The Guide

by Peter Heller

  The conversation moved easily from fishing to when everybody arrived and where they were from. The new couple had flown from their mountain house outside of Sendai in the north of Japan’s main island—they had the house because they loved to ski in winter almost as much as they loved to fish—and did Jack, the Colorado native, know that the snow in northern Japan had been compared favorably to the champagne powder of Colorado and Utah?

  “Of course,” Yumi interjected, perfectly timed so as not to interrupt her husband, “nothing in the world can compare to the majesty and the distances of the Rocky Mountains.”

  The distances. Charming. She meant actual square miles, Jack thought, but there were distances here Jack suspected did not exist even in the Himalaya, and they had something to do with how the mountains lived in the imaginations of the people who grew up among them. Jack recalled aloud that Sendai was in the Tohoku region, wasn’t it? Made famous by Bashō’s Narrow Road to the Deep North, and Yumi raised an eyebrow and Teiji cocked his head to the side and studied Jack anew.

  “Do you know it? The greatest work of the greatest haiku master?” Teiji asked.

  “Yes. I have it with me. I keep an apple box of my favorite books in my truck.” Jack rarely betrayed his erudition, but he had never met anyone outside of college who knew anything about Bashō, much less anyone who knew the actual physical territory, and he felt himself getting excited.

  “Really?” Yumi said. “So you are an admirer of the poetry of our Green Peach?”

  Yes, Jack thought. More than an admirer. And he knew that Green Peach was one of the master’s early nicknames, taken in deep respect for Li Po, who lived nine hundred years before, and whose name translated from Chinese as “White Plum.” The only course he and Wynn had ever taken together was a class on Japanese poetry. It had been hands down Jack’s favorite class. But Jack just said, “Yes.”

  Teiji, it was clear, was a very polite and considerate man. But he was intrigued now, and he evidently wanted to know if Jack was a name-dropper or a serious reader. And so he laid his fork upside down on the edge of his arugula salad plate and said, “Do you have a favorite haiku?”

  Jack laid his own fork aside. “I love many. Honestly, it depends what mood I’m in.”

  Teiji nodded, as if acknowledging a well-played point in tennis. “Which one would suit you now, for example?”

  Jack cleared his throat. Alison watched the two closely, fascinated. Jack seemed more like a kid than she had ever seen him. His guard was down. “Gimme a minute,” Jack murmured. “Please.” He closed his eyes for just a second, as if trying to hear the vanishing song of a bird. When he opened them he said, “Tonight I’d have to say: The temple bell ceases— / but the sound continues to toll / out of the flowers.”

  “Bravo!” Yumi cried, and made rapid claps with flattened palms. “I love this poem, too.”

  Teiji was smiling as if he’d been rooting for Jack the whole time, which he probably had. Jack looked down at his bread plate shyly. He thought, You don’t know that it suits me now because the sounds that stop, but keep resonating, are not always lovely.

  * * *

  •

  “Do you know Bashō?” Yumi said sweetly to Alison, making sure she was not excluded from the conversation.

  Alison smiled, Jack thought, with some mischief. “Not too much,” she said. “I’ve heard of him. My neighbor has the one about the frog and the pond chiseled on his gatepost.”

  Well, she was charming them, too. She was sticking with her salt-of-the-earth, mountains-of-Carolina persona, which, Jack thought, was exactly who she was.

  By the vichyssoise, they were talking about the newest coronavirus. The latest one that was moving across Central Asia and had already arrived in Beijing and the US. It was not as deadly as the one that had ripped through South Asia two falls ago, but it was of grave concern because it seemed to be mutating faster than the others. Teiji averred that Japan, of course, was a leader in testing and real-time tracking, and had managed to isolate and contain most outbreaks in the past few years. Alison said that the US did not have nearly the sophistication or precision of identifying who was immune and who was vulnerable through each wave, perhaps because of the sprawl of the country, but also because of its culture of lionizing individualism, and she thought that people here were almost resigned to having novel and not-so-novel coronavirus seasons the way we have flu seasons.

  “But of course the mortality rates are much much lower, now that we’ve all speeded up the production of therapies and vaccines. So it really is almost like the flu.”

  “Of course,” Yumi said politely, and her husband politely nodded.

  By the time they were served the fresh Maine blueberries in cream and maple syrup, and Cognac, which all declined, and decaf coffee, which all took, Jack understood that this considerate and modest couple were a team to be reckoned with, and he bet they were exceptionally good trout fishers.

  * * *

  •

  Jack excused himself after the first cup of coffee, and thanked Yumi and Teiji for the company. He said he had some gear to organize before bed, traded a quick to be continued glance with Alison, and stood.

  He went out the heavy door into the icy star-filled dark—clear again, this time probably frost—and on the porch he turned right instead of left.

  He had never smoked but he wished he did now. So he’d have an excuse to stand outside the kitchen’s back door and take in the night. He knew that Shay smoked back there though she wasn’t supposed to. It was one of the first things Kurt had said to him after shaking hands—no smoking on the premises anywhere. Private time on the river was the one exception. He had nothing against his guides smoking a cigar or whatever as they fished on an evening off. What could be better, right?

  When Kurt said it, Jack had looked up sharply at the enlistment of his mantra, though he understood that the manager was using it more as a rhetorical weapon than a prayer…He also knew that Shay liked to step out back and walk around the west side of the lodge and chuck grease or greasy water over the bank. Though he doubted she was allowed to do that, either. But he’d wait anyway. It was still early enough, he wasn’t going to lose any sleep. He zipped up his down sweater and leaned against the logs by the back door.

  He looked up and saw the great canted W of Cassiopeia surfing the trees of the low ridge to the north, and above it the Little Dipper swinging from its handle around the North Star. Hard to get lost in a place where so many of the nights are clear. If you move at night. And that made him think about the river and the bridge and if anyone at all was really monitoring the cameras in the middle of the night. And Kreutzer’s—what was the security perimeter like around that lodge? If there really was anything beyond a heavy gate and tall fence—and perhaps a crazy old coot looking out one of his windows through a spotting scope. Though he doubted that story more and more. And as he let his eyes wander along the ridge eastward, upstream, and tried to capture the constellations that swam there in the net of his knowledge—admittedly not vast in the realm of astronomy; he knew a handful of the most prominent connect-the-dot figures—he thought of his father.

  What would Pop be doing now, under these same stars? Probably reading at the kitchen table and not seeing anything beyond the plate window but the reflection of his own lamp, and his own face maybe above the book—a man not yet fifty wearing his granny reading glasses that Jack teased him about, a man not old but going gray, from grief probably, and dashed hopes.

  He wondered how his father thought of that morning on the Encampment fourteen years before. How he would remember the four horses stringing along the steep rocky slope in thick trees above the roaring gorge. His father was first on Dandy, the old outfitting horse who never ruffled, leading the flighty half-Arab BJ on a loose rope with the packs; and then his mother on sweet big-boned Mindy, because he, Jack, at eleven decided this morning he w
anted to ride sweep. Did Pop remember the sounds as Jack did? The dainty click of Dandy’s hooves as he crossed the sloping granite slab, the cluck as Pop encouraged him to cross, the gentle tug on the lead rope to the packhorse and then: the toss of bit rings and struck stone as BJ startled at something and balked back. And his mother. The gust of alarm: Mindy already halfway across, having to bunch back, too, behind the startled Arab. He would never forget the sharp scrape of Mindy’s scrabbling hooves as she lost her footing on tilted rock, his mother up in the stirrups and forward over her neck urging the horse to hold to the slope, trying to get her up in the steep duff above the slab, the thunder of the rapid in the narrow chasm too far below. How the horse scrabbled and slid backward and went over the edge, the two of them for a moment suspended, it seemed, in midair. He saw them hit the white torrent. For a moment, miraculously, they were swimming, she was grabbing for the saddle, then they went over what must have once been a ledge but was now the hump of a breaking wave that rolled down into the trench of a thundering backward-breaking hydraulic, they vanished, came up once, first the mare’s dark head, then his mother’s arm before they slammed into the wall and were tugged around the bend.

  For years afterward he dreamt that the moment she fell and hit the air she took flight. She and the horse both did, and lifted and flew over the other side of the gorge. Her favorite bird had been the great horned owl. “What do you think he’s saying tonight?” she would ask Jack whenever they heard one. And for years afterward, whenever one of the huge owls flew over him at night, he believed it was she, gliding by to touch him, to remind him that she loved him.

  No owl now. Jack swallowed and breathed. A cigarette would be good, really good, right now. Or one of those mojitos he wasn’t allowed to drink because he was a guide limited to two beers; or how about a mojito without any of the fancy limeade and mint parts, just straight rum, that would be good, too. He was thinking about that when he heard the latch of the door; yellow light fanned across the packed sand where they had parked the golf cart and he heard Shay’s hoarse laugh, as she said, “That sure as shit is not happening, Gionno, but thanks for holding the door!” and she backed out into the night carrying a twelve-quart stainless pot and pirouetted and gasped. She was almost face-to-face with Jack.

  * * *

  •

  “Whoa, sorry,” he said.

  “Man, you scared the crap out of me. Lucky this thing is half-full.”

  “Let me take it.”

  “I got it. Be right back. Meanwhile you think of a good excuse for being here.” She disappeared around the corner and he knew she was tossing whatever was in the pot down the slope. He bet she did it just to get outside, and just to do something—one thing—not allowed.

  “That’s not allowed, is it?” Jack said when she came back. “Jensen would be mad.”

  “Nope and yep,” she said, and put the pot down on a patch of grass. “This isn’t allowed, either.” She dug in the front pocket of her tight Wranglers and pulled out a hard pack of Marlboros. She held it out to Jack. Her sleeves were rolled up and he caught sight of the little anchor tattoo on the inside of her wrist. “You?” she said.

  “Thanks.” Why not? he thought.

  “You’re gonna work here, you better take up smoking and drinking.”

  “Yeah?”

  She fingered a lighter out of the same pocket and struck the flint, cupped her hand for Jack, then lit her own, inhaled deeply. “Tight damn ship,” she said. “Too tight. Have you noticed?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “More things not allowed than are.” She blew out to the side. “Let’s see, what’s allowed? Working your ass off, or…fishing, eating, being a billionaire. Kurt’s certainly not gonna tell Sir William Barron not to smoke on his porch.”

  “Sir?”

  “Knight of the British Empire. Bona fide.”

  “No shit. He doesn’t have an accent.”

  “ ’Cept when he gets tanked. You haven’t seen that yet.”

  “Nope. What’d he get knighted for?”

  “Designing a wind turbine that wouldn’t turn to matchsticks in a North Sea hurricane.”

  “Whoa. What about her?”

  “Dunno, Neave never says anything. It’s quite the clientele. You seem to be enjoying your fishing buddy.” She flicked the ash, surveyed the stars. When she looked at him again her eyes were moist. “I could use something stronger, you?”

  “Better not. Gotta be on my game in the morning.”

  “Huh. Everyone here’s on their game all the time. Trying to improve themselves. That’s what this place is all about.”

  “It is?”

  She didn’t say anything. She held the cigarette in the corner of her mouth and from the same magic pocket she pried out a small vial. She shook the white powder into the pocket between thumb and forefinger and snorted, blinked, wiped her nose, and shoved back the bottle. She was a pro. Now she blinked the wetness out of her eyes.

  “Better.”

  Jack didn’t say anything. Shay was pretty, probably a year or two older, and had the speech and bearing of someone who had attended the best schools and expected the best of the world. Like many of the kids he had gone to college with. The coke, or whatever it was, surprised him, as did the cigarette. But then in her class of people there were always rebels, those who made a mission of subverting expectations. A friend of his from the canoe club was a Northrop—a Northrop Grumman Northrop—and had graduated two years before and gone to northern Michigan and become a cop. He wanted to ask her about the anchor, but instead he said, “Sir Will doesn’t fish. Doesn’t seem to. What’s he doing here?”

  Shay crushed her cigarette against the log wall and squatted. From behind a potted lavender by the door she took a Ziploc bag and dropped her butt in with a bunch of others and tucked the bag back in its hiding place. She winced a smile. “Kurt has a nose on him. Okay, cowboy, it’s been fun,” she said, and turned.

  Jack put a hand on her arm and he felt it tense under her blouse. It was not soft, she was very strong. He wanted to ask her about that, too: she was not much older but he’d bet she had worked ranches, or maybe boats—the kind of sailing yachts that had manual winches where the crew had to be super fit. But now she froze and he knew the moment could tilt in either direction. “Um,” he said. “I was wondering what those twenty-odd breakfasts were for.”

  Her face was two feet away. She had always seemed game and fun. She always brought a gust of ebullient energy to the table whenever she came around with wine or a new course. Jack understood why Jensen, who seemed to know everything, would cut her a little slack when it came to a cigarette now and then. But now her eyes were sad, and he saw fear there, too.

  “Can’t say,” she said.

  “Can’t because you’d lose your job?”

  Her eyes searched his. There was not the defiance in them he expected; instead it seemed she was looking for a place to land her boat, or anchor.

  “NDA,” she said. She saw his puzzlement. “Oh yeah, you’re a cowboy. Nondisclosure agreement.”

  His hand was still around her biceps. “Well, I need to know.”

  “Well, tough.”

  “Well, how about I mention to Kurt that you’re doing blow behind the kitchen?”

  Her expression hardened. “Go ahead.”

  “And then while you were jacked up you started spilling info on the guests. Like full names and who gets plastered.”

  Jack saw the fear flash across her eyes again. There and gone, like a coyote running in shade at the edge of the trees.

  “You’re not a snitch. I’ve been watching you.”

  “I need to know,” Jack said. “It’s gone past polite.”

  She sucked in a deep breath and yanked her arm from his grasp. “I know you probably live on a horse. But out on the range or wherever, you ever h
ear of celebrity rehabs?” Yep, they’d gone past polite. Jack didn’t say anything. “Well, they always end up in BuzzFeed or TMZ, you know those shots of the poor things in big sunglasses and T-shirts, hair all wild, trying to hide their faces as they exit some treatment center?” Now he nodded. “Well, there’s no paparazzi here. And these aren’t just hapless celebrities.”

  Jack was trying to digest it. He said, “Will and…Neave, they don’t fish, but…they stay here, get treatment. The others at Kreutzer’s…” He trailed off. He was trying to fit puzzle pieces together. “But some do fish, like Alison…”

  “Think about it, cowboy,” she said. Jack grimaced. “If the CEO of a major corporation is spinning out of control, needs to get clean, but if the board or whatever finds out, it’s splitsville, walk the plank, dude—well, where does the dude go?”

  Jack was no longer looking at her. He wasn’t seeing the night anymore, either, his imagination and memory were traveling…what added up?

  Now it was she squeezing his arm. “If you mention one word, I lose my job that fast. Not kidding. And get sued. I mean it. I like you, I do, but you just put me out on the thinnest ice and I’m not sure I appreciate it.” She spun around, swept the stainless pot off the ground, and shoved back into the kitchen.

  * * *

  •

  On his way back up the road, a shadow stepped out from the trail to the pool house. A big shadow. Kurt. Jack could just see his face in the porch lights from the lodge. He was not happy.

  “Thought I told you we discourage guides and guests from going into town.”