Platte River

by Rick Bass

  Nine times out of ten, the big fish simply snaps the leader, and is gone (the tiny hook rusts away and falls out of the fish’s mouth after a day or two, Willis tells Harley, leaving no one injured, only wiser). But this time Jack is able to land the steelhead, to wear it down and drag it up on the sandbar.

  It’s the most beautiful thing Harley’s ever seen come out of the water — fluorescent red, emerald, stony black, chocolate brown, and moon silver. It’s nearly dead from the fight. Willis turns the flashlight off, and Jack unhooks the tiny fly from beside the fish’s jaw and goes off into the brush to find a stick. He comes back and thwacks it twice, three times, solidly on the head. The big fish — twelve pounds, maybe thirteen, Jack says, breathing heavily — dies then. The spirit of the fish flies up to the stars, and the glittering corpse remains on the sandbar. Nick stares blankly at the fish, and then lights a cigarette. The other men wade back into the river.

  They fish for a long time afterward, with no action — none. Just the motion: casting back and forth, back and forth, but believing, now. Harley glances at his watch when the moon steps from behind some clouds — two A.M. — and looks back at the sandbar, where Nick’s still standing, just a silhouette in the shadows. Nick’s staring off in some nondirection, thinking about something far away, and simply not moving: almost perfectly motionless, Harley thinks, casting back and forth. Like a statue.

  Raccoons prowl along the sandbar, trilling to one another as if plotting how to get closer to the fish, paws groping delicately in the cold shallows, feeling for mussels. Their eyes are bright as they pass through those striped patches of moonlight, and they fix their stares on the men standing in the river, as if jealous of them, before resuming their probing.

  Eventually the raccoons are brave enough to cluster around Nick — Jack watches, fascinated — but still they don’t touch the fish, though they look at it and chirr even more.

  Nick stands on the sandbar among the raccoons, smoking. All Jack and Harley can see is his silhouette and the end of his glowing cigarette.

  Harley and Jack go back to fishing. An hour passes, maybe more, and the raccoons leave. Nick does, too. He wades downstream of the cabin, walking without a flashlight, and disappears into the woods, headed back to the car. The smell of his cigarette hangs over the river for a while, and then there’s nothing, just the cold emptiness of April waiting to open up into May. And the fish, perhaps, snaking their way, hidden, upstream — ignoring the bright lures, trying to make it past the devil-tempter men.

  “Is Nick okay?” Willis asks Jack. “Do you think we ought to go check on him?”

  Jack shakes his head grimly. There’s little doubt that he’s replaying the night’s fight — the big belly of the steelhead leaping, the mad pull down the river. “He’s just down, is all,” Jack says, feeling the drift of his line, staring out at the river’s blackness. “There’s nothing we can do.”

  Harley hears Jack grunt when the next steelhead hits, and feels, twenty yards downstream, Jack’s near terror, and then pleasure, and then, quickly, Jack’s determination as Jack lifts the rod, arches it, sets the hook, and begins the shuffling dance, headed Harley’s way, down the river, hooked onto another fish.

  “Fish,” Jack mutters, almost under his breath. The fish, rising like a rocket, surges. It twists, shakes, rolls, and crashes back into the river, leaps again, but still it’s hooked. Jack has it on his line — it’s still Jack’s fish, Jack owns this piece of wildness, and it’s a fight, nothing but a fight, and there will be no compromise, the fish is too large. It will be landed and clubbed and taken home and eaten (the way it has eaten other fish all its life) — or it will escape.

  “Here,” Jack says, sidestepping past Harley, starting downstream after the runaway fish. Line is stripping out with a high, fast clicking sound, a zing, the fish taking Jack’s line, and his reel and rod, and even Jack, all the way back to the lake, even perhaps to the sea. “Here,” Jack says, holding the bowing rod out to Harley. “Take it.”

  Harley freezes. He’s petrified.

  “It’s your fish,” Harley says, and shakes his head. “No. You go ahead.”

  “Hurry,” Jack insists. “Take it.”

  Harley steps up and takes the bouncing, vibrating rod from Jack’s strong hands. Harley has long forgotten that these men are poets; it could be a century ago that he had been told that fact. What it feels like, to Harley, is that he has hooked into a linebacker. He might as well be standing on a football field, having cast his fly toward the jersey of an all-American, and that all-American is running down the field, running toward Canada, surfing down the center of the river, under water, running. Harley digs in and tries to hold the big fish, but it’s no good, the fish is too strong, too fast. The line is being stripped off the reel as fast as it can go, and Harley, like Jack before him, begins to run along through the shallows, following the huge fish’s flight: raising the rod every now and then, trying to provide some resistance, trying to slow the fish down, but all the fish feels is fear, and Harley stumbles along behind it, his line almost gone, and then, at the end of the sandbar, it is gone.

  Harley stops, digs in, raises the rod, and begins trying to reel the fish in. He can barely turn the crank, and he wonders, with a shock, if Jack’s stronger than he is — Jack had been able to land his fish — and the fish leaps once, and Harley pulls harder, trying to reel it in, and then there’s a soft, earthy pull, and a looseness, like a bad tooth coming out, an emptiness that the tongue quickly runs itself over. In the dark like that, Harley hasn’t really seen anything, just the fish’s huge silver form leaping once, right before it broke the leader. It’s a feeling that will give him nightmares for months afterward. And he stands there with the loose line, the empty rod, and swears, swears in his heart, that he can feel the fish (a part of himself now) still running, out to the lake already — out to the lake.

  ·

  On the way home, they stop off at the upstream bridge again. Nick stays in the car, but the other three shine their lights down on the river, and this time they see them — ten, twelve, maybe more — long, dark steelhead nosing their way up the river like submarines, moving from rock to rock, surging and then faltering — dark shadows against the river’s stony bottom.

  “They’re here,” Willis whispers, shutting off his flashlight and looking over at Jack, who’s shut his light off too, and is crouched, looking over the edge, still watching the dark, fishy shadows in the moonlight, breathing raggedly. Like a big cat, thinks Harley, like a tiger.

  “Should we tell him?” Willis asks. He wants fish, but he also knows he should get his friend home, that Nick has had enough fishing. That maybe Shellie, in bed, with her smallness and her warmth, can gather him in and hold him until the season passes — her textbooks on griffins, on monstrosities, closed on her desk. Jack looks crazy, wild-haired in the moonlight, glancing from Willis to the river and back. All those fish below, bodies and bodies of fish, just waiting.

  “We’ve got to go,” Willis says. He even laughs a low laugh, almost a mean sound, and yet with some humor in it, some belief in the future. “We’ve got to get him home. We’ve been gone too long already.”

  “Yes,” says Jack, easing up, looking at the river one more time. “Yes,” he says again, sighing. Harley has the feeling Jack is thinking now of hunting season, four months distant. They walk back to the car.

  “Well?” says Nick in a dull voice, his head down between his legs. “Well?”

  No one says anything, and they ride home in wet waders, returning slowly to earth. The big fish in the back is wrapped in newspaper, like a flower, and smells fishy, but fresh, like the river.

  They stop for gas at a twenty-four-hour convenience store, brightly lit, more or less in the middle of nowhere. There’s just one woman working the cash register — a young girl, actually, no older than the high school students Jack, Nick, and Willis teach.

  The four men stand around the car in their waders and heavy sweaters as Nick, tryin
g to resurface, to revive, fills the car with gas. They are eager to go in and talk to the young girl, who looks so lonely, and who’s watching them with a hard, old-yet-young interest — but they can’t abandon Nick.

  A few moths bounce against the bright yellow lights over their heads. The convenience store’s parking lot, in all its middle-of-the-blackness brilliance, could be a landing spot for flying saucers, Harley thinks.

  Nick shuts the pump off and the four men, in squishing boots, walk in, blinking like owls, and smile at the girl, who grins back. They begin buying their junk food: greasy doughnuts and potato chips. Nick buys some more cigarettes, and they all buy beer nuts and acid coffee. They ask the girl how her classes are going. She’s not in school, it turns out; she’s got a daughter a year old. The girl, who isn’t wearing a name tag, won’t tell them her name, but asks if they caught anything.

  “Nope,” says Jack, grinning.

  It’s just a pleasure to be in her company. Jack buys a lottery ticket, rubs off the numbers, and wins two dollars. The girl smiles. Jack trades in the winning ticket for two more and hands one to Harley and one to Nick, but neither of them wins anything.

  “I’ll go home with y’all,” the girl says. The whole world seems empty, lonely. The men laugh and look down, considering it, and then glance at one another. The girl doesn’t understand that there’s no chance of this happening, and for a moment she gets her hopes up: it’s got to be like having a fish on the line.

  “We’re married,” Jack says after a long pause, though that’s not it at all. What it is, is that it’s late, everyone’s tired and needs a shower and sleep. But Jack says this with a wonderful sly grin, as if to show that he, and all of them, are considering it. And so the girl smiles, not at all daunted, and says, “Here, take these,” and hands them a big box of doughnuts.

  “Why, thank you,” says Jack, tipping his baseball cap. The girl beams, delighted with her four new boyfriends. As they’re leaving, Nick stops and takes off his wrist-watch — it’s silver, heavy, expensive — and gives it to her.

  They drive on into the night, eating stale doughnuts, drinking bad coffee.

  “She didn’t mean all of us,” Willis says with his mouth full. “She meant any of us. I’ll bet she meant you, Nick.” Willis reaches up in the front seat and offers him a doughnut, and Nick shakes his head.

  “Messy,” says Jack, grinning, looking back. “Messy, messy.” He plugs in the Tom Rush tape, and they all think about Harley’s lie, about being on the lake with Rush, perfect acoustics, close enough to touch him.

  “Season’s over,” Jack says when they reach Nick’s house and let him out. They all shake hands, even though they’ll see him only a few hours later, at school.

  “Next year,” Willis says to Nick.

  Nick walks around to the back of the car, takes his rod out, and hands it to Willis. “I want you to have this,” he says.

  Jack and Willis look at each other.

  “Just take it, Wolverine,” Nick says, pressing it into Willis’s hands. Nick laughs an odd, false laugh, the kind that might dissolve into weeping if Willis doesn’t take the rod.

  “Thank you,” Willis says, and puts the rod back in the car. He feels as if he’s aided in whatever’s coming. Later, playing the scene back, he wishes he’d done it another way — thought of the right thing to say in order to refuse the rod.

  Nick also tries to give Jack his new sleeveless down vest. It had given them the illusion that Nick had some bulk, but Jack, who even without the puffy vest is larger than Nick, refuses it sternly. Jack tells him no so forcefully that it hurts Nick’s feelings. Nick smiles a strange, sad smile, as if Jack’s missing his chance to get in on the ground floor of some unbelievable deal. Nick nods goodbye to Jack, who’s still bristling, and shakes Willis’s hand, then walks slowly, carrying his vest over his arm like a blanket, through the trees to his dark cottage.

  The men watch him go. Each of them imagines Shellie sleeping in the warm, dry house. Harley imagines her in a flannel nightgown; Willis imagines her in sweat pants and a T-shirt; and Jack imagines her in a robe, sitting on the edge of the bed, rubbing her eyes, having heard the car drive up, wondering if Nick’s all right — trying to psych herself up into believing that he is — and maybe hoping that he caught a fish. She hears him come in and knows instantly that he did not.

  The three men sit in the car for a second and watch Nick’s house, but when no lights come on, they back up and drive away.

  ·

  It’s a bright, windy morning when Willis comes by Harley’s cottage to pick him up, about ten minutes before class. Harley’s lying on his stomach, snoring, with the windows open. The curtains are blowing wildly. He’s dreaming of Shaw’s scarves, of their amazing colors, and of the way, before she sends them off to a gallery or museum, she’ll have them tacked up over the whole side of the barn as she sits below them in a lawn chair, at a slight distance, and evaluates them, trying to decide which ones to send — all of them fluttering and snapping in the Canadian air. In his dream, he sees for the first time that there are worse things than being deserted, left behind. He feels a mild peace.

  Willis sits down on the edge of the bed. He shakes Harley’s shoulder lightly, and then roughly.

  “Wake up, Heine Man,” he says. “Wake up.”

  ·

  They walk to class together. Harley’s still wearing what he had on the night before, though he’s changed into sneakers and has a night’s beard. But he looks strangely fresh after having washed his face and combed his hair. The cold wind is invigorating. The wind’s stiff, turned around from the north, coming off the lake. Harley, who still hasn’t given the first speck of thought to what it is he is going to talk about, feels like a tumbling leaf in the fall.

  He remembers walking back with the Wolverine from college football practice, in weather so cold that their sweaty hair froze solid. He remembers the clacking sound their hair made as they walked. He remembers being so fucking strong.

  Eleven hours, Harley thinks — thirteen, counting the time change — before he sees Shaw, or rather, before he sees their cabin and finds out whether she has finished packing and left. Thirteen more hours. Harley tries to think of the class, and of what he might have to offer, but he can’t. Then he tries to think of Shaw again, but as he and Willis walk side by side, hands in their pockets, saying nothing, what Harley realizes they are both thinking about is Nick, and his giveaway program of the night before.

  It’s like a fish running for the sea, Harley thinks, trying to stop a thing like that, when someone’s got a case of it as bad as Nick does.

  “Did you remember to get that fish out of the back?” Harley asks.

  “Yes,” says Willis. He looks up, grinning, remembering Jack fighting the fish. Remembers standing in the river himself, in the night, as if he were another creature, as if it were another life. “Sorry you won’t be here to eat it,” he says.

  “Ah,” says Harley, coming to life and looking out at the lake, swinging a hand at the head of a bare thistle along the trail they’re walking down. “It was fun just to see it caught.”

  ·

  The students are already there. Dressed in black, all hip and bright-eyed, many of them still have wet clinging hair from their showers. He sees what he knows must be poets, composers, singers, musicians: flutists, cellists, pianists, bassists. Harley thinks of Shaw: a whole school of little Shaws — or a whole classroom, anyway.

  He stands at the front of the class. The Wolverine has abandoned him, deposited him in the room like a brown bear dumping a salmon onto the bank for her cubs to feed on. Willis sits at the back of the class with his hands clasped behind his head, red-eyed, smiling.

  Nick comes by and peers through the doorway. Spying Harley up there alone, he nods good morning to him and tosses a brown paper bag across the room. Embarrassed, Harley catches it, but does not open it. Nick waves goodbye and disappears.

  Out on the grassy quad, the carillon bells begin to r
ing. Harley clears his throat, shrugs, and looks around the room. He has no idea what to say. It’s like the worst of nightmares. Harley glances from student to student and is terrified to see the suspicion beginning to light in their young eyes, their dark artists’ eyes.

  Then Willis walks up to the front, opening windows as he goes. Fresh, cold air swirls into the classroom. The students turn to watch him as he clears some empty desks out of the way, so there’s more space around Harley — and now, even more, it looks as if the class has Harley trapped.

  “This man is strong, stronger than any of us will ever be,” Willis says, pointing to Harley as if he’s diagramming a poem — talking about its structure, perhaps. “He’s got talent, too, but mostly he’s just strong. I thought we’d show you what this man used to do for a living. He was so good at it that in two years of doing this, he made enough money — not that money is any kind of measurement — to last him, if he’s frugal, the rest of his life.”

  “What does he do now?” one of the students asks, a tall, thin, pale boy, an inner-city-looking kid with long black hair and a blue-jean jacket. Harley wants to take this boy under his wing, carry him. to Canada and teach him to drive fence posts, rather than let him write poems or play the trumpet, or whatever pretty thing it is that he does.

  “He walks in the woods,” Willis says before Harley can answer. He indicates Harley with his pointer as if, still, Harley were only a poem. “He makes love to his girlfriend. He gets up early in the morning and goes to bed early. He lives in the woods.” Willis grows more animated, tapping the pointer in the palm of his hand. “He doesn’t have a family, doesn’t have any responsibilities, and he doesn’t even have a job.” Willis taps Harley with the pointer.