The Run to Gitche Gumee

by Robert F. Jones

  Bullshit. Don’t kid yourself. It’s the cancer at work.

  We reached the end of the pool. “You had all the fun this afternoon,” I told Ben, “watching me warm and dry from the shore while I beat my brains out on that big rainbow. So it’s only fair that you should get in the water first this time. I could use a few laughs.”

  “Get ready to chuckle.”

  He waded out to midstream, heavy-legged in his chest waders, and started searching for risers. Ben had a slow, easy stroke to his casts, the classic metronome, and I followed the loops of his pale green flyline hissing esses in the sunset. It was hypnotic. He dropped the fly—a rusty spinner—about sixty feet up and across from where he stood. So soft a touch that there was no splash. The fly drifted less than a foot before it was taken. He tightened and raised his rod tip. A quick leap, two more, then he took the trout on the reel and brought it in, easing the fish away from the feeding line so as not to alarm the others. He released it and started casting again, air-drying the fly as he eased back out toward the far bank.

  He took half a dozen more trout on his next six casts, easy as pie, then reeled up and waded back to the bank where I was sitting in the last random beams of sunlight.

  “Your turn, Hairball,” he said.

  “Any size to them?”

  “Ten to fourteen inches, but peppy little devils, full of bounce.”

  “I could see that from here.”

  “The big trout should start working soon, sometime within the next half hour,” he said. “Maybe you’ll tag that guy who gave you conniptions earlier.”

  But I didn’t. Oh, I caught and released maybe eight or ten fish, all rainbows, but none of any real size. It got darker and darker. Colder and colder. Then, on my last backcast, I picked up a bat. He must have been cruising for the last of the spinning mayflies, and he hit my fly so hard that he made the reel sing. He flew off with it until the weight of the line slapped him down on the water.

  I hate it when they do that. Not that I’m fearful of bats, but rather that I have too deep a liking for them. Ugly little fellows when you study them up close, but miracles of evolution—die Fledermaus, a German word that also means a flighty woman.

  I reeled the drowning bat in and flipped him up on the near bank with my free hand. He was panting, poor little guy. I knelt beside him for a moment.

  Ben and Jake walked down to where I was kneeling. “Are you going to give him mouth to mouth, Doc?”

  “No, smartass, I just want to see how deep he took the fly.” It was hooked in the corner of the bat’s mouth, painful I’m sure but far from mortal. I reached down and clipped it loose with the scissors attached to my vest, just above the knot, taking care that he didn’t nip me. I didn’t dare pick him up in a bare hand and try to remove the barbless hook with the needlenose grips. Even with an easy touch I might have crushed his bones. He’d throw the fly soon enough when he got airborne, just a few quick loops and chandelles should do it.

  We went back a few steps and watched in the dying light until the bat flew away.

  “You’re getting to be a gentle soul, aren’t you?” Ben said in a quiet, serious voice. “I don’t mean that sarcastically. I’m not ribbing you. But you are.”

  The question took me aback. Was I going soft? Or perhaps this trip was rekindling gentler emotions that I hadn’t felt since high school.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I have a sympathy for life, I guess, if that’s what ‘gentle’ means. Maybe it comes with age. But you’re a softy too it would seem. No trout for supper?”

  “Think again, pal.” He reached down into the grass and pulled up a stringer full of trout, stocky little ten inchers. “I’m not averse to killing a few fish now and then for a special occasion. I just don’t want to kill all of them. Found these guys down at the tail of the pool while you were battling Count Dracula and they were too good to pass up. Just tiddlers, yes, but they’ll taste mighty sweet from the frying pan.”

  Yes, they did. And it was a special occasion, I now realized. This trip was changing both of us for the better, bringing me back into a world more real than arid, success-driven California, and weaning Ben from self-pity and the bottle.

  I stayed up late again that night, trying the capture the music of the spinner dance on my horn. I wasn’t fast enough to do it justice, but some nice sounds emerged anyway—quick up-and-down riffs punctuated with buggy orgasmic flights in the lower registers, followed by sad melodic passages as the spent females drifted away downstream. But this number needed a quartet at least to do it justice—a light, quick keyboard for the braided sound of the river, John Lewis in his prime would do; a guttural trumpet for the climaxes (Diz at his best); Max Roach to mix the tempo; with the Prez and his tenor sax for the Lady Ophelia songs. I imagined the soloes as I sketched them out—the mind’s ear connects straight to the tear ducts, and my eyes began to blur.

  After a while I put the horn aside and watched the river race past. Large mayflies were spinning in the moonlight just below the riffle, twice the size of the baetis we’d seen during daylight hours. One of them fluttered to the bank and lit on my hand. I recognized it at once—an old friend of my youth, the White-Gloved Howdy. This outsized ephemerid is technically a subspecies of Isonychia—I. Bicolor—but its happier name derives from its forelegs. They’re extra long for a mayfly and bonewhite toward the front end—what would correspond to the gloved hands and wrists of a Victorian gentleman caller.

  Then I heard a sound from the top of the pool. Ker-chung! A big fish on the take. It was my nemesis from the early afternoon—had to be. The trout was feeding in the exact same lie. The rise rings spread as if someone had dropped a depth charge. I grabbed my flybox and searched it for a howdy match. The only extralong fly I had was a Hex tie, a mahogany-bodied imago of Hexagenia limbata, the so-called Michigan caddis, with long hyaline wings tied flat. It was big enough, a long-shanked No. 8, so it’d be worth the effort.

  We’d been fishing 5X tippets to the baetis, with a breaking point of no more than two pounds. I’d need a sturdier length of terminal line than that, both to throw this fly accurately and to handle a really big trout if I could get one to take. Now I rummaged around in Ben’s tackle bag and found a spool of ten-pound-test monofilament. I clipped off the old tippet back to heavier line, barrel-knotted the new long tippet to it, taking special care to ensure that the turns were wrapped tight, and greased the whole length with floatant. In situations like this it’s unforgiveable to allow the leader to sink the fly.

  The big ’bow was feeding steadily now, in heavy, hollow, headlong splashes that echoed back to me from the far bank. Lesser trout were on the take too, all up and down the pool. No time for waders. I thought of waking Ben—he’d never forgive me if he missed this feeding frenzy—but that would take too long. These late-season falls of big mayfly spinners were over almost before they began. I slid down the near bank and crouched low as I angled my way across the slippery gravel. He was working in the shadow line of moonlight, close to the head of the pool. I squatted down, chest-deep in the current, and stripped line from the reel, enough—I hoped—to reach him with only one backcast.

  I threw.

  The fly blipped on the water, three feet ahead of him. I watched it swirl once, then drift down over him. He took it with the impact of a .375 H&H Magnum, a solid, no-nonsense hit that hooked him with its very velocity. He jumped high, shaking his head, gill plates rattling like a tarpon’s, then jumped again—three, four, five times. He bored off up through the rapids and line melted off my reel. I couldn’t turn him.

  I’d have to follow or he’d spool me in no time. As I scrambled up through the rushing water and slippery boulders of the whitewater, holding the rod high over my head, I heard a shout from the campsite. I glanced back. Ben was standing there in his skivvies, with Jake beside him, pumping his right arm up and down. “Go, go, go!” Maybe I shouted on the hookup and woke him, or maybe he’d been watching me all along. But I didn’t have time to ye
ll back. I was too busy keeping my footing and fighting the onrushing current.

  You’re too old for this, Doc . . .

  Somehow I made it up through the rapids though and into the slower water. The trout by now had taken me well into the backing. My knuckles were white on the corks, my hand cramping, I’d fallen twice, banged elbows to a high screeching tingle, and scuffed my shins on boulders. I’d lost one of my sneakers along the way. But unless the hook pulled out, I had him now.

  Jake came running up the shoreline with Ben behind him, carrying a long-handled landing net. Ten minutes later we scooped him into its meshes. His heaving sides gleamed silver in the moonlight. A tiny, well-shaped head, broad shoulders, and a tail that looked a handspan wide from top to bottom.

  “He’s two feet long if he’s an inch,” Ben said. “And look at the girth of him—he’s got to go eight pounds anyway, maybe closer to ten.”

  “Too much trout for us to eat before the meat goes bad,” I said. “Let’s try a little streamside CPR.”

  It took both of us to hold him upright into the current, kneedeep in the Firesteel, moving him gently back and forth until he righted himself. Blood was flowing down my shins, trailing off in black tendrils downstream. The trout tasted some of it on a back eddy, then sprang back to life. He rolled his eyes at us and zoomed away like an Exocet missile, into the darkness he’d sprung from.

  8

  SHIKAREE LODGE

  Islept like a log that night. Literally. Flat on my back. No tossing and turning for me. Even rolling over was a pain. My legs were not only stiff from all that upstream running but sore as hell from banging into rocks. I’d doused the abrasions with hydrogen peroxide, laved my shins with Neosporin, covered the worst scrapes with monster Band-Aids, then popped a couple of Percodans and a tetracycline. I still couldn’t sleep.

  “You’re gimpy, pal,” Ben said the next morning as I limped out of the tent. “‘Slowly he turned, step by step . . . ’ Maybe we ought to call it quits. There’s a takeout spot a few miles downriver.”

  “I’ll be all right,” I said. “My shins look like chopped liver and my muscles are a little stiff, but I took an antibiotic and a muscle relaxant. Half a mile of paddling and the kinks will work themselves out. They’ll record it in the medical annals as just another case of ‘Physician, heal thyself.’”

  “You’re the doctor. Anyway, we’ve got an easy day ahead of us. The fishing sucks for the next ten miles—mostly hatchery trout—so we can blow right through, dodging rafts and drift boats all the way. There’s a swank new resort down there by the takeout—Septuagesima Island, right across from Stony Creek—and they hammer the water for five miles either way.”

  “As in Septuagesima Sunday?”

  “Yeah, seventy days before Lent. I guess one of the early French explorers discovered it on that day. Duluth or one of those guys back in the sixteen hundreds. They must have had a chilly time of it, that time of year.” He poured me a cup of joe. “Those old voyageurs wouldn’t recognize the place now. Teeming with fat cats and their ladies, $500-a-day river guides, whole herds of exotic critters from the Himalayas and Siberia—Marco Polo sheep, musk oxen, argali, snow leopards, even Asiatic brown bears, if you’d care to take one home as a ‘trophy.’ They call it Shikaree Lodge. ‘Thugee’ would have been a better choice. They charge 20K for a Marco Polo. I did some carpentry work there in the mid-’80s when the lodge was just opening. You’ll never guess who built the place.”

  “I give up.”

  “Your old squeeze Cora Stoat. Her third husband was Lancelot Shrubb, a rabid big game hunter, a big bucks oil man from Texas in more ways than one. She built the lodge for him as a surprise, stocked it with critters suited to the climate, and presented it to him on their fifth wedding anniversary. He was surprised, all right. On his first day afield a Siberian tiger had him for lunch.”

  “Serves him right for messing with my Cora.”

  “Anyway, with the Big Bwana gone she turned it commercial. With a capital ‘C.’ You’ll know what I mean when we get there.”

  Indeed I did. A few miles downstream we saw the first evidence of Shikaree Lodge—an electrified game fence, twelve feet high and topped with razor wire, that was meant to keep the wildlife on Cora’s property. Signs warned hunters to keep out under threat of the direst penalties. The signs were better spelled than Curly’s similar warning of fifty years earlier.

  The fence crossed the Firesteel, barring our way, and disappeared deep into the woods of the west bank. There was a gate in the fence to allow river traffic through, and a guard shack on the east bank. A guard ambled out of it as we approached, a tall beefy guy in a rent-a-cop outfit. He carried a shotgun—a ten-gauge streetsweeper, by the look of it. He gestured us in to the shore.

  “Sorry, fellas,” he said as we pulled up, “but I gotta check you guys through—names, destination, time of entry, that kind of bullshit. There’s another gate at the far end to check you out.”

  “Is it legal to bar access to a public waterway?” I asked him.

  “Beats me,” he said “I only work here. But it’s the boss’s orders and I guess she’s cleared it with the DNR. We’ve got a lot of valuable wildlife on the premises, some of it endangered species, and she can’t afford to take no chances with poachers.”

  “She?”

  “Miz Cora,” he said absently, as if everyone in the world must know her. He was looking down into the canoe and had spotted the gun cases. He shook his head. “I’m afraid I’ll have to confiscate your firearms, gentlemen. And the dog, too. They’ll be returned to you when you leave the property.”

  “I’m afraid not,” I said. “The dog is perfectly well behaved, solid to wing and shot, and what’s more there’s a priceless weapon involved—a rare English double worth more than $100,000.”

  He looked at me with new respect. “Your gun won’t get hurt or ripped off, sir. We’re bonded. Insurance up the ass.”

  “Up yours, my good man,” I told him. I was getting hot. “No offense intended. Let me speak to your supervisor—no, better yet, let me speak to Cora herself. She’s an old friend of ours.”

  He popped a cell phone from his hip, flicked it open, and punched a number. “May I have your name, sir?”

  “Doctor Taggart . . . . No, tell her it’s Harry Taggart from the fall of 1950, along with Ben Slater. Tell her we’re the guys who sunk her daddy’s Gar Wood.”

  He turned his back and walked up toward the shack, talking so we couldn’t hear him. I caught a few words nonetheless. “ . . . couple of old farts down here . . . rich fuckers . . . wanna talk to the Queen Bee . . . ”

  He nodded, waited, then snapped to attention and talked some more. He nodded a few more times, deep bows of respect, disconnected, and walked back down to us.

  “She’ll be here in a few minutes,” he said. “Why don’t you guys come on up to the shack, have a cuppa coffee while you’re waiting? Bring the pooch too. I’ve got a Lab myself.”

  I looked at Ben. He shrugged—why not? We went.

  The coffee wasn’t half bad. Nor were the wildlife photos on the wall: A brown bear slapping salmon out of the Firesteel; a herd of yaks standing belly deep in a Wisconsin blizzard, circled up for protection with their horntips pointing outwards; a shaggy Asian argali sheep with a full curve and a half of horn, battling a pack of Russian wolves.

  “Tell me about sinking that speed boat,” the guard said with a wicked, complicitous grin. His name was Tony Mezzoni according to the tag on his chest, chief of what was euphemistically called the Grounds Crew. Ben gave him the rundown, with comic book sound effects. Tony laughed and hitched at his crotch, tears ran down his face.

  We were standing outside the shack now, waiting for Miz Stoat. A monarch butterfly flitted past, drifting upstream toward the south. Tony’s eyes lit up. Then the shotgun was at his shoulder—POW! Orange and black confetti fluttered on the breeze.

  “Don’t get a chance to shoot much on this job,” Tony apologized. Jake wen
t out and sniffed around, picked up a tattered wing, and dropped it at Ben’s feet. I noticed that there were ragged lanes slashed through the brush surrounding the shack, all at shoulder height. “I love wingshooting. A few ducks blow through now and then, spring and fall, and of course there’s always the robin migration. They taste damn good with pine nuts in a red wine sauce over pasta.”

  We heard the truck coming fast, bouncing down the two-track inside the fence. It was a Range Rover just like mine back in Palos Verdes, the same British racing green but filmed with dust instead of sea salt. It slewed to a halt in the dirt. Two women dressed in crisp, tailored safari clothes got out, both slim and well coiffed, and glinting with jewelry to boot. Cora from the driver’s side door, and from the other . . . the Wickedly Wonderful Wanda. They walked toward us, smiling.

  “Imagine!” Cora said. “Our knights in shining armor have returned, just in time to save us again.”

  “It’s more like grungy sweat suits,” Ben said, grinning. “But what do you want us to save you from this time?”

  “Boredom,” Wanda said. “And an elephant in musth.”

  Wanda and Cora were both widowed now. They had stayed in close touch since Bryn Mawr, getting together a few times each year for girl talk and shopping, in places like Paris, Milan, Palm Beach, and New York. Wanda had been married for fifteen years to a Philadelphia legal eagle, then divorced him when she caught him sleeping with a client’s wife. She soon signed up for another hitch—this time with a commodities broker from Chicago who’d died a year ago of heart disease (too many pork belly futures in his past?). Cora hadn’t remarried after Number Three’s encounter with the tiger.

  We learned all this on the drive to the main lodge, Cora at the wheel. She insisted that we stay the night there at least. Tony and the crew would bring up our gear, and dogs were always welcome at Shikaree. Up close the women showed their age, despite the most artful effects of more than one face lift apiece. The road wound through alternate woods and meadows, on some of which grazed mixed herds of wildlife—huge Indian sambhur fed beside tiny, tan, woolly-coated chiru gazelles from the plateaus of Tibet; English red deer as big as elk rubbed shoulders with bottle-nosed saiga from Mongolia. Alone on a grassy hillock stood a strange, brown, goatlike creature with horns like upright oil drilling spuds and a long black beard that blew back in wisps against a creamy white vest—a markhor, Cora explained, from the steppes of Uzbekistan. Wildlife from the former Soviet Union was a glut on the exotics market these days, dirt cheap except for the shipping costs.