by Gary D. Svee
Damn! Look at that!
The train had been hugging a narrow bridge of land between the river and the hills on the north edge of the valley. Farther west, the river ran along the valley’s south side, but just at the east hill, it swung north to crash against the hill and the railway.
Low and fast the river ran, dodging a rock here and there. It was an assault team storming an enemy stronghold.
But Thompson’s attention was focused on eddies swirling along the bank. Had to be trout in those eddies, trout big enough to resist the rush of the river. They would be lying on the edges of the current, leaving it to the river to serve them oxygen for their gills and food for their gullets.
Thompson could feel their fierce pull on his fishing line in their dance with death. Damn, what a river this was!
The sheriff scooted back in his seat, willing his body to fit. Might as well be trapped in a cave as stuck in this seat. The sheriff climbed stiff-legged from the seat, hunching his head to his shoulders to avoid the coach’s low ceiling. In the aisle, he leaned forward, bracing himself against the backs of two empty seats, leaning down so he could see out of the train’s windows. The valley opened up here, cottonwoods following the course of the river to the south and ponderosa pine, sage, yucca, and juniper dotting the hills to the north. Directly north of town, a sandstone-rimmed plateau stood vigil.
Thompson leaned down to see the sandstone quarry, but it was too far west, hidden behind the confines of this damn milk train.
What the hell? A boy, five or six, was tapping Thompson’s leg as though it were a door he wanted to open. The boy’s mother was sitting in the back of the car, pretending the child was a stranger to her.
Johnson stepped aside. “Sorry, son. Didn’t mean to block your way.”
But the boy didn’t move. He cricked his head back to look up at the sheriff, one brown eye squinted shut as he studied the lawman.
“You a giant?” the boy asked.
Thompson grinned. “I suppose you might say that, compared to some, anyway.”
“Like Goliath?”
“I suppose.”
The boy nodded,
“How long will it be before we get there?”
“To Eagles Nest?”
“Yeah.”
“Just a few minutes.”
The boy nodded, his mind obviously on greater matters. He walked back to his mother then, and she smiled feebly at the sheriff. He smiled back. Cute kid and smart as a button.
The train was slowing now, coming into the station. Drinkwalter was standing there with his new deputy. Hell, he wasn’t a deputy, nothing more than a kid. Frank had picked up another stray. He collected people like Mrs. Codgins collected stray cats.
Nice-looking kid, but a little stiff. That wouldn’t do, not if the kid wanted to be a sorry son of a bitch.
The train shuddered to a stop, and Thompson leaned down to collect his fishing rod and gear. Drinkwalter best have some of Tilly’s sandwiches. He’d best have the three sandwiches that Yellowstone County Sheriff James Thompson ordered or there would be hell to pay, one sorry son of a bitch to another. Thompson grinned and shuffled for the door.
Mac McPherson stood on the depot’s wooden plank dock, waiting for the Yellowstone County Sheriff. The train was late. The train was always late, Sheriff Drinkwalter said, but Drinkwalter didn’t seem to be concerned about it. He stood, leaning on one hip, the way horses do sometimes. It didn’t seem to bother him that they had been standing motionless for nearly half an hour. Mac envied him that. Standing still was an anathema to him. He had to be doing something. When he mentioned that to the sheriff, Drinkwalter said they were doing something, waiting for the train.
Mac was excited about the fishing trip, but a little nervous, too. He had fished the Yellowstone before with a makeshift rod he cut from a willow patch in early spring, peeling the bark from it. It was suspended from nails along a rafter in the cabin now, drying and seasoning. Light, it was, and smooth to the touch, but growing brittle with age.
At its best, the willow was nothing like Deak’s old rod. Mac had been studying the rod since the sheriff picked him up that morning. Split bamboo, the sheriff called it. It trembled in his hands, eager to go fishing.
Mac’s eyes swept over his new possessions. A wicker fishing basket with a leather strap lay in the wagon box against his new rod’s reel. Inside the basket was a book of hand-tied flies and leader and hooks. When the sheriff gave the outfit to Mac, he said that they would fish with hoppers this day so that Mac could learn to read the water, so he would be less likely to miss a strike when it came. Another day he would teach Mac how to cast a dry fly with a split bamboo rod, the sheriff said in a voice that suggested he was a wizard about to pass along a magical potion to his apprentice.
Mac was intrigued with that, but apprehensive, too. What could someone learn from watching someone else fish? Sounded like another damn test.
The train screeched to a stop, wheezing steam as though it were catching its breath from the long run from Billings. The conductor stepped down from the coach, looking up and down the track.
He leaned down, then, and placed a step on the depot platform. First from the train was a boy of five or six. He jumped to the platform, ignoring the step. Next came the boy’s mother. She seemed tired, nervously tired, as though the early hour and her son’s energy had worn her down to nerve and muscle.
And finally Sheriff James Thompson stepped down from the train. The man was huge, almost eye-to-eye with the conductor standing on the train step. The sheriff was wearing a flannel shirt, cotton pants, boots, and a hat. He carried a case that Mac knew must hold the sheriff’s fishing rod, and a wicker basket much like the one the sheriff had given him that morning. The sheriff hitched up his pants and strode over to Mac and Drinkwalter. Strode was the only word for the sheriffs determined gait, Mac decided. No other word would fit.
Thompson grinned as he reached out to envelop Drinkwalter’s fist in his own. “Good to see you, Frank. Been a while.”
“It has indeed.”
“Haven’t changed much.”
“Just for the better. Everyone tells me I’ve changed for the better.”
Thompson cocked his head. “Well, I don’t know if I’d go that far, but…” Whack! A rock bounced off the sheriff’s forehead and fell, skittering off the platform. The sheriff’s eyes turned, and Mac could see a storm cloud centering on the knot glowing red and white on the sheriff’s forehead.
The little boy was bent over near the depot, apparently looking for another rock. He found one and whiz, the stone zipped past the sheriff’s head. Thompson stood for a moment and then crooked his finger. The boy skipped over to face his nemesis.
“Son,” the sheriff said, his voice rumbling like a prairie thunderstorm. “Why did you chuck that rock at me?”
The boy offered his hand for the sheriff to shake. Thompson looked at the boy as though he had been offered a rattlesnake, but he reached out to take the boy’s hand between his thumb and forefinger.
“Name’s David,” the boy said.
“It’s nice that you’re David, but why in the … why’d you throw that rock at me?”
“Didn’t have a sling.”
Thompson’s eyes squeezed shut. “From the train,” he said. “On the train you asked if I was Goliath.”
The boy nodded, “And I’m David.”
“So you set about to slew me with a rock?”
“Yeah. Did I do it?”
“Slew me?”
“Yeah.”
“No.”
“Would have if I’d had a sling. The other David had a sling.”
The boy’s mother stepped up. “Is there something wrong?”
Thompson started to shake his head, but the growing knot on his forehead restricted the movement. “No ma’am. The boy was just giving me a Bible lesson.”
“Ma says you should do whatever the Bible says.”
Sheriff Thompson’s mouth started to open, but
then his teeth audibly ground shut. His words came softly. “Always good to know the Bible,” he whispered.
“You sure he hasn’t caused you any trouble.”
“No trouble.”
“Tried to slew him, Ma.”
“You what?”
“Tried to slew him.”
“David Patrick Monahan, I swear, sometimes you don’t make any sense at all.”
“But I do what the Bible says.”
“Yes, you do what the Bible says.”
The two started to bustle off. The boy turned to shout: “Bye, Goliath.”
The mother took three steps, jolting to a stop. She turned to look at the growing knot on Sheriff Thompson’s forehead. “You tried to slew him?”
“Yeah, Ma.”
The mother reached out and grabbed the boy by the ear, dragging him wailing toward her luggage. “David Patrick Monahan, when your father comes home from work, you are going to learn another lesson from the Bible: Spare the rod and spoil the child.”
Only the boy’s retreating wail remained as the two turned the corner of the depot and disappeared.
Sheriff Thompson reached up to explore the knot on his forehead with tentative fingers. “Hell of a town you have here, Frank.”
“We’re a Bible-believing bunch.”
“You”—Thompson stared squinty-eyed at Mac—“your name isn’t David, is it?”
“Nope. Your name isn’t Goliath, is it?”
A smile twitched at the corners of the sheriff’s mouth. He held out his hand. “James Thompson. Some call me Big Jim.”
“Mac McPherson. Some call me one sorry son of a bitch.”
Thompson grinned, turning toward Drinkwalter. “He’ll do.”
Drinkwalter was staring at the corner where the Monahans had disappeared.
“You know that kid’s got a helluva arm on him for his age. We might have a major league pitcher on our hands, here.”
“Nah,” Thompson said. “He’ll never live that long. Don’t suppose you brought a horse.”
“Thompson, there isn’t a horse in Montana big enough to carry you, but I did bring a wagon.”
“Spring wagon. I don’t like to be jostled about. I was jostled a lot on that milk run, and I don’t want to be jostled anymore. Spring wagon?”
“Yeah.”
“Tilly’s sandwiches?”
“Beef.”
“Three for me?”
“Nope. Got you six. You always ask for three, but you always eat six, and I don’t get any.”
“Six?” Thompson grinned. “Drinkwalter, you are one sorry son of a bitch.”
One of Thompson’s eyes squeezed almost shut. “Get bait?”
“Fresh this morning.”
“Beer?”
“Sitting on ice in the wagon.”
“Then what the hell are we waiting for?”
“For you, Big Jim.”
“You mocking me?”
“Yeah.”
“Just so I know.”
The three stepped toward the waiting wagon. “You know, as long as you got six of Tilly’s sandwiches for me, I might as well have one now. No sense saving them all for lunch.”
Drinkwalter nudged Mac. “Grab your sandwich and run for your life. It always starts out like this.”
“Most of the time you cast blind. You don’t know if there’s a fish out there or not. So you drop that hopper in a place where fish are likely to be. Now, later in the day, they’ll start rising, eating hatches on the surface. You’ll know where they are then. Then it’s the question of getting the right fly to them in the right way.”
Sheriff Frank Drinkwalter and Mac McPherson were edging toward the river through a bank of willows that threatened to tangle their lines and steal their rods. “We’ll come into the river along the bottom of the hole. It’s always best to fish upstream when you can. A trout’s attention is always fixed on what’s ahead and above, so you come up below and behind him. You come downstream, and he’ll see you or your shadow. That will spook him, at least spook him enough not to take your fly or your hopper if it comes past him in the leastways wrong.”
The sheriff stopped, caught for a moment in the rustle of the willows, leaves dappling his face in light and shadow. “There’s poetry in fishing, Mac, pure poetry. I can’t read Shelley or Keats, but I can read poetry in a fly line carving soft loops into the big sky. I see a poem flashing from a rainbow’s side as it dances across the water. You understand that, Mac?”
Mac shook his head.
“Well, you will if I’ve got anything to say about it. Anyhow, we’ll come in on the bottom of this hole. Not much space between the willows and the water, so we won’t be making any long casts, just flipping the hoppers along the bank. Let them drift down and watch for a bite. Don’t jerk too fast, Mac. Just set the hook, and bring them in. I’ll walk up and fish the top of the hole. Along the way I’ll likely scare some hoppers into the water, ring the dinner bell for some of these bull trout.”
“No bull trout here. Never heard of anyone taking a bull trout from this river.”
“Bull trout, rainbows, and lochs big and mean enough to call a hole their own.”
“Oh.”
“You get into a big one and need some help, you let out a shout, and I’ll come running.”
“Isn’t Mr. Thompson going to fish this hole?”
“Well…” Drinkwalter stared at the top of the hills on the south side of the river. “Well, I mentioned that it was getting along toward noon. Told him it wouldn’t be long until we could have some of Tilly’s sandwiches and a little beer.”
Mac cocked his head and looked at the sheriff. Drinkwalter rubbed his chin. “You see, Mac, Thompson can’t do anything else when his mind is on Tilly’s sandwiches. He had to go back to the wagon and have one. Might be, he’ll have a beer, too. So we’ll have this hole to ourselves.”
Mac’s forehead curled into a question mark. “You don’t want him to fish?”
“Mac, if Thompson catches the biggest fish, he will be one impossible son of a bitch. I’ve seen some humongous trout in here, Mac. If he caught one of those, and we didn’t, well…”
“You really are one sorry son of a bitch, aren’t you?”
“I’m not the guilty one here. He didn’t have to go back to the wagon for the sandwiches and beer. That was his decision. Besides, he isn’t above pulling a fast one if he can. One time he sent me back to town. Said one of my deputies had dropped by to tell me there was a letter from Catherine marked ‘urgent.’ I ran all the way back to town. There wasn’t any letter. Deputy hadn’t set foot out of the office. By the time I got back to the river, Thompson had eaten all the sandwiches, drunk all the beer, and caught two rainbow that would make tears come to the eyes of a normal man. He’s one sorry son of a bitch.”
“Now, you won’t say anything about this, will you?”
“One sorry son of a bitch to another?”
Drinkwalter grinned. “One sorry son of a bitch to another.”
Mac grinned, too. “Let’s get some bull trout out of this hole before Thompson figures out what’s going on.”
“Mac, we could clean this whole river of trout before Thompson figures out what’s going on—so long as we had enough of Tilly’s sandwiches to keep him busy.”
“Well,” Mac said, “you take the high road and I’ll take the low road, and we’ll get the big trout. He might be eating Tilly’s sandwiches now, but when he sees the fish we’ve caught, he’ll be eating crow.”
Drinkwalter chuckled. “You’ll do, Mac. You’ll do.”
The sheriff drifted off through the willows, protecting his face and his rod from their clinging grasp, and Mac was left beside the river. Frank Drinkwalter was one sorry son of a bitch, and Mac McPherson was proud to call him friend.
Mac stood in the shadows of the willows, only his fishing rod giving any indication where he was. He had been working his way up the bank just as Drinkwalter had said he should, lobbing a hopper ahead of h
im, watching it float down toward him, bobbing and weaving in the eddies along the bank. More than once, trout had risen to the bait, but Mac was always a little too slow or a little too fast. He had put five new hoppers on during the trip up the bank, replacing the ones trout had taken.
Mac had been casting blind, tossing the hoppers to places where fish should be, but this was different, breathtakingly different. Something huge was feeding under the bank at his feet.
Mac had stepped back into the cover of the willows when he first saw the movement. He jerked the tattered remnants of one hopper off the hook and eased open the top of a Bull Durham sack the sheriff had given him. A hopper made his bid for freedom, a yellow-bellied hopper of the kind that Drinkwalter said trout liked best.
The sheriff had talked about the role that fate played in fishing. Was it fate that this particular hopper poked his head out of the sack to take the hook? Was that huge trout waiting for this specific hopper to come down the river, feebly kicking its way toward shore?
One cast: He would only get one cast. It had to come at just the right time, when the fish’s attention was focused at just the point of the river where the hopper was carried by the current. Casting upstream could leave coils of fish-frightening line on the water. Mac would have to mend the line, keep the coils at his feet and not on the river. But the line couldn’t be too tight. Then the hopper’s drift would be unnatural, and he would spook away from the bait, probably leave the hole altogether.
Mac almost wished that he hadn’t seen the fish. He might have caught it anyway, working along the bank as he was. He might have caught it unconsciously, without all the tension he was feeling now. Then again, he might have frightened the fish to deeper water without ever having seen it. That would have been all right, too. You can’t feel bad about not catching a fish that you haven’t seen. He must have spooked a dozen fish on his walk up the river.
But he knew that this fish was lying under the bank. He knew this fish was huge, and Mac knew he was frightened to death that he would mess this up, be left with nothing more than a fish story to be told around campfires.
