by Ron Carlson
“Holy shit,” Vonnie said. Their rods bent and bobbed, both reels giving line in these first moments. They had been taken by the place, the desperate beauty of fishing from the glacier so far above the water, and they hadn’t considered this part. They’d made a mistake, and it was apparent in that first second. The glacial ledge was still fifteen feet above the lake, too far for landing anything.
Mack gave line and walked the edge quickly marching, his rod aloft around the edge of the snowfield to where, when it tapered to ten feet, he could slide off onto the rocky bank in a small cascade of the old snow. Now he adjusted his drag and reeled it tight again, the fish fighting and the rod flexing as if alive. He was good now, but the fish was out sixty yards. Vonnie had trouble though, her fish had plunged and she was stuck up in the snow. “I can’t get around there,” she said.
“Wear him out,” Mack said. “I’ll come back when I get this guy.” For every three turns he could take, the fish took one back. “Wish I had some lemon drops,” Mack said. His father always had a pocket of the hard candy and told Mack that a good fish would last as long as the candy did in the boy’s mouth—and no chewing. Mack held the rod in one hand and rolled one shirtsleeve and then changed hands and rolled the other. His father would stand back when a fish was on, never beside him as if to take the rod; Mack was on his own. He’d give him a lemon drop and back away, saying a couple of times, “Nice work, son.”
The sun was hot now. He could see Vonnie’s line angled out into the lake where the big fish did what he wanted. Eventually he worked his fish in, horsing him more than he’d like, always it seemed at the edge of snapping the line. Back and forth in the red shallows the big brown trout swam, frantic when he saw the man. Mack let him go each way five times and then lowered his pole almost to the water and reeled in, lifting and taking the line in his hand and backing straight away, dragging the trout onto the wet rock shelf and then farther onto the dry sandstone, where it twisted and jumped in a tangle of line. Mack got his fingers in the gills, dropped the fish, grabbed him again and lifted him into the air. It was an eighteen-inch brown, heavy as a single muscle. Holding him between his knee and the rock, Mack tapped him sharply on the head twice with the handle of his knife and the fish shuddered and stopped. Mack carried his tackle and the fish, still hooked, back into the rocky lichen and laid it all there. He had to circle again away from the lake to the rocky summit to mount the glacier and he joined Vonnie where she stood as if her line were seized by the lake itself. “Let’s try to get down,” he said.
“He’s too tight.” Every step she took bent her pole further.
“Let’s wait, just wait.”
There would be some slack and she’d take it and then give it back. Slack, reel, yield.
“Maybe they both took it,” he said. “It looks like two fish.”
“Mack,” Vonnie said. “Just one, but he’s worthy.”
“You want a granola bar?” he asked her.
“Not really.”
“It’s from Hagen’s.”
“You went there too?”
“I’m not as dumb as I look.”
“Yes you are.” He opened the homemade biscuit and held it before her mouth. She took a bite and said through the chewing, “Did you get bear claws too?”
“I did.”
“We’re at capacity with baked goods.” He took a bite of the bar and then held the canteen so Vonnie could drink.
“You got a headache?”
“Very small, but we’re up here.” There was some slack and she took it and more and she reeled in.
“He’s coming in. He’s swimming under the shelf.”
Vonnie reeled steadily. “Can you see him?”
“No.” Then Mack saw something and it was the fish’s shadow in the water and then the trout near the surface. “He’s too close.” Vonnie snugged the line and the fish responded, leaping and in that second seeing the world, the two people in the white snow, it twisted with every ounce of itself, and the fish swam away, the fine broken leader trailing from its mouth. They could see him race down, diving through the bladed sunlight of the lake water, and then stall and settle again as if nothing had happened.
Vonnie looked at Mack, her face blank and then he saw the old smile emerge.
“Fish,” she said.
They were at the wild rough top of the world.
She reeled in and they gathered their jackets and walked back as they had come to step off the glacier and go around to the lake.
“How long will our footprints be in that thing?” she asked.
“Eons,” he said. “It’s going to confuse the anthropologists in the distant future. ‘It looks like one of them had real expensive boots,’ ” Mack said, “ ‘but what were they doing up here?’ ” She reached into his shirt pocket and withdrew the rest of the Hagen granola bar.
When they got to the lakeside, she admired Mack’s fish. “You want to get yours?” he said.
“I better,” she said. They walked out the rock shelf and looked into the water. The fish held and their shadows held. She lifted her binoculars and sighted and said finally, “There he is with a foot of my leader.”
“Let’s hope he’s still pissed off and hungry and can beat these other guys to the punch,” Mack said, pointing, “Set your fly out here so it’s between him and the sun. You want a cup of tea?”
“Yeah, make some tea and I’ll see what I can do about my fish.” Mack scooped the little stove tin full of water and walked back to the hillside out of the wind and made a rock corner and set up his tiny propane stove. Vonnie stood, her rod against her side and tied on another fly.
The BlackBerry said now: Not east; W slope. Two mile line. Mack smiled. Needle in a two-mile haystack.
Vonnie slowly walked the rocks, small steps, her binoculars at her eyes, and then she stopped. Mack watched her: a motionless figure on a silver plate. She knelt, still looking out where the fish held, and placed the field glasses on the rock shore. She worked her arm back and forth twice and then looped a slow cast that ran out onto the sunny lake surface. Mack’s stove hissed; the simmering water had begun to bubble in the two-cup tin.
He heard a crack and the sky echoed it. A rifle shot somewhere below. Vonnie turned, a question mark on her face, and Mack saw her rod start and then bend double.
“Here he is,” she said. Mack started to stand but saw that Vonnie wasn’t going to be delicate about it this time. She hauled and reeled once, and then, her rod in a horseshoe, she backed away from the lake. The trout slid onto the land, twisting like a dervish, a blur, and still Vonnie backed until he was well away from water. She knelt and secured him and tapped his skull quickly and then again. She lifted the big fish like a bouquet and grabbed her rod and joined Mack in the rocky lee.
“What was that, a shot?”
“Somebody sighting in a rifle.”
“Or poachers,” she said. “You can’t sight in up here. You can’t be shooting.”
“You’re not supposed to. Is that the same fish?” he said.
“Check it,” she said, lifting the two-foot brown so Mack could see the two leaders coming from his noble jaw.
Mack smiled. “The same fish twice. I’ve never seen it.”
Out of the wind it was warm and Mack retrieved two paper cups from his daypack and poured the tea. Vonnie sat a minute and then quickly knelt and drew her knife, making the vent cut and the gill cross in each fish and then pulling out the guts in a single pull, expertly, and thumbing out the blood. She walked to the lake and rinsed them and washed her hands.
When she returned with the big browns on a gill cord, she said, “How close was that shot?”
Mack looked up and made a circle with his hand. “Up here, in the valley. A mile, two. Not three.”
“Let’s see your hands.”
She held them out. “What do you see; I’m not nicked up.”
“Some ring,” he said. She took her hands away and picked up the tea. “You and Kent going to
have kids?”
“He doesn’t want them. We’re not married.”
“You’re engaged.”
“I’m not engaged.”
“He gave you a silver ring with those three stones that look a lot to me like diamonds.”
“It’s a ring.”
“Didn’t that lawyer get down on a knee and say, ‘Yvonne, please marry me’?”
“He gave me a ring.”
“I don’t feel as if I’m getting full disclosure here, but it’s a nice ring. You moved in with him.”
“I did.”
“That’s a big house. Is it called a house?” She sipped her tea and looked out over Spearpoint. “Did you take your books out of that dairy crate?” She looked at him over her tea. For a moment it was as quiet as the sky, quiet as it should have been with all of the world far below them. He said, “You want some sugar cubes? Sugar cubes are very fine when drinking tea in the big mountains. I forgot.” He pulled out a paper sleeve and unwrapped the sugar cubes. “Take two. I don’t have enough sugar cubes in my own life.”
There was a new noise now, a squeal and then another. “What the hell?” They listened. “It sounds like wild turkeys.” Then there was a bass whoop and the unmistakable cadence of voices. “Sit still,” Mack said.
It was periodic but ascending and two minutes later the clear words could be heard: “See, see, see!” A person climbed into view at the spearpoint, and then another and two more, young people in sweatshirts and hiking shorts. Two girls and two boys.
“See! My god,” a female voice said. “What a weird place!” One of the young men lay down flat on his back on the rocks there, and the three others stood with their hands on their knees catching their breath. “Is that snow?”
“What do you want to do?” Mack said.
“Nothing,” Vonnie said. “Wait. Hope they turn around. Finish this tea. They won’t see us if we don’t move.”
“No way!” one of the girls cried.
“Way way,” the other said, pulling her shirt off. They were throwing their clothing onto the boy on the ground who was lying inert in the laundry.
“Now what do you want to do?” Mack said. “Drink up. We can hide and watch this carnival or we can make ourselves known.”
“That was never your way,” Vonnie said to him. She slowly lifted her cup to her mouth in two long sips.
“Or we can quietly slip up over this hill and deadhead back.”
Now one of the naked girls had picked her way barefoot to the edge and she jumped in the lake and came up sputtering and swearing and scrambling for her footing. “Oh my god! It’s ice!”
Mack had packed the stove and gathered his gear.
“One’s a redhead, if you want to know,” Vonnie said. She had her binoculars on the group. “Or do you need this provocation?” The boy had jumped in now and then the other girl, grabbing him, and one said, “It’s not cold like this.” The boy on the ground was lying there, his hands behind his head.
“You’re all nuts.”
“Come on, James. We’re swimming.”
Mack and Vonnie moved low over the hill, carrying their fish, and descended; they could still hear the voices, distorted and amplified by the water. “That’s too bad,” Mack said. “You caught a beautiful fish.”
“It’s okay. These two are giants. We don’t want another. What are four college kids doing in the Winds in September? Don’t they have class?”
“They’re after their merit badges.”
She looked down the slope to where the trees began. “Which way is it?”
They descended steeply down rock to rock, their knees working and warming. “Is it easier to climb up than go down?” Vonnie asked.
“I’ve heard people say it.”
“I’m saying it.” The forest was thick here, undergrowth, and Mack led them through the brush, holding branches, going wide around the deadfall. The trees grew bigger as they dropped down and the brush more sparse, and the walking became walking as he followed the drainage, ridge to ridge. They walked an hour as the shade gathered. They were out of the wind, but it was cooling, and they moved without talking. They stopped above a meadow full of elk, all cows, the bulls out of sight, and ate an apple.
“You hungry?” he asked her.
“Not really.”
“We’ll eat these fish tonight, if we find our camp.” They rose and walked around and then across a marshy wood through a rockfall, boulders big as rooms, the ground patterned with elk track.
“You know where we are, don’t you?” she asked him.
“I do,” he said.
“You’ve got direction in the woods like no one I know,” she said. “I’ve always loved that about you.”
“Thank you very much,” he said, “but let’s go down here first.” They stepped carefully down a broad screefall and into a vale of short pines walking among the trees, no trail. They ascended the far side and out into the scrub meadow, the last clumps of lupine and high mountain sage. Mack looked at where the sun now met the mountain and he checked his watch.
“It got late,” Vonnie said.
“We didn’t have a lunch,” Mack said. “I’m sorry.”
“We had one of Hagen’s bars and tea by the glacier,” she told him. “Who gets that?”
The shadows had thickened even as they stood and talked. The angle of light grew fragile; it made him want to hurry. It had always called to him, and now it hurt. You always felt time as a tangible heartbeat in the mountains. The days were short.
On one fishing trip when he was a boy, his father had talked about it, about how when you slept at eleven thousand feet, you were going so much faster than all the folks sleeping way below you back in the village.
“Faster, sir?” Mack had said.
“That’s it. We all go around as the earth turns,” he said. He circled a finger. “One day, sunrise to sunrise.” He went on. “But sunrise to sunrise in that one rotation, we’re way up here and we travel a whole lot further.”
“How much?”
“That’s for calculus to know,” his father had said.
Mack lifted his first finger to make a point. “You’re smiling.”
His father did smile now. “Okay, right you are, but it’s still true. Look around, son. You can feel it. Time up here is precious. You with me?”
“Yes, sir. I am.”
Now the mountain air felt rare again, the day lapsing. Vonnie put her hands out suddenly in recognition. “I know where we’re going,” she said. They stopped as they joined the highline game trail, and she knelt and picked up a large rock from a fall there. “Get your rock.”
“Right you are,” he said. And he picked up a stone as big as a football. They walked up the faint switchback trail, which Mack himself had made for the first time six years before, and they topped a hillock with three ruined ponderosas standing dead. They’d hauled a lot of stones that year.
The grave was as they’d left it, an oval of stones level in the grassy hilltop. The place was run with faded lupine. He could see Vonnie was affected by the spot and she stood with her stone and looked around at the great circle of the world. “Prettiest gravesite on earth,” she said. The air lifted her hair. She walked around and fitted her stone into the pile, saying, “Hey Scout,” and Mack laid his there too. The old plank he’d cut at home lay in the rocks, weathered. It said: SCOUT. A DOG.
“You want to say something?” she said.
“I’m glad we’re here. He was a good dog who loved to fish.”
Vonnie sat on the ground and drank some water from her water bottle. “We haven’t been up here.”
“Three years,” he said. “No, four.”
“You should get another dog,” she said.
“He had trouble not chasing a cast,” Mack said.
“I know all about it,” Vonnie said. “He could swim.” She handed Mack the bottle and he drank. “We’re making it quite a trip.”
“Well, we brought two more rocks,” he s
aid. “Let’s go.”
“What was that?”
“What.”
She pointed: “A deer? No.” She laughed. “I thought I saw somebody.”
“Hiram,” he said.
“I’m tired,” she said. “That’s all.” She stood up.
They left the trail from the gravesite, crossing south off the hill and in half a mile they dropped onto a path and climbed three hundred yards of hard long uphill strides. Here it was very dark, the periphery run with narrow spears of sky. Then the trail veered off level under some pines, and they were standing in their perfect campsite, quiet and waiting above the blue blanket of Valentine Lake in the burnished late day. “That’s why I hang a clothesline,” he said.
“To welcome you home,” she said.
“So I can find the way,” he said. “But welcome home.”
Vonnie shook her sleeping bag and lay down on it, unlacing her boots. “You want me to cook?”
“No, I’ll do it,” he said. She lay and watched the sky, and Mack saw her eyes close. The sun was down behind the western slope.
He cut the heads from the trout and they were still too big for the pan, so he left the tails on and stuffed them with lemon wedges and pepper and butter and double-wrapped them in foil and set them aside. He knelt and fingered together a mound of tinder, moss, and hairy duff and lit it and fed it up, and the fire rose quiet and straight. When he looked up from his work, the day was gone, the mountain sky a bowl of glowing grainy dark. He snugged the fish into the coals burying them carefully by using a forked stick. Away from the fire it was chilly and he could hear her napping. He put his hand on her shoulder and she woke without a word, her eyes a sleepy kindness, and she crawled into her bag and napped again. Mack made a tour of the perimeter and gathered an armload of branches, using half now to stoke the fire. He broke and sorted the rest into piles close at hand. He shook up a water bottle with powdered lime punch and set it back on the rock shelf.
