiece. “My dad just stopped by the store for a fishing license.” Her voice wavered. “Can you tell the other ladies for me? Thank you.”

  “Don’t know what all the tears are about.” James’s voice grew closer as he wheeled his chair past Jack’s on his way to the coffee counter.

  “It’s the first fishing license you’ve bought in pert near a decade,” Fletcher said, joining him at the counter. “Mae, call Elsie and ask her to bake a cake. We need to celebrate.”

  “I hate to think how you’re going to behave when I actually catch something.” James leaned back in his chair and slid his license into his front pocket.

  “It’s good to have my fishing buddy back.” Fletcher drummed the top of the coffee counter with two hands. “Best angler on the river, right here,” he announced loudly.

  “We’ll see.” James grinned. “We’ll see.”

  Chapter 17

  Friday afternoon, Jack stopped by Trevor’s store for a cup of coffee, to check his messages and—if no better offer came forth—dinner.

  “Glad you showed up,” Trevor greeted him with a grin. “I forgot that I have a dental appointment at three thirty in Molalla, and I gave Fletcher the afternoon off to go fishing.”

  “Why’d you do that?” Jack peered around the store. Only Mae was in the immediate vicinity.

  “I forgot. Can you stick around? I don’t want to leave her alone in the store too long, in case it gets busy.”

  Jack poured a cup of coffee and sat down in his comfy chair and waited for Trevor to spice up the offer.

  “I was hoping you’d feel in debt for all the free coffee you get around here, not to mention the dinners.”

  Jack frowned. “I suppose I can.”

  No more than five minutes after Trevor left, Harold Dutton strolled in, set his spin reel on top of the line counter and peered around the store. Mae was busy ringing up a string of customers. Crud, now what? He sure hoped Harold didn’t expect any help from him. Jack topped off his cup of coffee and was just about to sit down when Harold looked his way.

  “Trevor here?” he asked.

  “No, he’s at a
dental appointment.” Jack tried to remember his old greeting. “You need help?”

  Harold nodded. “I need new line.”

  He shouldn’t have asked. Mae was still busy at the register, so Jack made his way to the line counter. He slowly loosened the drag knob and tried to recall the steps of running the line-winding machine. Even though Trevor had shown him on several occasions, he couldn’t remember the first step about finagling the spool onto the machine. He looked up at Harold and wondered if Trevor had ever shown him. Too bad Bob wasn’t here; he’d built this crazy machine.

  “What pound test would you like, Harold?” Mae strolled across the aisle.

  “Eight,” he said.

  Jack handed her the empty spool as she stepped past. For a moment, he watched her put the spool into the chuck and tighten it down. Then she set a bulk spool of Trilene line on a dowel and tied the line from the bulk spool onto the reel spool. Right there, was where his brain began to hurt. Just like math, he’d never remember all the steps.

  While he returned to his chair, a tall, beefy lumberjack wearing a red-and-black mackinaw set a pan full of percentage-off items beside the register.

  Crud!

  Jack made his way behind the front counter. He had on his dirtiest old dress shirt, he hadn’t eaten lunch, and he was plain unprepared to be Trevor’s temporary cashier. And to top it off, he didn’t recognize the Paul Bunyan character.

  He rang up the split shot first, the lures second, and then he started on the percentage items. “Size four,” he counted the hooks, “are thirty cents a dozen, and you have ten.”

  “Nine,” said the sturdy fellow on the other side of the counter.

  “Let me see, how does Trevor figure it?” he said out loud. “Nine and 12 are both divisible by three. And three goes into 30, ten times. And nine times three is twenty-seven cents!” Jack grinned.

  The fellow scratched his head. “If a dozen hooks are thirty cents, why are nine hooks twenty-seven cents?”

  “Mae,” Jack said loudly and prayed that she’d hear him above the din of the line-winding machine. She took her foot off the pedal and glanced his direction. “Hooks are thirty cents a dozen, and he’s buying nine.”