The Sky Fisherman

by Craig Lesley

  "He'll listen next time, all right," I said. "A hundred pounds, right?" My nose tingled and I moved toward the icehouse. "Why don't you help me load the blocks?" I didn't want to go near those rabbits. "You got a mess of them."

  He held up a bloodstained thumb.

  "Listen. I'll drag the blocks out. You load them." I planned to keep my distance.

  "Teamwork," he said.

  Inside, the icehouse was shocking cold compared with the withering heat. Using the ice tongs, I dragged two fifty-pound blocks of ice toward the door, then brushed away the flecks of sawdust insulation with a cotton glove. Grabbing the pick, I asked, "How do you want it? Ten-pound chunks?"

  "Close enough."

  Scooping up the first block I set out, he tucked it beneath his arm and zigzagged toward the truck, stiff-arming an imaginary opponent. At the goal, he spiked the ice into the truck with a sickening whack as it rebounded off rabbits. "Two-minute drill," he called, hurrying back to repeat the process.

  "Better slow down in this heat," I said.

  "You never saw me play, huh? Fred 'the Freight Train' Meeks. Scored eleven touchdowns my senior year." Beads of sweat popped out of his forehead, a combination of beer and heat. "Full-ride scholarship to Western. Really rolling until I got blindsided at Wyoming. That cowboy got a fifteen-yard penalty and I got a blown knee." He picked up another block and scooted toward the truck.

  The last chunk was small, maybe five pounds, and he cocked it behind his ear like a passing quarterback, then threw, a wobbling missile that seemed about to crack the side window. "Shit," he cried as the ice hit the pickup spotlight, bounced off, then skittered across the asphalt, tiny pieces breaking from the mam chunk. "Shit. Fuck. Never could pass. Look at that!"

  I thought he meant the crooked spotlight in the pickup, but the sharp ice had cut his fingers. Drops of blood fell to the pavement.

  "We've got some Band-Aids inside," I said. "Maybe you should come in and wash up."

  He held up his hand. The blood was still coming. "Guess I better. No one's going to run off with those rabbits."

  At the back-room sink, he pressed wet paper towels against the cut until it stopped bleeding.

  "What a pisser." He gritted his teeth as I applied Merthiolate to the cut. "But Mercurochrome hurts worse."

  "It might need a stitch," I said, applying a Band-Aid, "or one of those butterfly things. Pretty damn deep."

  "I've had worse," he said. "But thanks." He stuffed some paper towels in his pocket and wiped his forehead with another. As he started to leave, he glanced up and saw Kalim's basketball painting. "Shit!" He stared at the painting.

  "Did you know each other in school?" I asked.

  He shook his head. "I'm older, but when that kid was hot, he could shoot the lights out. Fucking picture looks just like him."

  "His aunt painted it," I said. "She's an old friend of Jake's."

  "She caught him cold," he said. "I fucking can't believe it."

  "Kind of gives me the spooks," I said. "My uncle and I found him. By then, you couldn't tell who he was."

  He squinted at me, but didn't say anything for a moment. "You get around. Saw your picture in the paper a while back. Big hero at the fire. Hell, you've been all over this summer, haven't you?"

  "I saw you at the fire, too."

  He glanced toward the floor. "Not exactly my best night." He looked up. "So you found him? The way that river is, I'm surprised anyone did."

  Outside again, he took a short-handled shovel from behind the pickup seat and stirred the rabbits and ice around. Some of the rabbits only had a foot or forequarter touching ice, so they'd continue to rot.

  "Should have used some boxes, I guess. But what the hell. If I drive fast, I won't smell a thing."

  "You got a helluva mess," I said. "If you get stopped, the cops won't believe it."

  Melting ice was already leaking beneath the pickup's closed tailgate, dripping on the asphalt.

  "Hollow points," he said, climbing into the truck. "Even with a lousy shot, rabbits slow down and crawl so you can club 'em. Ever hear rabbits scream?"

  "Sure." Riley had gutshot a cottontail once. Remembering the horrible sound made me cringe.

  "That's what I did when I lost that knee," he said. "Screamed just like a fucking rabbit."

  After Meeks drove away, I couldn't help but feel a little sorry for him. When Riley had taught me boxing lessons, he had said I needed to toughen up, and he was probably right. Even so, I knew you had to be pretty good to play in a Shrine game, although I wasn't sure Meeks was telling the truth. Now he was just a small-town has-been playing cruel practical jokes and getting plastered.

  What dark scrap of fate had cost Meeks the knee? I wondered. Or caused Riley to blow up and Kalim to lose his life? Looking up at Juniper's painting, I thought about Kalim. Juniper had said that in the All-Indian tournament he had been unstoppable, hitting from every spot on the court, bringing the crowd to its feet. I wanted to be that kind of player, too.

  I studied my hands for traces of rabbit blood. One thing I knew, I didn't want my own future cut short by anything, including rabbit fever. At the back sink, I washed and washed with Lava until my hands ached.

  When I came back out, I got a Pepsi and walked into the bright sunlight of the parking lot. After a few minutes my mind cleared and I took a deep breath, glad for the fresh start in Gateway. I studied the front wall of my uncle's store. Pumice block. Solid. Not even a tornado could take it apart, I decided, although one might tear off the roof. No, I said to myself, I wouldn't end up like Kalim or Meeks.

  Inside, the phone rang but I didn't answer. Bathed by sunshine, I stood enjoying the cold drink. Vacationers drove by in a station wagon and some children waved. Smiling, I waved back.

  ***

  When I realized that school was about to start, I also knew I wasn't in top shape. I didn't want to wind up flabby like Meeks, so I started having Jake drop me off four miles from town, leaving me to run back and build endurance. I could have run out and back two miles myself, but I didn't like that approach because I might be tempted to cheat and dog back early. Jake measured exactly four miles on the truck odometer, increasing the distance a bit each time. Maybe he thought I was nuts, but he didn't disapprove the training. When Jake wasn't available, I'd ask Franklin. He didn't seem to mind, and I liked his car almost as much as Jake's truck. He had taken to sucking Sen-Sen and offered me some for the runs. "Keeps your mouth moist," he said.

  I came to like the licorice, soapy taste, and it helped keep the saliva flowing. "Did you ever run, Franklin?" I asked him one night.

  "Sure, but not like you're doing. Still, I know about training. Laps and laps and laps. I tried making the swim team at UCLA."

  At first I had thought he meant track when he mentioned laps. Most of the towns we had lived in were too small to have swimming pools. Gateway was no exception, although people kept talking about building a pool, along with the hospital. However, with the mill destroyed and unemployment high, enthusiasm for those projects faded.

  "Did you make the team?"

  "Regrettably, no." His eyes saddened. "Not enough stamina. I had polio when I was young—not too bad—no iron lung, thank God. That would have been worse than death, I think. But I ran a very high fever for a week and my left side was paralyzed ten days. Swimming was good therapy. I worked and worked at it, but that left side never quite got back the strength."

  "How'd you get polio?" I asked.

  "Who knows? My mother blamed the crowded Saturday matinees, and my dad blamed an irrigation ditch. People were scared to death. Now there's the vaccine." He pulled the car over onto the roadside. "Five miles. Give 'em hell."

  I jogged in place a while, loosening muscles and getting my bearings. The constellations brightened the night sky, and I picked out the Sky Fisherman and the Leaky Boat, smiling at the recollection of Jake's story about the old man. Above Gateway, the sky glowed with the town lights, and I started off, taking a kind of joy in the
tennis shoes' slap-slap on the pavement, the slight jar of contact in my knees, hips, and back. No weakness in my left side.

  After running a couple miles toward town, I'd start to feel weary, then think of Grass Valley's track coach, "Doc" Lewis, who taught discipline and guts. Raw spring days when the baseball players stayed inside the warm gym practicing grounders on the hardwood floors, we ran muddy laps, towels wrapped around our necks to keep the rain from trickling down our backs. One day a freshman asked if we could practice inside. Rain dripped off Lewis's long nose and jutting chin as he gave the boy a withering look. "Track men don't melt."

  The long-distance runners were Lewis's favorites. "Hard-asses," he called us. "You got to be a hard-ass on yourself, 'cause no one else gives a shit." If you ran a mile in four and a half minutes one day, he wanted four and a quarter the next. No excuses. We weren't smooth and we weren't pretty, but we won. Track, especially distance running, wasn't popular then as it became later. Sometimes at the end of the mile I was so exhausted I puked. "If you're not puking, you can run harder," he said. "It hurts too much," I complained once. He gave me a blistering look. "Pain is weakness leaving the body."

  Long-distance running wasn't popular in Gateway either. On my night runs I owned the road's shoulders. Oncoming traffic would flick their headlights to see what the hell was coming. Big trucks honked as they passed. Polite drivers rode the white line, allowing me extra room.

  Running hard, feeling strength in every sinew, I didn't even envy the people who sped by me in sleek cars, although the tinkling laughter of windswept girls tightened the emptiness of my belly.

  Conditioning came now, I imagined. Given time, the cars and girls would come, too. From the the passing cars' radios I heard Hank Williams, Elvis, Brenda Lee.

  The cars never stopped, although some slowed to pitch out beer bottles, cigarettes, religious tracts. Once a carload of boys slowed to my pace, and I expected trouble. But they were just curious. "What the hell you doing?" a moonfaced, blond boy asked. He had rolled up a pack of Winstons in his T-shirt sleeve.

  "Training. Getting ready for basketball."

  "Shit. You're starting early. Not even football season yet. You from Gateway?"

  "That's right." I ran a little faster so they had to accelerate.

  "We're from Pineville. Last year we whipped your ass."

  "Not mine," I said. "I'm new."

  "Well, shit. We better start running, too." They sped off.

  Running toward the twinkling lights of Gateway, I believed they promised some important destination, a fulfillment one could accomplish by adhering to hard work, discipline, and smarts. If I ran hard enough and long enough, training for the right moment, I believed I could succeed. Other people might be born to privilege or money; hard work gained my advantage.

  My mother believed this, too. After working all week at Sunrise Biscuits, she'd spend hours at the library studying to improve her knowledge of history, art, and music. She brought home every company publication and memo, improving her secretarial skills and studying up on the company's training and policies. On those rare occasions when a representative came out from Minneapolis or Omaha, she was ready—up to date and informed. Still, it took a toll. Much of the time she was dog tired.

  If hard work was the main fiber of my training, resentment was the second motivator. Thinking of that farm boy at the A&W with his Ford convertible and others just like him, I ran harder, determined that when the moment came for a matchup, I'd beat him. I was getting ready, training to be tough, and he was still soft. Cocooned in his privilege, he didn't realize I was gaining on him, so that provided me the edge. It wasn't hate, the kind that settles when someone close betrays you. Instinctively, I resented this type, despised his arrogance and nonchalance. Make them pay, I thought, take their whipping—no apologies or excuses.

  Doc Lewis taught me that, too. He was Grass Valley's basketball coach as well as the track coach, and our sophomore year we played Lakeshore in a state Christmas tournament. Three hundred miles from home, we were nervous in the big city and barely snuck by Crater, another podunk school, in the first round. Lewis didn't bother to have us scout Lakeshore's opening game. Instead, he loaded us on the varsity bus and had us tour the suburb. We saw Lakeshore's fancy houses, the foreign cars, the speedboats for water skiing. Most of the houses were decorated far more lavishly than anyplace in Grass Valley. A few had strung small white Christmas lights all around their possessions. Cars, boats, even a seaplane with pontoons, were outlined. "Isn't this pretty?" Lewis asked.

  "I got to bring my dad back to see this," Jimmy Erickson said, and everybody laughed because his dad wasn't getting out of prison for three more years.

  Before tip-off, Lewis stood pointing at the baskets. "They don't own those," he said. "If the bastards even try to get close, play smashmouth. I don't care if all of you foul out. When they start to drive the lane, make them pay."

  And we did. Lakeshore was taller, more talented, but the way we played that night, basketball was a contact sport. Bump, hustle; slap, hustle; knee, hustle; elbow, hustle. Lakeshore whined and complained at the bruising style, but the referees let us play, except for the flagrant stuff. Pretty soon the crowd got behind our scruffy team from the boondocks. Jimmy and I broke Lakeshore's press like pretzels. Lewis pulled us when we got in foul trouble, but the subs did okay, too. Returning for the final quarter, hustling our guts out, we won by six. Lewis grinned a mile wide when the tournament organizers presented him with the trophy and game ball. In the locker room we laughed, too—and puked. Jimmy Erickson and I never played together again. After Christmas his mom took off with her boyfriend, dragging Jimmy to hell knows where, and I started at point guard the rest of the season.

  On the homestretch, the road paralleled the railroad track. Some nights the silver streamliner swept by, its lights illuminating the road. Seeing me run, the engineer pulled the whistle as the train slid past. I wondered if the people in the coaches or dining cars noticed me, if someone in the club car laid down his cards and cigarette, then looked out the window, musing, "There's a young man on the move."

  Hitting Gateway's outskirts, I sweated freely after five-plus miles. Passing the Tire Exchange, Krazy Karl's Gun World, the A&W, I kicked hard the last stretch, practically sprinting to the high school track. Now people could watch, and I imagined them admiring me and my training.

  Through all this conditioning I felt a kind of inexplicable kinship to Kalim, and I thought if I could score enough points to gain some regional attention, I might dedicate the season to him. At the time, I fancied this was some type of altruism. Later, I recognized it as my own vanity.

  22

  AT JAKE'S, Labor Day marked the division between fishing and hunting seasons, but it also marked a change in the customers' attitudes. Jake pointed out that Memorial Day was a happy occasion. In May, with the prospect of summer lying ahead—vacations and time off—people were enthusiastic and optimistic. But summer, like hope, fades. By Labor Day the customers had worked themselves into a frenzy, frustrated at all the activities they had planned but not accomplished, desperate for one last fling. A flabby guy from the city would come in and stare longingly at the fishing poles he had wanted to buy but wouldn't now because this season was almost finished. Even so, he'd try a couple, testing the limberness and weight. A frazzled wife, trailing a couple rumpled kids, would shuffle in on sunburned feet—all of them wore thongs—while they waited for their chicken order next door. "I hope you're not planning to buy that pole," she'd say. "You said that sundress I tried on in Central was too expensive and I passed it up. Anyway, we've got to hurry back and buy the kids some school clothes while they're on sale." Turning to me, she might ask, "Do you have sunburn ointment?"

  I'd shake my head. "Sorry. We don't carry it. You've got to have a drugstore license."

  She'd gather the kids, pulling them away from the baseball gloves and fishing lures, then go outside. "You coming, John? Now we've got to find a drugstore." He w
ould acknowledge with a grunt but linger, trying a couple more flimsy casts, perhaps a pretense that he remained independent. Finally, he'd return the pole to the rack and drift out.

  I never knew quite what to say to those guys, but Jake was masterful at hitting the right tone. "Come back and see us, fella" or "The fish will be bigger next year!" he'd say heartily. After they were gone, he'd add, "The poor bastard might get to retire before his heart attack."

  Labor Day marked a change in fishing styles, too. Some of the great fishing would occur in the fall when salmon and steelhead left the Pacific, made their way up the big river past the fish ladders on the dams, and returned to the Lost, but the main recreational fishing enjoyed by the tourists and summer people was coming to an end. A hardier breed of fisherman tried the salmon and steelhead runs. It required more skill, especially when fly fishing for the lunkers.

  Jake blacked out three days on his guide calendar, then wrote "architects" in the margin. "If anybody asks, you tell them I'm taking some muck-a-mucks from the city—the whole firm. The more important you make it sound, the more likely they'll believe you. Human nature."

  "I can't believe you're going to leave me alone with the Labor Day rush." I didn't try to hide my annoyance. "It'll get frantic."

  Jake tapped the calendar with a pencil. "I'm coming back Saturday. Anyway, you've got Jed to help out."

  "Some help. He limps back to the toilet, contemplates existence for an hour."

  I knew Jake didn't have a trip planned because I'd checked the guide calendar. "Where are you really going, just in case I have to send out the county Search and Rescue?"

  His eyes widened as he pretended alarm. "Don't do that or I'll have to go rescue those lard buckets once they get themselves lost." After eyeing me for a minute, he said, "Scout's honor?"

  "Why not?" I gave a mock salute.