by John Larison
In a world of secrets, they were one another’s trusted confidants. It was an intimacy as deep and permanent as any Hank had known. He felt it with Walter, and he felt it with Danny. That was the magic of mentorship, Hank realized now. Each person received more than he gave.
Of course, they both kept some secrets for themselves, a long-established custom among the guides. Hank had the boulder field between Upper and Lower Nefarious, plus a couple other minor spots, and he knew Danny had at least two or three places just as good that he kept close to his chest. If Danny was talking about a fish he’d caught and didn’t reveal the location, it was understood that Hank wouldn’t ask where.
Danny didn’t know about Red Gate, for instance, which was one of Walter’s many dozen secret places. When Walter had first been diagnosed with cancer, he’d begun divulging his places to Hank, on the unstated condition that Hank not fish them with anyone else. He’d learned of Red Gate, of Ridge Back, of Tendrils, three places that could produce fish on impossible days. When Walter got word the cancer was in remission, the divulging stopped. But now, when they spoke, Walter would say he “rose two in Tendrils, a couple others in another spot I’ll show you soon.” When Hank passed away, he’d leave his shelf of fishing logs, and all their pool maps, to Danny.
They respected each other’s secrets because they understood just how essential these secrets were. To love a river, as to love a romantic partner, a person needed to have the sense that the water had shared something intimate. Those confidences, and the promise of further discovery and insight, were the fuel that kept any romance alive. Walter, Hank, Caroline, Danny—they all understood this. It was those “chargers” who didn’t, a generation of misfits who’d never learned to love.
But Danny had a dark side too; Hank couldn’t deny it. There were rumors and then there were the truths Hank had seen himself. Like when Danny was eighteen and had called asking for bail. Hank had arrived to find Danny’s fists swollen and his toe broken. According to the cops on scene, it’d taken five men to pull Danny from the choke-setter who’d picked the fight.
Hank didn’t know for sure what had happened between Danny and his ex. He didn’t want to know.
“Have you been exploring the lower river much?” Danny asked. He was standing on shore behind Hank, off to the side so as not to interfere with Hank’s cast.
The lower river had been gouged by two serious floods several years back, its course drastically altered, the old runs buried and new ones uncovered. “In December and May and June. Trying to catch the waves of fresh fish. I got the impression they were blowing through that water. Why?”
“Just wondering,” Danny said.
Hank stepped down; his next cast would land on the ledge. He dug deep in the cast and made sure the dry fly landed at the same moment as the line—the fly was skating the moment it alit. “I take it you’ve been spending time down there.”
“I have,” Danny said. Which said everything he wasn’t. “Morell was too.”
A step down, a new cast. Morell.
“He got into it pretty heavy with Andy there last week.” Andy Trib, Danny’s good friend, though it was no secret they’d had their own troubles a few years back; the rumors had been vicious—concerning Danny’s wife at the time, now his ex. “Andy told me he was sure Morell was the one that cut his anchor rope. I told you about that, right?”
A step down, a new cast. He had. Andy had been guiding some clients through a run—Hank didn’t realize it had been on the lower river— when Andy saw his own boat come drifting by. He had to swim for it.
“Morell didn’t tell me his side, knowing Andy and me are tight, so I don’t have the clearest picture. But from what I can muster up, Andy cut him off at the ramp one morning, then low-holed him that afternoon. That was the thing about Morell, he kept a grudge.”
A step down, a new cast. Guides guarded their grudges like they did their secrets. “I heard that Morell had undercut Andy’s prices, got his client list, and called a bunch of them.” Hank had heard that through Caroline a couple weeks back.
“That’s what Andy has been saying,” Danny muttered.
“You don’t believe him?”
“No, I do. It’s just, well, I’m not telling you this because I’m interested in the particulars.”
A step down, a new cast.
Danny aimed his rod to a point across the river. “Strip out another five feet and throw it on the same angle.”
“Really? All the way to the bank?”
“I swam that ledge last week. There’s a shelf just off that tuft of grass. There was a hog on it.”
“You’re kidding.” Hank pulled out the line and came around: The fly smacked the surface just off the grass, broad wakes behind it. Nothing, not today. “Not interested in particulars?”
Danny spit. “I’ve just got a bad feeling about this whole thing. Can’t shake it, that his going missing was no accident.”
“The guy wasn’t quick to make friends.” Hank took two big steps down, sent another cast to the spot Danny had mentioned. This time after the fly landed, he fed it slack, tugged it, gave it slack. Nothing.
“Times are tight, least for the younger guys. That isn’t making the situation any more friendly. Bookings through the shop are way down.”
“People know the fish aren’t here like they used to be.”
“Morell, though, he was staying real busy. Maybe it was those articles he was writing. Or maybe he was swiping clients. Whichever, he was too new to be top dog, if you get my drift.”
Hank reeled in, offered the water to Danny, but Danny declined with a nod to the boat. They walked back up the shore. Danny said, “I bet he turns up sooner or later, a knife in his back.”
***
AFTER FISHING WITH Danny, Hank couldn’t stop thinking about Morell. Disdaining Morell, really, and then feeling shabby for thinking ill of the dead. There was something else there too, something maybe like guilt. Like he’d watched the punk inch to the edge of a cliff and, despite knowing better, hadn’t warned him to step back.
What bothered him now was that he couldn’t muster more than some trivial compassion. He could say, “What a waste,” but then again, wasn’t he glad the kid was gone?
Case in point, the first time Hank encountered Morell guiding the river. Hank’s clients were fishing Sawtooth, one at the top and the other in the tailout. Morell came around the corner and made a showy display of moving his boat—and his clients who were fishing Montana-style, one in the bow and one in the back—to the far bank. They shared a nod as Morell passed, and that’s when Hank noticed the earphones in the kid’s ears. He was listening to music while blessed with the splattering aria of the Ipsyniho? As if this wasn’t insult enough, in the center of the run, Morell pulled back offshore and instructed his clients to cast to the center boulder, precisely where Hank’s client would be fishing in another couple minutes. They didn’t move a fish, but that was hardly the point. Morell had low-holed him, and while listening to a fucking iPod.
Hank could have held a grudge about the whole thing, but Morell was young and relatively new to the watershed and Hank himself had made faux pas at that age. Besides, forgiveness was the highest end. So they say.
But this wasn’t an isolated incident. After a while, Hank started referring to low-holing as “Morelling.” The kid’s lasting nickname came not long after: Poddy. Walter had dubbed him after watching him shout at a client over music only he could hear.
But now the kid was dead and Hank was looking for an empathetic reading: Morell was just a product of this up-and-coming generation, a whole tribe of youth that had come to expect entertainment at every turn, and of course he would listen to music on the river, because you can’t text while oaring. It wasn’t his fault. He was the product, not the producer.
But there was one memory that Hank couldn’t soften, no matter how rigorously he tried to reinterpret it. There it was as fresh as it had been in the moment: Walter at Millican Ramp, two clie
nts waiting on land, Walter working as fast as he could given the limp and the pain of the cancer to move the tackle and gear from the bed of his Chevy to the boat. Like all the old guides, who never made enough money to secure even a simple form of retirement, Walter was still working, despite his doctor telling him not to and his friends chipping in to buy him some recovery time. Under his baseball cap, he was bald from the chemo. Under his waders, he was emaciated from the vomiting. He’d had to mortgage his house to afford the treatment. And yet, there he was at 4:19 in the morning, loading his boat and standing straight. Morell, though, couldn’t wait. He was next in line on the ramp, his client asking about fish size, fish strength, fish numbers. Hank had his own clients, a pair of quiet teachers from Portland, and he told them to wader up while he went and helped a friend. He was walking toward Walter and the ramp when Morell leapt from his truck, grabbed the remaining gear from Walter’s cab, and heaved it into the old man’s boat. Walter looked up, a bit struck by the suddenness of the whole thing, and Morell said, “Next time, maybe, you could do this in the parking lot.” Then to Walter’s clients, who’d surely heard the exchange, “Come on, guys, time to climb aboard.” It was Walter’s silence immediately after, his refusal or inability to defend himself, that prompted Hank to grab Morell by the collar as he came back up the ramp. There were clients watching, so he didn’t knock the little fuck’s teeth out or throw him headlong into the river, but he did jam an elbow to his neck and press him against the side of the truck. Morell gasped for air. In that moment, Hank had so much to say, so much he didn’t know where or how to start. All that came out was, “Mind your manners.”
In Hank’s day, such disrespect for the river’s elders would have been met with a broken casting arm, an injury feared second only to total paralysis. A broken casting arm would effectively end your season, and your clients would find a new gillie. Depending on the details of your sin and the sobriety level of the vigilantes, there might also have been some truck sabotage, a ruptured boat, maybe minor arson to home or dwelling. And the assault would have continued until the offending prick had packed his shit and found a new watershed. In the ethical code of the Ipsyniho, respect for the river and its fish came first, then respect for the river’s old guard, then respect for the etiquette the old guard had established. Justin Morell seemed hell-bent on insulting all three.
Yet Hank found himself surprised now, not that the kid had gone missing, but that he felt so obligated to forgive him, just because he was dead. And what was this “kid” nonsense? Morell had been a grown man.
Morell had wasted a chance. That was it. He’d misused his time. He’d neglected this most spectacular gift the world had offered him.
There came a time for people like that to face what they deserved.
*
HE DROVE TO town for supplies: paint and spackle and whatever über-potent carpet cleaner he could find. He still had plenty to do before Annie arrived.
But once in town, he drove first to Morell’s place, one of those sixties-era ranch homes that proliferate in the West, the ones seemingly built to emphasize their garages. He parked out front and waited to shut down the truck, humming along to Cornell ’77. “Row, Jimmy, row.” He was here to muster up some compassion, to find a reason to forgive this kid. “How to get there, I don’t know.”
The girlfriend answered, a beanpole of a girl, black hair, lip ring, swollen eyes—probably a couple years younger than Annie though she looked ten years more haggard. She was wearing hardly anything, tiny shorts or a bikini bottom (was there a difference these days?) and a muslin-thin tank top. If interested, he could’ve learned much about the geography of her dark nipples, which were barely concealed by the fabric.
“I’m stopping by to pay my respects,” Hank said. He caught himself pulling at his beard, and forced his hands deep into his pockets. “I want to help however I can. This must be, this is … well, I can’t imagine how hard.”
She turned and walked inside, leaving the door ajar.
He followed her in. “Shut this?”
She didn’t answer, and he decided to leave it open, an escape route. She was drinking and offered him a glass. He accepted, and watched as her bony arm tipped the vodka bottle like it was tonic. He guessed she didn’t do much eating.
“His mom is coming out on Tuesday,” she said. “It will be hers to deal with then. I’m so done being the one. I didn’t sign up for this, you-know-what-I-mean? It’s not that I’m a bad person or anything, but it’s not like I was in this for the long haul. It isn’t fair to stick me with this. We weren’t tight like that, you-know-what-I-mean? I’m not a bad person.”
“It’s too much for anyone.” There was a Bob Marley poster on the wall, another for Pink Floyd, the one with the nude women sitting beside a pool, their backs painted with each of the album covers. Bottles of hard liquor lined the windowsill, some sporting half-burned candles, wax dripping like frozen tears down the glass. The place smelled of cat, of incense, of unsmoked weed.
With a series of eye-watering gulps, she drank her beverage down far enough that she could add some ice cubes. “You’re one of his coworkers? ”
Hank considered this. Supervisor was more like it. “Yep, exactly.”
Down the hallway, through an open door, he saw a fly-tying vise, a stack of fly boxes.
“Do you think he’s dead?” she asked, while crunching on a piece of ice.
“Oh. Um.” He reached for the wall behind him, to lean against it, but stumbled slightly into the open room. He could have sworn there was a wall there. “A lot of possibilities. A lot of room for hope still.”
“I’m sure of it,” she said. “To be honest. I told myself if he wasn’t found by last night … This is just so crazy. It’s not fair. Like you said, it’s too much for one person.” She looked toward the window as if she were considering issues of great philosophical weight. “It’s too much for one person.”
Hank pointed his beverage down the hallway. “Do mind if I have a look at his flies?”
The room with the fly-tying bench also housed all his rods, which were leaning with no apparent order in one corner. There was a laptop on a second desk—likely the site where he’d written those articles. On the small bookshelf nearby rested a single row of books, mostly whereto-fish books. The other two rows were filled with sideways stacks of magazines. All the fly-fishing titles, plus some snowboarding glossies he’d never seen before.
On one wall hung the famous Sage poster of the guy double-hauling across the tropical blue from the roof of that crashed plane. On another, two posters, one of a big British Columbia river on a snowy morning and the other Jeff Callahan’s renowned image of the Ipsyniho at dawn. Images so common as to hold little or no interest for Hank. However, immediately above the laptop hung a slab of corkboard. There Hank found maybe twenty-five photos tacked. He was expecting to see Morell in each of them, holding a big fish, gripping and grinning like some weekend joe. But to his surprise, only a couple of the photos were of Morell. The rest were of the river, of certain runs, of unidentifiable anglers casting at last light, of an otter sitting on a rock. And then, to Hank’s utter wonderment, there was a picture of Hank himself and Walter. They were standing on the shore near Kitchen, wadered up and laughing. Hank couldn’t remember the day, but he was wearing last year’s waders. Morell must have happened by and snapped this photo. But why? And why post it so prominently?
“There’s going to be a service,” the girlfriend bellowed. Her drink sloshed over the rim. “You should come. They say it will be healing.” She elbowed the pile of rods in the corner. “You can have any of this shit you want.”
He unpinned the photo. “Mind?”
She shrugged. “What the fuck am I gonna do with it?”
Chapter Seven
Walter and Hank met Danny and Andy at the Cougar Creek confluence pool, the river’s primary staging pool, just past noon. Another truck was parked on the one-lane Forest Service road. A fading and tattered bumper
sticker read, “Fuck spotted owls.”
Walter said to Danny, “Rifle.”
Danny folded down the seat in his old Cummins and produced a slender, rolled-up blanket. He cracked open the bolt-action and tossed the blanket back in the cab. Walter grabbed his .30-06 from the gun rack in his window.
Andy shook Hank’s hand. “How you been?” Andy Trib, a compact little guy with bloodshot eyes, prematurely graying hair, and a baseball cap always pulled low. For what the guy lacked in social skills, he more than compensated for with a two-hander. Hank had met him first in the midnineties, when Danny started bringing him around. He was one of the first Great Lakes transplants. In the years since, a river of unemployed twenty-somethings had come streaming from the failing industrial center, salivating to be steelhead guides, their hunger fueled by the images of big rivers and big fish that now plastered the national fishing magazines. Most burned out or drifted on within a year or two. But a few, like Andy Trib, proved themselves and became respected—if steadily goaded—members of the circle.
“Hear you had a run-in with Morell,” Hank said.
Andy spit. “You could say that. Won’t talk shit on account of all that’s happened, but did you hear that fucker cut my anchor line?”
Walter called, “You two finish your tea party. Danny and I’ll take care of these Bubbas.”
Andy and Hank leaned against the tailgate and watched Danny and Walter disappear over the shoulder, rifles in their hands. Walter, of course, had his wading staff in the other.
While they waited, Andy tucked a pinch of Kodiak into his lip and Hank sparked a smoke, and the nicotine got Andy chatty. He went on and on about how Morell had been swiping clients, low-holing, and, Andy suspected though couldn’t prove, puncturing his truck tires. “Feel bad saying it, but the valley’s a better place with Poddy gone. Just wish of course he’d left under different circumstances.”
