Yellow Stonefly

by Tim Poland

  “Wild horses couldn’t keep me from it, honey.”

  “How is J.D. these days?”

  “Bless his heart, what an insufferable grouch he’s been lately.” Margie caught the eye of their waitress and pointed to her empty coffee cup. “Budget cuts are just giving him fits. Laid off a bunch of people, so there aren’t enough wardens in the field. Poor baby, now he’s responsible for the better part of three counties. And if that isn’t enough, they’re expecting him to be on the lookout for that guy that went missing a couple weeks ago. You hear about that?”

  “Yeah, I heard about it. God, that’s really too much to ask of one person.” Sandy smeared a glob of the diner’s homemade blueberry jam on her last bite of toast.

  “No shit.” Apparently caught off guard by Margie’s language, the waitress paused abruptly before filling her coffee cup. “Thanks so much,” Margie said to the waitress. “We can have the check now.”

  Margie took a sip from her fresh coffee and continued.

  “So he’s overworked, worn out, and cranky. Not that I can blame the poor guy, but he’s been a royal pain to live with lately.”

  “I’m sorry he’s in such a state,” Sandy said. “He’s such a good man. Doesn’t deserve that.”

  “Oh, he’s a sweetheart. Don’t I know it,” Margie said. “But sometimes lately, let me tell you, it can test a person. And now he’s all worked up about bear poachers or some such.”

  “Bear poachers?” Sandy knit her brows and leaned back in the booth.

  “Yeah. About a week ago someone found a dead bear. Guts cut open and its paws cut off. That just flat out made him furious. Says poachers sell the gall bladders and paws to Asia, for aphrodisiacs, of all things. That’s about put him over the edge. The boy has an unnatural love for bears.”

  The waitress stopped at their booth and laid their checks face down on the tabletop, one in front of each of them. “Thank you. And have a blessed day,” she said, and turned to another booth.

  Margie leaned across the table, motioning Sandy closer, and whispered behind her cupped hand. “‘Blessed,’ my ass. I swear, these religious kooks work my last nerve. Surely not living in the same world I am. But I have to admit the food’s good. Then again,” Margie said, resuming a normal tone of voice, “my children are in school, wreaking their havoc on their teachers for the day, my loving but cranky husband is off doing his game warden thing, and I get to hang out all day in your wilderness with you. Maybe I am having a ‘blessed’ day after all.”

  After they each paid for their breakfasts, Margie laid a large tip on their table and followed Sandy out to the parking lot. Stink pushed himself up on all fours, and his tail thumped against the seat back in the truck cab as Sandy and Margie approached. Sandy had waited for close to two months before Stink finally accepted her presence and warmed to her. He had taken to Margie immediately and continued to be partial to her.

  “How’s the old skunk-killer doing today?” Margie’s voice was high-pitched and cajoling as she opened the passenger side door and laid her hands to each side of the dog’s face and scratched and petted him vigorously. His tail whacked against the seat faster as he extended his head and licked his pink and purple tongue across Margie’s face. She indulged him a moment, then pulled her face out of his range and wiped her face on her sleeve.

  “I’m touched, Stink. But believe it or not, I’ve already had a bath today.”

  Sandy handed her the greasy paper napkin containing the bacon. “Here, give him this. Ought to keep him off you for a while.”

  “Look what your mother brought you, you old thing,” Margie cooed as she fed him the strips of bacon, which he gulped down instantly, hardly chewing at all. She dug in her purse for a wet wipe and cleaned her hands and face. “I’ll ride with you, okay?” she said. “We can keep yakking.”

  Sandy would have liked nothing more. While Stink’s eyes followed Margie, she stepped to her minivan, retrieved her waders from the back, and tossed them into the bed of Sandy’s truck. Margie Callander was no angler. Fishing was not a passion, but rather something to do, only on rare occasions and only with Sandy, as an excuse to get away from it all for the day. A sort of girls’ day out. About the only sort of girls’ day out she could have with a woman like Sandy Holston. Margie had her own waders because, as she said, she had to have “something to fit over this ass of mine.” Beyond that, she used Sandy’s gear and didn’t care one lick whether she caught a fish or not. When Vernon came for Sandy, it was Margie who was with her, Margie who had stuck by her, Margie who had actually taken a shot at Vernon with the little pistol she carried in her purse. It was into Margie’s arms that Sandy had collapsed when it was over and Vernon’s body was drifting downstream. Other than Keefe, Margie was the only other person Sandy would fish with.

  Stink looked back and forth at Sandy and Margie, panting happily between them in the truck cab.

  “Okay to leave my van here?” Margie asked.

  “I’d think so,” Sandy said.

  “Suppose we’ll have to trust to their Christian charity, eh?”

  Both women grinned as Sandy pulled the truck out of the lot and headed south.

  “So,” Margie said, “I’ve been blabbing away about my life all morning so far. What’s up with you and yours? How’s James these days?”

  “Oh, he’s fine.” A rote response, but Sandy paused involuntarily before saying it, and now she could feel her jaw muscles tense, could feel her fingers clutch more tightly around the steering wheel. She knew, at least in part, that this was why she had invited Margie to go fishing today, that this was the question she hoped Margie would ask. A simple question with a difficult answer that she didn’t quite know how to begin to give. But she knew Margie would be the one to tease the first thread loose from the knot.

  Margie turned toward Sandy and leaned her back against the cab door. Her hand rested on Stink’s back, scratching at his spine. A glint shone in her eye and an irrepressible grin spread over her face. “Uh-hunh. Hell, girl, the dog didn’t even believe that one. Now spill it. What gives?”

  “Really, he’s fine, Margie.” Sandy stumbled over her tongue, trying to speak and not speak at the same time. “It’s just that, well . . .”

  “I’m still sitting here waiting, and that chick is still pecking pretty hard at the shell. Come on, honey. Let it out.”

  Sandy pursed her lips, inhaled, and tightened her grip on the steering wheel. “It’s probably nothing, but, it’s just that . . .”

  “Keep going.”

  Sandy spoke in a halting, tentative voice, groping cautiously, slowly through her concerns as the truck followed its course along the old river road, up around Willard Lake, and down the county access road to the gate on the fire road that followed the headwaters up to Keefe’s bungalow. She tried to play it down, admitting she had precious little evidence on which to found her fears. One minor mental slip about her gate key and a couple of faulty trout flies hardly amounted to proof of developing dementia. And yet, it was out of keeping. Keefe was focused, thought carefully about what he was going to say before he said it, and his flies were always tied with such precision and expertise. Working in a nursing home, she’d obviously become quite familiar with the various signs and symptoms of dementia, but then again, she wasn’t a specialist, just an LPN, and residents in the home with serious forms of dementia were housed in another wing of the facility, one in which she’d never worked. Keefe was normally a withdrawn, introspective man, and even an expert would have found it difficult to catch signs of aberrant behavior. Still, she couldn’t shake the feeling that on that day she’d met up with Keefe in the clearing, he’d been lost, unable to remember the way back to the bungalow. That he’d been sitting there, waiting, confused, hoping she’d come along to guide him home.

  When they turned into the entrance of the fire road, Sandy stopped the truck and got out to open the gate. “Like I said, it’s probably nothing. I’m probably just overthinking it all.” Sandy stood by
the open door of the truck, lightly shaking the ring of keys in her hand.

  “Maybe. This stuff is tricky, you know. So, what do you want from me? A second opinion?” Margie leaned forward in the seat and looked past Stink as she spoke.

  “I guess so.” Sandy stepped around the open truck door and started toward the gate. “What I really want is for you to tell me I’m full of shit and to stop fretting about nothing.”

  Margie leaned her face out the open window on her side of the truck cab. “I can do that for you right now, without further investigation.”

  Sandy worked her key into the rusted padlock that fastened the link of heavy chain holding the gate closed. As was often the case, she struggled with the old lock, inching her key back and forth, seeking the right spot where the key would catch with the corroded tumblers.

  “You sure you’ve got the right key for that lock?” Margie’s head leaned all the way out her window, a wicked grin on her face.

  Sandy scowled good-naturedly over her shoulder at her friend. “There’s a trick to it. Gotta catch it just so. There,” she said, as the lock finally gave way and she walked the gate open. Sandy moved her truck through the open gate, got out to relock the gate, and returned to the truck cab.

  “All right,” Margie said. “Let’s go see what your aging boyfriend is up to.” She lifted her hand from Stink’s back and reached to Sandy’s shoulder and squeezed it gently. “I’m sure it’s nothing, honey,” she said. “Really, now that I think of it, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that you’d think too much about such things. Think about it. You spend almost all your time with the elderly, so to speak. James, not that he’s really elderly, bless his heart. Your residents at the nursing home. And let’s not forget about this old guy right here.” Margie patted the top of Stink’s head, causing his tail to slap back and forth between the two women beside him. “I think I may be the only person you know who’s actually your own age.”

  As was his wont, when they arrived at the bungalow and let him out of the truck, Stink walked around to the front of the cottage, hiked his leg on the bottom step, then walked up the remaining steps to wait on the front porch. Keefe was fishing in the wide, gentle pool across the small clearing in front of the bungalow, but Stink didn’t appear to have seen him. Neither did Sandy and Margie, until they retrieved their gear from the bed of Sandy’s truck and followed Stink around to the front of the house. When she saw him, Margie froze in place, her arms limp at her side, and her mouth dropped open slightly. Sandy paused, ran her fingers over her forehead, and chuckled softly, before moving in beside Margie and dropping their gear to the ground.

  Keefe stood in the middle of the pool, fly rod in his right hand, plying the seam of the current with his usual deft, efficient casts. As always when fishing, he wore his weathered brown fedora. Otherwise he was completely naked. His forearms, neck, and face showed only a slight tanning of the skin from limited spring sunlight; the rest of his body, surprisingly sinewy for a man his age, displayed a predictable winter pallor. No sooner had they spotted Keefe than a fish responded to his elegant cast with a strike. Sandy had always admired the graceful serenity in Keefe’s retrieval of a caught fish—never rushed, never any undue strain, never a hint of excitement or uncertainty. Caught up in her appreciation for Keefe’s technique, Sandy forgot for a moment they were watching a naked fisherman. Keefe squatted as he brought the fish to hand, the tension in his thigh muscles visible even from their distance as he did so.

  As Keefe released the brook trout back into the pool and retrieved his loose line, a vague sound began to rumble up in Margie’s throat. “Uh, much as I’d like to say otherwise right now, you’re not overthinking it, honey.”

  Keefe emerged from the stream, revealing that, in addition to the brown fedora, he also wore a pair of old deck shoes. He started across the clearing toward the bungalow, and his pace remained steady when he saw Sandy and Margie there.

  “Well, this actually is nothing, believe it or not,” Sandy said to Margie, recalling her own awkward embarrassment the first time she encountered this particular eccentricity of Keefe’s. “Does it from time to time. Has since I’ve known him. Says it’s good for the soul to fish naked every now and then.”

  Keefe’s stride continued evenly as he approached the two women. He raised his thumb and forefinger to the brim of his hat and tipped it slightly toward them.

  “Ladies.” His voice was as steady as his gait as he continued past them, up the steps, and opened the front door. As he did so, he looked down at Stink, whose bent tail had begun to wag vigorously when he noticed Keefe’s approach.

  “Come on, old fella,” Keefe said to the dog as they both passed through the doorway. “Let’s see if we can stir up a pot of coffee and make ourselves decent. It appears we have company.”

  Sandy sighed, shrugged, and knelt to her gear on the ground while Margie tried hopelessly to stifle a giggle behind her hand.

  “And this is normal, you say?” Margie asked.

  “Sort of,” Sandy answered.

  “Oh, honey. I’m sorry, but if this is normal, well, what you were talking about before is going to be even trickier than I thought.”

  Sandy began to assemble her fly rod.

  “Yeah, that’s what I was thinking.”

  Ain’t Been No Mountain Lions in This Part of the Country for a Hundred Years

  From over the crest of the ridge, wind sheared off down the slopes through the trees, pushing before it a wave of scent and sound, lush markers of survival in a season of plenty. Swept through the air over the mountain, the promise of a means to live.

  The fawn had been taken easily enough. It and the doe had been grazing new shoots of foliage breaking from the duff under the forest canopy. Young enough to be erratic in its flight, small enough to be brought down without too much effort, large enough to carry sufficient meat, the fawn was the obvious prey. There was no moment lost to choice. Through the thicker brush around the small clearing, her crouch was low and slow, upwind, down across the slope. Front legs stretched out and pulled her forward, the longer hind legs pushed with taut, ready muscle. The thick tail twitched, whipped with anticipation. Around the teeth, the lobes of whiskered jowl and snout quivered. Just outside the hem of the clearing, her hind feet found the purchase of an outcropping of stone. She set and leapt, bursting from the brush in an impossibly high arc. The doe fluted once and bolted. Frozen for a second, the fawn darted frantically away, then spun with unfocused terror in the opposite direction, into the descending embrace of claws. The fawn collapsed under the long, tawny body, held down by the push of paws. She found the ridge of the neck, and her jaw drove the teeth deep and through the spine. Jaw and teeth locked in place, she pinned the hapless fawn. It did not struggle long.

  She dragged the dead fawn out of the clearing, through the deeper brush, and up the slope a short way until she came to a humped outcropping. The fawn’s head flopped on the end of the limp neck when she dropped the body. To the side of the ledge of stone, she scratched out her cache and tugged the carcass into the impression. With her front paws she clawed into the forest floor and buried her prey under a covering of leaves and loam. She was hungry, but she would eat later, ripping into the chest under the rib cage, starting with the heart and lungs.

  But now she would rest. Though the fawn was small and the kill quick, she was tired. First, replenish the spent breath. Eat after. From this ledge she could see the approach of any threat to the meal that waited. Across the rock ledge, she stretched the length of her body. The hind legs and long tail draped casually over the lip of stone. She licked one front paw and ran it over her snout, cleaning herself of the drying blood.

  A Country unto Himself

  The dealer had been late for their appointment at the rest area on I-81 near Pepper’s Fork, so he hadn’t made it back until well after dark. If a man said he’d do something, then he should just do it. It should be that simple. And if a man said he’d meet you at 5:00 p.m., then he should
damn well be there at 5:00 p.m. Time was the simplest of things to manage. Anger, on the other hand, though it was largely a pointless indulgence, could nonetheless be quite real and a more formidable animal to restrain. However, he’d managed that, too, as he did all things. In a perfect world, he would have mashed the dealer’s throat beneath his boot and gutted him of the same sort of organs he traded in. But he’d held himself in check, waiting, the scowl sitting like a stone on his face. For now, he would still have to do business with people like that from time to time.

  The fire he started in the pit when he returned had begun to flare up nicely by the time he emerged from the trailer. Twists of gray smoke from the new fire wound up through the smoke hole in the camouflaged tarpaulin stretched above the fire pit. After setting the fire, he’d gone into the trailer, stripped off his shirt, and washed in the water basin in the tiny kitchenette. Now, bare to the waist, he stepped under the tarpaulin and stood by the fire, drying off with a dingy, threadbare white towel while the fire warmed his torso in the cooling night. The trailer wasn’t much—little more than a camper trailer, with a cramped sleeping cubicle and what amounted to the only other room, containing a table with two cushioned benches, and a kitchenette that was no more than a counter with the water basin, a small refrigerator, and a propane cooktop. No, not much of a trailer, but more than enough for a self-reliant man who was doctrine, society, law unto himself.

  He ran his fingertips over his closely cropped hair, through his coarse, untrimmed beard, tossed the towel over his head and pulled on each end of it, pressing his neck against the sling the towel made around the back of his neck. The cords of his chest and arm muscles grew taut with the tension, and the firelight revealed the tattoos, one on the pale underside of each forearm. Simple in form and style, each tattoo was a string of precisely inked, dark blue block letters. On the left forearm, Every True Man is a Cause, a Country, and an Age; on the right forearm, Power is, in Nature, the Essential Measure of Right.