Traveling Light

by Bill Barich

  “Why do steelhead strike their own roe?”

  “Cannibal instinct.”

  “Do you ever use flies instead of bait?”

  “Listen,” he said. “I’d rather fly-fish than anything. But the river’s too high and discolored most of the time. If you want action, you go with bait.”

  We went back into the living room, and Deeds brought down a quart of Jim Beam from an antique highboy. The bottle had spiderwebbing trailing from its cap; the tiny faces on the label were faded from the sun. I don’t recall very much after this, although I know I stayed for dinner. Deeds fed me steelhead. I watched in awe as he concocted his special barbecue sauce—mayo, ketchup, A.I., Lea & Perrins, brown sugar, onions, garlic, and corn relish—and slathered it on the skinned fish, then jammed the whole reeking mess under the broiler. It tasted fine, though—at least, to my numbed palate.

  After the meal, Deeds embarked on a lengthy monolog about the demise of the Russian River. He showed me some photographs in support of his case; they would have done Zane Grey proud. “That’s 1964,” he said, pointing to three big steelhead arranged on a bed of ferns. “I caught them in thirty minutes. You won’t see that happen again. Too much junk in the river. Chemicals. Garbage. Sewage. Damn kids drive their dune buggies down the creek beds, right through the water. Can you imagine that? They run over steelhead fry. Death by tires. It’s incredible. I’m talking about incredible. Don’t they understand that creek beds are out of bounds? Only fish that are in the river are fair game.” His mood became elevated again when he brought down a second bottle of Beam. He showed me a few more pictures—all of his former wife, from whom he’d been recently divorced—and then said, “I’ll bet you’d like to hear some music,” and proceeded to play his way through the blues collection. When I left, shortly after midnight, he was using his rod tip like a baton to conduct a medley of Howlin’ Wolf tunes.

  I didn’t expect to see Deeds for a few days—not in the wake of such carousing—but he came by the next afternoon and apologized for not offering me a ride home.

  “You offered, Paul,” I said, “but you wanted to go through Reno first.”

  Deeds laughed. “I meant to give you these,” he said, digging into his pocket and handing over a jar containing five berries. “And these”—an assortment of lead weights. “And these”—three twenty-five-pound-test leaders. Each leader had a knot in it, so it could be attached to a regular monofilament by means of a swivel. Below the knot, the leaders were divided into two uneven strands. “You tie your weight on the short one,” he said. “You want it to bounce along the river bottom, down where the fish are. Not too fast and not too slow—tick, tick, tick.” He was demonstrating with an invisible rod, keeping his eyes fixed on the line. “The bait follows behind. If you feel the bait stop, wham!”—he jerked back the rod—”you set up. That drives the barb of the hook through the fish’s lip.”

  “How should I play the fish?”

  “With steelhead, you don’t play,” said Deeds. “You pray.

  That evening, just as the sky was turning, I stationed myself near a deep pool below a rocky outcrop and started casting. Deeds’s weights were much heavier than the lures I’d been using. The one I tied to the shorter strand of leader bounced properly on the bottom—tick, tick, tick, like seconds passing. Suddenly, the berry stopped in transit, as if a fish had mouthed it. I lifted my rod, preparing to do battle, but I felt no resistance. Soon enough, I reeled in a fat sucker; it flopped onto the shore like a sack of mush. Suckers are trash fish, insults to divinity. They have chubby humanoid lips and appear to be begging for cigars. It’s possible to envision them wearing suspenders and sitting on park benches, acting like heirs to the continent’s watershed. I released mine, stifling a desire to kick it, and moved toward the center of the pool. I put my next cast under some willows on the opposite shore. Tick, tick, tick: again the bait stopped, and again I set the hook. This time, a steelhead shot out of the water. I played, or prayed, the fish for ten minutes, certain that I’d lose it, but my luck held, and I was able finally to draw it into the shallows and beach it. The fish was small, about four pounds, and male; so much milt leaked from him that a white puddle formed on the sand. I dispatched him quickly, suffused with guilt, but the guilt changed to atavistic pride once I had threaded a willow branch through his mouth and out of his gills and begun the uphill trek to my house. I stopped on a rise and looked back at the valley, which was vanishing in purple haze. As Zane Grey put it, “the sunset was beautiful, resembling ships of silver clouds with rosy sails that crossed the lilac sea of sky in the west.”

  Deeds became my nemesis as well as my friend. Never again would he grant me the license of undisturbed water. If I was fishing, he was fishing, too—often just ahead of me, combing the better pools and riffles before I had a chance at them. The situation would have been intolerable if I hadn’t continued to learn from him. He persuaded me to buy a longer, sturdier rod and a bait-casting reel; taught me to use bobbers in bright red, pink, and chartreuse to attract fish; instructed me in the basics of steelhead anatomy; and gave me a short course in how to cast a shooting head—a twenty-eight-to-thirty-foot-long, single-tapered line that allows an angler to cast great distances without exerting much effort.

  That first winter, I caught ten fish; they were poached, baked, broiled, eaten as sashimi, or soaked in brine and then smoked over hickory chips until their flesh was glazed and peeled away in savory chunks. Deeds caught forty-six; most were released, but a few prime specimens were subjected to the ignominy of his barbecue sauce. I thought my statistics would improve the following winter, but California entered a two-year drought, and steelhead fishing was dismal. When the drought ended, the rains were exceptionally heavy, and the Russian remained high, muddy, and inaccessible for most of the season. The year after that, rainfall did taper off, and the river was in excellent shape, but fish were scarce, because the drought had affected spawning adversely. In the low, clear water, steelhead eggs and fry had been more vulnerable than ever to predators, and the mortality rate had been increased by soaring temperatures and a poor supply of oxygen. I tried to be hopeful, but in mid-September, right before the next (depressing? suicidal?) season was to begin, I cracked. I had a little money coming from a writing job, so I said to Deeds, who was helping himself to my good French-roast coffee, “I can’t take it anymore, Paul. I’m going to Oregon for some real fishing.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Deeds said.

  I doubted his sincerity. “You dare to leave California?”

  “I’ve done it before,” he said defensively.

  It happened that he had a sister in Portland, who had been hounding him to visit. Her name was Joan, and she met us at the airport. She was a big woman, built like Deeds, with bony shoulders and elbows. She was ten years older than he was, and the age difference showed in their relationship. She had a tendency to treat him in a mock-scolding manner, as if he were a bad boy in need of constant correction; he responded by acting petulant and making snide comments. It was all very stylized, a residue of childhood. Her husband, a machinist, told us he cared nothing about fishing. “If I want salmon,” he said jovially, “I go to the supermarket.” I suppose most families seem odd when they’re viewed from the outside. I made some phone calls while this family did its catching up, and arranged for a guide to take Paul and me on a three-day drift trip down the Deschutes River. The Deschutes is a legendary steelhead stream, known for its productivity; the lower portion, which we’d be drifting, is wild and free-flowing. The guide assured me that the river would be perfect for fly-fishing, unless we got some rain. I had a good night’s sleep in the guest room and spent the next day buying tackle in Portland’s sporting-goods stores. I wanted to rent a car, too, but Joan insisted that I save the money; she volunteered to drive us to Maupin, where we were to launch the boat, and then pick us up at the mouth of the Deschutes—it empties into the Columbia River—at the end of the trip.

  We got an early start in the mo
rning. I tried my best to ease the tension between Deeds and his sister. I made jokes, and even did some whistling, but their bickering never quit. About ten o’clock, we stopped for huckleberry pancakes at a restaurant near Mt. Hood, and then we descended into a desert atmosphere of dry, brown hills and clumps of sage.

  “Zane Grey country, Paul,” I said.

  Deeds felt better when we reached Maupin. The guide was waiting for us outside a bar, holding a can of Blitz beer in his hand. His wooden drift boat—pale green, about thirteen feet long, with a slightly elevated prow—was attached to a trailer hitch and stacked high with supplies, to which we added our rods, tackle, sleeping bags, liquor, and sundries. We launched the boat at a ramp about a mile downstream from the bar. The Deschutes isn’t really treacherous, except in its last five miles or so, when it drops briskly in elevation to join the Columbia, and four sets of rapids are created, but I still experienced a few seconds’ panic as we were tugged forward into the current. I was aware of the river’s power, of its swiftness, and of land falling irretrievably away behind us. The trip took on aspects of a childhood adventure. We drifted around a bend and into more primitive terrain: no cars, roads, or people, just craggy buttes and rattlesnakes and dust.

  The guide worked his oars to keep us on the edges of the white water. He’d navigated the Deschutes a thousand times and claimed to know where the fish would be. “I don’t guarantee they’ll cooperate,” he said. “Only that they’ll be in attendance.” As we passed one likely riffle after another, we became fidgety and fumbled with our rods. Deeds lit a cigarette; I had a nip of whiskey. Finally, the guide stopped near a moderately fast stretch that seemed the perfect habitat for steelhead. We were out of the boat before its prow touched the ground. I had trouble keeping my balance at first. I listed to the left in concord with the river’s flow, drawn unavoidably in its governing direction.

  Deeds beat me to the water, of course, and, after a false cast or two, laid out thirty feet of weight-forward floating fly line. We were both using nine-foot rods and a wet fly I’d bought in Portland—a Skykomish Sunrise. The fly was a beauty. It was supposed to represent the colors of a sunrise along the Skykomish River, in Washington—red, yellow, and silver, dressed with white bucktail wings on a No. 4 hook. I’m sure I chose the fly for its metaphoric content rather than for its resemblance to a bait fish or a bit of free-floating roe. I was particularly susceptible to aesthetic considerations when I was buying flies. Once, I’d filled a paper sack with tiny jassids, because they reminded me of Egyptian scarabs. I never caught a fish with any of them. Probably, I would never catch a fish with my Skykomish Sunrise, but it pleased me to watch it cut through the clear water, just beneath the surface. I asked the guide if the fly should run deeper. No, he said—the steelhead would come up to take it if they were curious enough. Deeds was working the slicks about twenty yards above me. I imitated his style: cast, quarter the line, retrieve, take two steps to the left. We must have looked like a comedy dance team practicing for the Elks’ annual picnic. Deeds was concentrating so hard he didn’t hear the guide announce that we were moving to another spot. I had to wade over and tap him on the shoulder. “What is it?” he asked irritably, his eyes hard behind the tinted lenses of his glasses.

  Late that afternoon, in some frothy riffles, I nailed our first steelhead on a Deschutes Skunk, a dry fly that the guide had lent me. The Skunk was sparsely tied and didn’t ride as high on the water as dries ordinarily do. The fish inhaled it on the retrieve, with such abandon that I almost lost control of my rod. I managed to tighten my grip before the rod escaped, and I passed the next quarter hour dashing back and forth along the bank, following the steelhead when it made its runs. The runs were long and dramatic, often punctuated by aerial high jinks. I should have cupped my hand around my reel to provide some drag—the necessary resistance—but I hadn’t played many steelhead on a fly rod, so I didn’t realize this, and compensated by jogging. Deeds thought the jogging was very funny, and he laughed. He laughed even harder when the guide started jogging behind me, waving around a landing net. No doubt the guide would have been laughing, too, but I hadn’t paid him yet; he was forced to maintain his professional composure. Gradually, the fish began to tire, and I drew him toward the shallows, where the guide scooped him up—a six-pound buck whose dorsal fin was stubby and malformed.

  “Hatchery fish,” the guide said, touching the fin. “They rub up against each other in the holding tanks and bite off each other’s fins.”

  I wiped the sweat from my brow and glanced at Deeds; his laughter had turned to envy.

  We set up camp that evening in a grove of alders. The buttes across the water were red; the water itself was dissolving in blackness. I shucked off my waders and did some stretching exercises, glad to be free of constriction. Deeds brewed coffee in a dented tin pot; the guide and I shared the bourbon. “You gentlemen are lucky,” the guide said after his third drink, “for I am an excellent cook.” Indeed he was, in the grand campground tradition of abundance. He filleted the steelhead, then broiled it over a wood fire and served it with skillet-fried potatoes and a tossed green salad. We applauded his culinary skills and awarded him another bourbon. Magpies flitted about over the camp, diving now and again into the sage. “Dessert, gentlemen,” the guide said, serving us wedges of Sara Lee cheesecake on pink paper plates. The moon appeared over the buttes. It was almost full and shed a soft, pale light that rippled on the ripples of the water. The guide washed his pots in a plastic basin, singing a many-versed song about love and death in the wilderness. I awarded him a final bourbon, on the condition that he drink it in silence, and unrolled my sleeping bag near Deeds. I woke just once during the night, when a Union Pacific freight train wailed in the distance. The sound was so melancholy it gave me the chills. It was like somebody weeping in a darkened theater long after the movie’s ended. I sat up and looked at the moon and the smoke rising from the fire.

  The guide nudged me at dawn. “Fishing time,” he said.

  I had no melancholy left—only aching bones and sore joints. Deeds was polishing the lenses of his glasses with a dish towel. He put on his waders and vest and walked into the river. I followed him. I could see the sun shining on the ridges of the buttes, but down there in the canyon it was still cold and gray. Two steps and cast, two steps and cast—we took thirty fishless steps before the guide called us to breakfast. After eating, we broke camp, drifted downstream for a mile or so, and waded into the water again. By three in the afternoon, we’d hooked five steelhead, and had released all but one—the dinner fish. “I feel pretty damn decent,” said Deeds, resting on the shore. He has the country person’s compactness of expression, saving his superlatives for truly earth-shattering events, like wars, hurricanes, famines, and the failure of his pickup to start on demand.

  That evening, we had our fish poached in wine and chicken broth. At Deeds’s request, I read aloud from Tales of Fresh-Water Fishing. I chose a passage describing a nine-pound Rogue River buck:

  He looked exactly what he was, a fish-spirit incarnate, fresh run from the sea, with opal and pearl hues of such delicate loveliness that no pen or brush could portray them. He brought the sea with him and had taken on the beauty of the river. He had a wild savage head, game as that of an eagle, jaws of a wolf, eyes of black jewel, full of mystic fire.

  “Very ripe,” said Deeds, chewing contentedly on a cheroot.

  “Jaws of a wolf?” the guide asked. “Full of mystic fire?”

  We took three more fish on our last day, not counting a giant that Deeds lost—a huge steelhead that sounded three times, made a crazed run upstream, and snapped Deeds’s leader at the tippet. Usually, that would have thrown Deeds into a funk, but this time he accepted his fate with equanimity. He even smiled a little. The smile was rueful, haunted. “You’ll get the bastard next trip,” the guide said. “Jay-sus, what a monster!” He advised us to fasten the clasps on our life jackets, because the Deschutes was dropping quickly and we were about to shoot
the rapids.

  White water loomed ahead—great furls of it. Boulders were visible in the spume. “I’m going to have to pay attention here for a minute,” the guide said, working his oars to position us. The roar of the water grew louder and louder. I looked at Deeds; he had his fingers in his ears. My muscles tensed involuntarily. I held tightly to the seat. “Wooden boat’s more trouble than those rubber rafts,” the guide said. “If we hit a rock, we splinter.” The current accelerated, pulling us ahead with a vengeance; then we were sucked forward into the gush and tumble and expelled a few seconds later on the other side. The guide brushed some water off his nose. “Gentlemen,” he said, “we have cheated death.” He negotiated the next three rapids with the same sort of understated flair, keeping us in quiet pockets in the surging foam. The sensation, I thought, must be akin to the one that surfers get when they’re riding inside the curl of a wave. I felt protected, enclosed in a husk of space. After the final rapid, the noise level diminished and the river widened by degrees, and we saw people fishing along the shore. The guide drew in his oars, and we glided effortlessly toward the Columbia.

  We reached the landing about noon. I paid the guide, awarded him a congratulatory snort, and helped Deeds unload the gear. Joan was waiting for us in the parking lot. I think we frightened her, stomping to the car all sunburned and exuding primitive energies. But this may be a masculine conceit; it’s equally possible that she was just offended by our dirty clothes and—in my case—unshaven cheeks. She and Deeds began arguing right away. She wanted him to wrap the steelhead steaks in newspaper before putting them in the cooler; he said that newspaper was unnecessary—that the plastic bags would keep them just fine. Then a serene look crossed his face. “No, Joan,” he said. “You’re right. I’ll unwrap them.”