Into the Twilight, Endlessly Grousing

by Patrick F. McManus

  I remove the sinkers from my leader so as to get the necessary drift without hanging up, and then send the worm on its mission. This is no ordinary worm, but one chosen for its strength, courage, and intelligence, the Sir Lancelot of Worms. I feed the line bit by bit from my level-wind reel, which no longer level-winds, because in an earlier and frightening part of the dream, I have taken the reel apart and cleaned it. Not likely! But this, of course, is only a dream, and one does foolish things in dreams, like cleaning a reel the week before Opening Day of Trout Season.

  Through my dream’s omniscient vision, I see the great fish lurking in dark depths beneath the stump, surrounded by bare, hook-hungry roots, the roots apparently supplied by the dream for the purpose of suspense. Peeking over the Cabinet Mountains, the sun suddenly rolls a shower of diamonds flashing across the creek, and at that very moment the great fish glides out from among the roots and sucks in the worm. The rod twitches ever so slightly. I heave back, arms straight and quivering above my head. Beads of water fly sparkling from the line as it snaps taut in the air, and I feel for the first time in my life the surging power of a truly big fish, a fish that will not surrender to the indignity of being flipped ignominiously back over my head and plopped on the bank, my standard method of landing fish.

  The straining leader cuts a slow arc in the surface of the pool, the fish not giving an inch, taking its time, contemplating its next move. The submerged roots are dangerously close. I haul back hard on the line, but I can’t hold the fish away from those gnarled and grasping tentacles an evil tree had sent down into the earth a century ago for the sole purpose of depriving me of the great fish.

  And then, as if the beckoning roots aren’t bad enough, the worst possible thing happens. Mrs. Smithers, our fourth-grade teacher, rudely awakens me with some stupid question about the capital of North Carolina! Just as if that were something I might be expected to know! What could she have been thinking of? As Mrs. Smithers taps angrily on a map with her pointer, the great fish swims into oblivion, about halfway between Greensboro and Winston-Salem.

  Later, I tried to pick up the dream where it left off, to see how it turned out, but I never could.

  Around the end of May each year, cutthroat would come up the creek to spawn, and that would be my one chance to catch really big fish. The water, typically, would be swift and murky and high up on the banks, and for about a week I could catch cutthroat up to maybe eighteen inches, and sometimes did. But then the water would recede, the cutthroat with it, and the resident brookies and I would be left to contend with one another over the summer.

  That was the problem with the dream fish. Because of its size, I was almost certain it had to be a spawning cutthroat. But that particular hole couldn’t be fished on Opening Day, when the cutthroat were running, because the water was always too high for me to reach the island, the willows too thick to permit access from the far bank. But it had been only a dream. A dream can do anything that suits its fancy.

  I made the mistake of telling Retch Sweeney about my dream fish.

  “So?” he said. “What’s your point?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “But don’t you think it’s interesting?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I guess you had to be there.”

  “Don’t put me in your dreams, I’d die of boredom. You want dreams, I’ll tell you dreams. Make your hair stand on end!”

  “But don’t you see, Retch? Maybe the dream was trying to tell me something.”

  “Like what?”

  “It could be trying to tell me to fish that hole on Opening Day.”

  “It could be trying to drown you, too. Ain’t no way you can get near that hole on opening day.”

  I had a little better luck telling my dream to the old woodsman Rancid Crabtree.

  “Now, thet is interestin’,” he said, biting off a chaw of tobacco. “Ah’m purty good at interpretin’ dreams. Maw momma taught me how to do it. You see, a dream never comes at you straight on. Nothin’ in a dream is what it seems to be but always somethin’ else. And once you figger out what the somethin’ else is, then you gots to go along with it.”

  “Really, Ranee? Can you tell what my dream means?”

  “Jist hold yer hosses, boy, it’s startin to come to me. Now, the way thet fish pole of yourn was choppin’ up and down, Ah suspect it was really an ax. Yep, thet’s it, an ax. Now, thet big stump, it’s got to mean wood of some kind—firewood! Gots to be firewood. And the big strong handsome fish, thet gots to be me.”

  “But what does it mean?”

  “It means you should go out thar in the yard and chop me up a big pile of firewood. Ain’t no doubt about it.”

  I preferred to interpret the dream for myself. It was less work. I knew what it meant, anyway. It meant that I was supposed to fish that hole on Opening Day, no matter what.

  The rest of the school year crawled by with ever-diminishing momentum. I began to fear that it would stop entirely and I would be trapped forever in fourth grade, a fear not without basis. But with a sudden burst of energy in the final weeks of school, I learned the capitals of all forty-eight states, conquered long division, learned to multiply and divide fractions, and memorized the Gettysburg Address. Contrary to all my expectations, school finally ended for the year, and I was promoted to fifth grade with what Mrs. Smithers described as a “photo finish,” whatever that meant. And now a whole endless summer of fishing stretched before me. It was, after all, a perfect world.

  Shortly after the passing of eternity, Opening Day of Trout Season Eve finally arrived. I went to bed at eight, my plan requiring me to be on the creek no later than five. I set the alarm clock for four-thirty. But the clock was a treacherous and evil thing. It could be depended upon to awaken me for school without fail, but it had no regard for fishing. It couldn’t care less if I went fishing or not. I lay awake worrying about the treachery of the clock.

  Then it occurred to me that I may have talked too much about my dream fish. It would be just like Rancid or Retch to beat me to the hole, in the off chance my dream had correctly prophesied that the great fish would be there. Why had I been so stupid to tell them the dream! Yes, it was quite possible and even probable that they would try to beat me down to the hole and claim it for themselves. I reset the alarm for three-thirty. Still, that only gave me a margin of thirty minutes to secure the hole by four. Why take the chance? I reset the alarm for three. That would be cutting it close. Even then the alarm might not go off. I continued to lie awake worrying about the evil clock. Midnight came and went. One o’clock ticked by. Two o’clock. I was still wide awake. Well, better safe than sorry. I got up and went fishing.

  The weather had been unseasonably cold all during May, and the melt-off hadn’t come yet. The creek would still be running low and clear, just as the dream had predicted. So far, so good. I shivered as I walked through the starry night, not because of the cold or my ancient fear of the dark, but out of sheer anticipation. The grass was tall and wet, and soon my pants were soaked and dragging on me, my tennis shoes had gone all icy-squishy, and mosquitoes came up out of the grass like fierce squadrons of Luftwaffe. It was wonderful. This, after all, was Opening Day of Trout Season. What more could a kid ask for?

  For two hours, I hunkered on the high bank above the creek, waiting for the first hint of dawn, shivering so violently a passing observer would have seen only a blur. Gradually, reluctantly, night began to lose its grip on the valley. It was almost time. As the sun began its climb up the far side of the Cabinet Mountains, I slid down the steep bank to the creek. Ahhh! There was the island, the creek forking around it, but the log promised in the dream as a bridge to the island was missing. Was it possible, if the dream had deceived me about the log, that it had also deceived me about the great fish? I waded through the icy water. Pain shot up my legs, which soon grew numb and comfortable, numbness serving as a kid’s insulated waders in those days. The gravel beach was there, still above water, offering me a straight shot at the h
ole. My hands were so cold I could barely hold the squirming Sir Lancelot. The hook finally baited, I set it adrift toward the hole beneath the stump. Had the great fish been only a malicious trick played upon me by the dream? A tiny doubt began to tug at me. But then, even as I had begun to question the dream, it happened, a strike so wild and powerful and savage it was almost terrifying!

  As I see it now in slow motion, perhaps even as I saw it then, the great fish came straight up out of the water, bursting into that bright spring morning of the Opening Day of Trout Season. Huge and magnificent and real at last, it rose high above the surface of the creek and then, slowly, slowly, majestically, rolled into a one-and-a-half gainer, all the while violently shaking its massive head. Then, still in slow motion—oh, the horror, the horror of it!—the fish broke free!

  I have since forgotten much bigger fish, fish I actually caught, but I have never forgotten the dream fish that, for one brief instant, became gloriously real. It survives today as brightly in my mind as it did when I was ten years old. So perhaps in a way I did catch the dream fish, inducting it as I have into the mythical legions of The Ones That Got Away, those fish that live on as long as memory lasts. And so, you might ask, do I not deep down believe it was a far, far better thing for the great fish to have slipped once more beneath the dancing diamonds of Sand Creek and to have darted away into the watery depths, still wild and free? Fat chance.

  Will

  It had been a good hunt but had gone on way too long. It was time to quit.

  “You can’t quit now,” Jack said. “Give it a couple more days.”

  We were more or less bivouacked in a big old abandoned ranch house equipped with shutters that pounded incessantly in the wind. Camping inside a drum would have been quieter. I still count Jack and his brother Ben, both scarcely out of their teens, among the best guides I’ve ever had. They were in the kitchen, busily assembling the day’s sack lunches for their clients, the rest of whom were finishing breakfast in the dining room.

  I walked back into the dining room and poured myself another cup of coffee.

  Marcella said, “If Pat leaves, I’m going with him. I can’t stand another bleeping day of this bleeping wind! It never bleeping stops!”

  “If it stops,” I said, “half the ranchers in Montana fall over.”

  Marcella was blond, pretty, and had mastered the pout. Her pout had been kind of cute at first, but cute has its limits. Marcella’s pout had now gone way beyond cute and was pushing the envelope of serious irritation. She was possibly married to Bennett, but in any case they had come on the hunt together. Bennett, who seemed to have grown oblivious to Marcella’s existence, was one of those fiercely macho hunters who make guides regret they dropped out of college. But I will say this for him. He had a really nice haircut.

  The other couple at the table. Will and Jane, were in their eighties. Will was terminally ill, and his doctor had warned him that if he came on this hunt, he’d die. Will replied that if he didn’t come, he’d die. So he and Jane had flown out from Chicago in their private jet. If my wife and I make it into the eighties, I hope we are just like Will and Jane—filthy rich! I jest slightly.

  Will and Jane were fine and elegant and brave and smart, and they had hunted all over the world together for just about everything it’s possible to hunt. Jane got a nice antelope on the first day of the hunt, but Will had had no luck at all, without much time left now—for anything—and every day seemed to take a greater toll on him. Because he was hunting, he refused to take his painkillers, but he remained chipper and funny and classy, and I knew this would turn out to be a truly rotten hunt if Will didn’t get his pronghorn. I feared that if that happened, Ben, the old man’s guide, might go off and do something truly awful to himself, like become a lawyer.

  I groaned loudly for Jack’s benefit as I hoisted my legs one more time into the battered Suburban.

  “What’s wrong now?” Jack said.

  “Just extreme pain,” I said.

  “Don’t worry. You’ll loosen up.”

  “That’s what you always say.”

  Marcella and Bennett were in the backseat, Marcella slouching in a pout in one corner, Bennett looking intense. I hate for an armed person to sit behind me when he looks that intense. Bennett had his hunt for the day all mapped out, and he directed Jack to drop him and Marcella off at the top of a ridge. He strode off through the sagebrush with Marcella pouting along behind, rifle slung over her shoulder. We watched until they disappeared down a wash.

  “I wonder if Bennett has ever read Hemingway’s ‘The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber’?” I mused aloud to Jack. “You know, where you think Macomber’s wife is going to shoot a Cape buffalo but instead she shoots—”

  “You would have to mention that,” Jack said. His forehead wrinkled into a worried frown.

  It wasn’t as though in the past five days we hadn’t seen some antelope that were more than satisfactory, as far as I was concerned. Disgusting as it is to admit, I was thinking of antelope more in terms of chops and sausage than size of horns.

  “Look, Jack, there’s a nice buck,” I’d say. “It’ll do fine.”

  “Naw. I want to get you a really good one.” That’s the problem with good guides. They won’t settle for less than the best.

  I was a bit puzzled as to why I’d come on this hunt anyway. I wasn’t in my hunting mode. I’d driven all the way from my home to eastern Montana, figuring that my hunting mode would kick in on the way. It hadn’t. Still, the hunt had been good, because just being in Montana is good, but I was tired and stiff and sore and old, and I knew it was time to quit.

  The Suburban slid to a stop in a cloud of dust. Jack grabbed the glasses and scoped some brown-and-white dots in the far distance. Gripes, I thought, I hope those brown-and-white dots turn out to be just brown-and-white dots.

  “There he is!” Jack said. He handed me the binoculars. Sure enough, there he was, a truly magnificent pronghorn standing aloofly off from the herd, an arrogant fellow too proud to mix with lesser of his kind.

  “Great,” I said. “The only problem is we’ll never get close enough for a shot. There’s no cover for us within half a mile of him.”

  “Sure there is,” Jack said. “See, we can crawl down that dry creek bed to the flat, and then we can crawl on our bellies to that little rise to the left of him. That’ll get us within four hundred yards of him, at least.”

  “So?” I said. “As I mentioned before, we can’t get close enough for a shot.”

  An hour later we were crawling on our bellies through the sagebrush. If you haven’t hunted antelope in Montana, I should mention that the way you crawl on your belly through sagebrush with a rifle is with the rifle slung around your neck and swaying under your chin. In this way the sling cuts off most communication between your body and your brain, so your brain doesn’t realize that your body is in extreme discomfort, until, of course, the time comes to remove the sling from your neck. Then your body yells, “Pain!” Eastern Montana, by the way, happens to be the sticker capital of the world, which you realize only if you crawl on your belly through a sizable portion of it. Every year Montana exports huge quantities of stickers imbedded in the hides of out-of-state hunters who have crawled on their bellies in quest of an antelope.

  “How you doing?” Jack whispered.

  “Yowp,” I replied.

  “Good, we’re almost to the rise.”

  “Yowp.”

  “We’re getting pretty close. So stop the whining.”

  “I’m not whining. Don’t you know a death rattle when you hear it?”

  Twenty minutes later I slid up alongside Jack, who was peering over the rise. “He’s still there,” he said.

  I unslung the rifle from my neck—“Pain!” my body screamed; “major pain down here!”—and then set the crosshairs to dancing about in the general vicinity of the pronghorn. Through sheer willpower, I steadied the rifle and fired. Dust flew up no more than ten feet behind my target. Prett
y fair shooting if you ask me, but Jack didn’t ask.

  Antelope can reach a top speed of sixty-one miles an hour, slightly less than the speed limit for cars at that time. In approximately two minutes, the herd had raced across the valley floor, up and over a mountain, and disappeared into the valley beyond. And here I had forgotten to bring my baseball bat. When your guide has spent hours getting you into position for a shot and you miss, you instantly whip out your bat and hit the guide over the head with it, but only as a safety precaution.

  Jack seemed stunned anyway. He was still staring at the place where the antelope had once stood.

  “I guess that’s it,” he said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “It’s time to quit.” I didn’t mention that the antelope had looked much too tough for steaks and chops.

  That evening, as we neared the pickup spot for Marcella and Bennett, the headlights illuminated Marcella walking down the road. Alone. She turned and began hopping up and down and waving her arms. There was no sign of Bennett.

  “Good grief!” Jack said. “I was afraid of this.”

  “Looks bad,” I said. “She isn’t pouting.”

  We pulled up alongside her. “I shot him!” she cried.

  Jack rested his forehead on the steering wheel. “Dead?”

  “Yes, dead! Hit him right in the neck!”

  I tried to comfort Jack. “At least he didn’t suffer.”

  “Bennett’s dragging him up to the road right now,” Marcella added. “Boy, is he ever ticked! He missed and I didn’t!”

  “Ah, an antelope!” Jack said.

  As we drove back to camp, Marcella related every last tiny detail of how Bennett had missed and she hadn’t. Bennett took our ribbing better than I expected, although I can’t say I care much for pouting in a man.