The River Why

by David James Duncan

  I’ve been avoiding some things in my characterizations of the Coke and Doughnut Dairy kids. I have not, for instance, mentioned that they consisted of two boys, sixteen and fourteen, three girls, twelve, nine, and seven, and a littlest boy of five. Nor have I mentioned that they were hearty, stocky stock—noisy, happy, not particularly brilliant, but good-hearted and full of an old pioneer-style generosity and ingenuity. But most flagrant of my omissions is their names. I could exercise an author’s authority and claim (as is partially true) that names are superfluous to describing what one actually experiences as a six-headed hydra writhing and spewing in fits of abstruse gyrations and unfathomable jabber. But this isn’t the real reason I’ve avoided their names. The real reason is their names. Beginning with the eldest, the names are Kernie, Bernie, Darlene, Charlene, Marlene, and Ernie II, so it should be evident why, when Kernie dubbed Ernie II “Hemingway,” I eagerly clasped and clung to it.

  This monotonous, ominous, and homonyminous naming system of Ernie and Emma’s was not a euphony enjoyed without cost. Seldom did parent summon child by name and end up with the child summoned. Instead Marlene would show for Darlene, or Bernie for Kernie, always with the same old whine: “I thought you said____lene!” or “I thought you said____nie!” Emma came up with a cacaphonous but effective solution for herself when she took to calling them Kern Bern Dar Char Mar and Ern. But Ernie Senior understandably disliked these amputations, and more than likely realized from the start that the situation was, for a man of his distinctions, utterly hopeless. One of his distinctions was a remarkably rudimentary power of declamation: under good conditions he mumbled, as a rule he stumbled, when angry he grumbled. Add to this the distinction that he called his wife “Hunny,” the distinction that his dogs were named Cindy, Zindy, and Bindy, the further distinction that he drinks a six-pack of Burgie beer every evening after supper, and the final distinction that he is infected with Scrabble’s Disease—a malady wherein the victim gets an invisible Scrabble board and a can full of wooden letters jammed into his cerebrum somewhere between the Reason and the Tongue so that, when he thinks a coherent word and sends it winging mouthward, the wood letters hit the Scrabble board, clack, slip, rattle, flip, fornicate, inbreed, regroup, and the word shoots into the Great Outdoors, a mutant, full of surprises—and you get some remarkable results. It wasn’t so bad that Ernie called his kids “Burplie,” “Crundy,” “Flartly,” “Zernile,” “Mirkleak,” “Benzene,” “Jerkly,” and “Bourbon” (though it was a bit unfair that he hit the ceiling when they failed to ascertain which of them he intended with these epithets). No, what really unbalanced the Coke and Doughnut Equanimity were those times, usually after four or five of the six-pack, when he would address his beloved and hard-working wife, Emma, by such sloshtongued tags as “Hunky,” “Weenie,” “Hernia,” “Hurky,” and, alas, even “Burgie”!

  I guess the kids thought I was about the greatest neighbor in the world even before I took them fishing (maybe because I could say their names). After we went fishing it got worse—like when Charlene, Marlene, and Hemingway would crawl all over me hugging and kissing and pinching, and other fishermen ogling in the distance; Darlene left me alone, but boy did she make googoo eyes; and worst of all were Bernie and Kernie, who were aces on their high school wrestling team, and who were convinced that no show of affection was nearly so touching as wrestling, and who agreed that wrestling me was twice as fun as fishing and fifty times as easy, and who were right about the ease and wrong about the fun, and who were also ripe, disdained deodorant, and delighted in mashing my face into their armpits for the sheer Walt Whitmanesque celebration of it, and who roared extempore Songs of Their Selfs afterward, gloating over how much older and taller I was. And I was. And so is a decrepit heron older and taller than a pair of young pumas.

  Hemingway was the only egg of the half-dozen who looked likely to hatch into a fisherman; he was the first to master the requisite fundamentals, and his grim little factory-worker face lit up and opened wide when fish stories were being told. So I’d slipped him the best rod and reel of their shabby lot—a Green Stamps Zebco, better for throwing bass plugs or jigging for panfish than trying for bluebacks and steelhead; but the drag worked and it held a hundred yards of ten-pound Stren line. (I didn’t mess with extolling the virtues of light line to this crew: if they hooked a good fish it would be gunbutts and gravestones, Might versus Fight. They were a decidedly indelicate brood.)

  We quacked along to the big plunking pool at the bottom of their westernmost pasture, then I showed them how to shuck the shells from the crawdad tails I’d brought. Everyone managed to get a baited hook into some part of the river, however unlikely, then they began gossiping, snickering, shouting, shoving, and eating candy—which was what they’d come for. Except Hemingway. He sat apart, staring at his rod tip, wordless and vigilant, a humanoid osprey. After ten minutes and a hundred and twelve “When-are-we-gonna-catch-one” ’s Darlene landed a four-inch bullhead which occasioned another ten minutes of hysteria, since three of them fell in while hauling the leviathan to shore. Hemingway’s lip curled; he reeled in and moved quietly away to a good-looking pocket at the head of the hole, and this time he didn’t prop his rod, but held it, jaw clenched, eyes squinting, a dwarf clone of his namesake. He was beginning to give me the fishy feeling.

  The sun neared the horizon. The air cooled and calmed. On the far side a muskrat paddled by. A little mist started rising from the river way downstream and the light turned to red gold. Mergansers flew from right to left in military fours and sixes, speeding toward the mountains for the night. Herons flew from left to right, solitary, slow, coasting down to raid nocturnal mud flats on the bay. The day melted into buttery evening. Things grew beautiful. The kids felt the change and left off acting silly. Trout began to swirl in the pool. Kernie and Bernie sat close to each other and spoke in muted tones of the one subject solemn to them—football. The girls encircled me and waxed philosophical, plying me with questions: “What does trout mean?” “Why is water wet?” “Is it wet to a fish?” “Wouldn’t air be wet to a fish and water dry, since air drownds ’em?” “What is a fish, anyway?” “What’s water?” “Where did the first water come from?” “Where will the last water go?” They didn’t ask a question I could answer till Marlene wondered what time it was, and I couldn’t answer that without my watch. They finally wearied of my stupidity and Charlene asked politely just what I did know, and would I like to talk about that. So I did Titus dirty by telling them I knew a guy with weird clothes full of pockets who could answer any question they could ask. Or make them think he’d answered. Provided he had a smoke. And provided they didn’t mind not understanding the answers. Then Hemingway started screaming bloody murder.

  I thought a mud-dauber had stung him till the steelhead took a tail-walk and the kids let out a sixfold WOW the Russians must have heard on their trawlers, out past the twelve-mile limit. I ordered everyone but Hemingway to reel in fast and was amazed when, despite the clamor, they heard and obeyed. I raced down and checked Ernie II’s drag; it was set about right. I would have coached him, then, but when they finished reeling the others chucked their poles and closed in around us, jumping and whooping, so I walked up the bank, sat down, and watched. Hemingway was squeaking “GusGusGusGusGus!…” but he held his rod high and his family at bay, so I just hollered “It’s OK! You’re doin’ great, Hemingway! Keep reeling!” which he did, and kept doing no matter what the steelhead did, which wasn’t exactly scientific angling but which served to keep his hands off the line and drag and took up the slack when there was any. Meanwhile Kernie marshalled the mob and issued some peculiar commands: Marlene, Darlene, and Charlene he sent to the tail of the hole while he, Bernie, and the dogs ran to the head, then all of them waded into the river and set up the war-whoop and water-dance—a stratagem intended to confine the fish to the pool. There was nothing but open, shallow, gravelly water upstream and down—water designed by the rivergod to tire and land fish in—whereas the
pool was littered with ledges, boulders, and snags. But I spectated, saying nothing: they were six berserk beginners, and I trusted sextuple beginner’s luck far more than my ability to instill strategy during the heat of battle. Unfortunately Kernie’s plan worked: the steelhead started downstream, caught sight of the splashing milkmaids, wheeled and tore upstream, encountered the flailing mainstays of the high school wrestling squad and their dogs, turned back to the hole, dove for the bottom, twisted and sulked. I grew worried then, but still said nothing. Hemingway just kept cranking.

  After five minutes the fish wearied; I said, “Tighten your drag a half turn.” He did, and the fish neared shore; it would have been happy to slide into a cleverly concealed net, but five kids and three dogs greeted it in the shallows. It plunged away downward, desperate and thrashing. Then, watching Ernie II’s rod tip, I saw it had entered a sunken tree; the pulsing in the pole grew less and less vibrant then stopped altogether. Snagged. And in the deepest part of the hole.

  Hemingway realized what had happened and burst into tears. I went down to console him and might have succeeded if Kernie, Bernie, Darlene, Charlene, and Marlene hadn’t rushed to their poles and immediately cast, with unbelievable accuracy, into the very spot where the fish had hung up. Hemingway howled at this stroke and fumbled for his pocketknife—but I snatched it away before fratricide was committed. And soon the five usurpers were also snagged—just retribution, I thought… till a startling thing happened: six united lines tugging at one sunken tree generate a lot of pull. First haltingly, then steadily, the six kids began winching the snag shoreward.…

  My native intelligence flared up. I shouted, “Look sharp, Hemingway! Keep reeling everybody!,” then I emptied my pockets, grabbed the net, and dazzled them all by diving into the Tamanawis. I swam for the bottom. Maybe forty feet from shore and twelve feet down I saw a silvery flashing, but I grew short of breath; back at the surface I yelled “Keep reeling!” I treaded water and waited, then down I went again. The snag was now in maybe eight feet of water; approaching it from the back (so I wouldn’t be skewered if their hooks came loose) I felt my way along it as it crawled toward shore—and sure enough, tangled in the digits of one tree-leg was the exhausted steelhead. I netted it, pinched the net shut, snapped Hemingway’s line, and shot to the surface. The kids and dogs took one look at the loaded net and KERSPLASH! they were all in the river. Fortunately the ones who could swim had the presence of mind to help the ones who couldn’t. We scrambled ashore and the fish and I got hugged and kissed and pawed and licked till even Whitman might have hollered “Cool it!” Suffocated and nauseated, I told Kernie and Bernie that the fish needed to be put out of its misery, figuring that clubbing something to death would be right up their alley. It was so far up their alley that they started fighting over who should get first whack, so I found a priest myself, handed it to Hemingway, and he adroitly dispatched his prize then cradled and cuddled and cooed it like a babe in his arms.

  On the way home another fight started over whether Hemingway or I had actually caught the fish; I pointed out that it was their six-poled snag-hauling that raised the fish from the deeps to a place where I could capture it, so technically all of us caught it, but Hemingway caught it most because he hooked and tired it. But Ernie II shrugged off this exegesis, stated flat out that I was the greatest fisherman in the world, and said he’d knife anybody who said otherwise. I asked if he’d knife me if I said otherwise. He said he was sorry but yes he would. He was a hell of a Hemingway. But I said otherwise anyhow, partly because I’m not the greatest, but mainly because he’d forgotten that I had his knife.

  It isn’t every day a ten-pound summer steelhead dies at the hands of six kids and their tutor. It was a tale they could tell Ernie III one day. And it was a tale they soon spread all over the county, which tale made me famous, and put my cabin on the map.

  It wasn’t so bad, this fame. It was kids that came first—mostly boys Kernie and Bernie’s ages—wanting to see the hero of the tale. But when word got out that I didn’t bite despite my hair and beard, and when a few dads caught sight of my rods and flies, the numbers began to swell. Fisherman-pilgrims from up and down the coast began appearing in my driveway, looking mean because they were bashful, but carrying some dairy food, meat, vegetable, or other welcome-gift, wanting to browse and get acquainted, satisfied with a fishing tip or a sample fly; then a week or two later some would return to buy or swap for the rod or flies that caught their eye on the first visit. Satyavati painted a sign in Tintinnabulatious colors which I hung from the cedar at the head of the driveway. It said,

  HANDMADE FLIES & RODS FOR SALE

  fishing tips free

  some true

  maybe

  I started tying more flies, building more rods, and organized a cabin corner into a poor-man’s tackle shop. Portlanders started stopping by, and a few Californians, and when word spread among guides and highbrows that I was Henning Hale-Orviston’s son the numbers grew some more. By winter steelhead season I was filling my belly with swapped-for food, meeting my bills with profits, salting away a few bucks, and I had half a hundred people I could call friends. It was a kind of notoriety a fisherman can live with… until one day it threatened to become much more.

  2

  Dutch

  I refuse to rise

  To the tempting fly

  Of the message I was sent

  Feathered with bright poetry.

  I am too wise a fish

  To gobble that angler’s bait;

  These are troubled waters,

  But I can avoid being caught.

  —Njal’s Saga

  There is a thing my father and his colleagues do which has always baffled me: whenever they find a good place to fish they return as soon as can be with a truckload of friends, take a hundred pictures, concoct descriptions intended to render it as alluring as possible, tell exactly how to fish it, and sell this veritable tourist brochure to the biggest publication they can find. Looking at the evidence we can only conclude that they seek the prompt annihilation of their fishing grounds. This makes a kind of metaphysical sense: the metaphysicians, Titus tells me, say that Time is not linear but cyclical, and the unprecedented amount of chaos in our day and age is due to the fact that we are approaching the end not just of a Cycle of Time, but of a Cycle of Cycles. Now the fag-ends of Cycles have always meant Bad Times, but compared to the end of a Cycle of Cycles they’re almost mellow: some day soon, say the metaphysicians, so much cosmic havoc and hockey will hit the fan that the whole damned fan will short-circuit, Creation will go bideep, and Heaven will be forced to play the greatest Ace ever held in the hole to keep us all from biting the dust, which Ace will usher in the New Age. In the meantime, say the metaphysicians, if there’s a Name of God that’s dear to you, keep it on your lips and you’ll be all right. Which is why what H2O and his colleagues do makes metaphysical sense: by ruining the fishing wherever they go, they speed us on toward the New Age; and by saying “Jesus Christ! What happened to the fishing?” they keep a Name of God on their lips. My bafflement stems from the fact that H2O and his colleagues are adamant nonmetaphysicians and therefore neither perceive nor take pleasure in the esoteric wisdom of their actions. On the contrary, after spilling the beans in spades they return to the fishing hole, find a swarm of anglers, take pictures, write how rotten the fishing has become, concoct descriptions intended to make the place sound like a garbage-heap, and get crocked when no publisher will touch this package with a ten-foot flypole.

  At the opposite extreme to this approach is (who else?) Ma and her backwoods buddies—who’d be hanged before they’d reveal the unpublicized and unfished-for anadromous runs they chase up local rivers. But the backwoods boys are schizoid, too, because they kill everything in sight till the fishing goes to pot, then they start cursing too. They curse the northward migration of retired Californians, the Fish Commission, the Army Corps of Engineers, the foreign fleets, and every other fisherman they see; they curse ott
ers, mergansers, belted kingfishers, ospreys, eagles, raccoons; they curse Modern Times, logging companies, road builders, farmers who irrigate, factories that pollute (and for money they log, build roads, farm, and work in factories); they guzzle their booze, chew their chaws, look sadly at the river and say “They just don’t make ’em like they used ta.” To which Ma says “But then they never did.” And they nod, hangdog and brokenhearted.

  It’s a sorry fix for highbrow and lowbrow alike, and I’ve cursed and drunk many a time, in both camps. But the longer I waged war on the Wolf Clansman inside me, the more obvious the answers became: if you want a river full of fish, it won’t help to advertise; it won’t help to kill everything you catch; it won’t help to work for a fish-killing industry; it won’t help to curse and drink and lament. So I cut down on my killing; I tied more flies on barbless hooks; I built more fly- and fewer bait-rods; I told tales more than I gave tips; and I found myself loving rivers and fish and fishing more than ever before.

  I’d learned, from Ma and the backwoods boys, of an unpublicized run of bluebacks on a stream not far from the Tamanawis; the same stream has a mediocre run of silvers that gets heavy pressure, but because of the salmon anglers’ coarse gear and discommodious tactics the simultaneous superb run of sea-runs moves upstream almost unscathed. It was on this creek (let’s call it Shat Creek, in hopes that no one’ll want to find it) that I encountered the more dangerous species of Notoriety: