Yellow Stonefly

by Tim Poland

  “Let’s go inside now,” she said to Margie.

  “Of course. Come on, we’ll make a fire.” Margie pressed her arm more tightly around Sandy’s waist and helped her friend walk out of the river. Stink rose and trotted after them, across the clearing, back inside the bungalow.

  THE sun had set while she rested, and night had settled into the ravine. With her right hand, Sandy tugged the blanket around her shoulders and rose from the sofa. The fire was burning nicely, but she took the poker to it, for good measure, and shifted one piece of firewood. A few new flames flared up. She’d been home from the hospital for nearly a week but had yet to do more than glance at Keefe’s tying bench. As she walked to it now, she saw that a fly still sat notched in the vise. For a moment, she wondered if it were one of hers or Keefe’s, but she knew the answer to the question before she finished asking it of herself. She switched on the light in the magnifying loop and examined the fly. Yellow stonefly. Its shank was wrapped tightly, each thread wound with precision, the hackles swept back and fluffed perfectly. Keefe’s work, most certainly. The wrapping around the head of the fly had been left unfinished, not yet tied off. The thin red strand of thread hung down, still connected to the bobbin lying at the base of the vise. When her wounds healed, when she had use of her arm and hand again, she would finish the work.

  Through the kitchen window, Sandy saw the bright sweep of headlights coming down from the fire road. Margie had arrived. Sandy turned off the light on the tying bench, walked to the front door, and flipped on the porch light. Margie stomped up the steps as Sandy opened the door.

  “It’s already started,” Margie said as she swept through the door, carrying a large tote bag. The flakes of snow peppering the shoulders of her coat began to melt immediately in the warm interior of the bungalow. Stink looked up at her from his post on the sofa, his tail thumping on the leather cushions. Margie leaned her face down to the dog and let him lick her nose. “How’s my boy? Are you taking care of our girl?”

  While Margie began to unload the contents of the tote bag onto the counter, Sandy stepped out onto the porch. The snow fell steadily, a thick curtain of big flakes. Already the clearing was coated with an inch or two of new snow. In the middle of the clearing, Sandy could see Keefe clearly, like a figure framed within a painting, striding toward the river bank, his walking stick gripped in his hand. If she had ever thought that memory unfolded with continuity and symmetry, like the orderly turning of pages in a book, she was no longer so naïve. Whole vast chunks of her life were tucked away in the folds of her brain, barely accessible, while others, records of a single, brief moment, leapt out loud and unbeckoned, with startling clarity. Memory would have its way with her, and she would let it.

  “The snow’s pretty heavy,” Sandy said as she came back inside from the porch.

  “Isn’t it beautiful,” Margie said.

  “If this keeps up all night, we could get snowed in. You’ll be stuck here.”

  “Oh, honey. That’s the plan. That is the plan.”

  Sandy smiled and walked to the counter.

  “If it’s as much snow as they predict,” Margie said, “the boys’ll be home from school and will flat out drive me crazy. J.D.’s there. They’ll be fine. I just worked five straight twelve-hour shifts and now I have two days off. I’ve earned a little vacation. No, this snow is just the ticket.”

  “What is all this?” Sandy asked, nodding at the containers piled on the counter.

  “Supplies, of course. Food and drink to sustain us through the storm. Don’t want to end up like one of those icky stories. You know, people trapped in a cabin during a blizzard, out in the middle of bum-fuck nowhere, with nothing to eat, and they’re forced to roast and eat the dog to survive.”

  Margie leaned over the counter and spoke to Stink in a coddling voice. “Just kidding, sweetheart. We’d never eat you. Besides, you’d probably taste like skunk.”

  Sandy walked to the stove, lifted the saucepan from the burner, and turned to Margie. “Want some tea?”

  “Not on your life, honey.” With a flourish, Margie reached into the cavernous tote bag and produced four bottles of red wine. “As a medical professional, I pronounce you sufficiently recovered to have a party. God knows you deserve one.”

  There were no wine glasses in the bungalow. Sandy took two tumblers from the cupboard, and Margie poured them each a generous glass.

  “Let’s go toast the snow.” Margie still wore her coat. She took a heavy woolen coat of Keefe’s that hung by the door, wrapped it around Sandy’s shoulders, and the two women walked outside. On the way out, Sandy lifted a finger free of the glass she held and flipped off the porch light.

  Snow continued to fall. The ground of the clearing, the bare trunks of the trees, the broad green leaves of the surrounding rhododendron, all coated with a pristine cloak of snow. The whiteness of the snow seemed to create its own light. Sandy could see across the clearing to the stream, across the clearing pool to the faint outline of the cave.

  “God, it’s beautiful,” Margie said. “To the snow.” She raised her glass before her and downed a hearty swallow of wine. Sandy took a small sip.

  “And to James Keefe.” Margie raised her glass toward Sandy, who raised her own glass and tapped it against the lip of Margie’s.

  “To James,” Sandy said, and raised her glass again to her lips.

  Margie pulled a pack of cigarettes from her coat pocket, took one out, and lit it. She blew a long, lingering plume of thick smoke into the cold night air. And through the drifting vapor, Sandy saw it. Across the clearing, in the dim, snowy light on the far side of the clearing pool, the fleeting flash of the tawny flank, the impossibly long tail disappearing into the cave. It was gone before it had fully registered in Sandy’s vision. She stared through the falling snow at the dark center of the cave, wondering if the tangle of her own memory and longing had painted the image onto the night. She glanced at Margie, who stood still as a stone, wine in one hand, cigarette in the other, looking across the clearing, her eyes wide with wonder.

  “Honey, did I . . . did I just see what I think I saw?” Margie had seen it, too. The mountain lion had returned to her den.

  “Yes,” Sandy said. “Yes. She’s home.” And once again, barely a whisper. “She’s home.”

  Acknowledgments

  I am immeasurably indebted to the editors at Swallow Press for their skillful guidance along the path that led to a better novel than the one I originally handed them. For an understanding of the mountain lion and its way of living in our world, I drew upon Chris Bolgiano’s fine book, Mountain Lion: An Unnatural History of Pumas and People. Robert A. Levine’s Defying Dementia was a valuable resource for shaping the particulars of the dementia that begins to afflict Keefe in the novel. This novel could not have come into being without the support of Rosemary Guruswamy, chair of the Department of English at Radford University, who scheduled my teaching life to allow space for my writing life. My special gratitude to Dan Woods and Rick Van Noy—friends, colleagues, and fishing buddies—who were always there and selflessly ready to wade through the waters of trout streams and the early drafts of this novel along with me. And finally, my thanks to Jeff and Lisa Saperstein—to Jeff, who drove us all home through the rain that night—and to Lisa, who was first to spot that mountain lion.