Road to Bountiful

by Smurthwaite, Donald S.

  I say a little prayer that Uncle Loyal won’t ask for salad, and if he did, it wouldn’t be with the vinaigrette dressing, and if he did, he wouldn’t ask for it on the side. No doubt, it would be heard in heaven and tagged “strange prayer of the day” by the ministering angels who keep track of such things. I had never prayed about salad dressing before.

  “This is a most unusual place. The patronage. It surprises me. Do you think any of these people will be fishing tomorrow? They look the jolly sportsman type, eh?”

  “I don’t think so, Uncle Loyal,” I say in a voice barely above a whisper, my eyes darting around, looking for anyone who might be wanting to eavesdrop, pull a knife, or just hit someone for the general principle of it.

  “Very good, then. More open space for us. More fish for us to pursue.”

  To my surprise, the waitress shows up in a matter of minutes, but I guess when the meat is just a hint darker than a Santa Claus suit, it doesn’t take long to cook it. She flops down a couple of big plates with the abundance of very red meat and huge potatoes and a sprig of parsley and says, “Go after it now, boys. Drinks?”

  “Lemonade would be wonderful,” Uncle Loyal says.

  “I’ll take water. No ice. Straight. No rocks,” I say. “Straight water. Just water. For me. It’s my ulcer. From the police messing with me so much.”

  “Hard drinkers, are we boys?”

  “No ma’am. We just have to drive up the canyon tonight. Want to have our heads clear and our eyes sharp.”

  “Can’t blame you for that.”

  “Nope. Not that.”

  “I’ll get the water and lemonade,” she says, turning toward the murky part of the restaurant/bar/biker hangout. “Lemonade. Haven’t had that ordered in a year or two. Hope we got some. You, fella, you’re kind of cute.”

  “Thank you,” I say.

  “Not you. I mean the little old fella.”

  “How kind of you,” Uncle Loyal says, obviously pleased. “And you are an attractive young lady.”

  “Nice of you to say,” she says as she saunters off. “A lotta people think so.”

  She comes back with the water and lemonade, and I decide to not tell her that my glass is greasy. The steak, I’d say, never really did get acquainted with the flames. Still, it tastes good. Marty was right about that. We fairly gulp down our meal, pay the bill, and I leave a big tip, because this is the kind of place where they might send out a couple of guys after you if you stiffed the waitress. We were leaving alive, after all, and for some reason, I feel that it was because the waitress thought Uncle Loyal was cute. She even winks at him as we’re leaving, and to my surprise, Uncle Loyal winks back, in the way you would expect an eighty-two-year-old man to wink—deep, chaste, and exaggerated. It was with the lightness in my step of a doomed man who receives a reprieve that I walk back to the red car and head back to the cabin.

  “A most satisfying meal,” Uncle Loyal says. “Although I am unsure if I would return there. The people. They were quite colorful, although warmhearted and gracious.”

  “Another story we can tell. Aunt Barbara will never believe this one. I’ll save it until we get to Utah. I want to see her face when I tell her I took you to a biker bar for dinner one night and the waitress thought you were cute. She did have some nice tattoos. Personally, I thought the cobra swallowing the puppy was charming.”

  “Call it this: our first fishing tale.”

  “Yes, our first. Only we were the bait, I think. We’ll have a few more stories tomorrow.”

  “What time shall we start? Early I suppose.”

  “Yep. They usually bite best first thing in the morning. I guess fish are like us. They need breakfast too. Most important meal of the day for them and us.”

  I drive up the canyon toward the cabin, cozy under the trees, a happy yellow lamplight beaming into the dark night to greet us.

  Fishing tomorrow. It’s quiet and I am getting drowsy, and for some reason, I start to think the way I do just before I fall asleep, namely, big, random thoughts that hardly make sense.

  Fish. We are fish, I think. From one water to the next, one pool to another. From creek to river to ocean, we move on, we move ahead. All of us. Uncle Loyal. Me. The people at the bar. We are fish, they are fish. We are all like fish, sometimes swimming with the current, sometimes against it, trying to figure out what’s bait and what is true.

  Uncle Loyal yawns, but his eyes are wide open. He sees a lot, I thought. He sees so much more than most people do. He called the people at the biker bar “gracious,” which is a word I would not have connected with the patrons in about two thousand years of thinking. But maybe they were, in their own way. Different fish in a different current, that’s all.

  And driving up the canyon, on a road I’d never been on before that day, getting ready to take my ancient great-uncle on his first mountain fishing trip ever, I decide to try to find the grace in people, no matter where they were or what they looked like.

  Uncle Loyal sees it. Maybe I can learn how to see it too. I’m sure it’s there. I just need to look harder for it.

  Chapter Nineteen

  When You Fish, You Cast in Your Line and Never Know What You Might Pull Out

  Dark. Still dark, an hour or maybe more before the sun tripped over the mountains to the east. Levi rumbled in his bed, tossed and turned and, I think, might have fallen asleep again. This is an old habit from the plains. I wake up and just listen to the sounds. I wake up early. As I have aged, it becomes easier to wake up before dawn. Four or five in the morning, most days. I blink a few times and think of where I am, and then I am awake. Sometimes, I fall back asleep, but more often, I stay awake and allow myself the pleasure of slow thinking. Today, I am unsure for a few moments of where I am. The stiff bed, the air of pine, dew, and old wood walls. The cabin. Yes, the cabin we have rented in the mountains. Today, we will fish.

  Levi bolts upright in the bed across the room. My eyes adjust to the darkness, and I see him quickly and quietly groping for his clothes and the fishing gear. We stopped at a small store on our way home from the restaurant last night and purchased more provisions for the day: crackers, juice, water, ready-made sandwiches, jerky—lots of jerky again—and fruit. Levi said, “You don’t know that you’re hungry when you fish because all you want to do is keep fishing, keep moving to the next hole. And then you do get hungry, and there’s not enough food in the world to fill you up.”

  He sits on the edge of his bed for a few moments. I glance at the alarm clock. It is a few minutes after five.

  “Uncle Loyal,” he whispers. “You awake?”

  “Yes, Levi. I’m awake. Is it time? Do we get up and get ready and go fishing now?”

  “Think so. It will be daylight in an hour. I’d like to be on the creek just about the time the sun comes up.”

  I admit to being a little groggy, but I find my fishing clothes, laid out on a chair by Levi last night, and struggle into them. I put on a plaid flannel shirt, the pair of durable, practical cotton pants, my walking shoes, and finally, the fishing hat.

  Levi nods in approval. “You look like a fisherman. That’s half of it.”

  “I am certainly dressed for the part.”

  “Let’s go, then. The fish await us. They tremble to know that we are on our way.”

  He pulls out the keys to the red car, we lock the cabin door behind us, and soon we are on our way back toward the rushing dark waters of the creek we had seen the day before. The headlights pierce the remains of the night, and we round curves in the road, moving upward, steadily climbing in elevation. Spooked, dusky deer hop across the road, one, then another, then a third and a fourth. A faint rose-and-pink light burnishes the sky eastward. Levi stares at each side road, looking at the Forest Service numbers. After thirty minutes in the car, he slows to a stop and squints at a sign.

  “This is it. We turn here. This is the road Jason told us about. Fish heaven, a couple of miles away.”

  The road is narrow and dusty. Lig
ht reaches the tops of the trees on either side of us. A creek appears, then disappears. At a wide spot in the road, Levi pulls over.

  “We need to hike . . .” and he stops and looks puzzled for a second. “We need to hike this way for no more than a quarter mile, and we’ll hit the creek.”

  We get out of the car. Levi grabs most of our gear after handing me the two fishing poles. He looks around again, like an explorer unsure of his way. He closes his eyes and listens.

  “I hear water. We’ll follow this little game path until we get to the creek. We’re almost there. I can smell water. I can smell pine. I can smell fish. It all adds up to the smell of victory and triumph. Beware, wily trout. You are no match for us. Levi and Loyal are at your doorstep.”

  I meekly follow Levi up the small trail. Soon, I also can hear the water, roiling, chattery, tumbling. Then I see it: a black ribbon, froth butting against rocks, the home of the trout, water on its merry way to a rendezvous with the sea. This moment is all so perfect. The sun splashes down in a swath through the tall trees and sends its spotlight to the clearing where we are standing. A fog or vapor rises from the stream as the sunlight touches it. Levi senses the perfectness of this moment.

  “Just right,” he mumbles. “Just right. Let’s get you geared up.”

  He tosses the rubbery slick waders to me and instructs me on how to put them on. He grabs the poles and expertly ties a dry fly onto the end of my leader. He feints a cast and wiggles the pole. Then he pronounces with Biblical gravity, “We are ready. It is good.”

  “Which pole is mine?”

  “Rod, Uncle Loyal. When you are in the mountains, they are rods, not poles. Rods for fly fishing. It is important to know the difference.”

  “I stand corrected.”

  “This one is yours.”

  He hands me my pole, and I try to flex it as he did. I am surprised at the play in it. It is elastic in its motion; it has a nice whip and feel to it.

  “What will you wear?” I ask.

  “What I have on.”

  “Do you want the waders? I can do without them.”

  “No. They’re for you. With the waders on, you can get to the deeper water, the holes. That’s where the fish will be in the morning. The deep holes. Where it’s dark, where they have been still all night. Now they are moving with the sunlight. They’ll look up and see a splotch on the water, and they’ll mistake it for food. Not too bright, these fish. They can’t tell the difference between a bit of steel shank and feathers and a big, meaty bug. But it’s okay. If they were smarter, we would have to find a less interesting way to catch them.”

  “Can we share the waders?”

  “No. They’re yours. Now and forever. For when we fish in Utah. We will fish in Utah.”

  “Yes. I think so. I believe you. But what of you? You will be cold, your feet will freeze. This river must be like ice. You only have a pair of shorts and a T-shirt on.”

  “Yep. I’ll be cold for a while, but then you get used to it. You never feel anything after you go numb, one of the nice things nature did for us. But I don’t really notice because I’m fishing.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure. I’ve done this a thousand times. Let’s get to the water.”

  We pick our way down a small slope and stand on the edge of the stream. I can see insects hovering and skipping near the water’s surface. Little wonder that fish rise and feed at this time of day. Levi motions to a spot in shallow water and says, “Go there and then cast toward the other side of the creek. Cast it just by flicking it. Let the fly drop on the water without creating a splash. You create a splash, and the fish know that someone or something is near and they will not bite. Fish are dumb, but they aren’t stupid. Now wade out and try.”

  Wade out and try. I gingerly step into the water. It swirls around my legs, and the waders suck tight against my legs and hips. I look down for a moment and feel slightly dizzy. I am in water, I think. In the mountains with a fishing pole in my hand. A fishing rod in my hands.

  “That’s where you need to cast. Good job, Uncle Loyal. Cast over there, where it’s dark.”

  I waggle my pole back and forth. The line gets tangled in itself, and the fly ends up pricking my left hand. I am confused. This is not how I imagined it. This is not what I thought the outcome would be. There is no magic in fishing.

  “Here,” Levi says.

  He walks to me, sloshing through the creek. “Here,” he says. And he takes my line and gently undoes the knots and loops. “Here,” he says. And he stands behind me and puts his left hand on my left shoulder, and he takes my forearm in his strong right hand. “Here,” he says. And with his right hand, he pulls my arm back. Gently. I feel the rhythm of his motion coursing through my shoulder, my arm, my hand, my fingers, to the whippy rod. “Here,” he says. And we rock a little, back and forth, and the line splits the air, and I think I can hear a zizzing sound. “Here,” he says, and he stops the forward motion of my hand and arm, and I watch the tiny fly float on unseen currents of air, dainty in its arc, the white speck of feathers settling on dark waters.

  “Here,” Levi says. And the fly lands. I wonder what a fish thinks in its watery world, if a fish can think at all, of the old man and the young man, close to one another, swaying in time with each other, while the cold water swirls about them.

  “Nice, nice. That’s how it should be done. Nice. Very good, very good, Uncle Loyal.”

  And then he says, “Here,” again, and he pulls back on my arm and the line whips out of the water, with drops sparkling in the early morning sun.

  And in the chilly morning waters, standing in the dizzying current, a young man, arm on my shoulder, speaking to me softly, I think of a parable.

  We ride. We all ride on dark waters, bits of feather on a current. We are not strong, but strong enough. Strong enough to float, no matter how deep the water, no matter how swift it flows. Here. That is what He did for us. He took us in His arms and said, “Here,” and there is a line that He provided. We ride the currents here, a slim connection of twine between us, among us. But it is a line that will not break.

  I think of Daisy and my daughters. I think of my old brown house and of Carl and Harriet Van Acker. I think of John Jannuzzi, and John Fetzberg and his children on my sidewalk on snowy North Dakota mornings. I think of Glenn and the Hecht sisters. I think of Floyd McKay, and I think of slim lines and dark waters. I see their many faces on the water and think of how they are part of me. I think of strength, and it is all I can do to not simply lay my rod down in the water and turn and walk to shore and tell Levi, “I know what it is to fish now. I know.”

  I watch in fascination as the tiny fly bobs and floats downstream. Levi eases his grip on my arm. His left hand stays on my shoulder.

  “There,” he says. “There.” He strengthens his grip on my right arm and helps me pull back the line and fly. I know there is something to the words he used, here and there, but I cannot think of the meaning. It doesn’t come to me. “There,” he repeats. “We’ll do this again.”

  And we do. Again and again. We carefully move upstream a little, Levi holding his arm under my arm and around my back, and we try another hole, this dark place in deep water where fish stay still in the morning.

  Soon, his left hand drops from my shoulder to my back and his right hand barely touches mine. Then he steps back, and our link is broken.

  I am fishing on my own.

  This is what Levi wanted to show me.

  I know how to fish now.

  The water feels cold, but the cold makes me feel alive, the way frigid air made Daisy feel alive when pellets of ice and grainy flakes of snow blew hard from the north.

  Levi is never far from my side. He watches each of my movements with the care of a young father watching a child on a bicycle for the first time. Had I slipped, he would have been there, a strong hand pulling me up. I lose track of time. A vague awareness that the sun is higher in the sky and the temperature warming are
all that tell me another day has taken flight, hurtling toward its sure conclusion. Levi does little fishing. A cast here and there, always with his head half cocked in my direction. I can tell he’s a very good fisherman by his grace and his rhythm, the places he put his dry fly, the glowing intensity of his eyes when the fly touches water.

  Then I know just enough to understand there are good fishermen and there are bad fishermen, and there are people who fish but don’t care much. I also understand that the gear does not make the fisherman and you could be a good fisherman with no gear at all. I hope to be a good fisherman.

  After a while and I don’t know how long, an hour, maybe two, we come near a small rocky beach, and he guides me toward shore.

  “Time to rest,” he says. “You’re wearing me out. I can’t keep up with you.”

  “You’ve been good to me. I like to fish this way, wading in a stream with a light pole in my hand.”

  The sun feels good, shining hard on the pebbly beach where we sit. The rush of the water is musical. In the sky a hawk, maybe a red-tail, floats on the updraft from the canyon.

  “But,” I tell him, “I am afraid that I am not a good fisherman yet and that I am keeping you from enjoying your day.”

  Levi leans back, flat against the smooth stones, his feet wide apart, his arms stretched.

  “Are you kidding me? You’re killing me, Uncle Loyal. Any day in a place like this is a good day. Anytime you fish it’s a good thing. I don’t care what you fish for. It’s just that you are fishing. You’re participating. That’s what counts, that’s what matters. When I fish, I don’t have a care in the world. I don’t even care if I catch a fish, and if I catch a fish, I put it back.”

  I think about what he said. I liked what he said. I think again about worlds and how there are different worlds right here in front of us. I counted the worlds. There was my world, and Levi’s world, the world of fishes. There was the world of the canyon and the world of the sky and the world of the sun and the world of the rocks on this beach. There was the world of the red-tailed hawk matted against the blue sky. And there was the world of the little bugs that crawled across the rocks and lived near the edge of the water. I scoop up a handful of soil.