When he tells the story to Hester, Caldwell avoids speaking of the hour he spent waiting for Darla Featherstone. His wife and son had left the house to collect his mother and would meet him at the lottery office, where an oversized cheque would be issued and photographs taken. Caldwell went upstairs to the bedroom and threw himself down on the mattress, practising for the life of leisure that was to be his. He stretched out, rubbed his stomach contentedly, and noticed, almost by accident, that he had an erection and wondered idly what, if anything, he should do about it. Darla Featherstone had said that it might be a little while before she arrived, so Caldwell supposed he had at least five or ten minutes to spare. He reminded himself that he and Jaime would probably be making love later that evening (Jaime’s favoured response to good news), but he was on the fence as to whether or not masturbation would help or hinder his evening’s performance. Mind you, toying with his cock had kind of exacerbated the situation; he was now possessed of what Jaime called, with affection, a “snarler.”
So he began to pull on it, and in his mind’s eye he saw (not that he’d summoned her, more that she’d walked in of her own accord) Darla Featherstone. She was dancing as though she were a girl at Mystery’s. She wore a sequined two-piece bikini, but she pulled it off almost immediately. In Caldwell’s mind, Darla Featherstone turned around to do this. Her buttocks were flawless, and then, as she unhooked the top, she turned back and Caldwell could see her breasts, which, since there is no gravity in dreams, pointed heavenward.
Caldwell rushed to shove his wife Jaime onto that imaginary stage, because he felt guilty about whacking off to the phantom of Darla Featherstone, guilty that he’d dreamt Darla’s body with the naive enthusiasm of his hormone-riddled students. He knew that her body could never be so perfect; in real life Darla would be pocked and puckered like everyone else. Jaime seemed to be making this point; she stood beside Darla and gave her a series of withering glances. Jaime’s body was claimed by earthly forces. What had been nothing but muscle when she was twenty-one and provincial intercollegiate individual medley champ was now partly tallow. Still, he loved his wife’s body. Caldwell did, and he pulled on his cock with all the enthusiasm he could muster. But when Caldwell came, Darla Featherstone was the only woman he saw.
He opened his eyes. He could see the world outside through the bedroom window. Ice pellets crackled against the glass, which was framed with rime. That probably explains, he thought, what’s keeping the people from the television station …
There came a knock on the door and Caldwell threw himself off the bed, and was startled to find none of the things he expected—no nightstands, no brightly burnished bureau adorned with the three hockey trophies that Jaime grudgingly, laughingly, allowed him to keep in their bedroom. Instead, Caldwell saw two beds and an old washbasin, dimly lit by a weakly cracking dawn. Outside the sliding glass door stood Beverly, her arms wrapped around herself as protection against the night’s chill. Caldwell slid the door open hesitantly.
“Hey,” said Beverly, “did we come here to fish or to fool around?”
MAYWELL’S BOAT was long and white, with a platform erected over the large outboard motor. There was no place for them to sit except beside Maywell on a small bench behind the steering console. The rest of the boat was taken up by fishing rods, rope and a long, thick pole carved at the top into a nasty point.
They travelled fast and they travelled far, that’s how it seemed to Beverly. When she fished with her grandfather, the journey to the fishing spot was always undertaken at a much slower pace. Granddad would stop at the marina to gas up, then disappear into the building and leave Beverly sitting in the boat while a teenaged boy filled up the orange tank. Her grandfather would emerge perhaps half an hour later, a little wobbly on his legs, filled with optimism concerning the day’s catch. He had almost always forgotten to purchase worms, which was his avowed purpose in entering the marina proper. He would light a cigarette and send Beverly back in.
Maywell piloted his boat in grim silence, again something Beverly’s grandfather never did. Grandfather would sing, tell filthy jokes, reminisce about his childhood. Beverly would experience this all again, years later, when she joined him in the land of the damned, sitting in the Dominion Tap Room day after day after grey day. She was sometimes startled out of her stupor to realize that she knew the ending of a story. What was startling was the smallness of her grandfather’s life, the fact that he had but a handful of old, musty stories and no prospect of acquiring new ones.
Caldwell was remembering journeys to fishing grounds too, trips with Andy sitting in the bow, turned around to face the open water. Andy always wore a ridiculous hat, something that a Foreign Legionnaire might don, with a long visor and a hank of material dangling down in the back to guard his neck from sunburn. He wore the hat in emulation of his “hero,” at least his fishing hero, who through the media of an eponymous magazine and a weekly television show had managed to fill the boy’s head with odd and complex ideas. Accordingly, Andy identified Lake Simcoe as “mesotrophic” and wanted to fish places where no fish had ever been caught. Caldwell pointed out that he had long lived beside the lake, learned its secrets from various uncles and friends, but Andy would not be swayed. He would identify some aspect of the lakeside—a tiny weed-choked bay—and demand that they put in. Caldwell would argue that there were no fish in there, never had been, and fishlessness might break his son’s heart. Actually, truth be told, Andy would enjoy the fishing whether he caught anything or not, allegiance to his heroes being more important to him than results. It was Caldwell’s heart that would sustain damage, back in the days when it was whole, his son’s slightest aches ripping through his soul second-hand.
An ugly ridge of red, porous rock shot out of the water; behind it lay a mangrove swamp. Maywell pulled back on the throttle, making the boat whoa abruptly. As the boat kicked back and forth, Maywell pushed at a toggle. There was a light whirring noise, which Caldwell identified as the automatic tilt. Then Maywell bolted forward, picking up the long pole. When he returned, he stepped over Beverly and nimbly took his position atop the platform. He poled gently into the mangroves, peering into the shallow water.
“Ever fished for bone before?” he demanded.
“Yep,” said Caldwell.
“Nope,” said Beverly.
“The fish come into the flats to feed. They come in with the tide, which we’re on right now, so we should be able to find us some. They’re hard to see. If they’re moving toward us, you might see a shadow move. If they’re lying aslant, you’ll see nothing. They’re like a mirror from the side, invisible.”
“Well,” marvelled Beverly, “isn’t that clever of them?”
Maywell looked down from his platform, his face set. “No, it isn’t clever of them, ma’am,” he answered lowly. “That’s just nature.”
“Nature is clever.”
“Nature is neither clever nor dull, ma’am,” said Maywell. “Nature is simply what is.”
Now Beverly turned to Caldwell. “What’s your opinion?”
“Oh, nature is clever enough,” said Caldwell, taking up the fishing rod. “Just not as clever as it thinks it is.” He stepped up onto the bow, his legs bent slightly for balance. He pulled the line out of the reel in a few quick, short motions, dumping it in coils near his feet. Caldwell swung around briefly, checking for clearance on his back cast, picked up the flyline and laid it out in front of the boat. As he stripped back in, he spoke to Maywell without looking at him. “Just tell me what to do, Cap’n.”
Maywell propelled the boat noiselessly forward with the long pole. He turned his head mechanically back and forth, searching, then snapped almost to attention. “Bonefish, sir.”
Caldwell turned slightly to his right. The rubber on the sole of his shoe gave off a small squeak as it pivoted on the whitewashed wood.
“No, they’re gone now,” intoned Maywell. “You’ve spooked them.”
“What?” demanded Caldwell in a hoarse whisp
er.
“You’ve got to be quiet, sir,” said Maywell. “They’re skittish creatures.”
Caldwell had been fishing with guides before, he knew that Maywell’s deferential “sir” really substituted for something more disdainful.
“It seems to me that all creatures are skittish,” announced Beverly.
“Quite so, ma’am.” Maywell put the pole in the crook of his arm, fumbled with a matchbook, lit up yet another cigarette. “They tend to be. Bonefish, sir.”
Caldwell tensed and turned himself, keeping his treacherous feet planted firmly atop the wood. “Where?” he whispered.
“Two o’clock. Fifty feet away, sir.”
Caldwell squinted through dark lenses and saw nothing.
“They’re gone, sir. You waited too long.”
“There’s a bonefish, Mr. Caldwell,” said Beverly.
Caldwell squinted. “Where?”
“Three, um,” she said, considering accuracy, “twenty.”
This time Caldwell turned and saw the shadows.
“There’s three of them, sir,” announced Maywell.
Caldwell picked up the line and threw it back and forth a few times.
“No, sir, they’re gone. Too much false-casting.”
Caldwell felt a little bubble of anger rise up within him, a bubble that popped and dissipated long before it hit the surface. He stepped down from the casting platform and held out the rod to Beverly. “You give it a try.”
She accepted the rod and almost vaulted up to the bow. She peeled line from the reel, laying it neatly beside her, and then she assumed a slight crouch, peering into the world.
“Have you ever fly-fished before, ma’am?” asked Maywell quietly.
“I have not.”
“It’s not as simple as it looks,” said Maywell.
“Nothing is.” She stiffened. “Bonefish, sir.”
“Where?” asked Maywell.
“Three forty-seven.” Beverly lifted the rod suddenly, throwing the line into the back of the boat. The line snaked along the bottom—Caldwell had to step to one side to allow it passage—and then was in the air. Beverly snapped the line back and forth, rushing her back cast and making a big belly, but she managed a fairly tidy lay-down. The fly began to sink, and even as Maywell said, “Oh, yes, ma’am, I see them …” the line went taut. Then the air was filled with a high-pitched whir as the fish flew toward the edge of the world.
“Keep your rod-tip up, ma’am.”
“My rod-tip is up.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Her grandfather used to say that—“Keep your rod-tip up.” Late in the fishing day, around four-thirty or five o’clock, it was one of the few sentences he could manage. By that time he would have consumed a bottle of rye, and be crumpled in the bottom of the boat, his head up on one thwart, his feet crossed over one another. He would estimate his day’s catch as inadequate. He believed, quite wrongly, that he was considered the finest perch fisherman in Orillia. He’d won the annual derby one year, fluking across some anomalous holding area, and although decades had passed, he believed he was being judged against that mark each time he went angling. So he would make Beverly fish with two rods, one on either side of the boat, and when she hooked a fish, he would growl, “Keep your rod-tip up.”
Maywell repeated, “Keep your rod-tip up,” and Beverly succumbed to a temptation she’d felt first at nine or ten years of age. She tossed the fishing rod into the water and yelled, “Run!” She chuckled, because, after all, it was fairly humorous to tell a fish to run, but then she quieted because she’d just done something very odd, something that would keep her visiting the professionals.
The men in the boat didn’t seem to think she was insane, exactly. Caldwell only laughed, not very loudly but deeply, giving out a bark that buckled his body for a brief moment. Maywell’s reaction was much more emphatic. He leapt down from the poling platform into the water. While doing this, he managed to drop his pole into the boat, and then, picking his legs up high, he ran after the rod that was being dragged away by the hooked fish. He did all this without comment, without expression, as though this was something fishing guides had to do regularly—retrieve rods thrown into the water by women who were still angry with their alcoholic grandfathers.
Maywell dove forward and wrapped his hand around the corked butt of the fly rod, and managed to get himself into a kneeling position, lifting the rod out of the water and leaning back, trying to find tension, a connection to the fish. But the top half of the fly rod had worked itself out of the ferrule, and the pole collapsed. Maywell grabbed the line above the joint, twisting his wrist so that he had it firmly, and then struggled to stand upright. He reached forward and took the line from beyond the tip, then brought his other hand forward to join it, abandoning the useless fly rod altogether. He had hold of the running line, and he circled his hands like a prizefighter working the speed bag, gathering monofilament, and in a few moments he grunted and his arms jerked and he was tight to the fish.
The bonefish splashed the surface about a hundred yards away. Maywell spit out his cigarette and began to pull. He raised his arms to his chest and then furiously cocked and circled them, taking up line. The skein around his fingers got tighter and tighter; red began to leak out from around it, blood from where the monofilament had worked itself into Maywell’s leathery skin.
“Let it go,” advised Caldwell.
“I think not, sir,” muttered Maywell.
As she watched Maywell—with undeniable admiration—Beverly noted that shadows moved across his body, that his figure would be darkened and then suddenly illuminated. She looked up at the sky and saw that it was studded with little clouds, that these clouds moved quickly overhead. She looked at the mangroves, saw how the breeze was ruffling them.
“The wind has changed,” Beverly said, and although she spoke very quietly, Maywell heard. For a moment he forgot his fight, lifted his face to the sun and noted the movement of clouds. But then the fish splashed, perhaps fifty feet away, turned and started another run, and Maywell’s hands were yanked away from him, and the effort of pulling the line back squeezed drops of blood that darkened the water around his legs.
Maywell placed the flyline between his teeth and shook the monofilament from his hands. He began to gather in the thicker stuff. Soon the bonefish splashed twenty feet away. Maywell marched sideways, pulling the fish with him, up onto a small sandbar. He yanked and tugged, pulled and hoisted, and then he quickly ran his left hand into the water. He missed on his first attempt, but on the second he managed to take hold of the creature’s belly. He lifted the bonefish up into the air; the silver side reflected so much sun that the creature seemed to be made out of light. Maywell gently worked the fly out of the fish’s maw.
“Please let it go,” said Beverly. “I don’t want to eat it.” Maywell was struggling to regain his breath, no easy feat given all the cigarettes he smoked. He began to cough, and it was many long moments before he could speak a sentence. “One doesn’t eat bonefish, ma’am.” Maywell lowered the fish back into the water and let it go. Then he splashed over to the boat and climbed wearily into it. He turned on the motor and announced, “That’s enough fishing for today.”
As the boat neared the Water’s Edge, Caldwell could see Jimmy Newton standing on the grounds in front of the main building, his hands on his hips, his chin lifted with smug defiance. Caldwell recognized the stance as the one George Reeves adopted during the opening credits to the old television show Superman. Caldwell spotted Lester too. He had a canvas sack slung over his back and was scurrying from little plant to little plant.
Maywell slowed up at the last possible instant, throwing a wake that splashed against the pylons, wetting even the sign that demanded NO WAKE. It hardly mattered; there were no other boats moored there. When they left, there’d been three anchored in the little harbour, a sport-fishing craft and two big cruisers, but they’d fled, hurrying off to find better shelter. This place was wide open,
Caldwell saw. The other side of the island was more hostile, but this shore was hardly safe haven. The points that formed the harbour were rounded and held only a few bent palm trees.
Maywell leapt up on the dock and threw the painter around a cleat. He marched across the dirt road and up toward the main building.
Lester knelt beside a small stripling and drove a thin stick into the ground beside it. He removed from his canvas sack a little plastic twist-tie and deftly attached the stalk to the stick, wiping his hands with evident satisfaction.
“Lester,” said Maywell, “what are you doing?”
“Strengthen ye the weak hands,” intoned Lester, “and confirm the feeble knees.”
Caldwell got out of the boat, turning back to Beverly and extending his hand. She smiled up at him but didn’t accept his help, preferring to grab the whitewashed ladder and pull herself up. They walked together toward the Water’s Edge.
“You saw the television,” said Maywell to Lester. “The hurricane’s going to miss us.”
Newton—nodding happily at Beverly and Caldwell as they passed—spoke without turning toward Maywell. “You’d better turn the set back on, pal.”
Maywell turned on him. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that the world, the globe, is a great big pinball machine, man, and Claire just got smacked by a bumper. Big trough of cold air sitting up there. An anomaly. Chaos. And the storm smacked it, bounced off, and she’s coming back. And, oh yeah, she’s got English on her now, baby.”
Maywell looked again at the man kneeling by the pitiful stripling. “Stop it, Lester,” he said.
Lester stood up suddenly and bolted, but he only went about twelve feet, to where another young plant was being stirred by the breeze. He knelt down and began work with his stick and twist-tie. “The eighty-third sam,” he intoned. “‘Oh, my God, make them like a wheel. As the stubble before the wind. As the fire burneth a wood, and as the flame setteth the mountains on fire, so persecute them with thy tempest, and make them afraid with thy storm.’”
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