A River Runs Through It and Other Stories, Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition

by Norman Maclean

  Somehow it's hard to quit with an odd number of fish, so I wanted one more for four, but I had to work hard to get him. When I finally did, he was small and I knew that he was the last and that the rest had got wise to George's Bee. The increasing heat of the afternoon had the opposite effect on the dead beaver and he gathered strength, so I climbed the bank and walked into the wind to the next bend where I could sit and look downstream for Paul. Now he could ask me, and I wouldn't be ashamed to be caught sitting in the shade.

  I sat there in the hot afternoon trying to forget the beaver and trying to think of the beer. Trying to forget the beaver, I also tried to forget my brother-in-law and Old Rawhide. I knew I was going to have a long time to sit here and forget, because my brother would never quit with three or four fish, as I had, and even he was going to have a hard time getting more. I sat there and forgot and forgot, until what remained was the river that went by and I who watched. On the river the heat mirages danced with each other and then they danced through each other and then they joined hands and danced around each other. Eventually the watcher joined the river, and there was only one of us. I believe it was the river.

  Even the anatomy of a river was laid bare. Not far downstream was a dry channel where the river had run once, and part of the way to come to know a thing is through its death. But years ago I had known the river when it flowed through this now dry channel, so I could enliven its stony remains with the waters of memory.

  In death it had its pattern, and we can only hope for as much. Its overall pattern was the favorite serpentine curve of the artist sketched on the valley from my hill to the last hill I could see on the other side. But internally it was made of sharp angles. It ran seemingly straight for a while, turned abruptly, then ran smoothly again, then met another obstacle, again was turned sharply and again ran smoothly. Straight lines that couldn't be exactly straight and angles that couldn't have been exactly right angles became the artist's most beautiful curve and swept from here across the valley to where it could be no longer seen.

  I also became the river by knowing how it was made. The Big Blackfoot is a new glacial river that runs and drops fast. The river is a straight rapids until it strikes big rocks or big trees with big roots. This is the turn that is not exactly at right angles. Then it swirls and deepens among big rocks and circles back through them where big fish live under the foam. As it slows, the sand and small rocks it picked up in the fast rapids above begin to settle out and are deposited, and the water becomes shallow and quiet. After the deposit is completed, it starts running again.

  On a hot afternoon the mind can also create fish and arrange them according to the way it has just made the river. It will have the fish spend most of their time in the “big blue” at the turn, where they can lie protected by big rocks and take it easy and have food washed to them by big waters. From there, they can move into the fast rapids above when they are really hungry or it is September and cool, but it is hard work living in such fast water all the time. The mind that arranges can also direct the fish into the quiet water in the evening when gnats and small moths come out. Here the fisherman should be told to use his small dry flies and to wax them so they will float. He should also be informed that in quiet evening water everything must be perfect because, with the glare from the sun gone, the fish can see everything, so even a few hairs too many in the tail of the fly can make all the difference. The mind can make all these arrangements, but of course the fish do not always observe them.

  Fishermen also think of the river as having been made with them partly in mind, and they talk of it as if it had been. They speak of the three parts as a unity and call it “a hole,” and the fast rapids they call “the head of the hole” and the big turn they call “the deep blue” or “pool” and the quiet, shallow water below they call “the tail of the hole,” which they think is shallow and quiet so that they can have a place to wade across and “try the other side.”

  As the heat mirages on the river in front of me danced with and through each other, I could feel patterns from my own life joining with them. It was here, while waiting for my brother, that I started this story, although, of course, at the time I did not know that stories of life are often more like rivers than books. But I knew a story had begun, perhaps long ago near the sound of water. And I sensed that ahead I would meet something that would never erode so there would be a sharp turn, deep circles, a deposit, and quietness.

  The fisherman even has a phrase to describe what he does when he studies the patterns of a river. He says he is “reading the water,” and perhaps to tell his stories he has to do much the same thing. Then one of his biggest problems is to guess where and at what time of day life lies ready to be taken as a joke. And to guess whether it is going to be a little or a big joke.

  For all of us, though, it is much easier to read the waters of tragedy.

  “Did you do any good?” The voice and the question suggested that if I woke up and looked around I would see my brother. The suggestion became a certainty when the voice asked, “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “Oh, just thinking,” I answered, as we all answer when we don't know what we have been doing.

  He said it was too hot to fish but he had fished until he caught “a fairly good mess,” which meant ten or twelve and just fair-sized. “Let's go and get that beer,” he said. When he said “beer,” everything else came back to me—the beer, the beaver, the brother-in-law, and his fishing companion.

  “God, let's get that beer,” I said.

  Paul kept spinning a bottle opener around his little finger. We were so dry that we could feel in our ears that we were trying to swallow. For talk, we only repeated the lyric refrain of the summer fisherman, “A bottle of beer would sure taste good.”

  A game trail cut from the bank to the river where we had left the beer for ourselves, and we went down it stiff-legged. Paul was ahead, and when he got near the bottom he loosened his knees and made for the river. We had buried the beer in moving water to keep it cool but not where the water was so fast it would wash the beer downstream.

  “I can't see it,” he said, feeling with his feet. “Oh,” I said, “you just haven't found the right place. It has to be there.” And I waded out to find it for him, already having doubts that I could.

  He said, “There's no use looking around. That's where we buried it.” He pointed to holes in the clay of the bottom where we had pulled out rocks to cover the bottles. I felt in one of the holes with the toe of my wading boot as if a bottle of beer might have escaped my attention in a hole the size of a small rock. He was doing the same thing. There were no bottles of beer hiding in holes too small for a bottle to get into.

  We had been saving our thirst for a long time. Now knee-deep by the holes in the clay bottom, we cupped our hands and started drinking out of the river. Between us and the car there were still three more holes where we had buried the beer, but we had about quit hoping for beer.

  Paul said, “All told, we buried eight bottles of beer in four holes. Do you think they could have drunk eight bottles of beer, besides the rest of that 3-7-77?”

  He was being gentle, for my sake and for the sake of my wife and my mother-in-law. But I couldn't argue against anything he was thinking. Although we had walked back on the trail, we were always in sight of the river and neither of us had seen a fisherman. Who else could have taken it?

  I said, “Paul, I'm sorry. I wish I knew how I could have stayed away from this guy.”

  “You couldn't,” he said.

  Suddenly we did something that for a time seemed strange to me, given the fact that we knew without hurrying to look that all the beer was gone and that we also knew without evidence who had taken it. Suddenly we turned and came out of that water with a roar, like two animals as they finish fording a river, making jumps when the water gets shallower and bringing waves to shore long after they get there. Later, I could see easily that our being gentle was for each other and the roar and the jumps to t
he shore were for those who had taken our beer.

  The rocks rattled and leaped out of our way as we walked along the shore. In each of the next three holes we enacted the rite of staring at the emptiness of stones that have been rolled aside.

  We came then to where in the distance we could see our car on the bank and where below the river forked with a sandbar in between.

  Nobody had moved the car to keep it in the shade. I could feel how hot it would be if we rubbed against a fender while shedding our wet clothes.

  I said, “I don't see them.” “I don't either,” Paul said.

  “They can't be in the car,” I said. He added, “Today a dog would die in a car if he were left in it.”

  Walking fast and watching for them, I wasn't watching where I was going and stumbled over a rock and lit on my elbow which I had stuck out to avoid falling on my rod. I was picking the grit out of my cut when Paul said, “What's on the sandbar?” Still trying to pick the blue-black specks out of my bruise, I said, “Maybe it's the bear.”

  “What bear?” he asked.

  “The bear that went over the mountain,” I told him. “That's where he comes down the mountain to drink.”

  “That's no bear,” he said.

  I studied the sandbar. “Maybe it's two bears,” I suggested.

  “It's two, all right,” he said, “but it's not bears.”

  “Why do you keep saying ‘it’ when it's two?” I asked him.

  “It's not bears,” he said. “It's red.”

  “Wait until you see it go up the mountain,” I told him. “Then you'll see it's bears. Bears go straight up a mountain.”

  We were walking very slowly now, as if ready to jump sideways if it moved suddenly.

  “It's red,” he said, “and it's whatever drank our beer.”

  I told him, “It isn't even human. It's red as you say.”

  By now, we had come to an uneasy stop, like animals approaching a waterhole and seeing something in the water where they were going to drink. We didn't snort or paw, but we could feel what it would be like to snort and paw. We had no choice but to go ahead.

  We kept going until we knew, but couldn't believe it. “Bear, hell,” Paul said. “It's a bare ass.”

  “Two bare asses,” I said.

  “That's what I meant,” he said. “It's two bare asses. Both are red.”

  We kept not believing after we knew. “I'll be a son of a bitch,” Paul said. “Me, too,” I said to confirm it.

  You have never really seen an ass until you have seen two sunburned asses on a sandbar in the middle of a river. Nearly all the rest of the body seems to have evaporated. The body is a large red ass about to blister, with hair on one end of it for a head and feet attached to the other end for legs. By tonight, it will run a fever.

  That's the way it looked then, but, when I view it now through the sentimentality of memory, it belongs to a pastoral world where you could take off your clothes, screw a dame in the middle of the river, then roll over on your belly and go to sleep for a couple of hours.

  If you tried something like that on the Blackfoot River these days, half the city of Great Falls would be standing on the shore waiting to steal your clothes when you went to sleep. Maybe sooner.

  “Hey,” Paul yelled with a hand on each side of his mouth. Then he blasted a whistle with a finger from each hand.

  “Do you think they are all right?” he asked me. “You used to work every summer in the sun in the Forest Service.”

  “Well,” I told him, “I never knew anybody who died of sunburn, but they sure as hell aren't going to wear any wool underwear for a couple of weeks.”

  “Let's get them to the car,” he said. We took off our baskets and leaned our rods against a log so they could be seen and nobody would step on them.

  We had waded almost to the sandbar when Paul stopped and barred me with his arm. “Just a minute,” he said. “I want to take another look so I'll always remember.”

  We stood there for a minute and made an engraving on what little was left of the blank tablets of our minds. It was an engraving in color. In the foreground of the engraving was a red Hills Bros. coffee can, then red tenderized soles of feet pointing downward, two red asses sizzling under the solar system, and in the background a pile of clothes with her red panties on top. To the side were the remains of the 3-7-77, red hot when touched. There was no fishing rod or basket in sight.

  Paul said, “May he get three doses of clap, and may he recover from all but the first.”

  I never again threw a line in this hole, which I came to regard as a kind of wild game sanctuary.

  We waded the rest of the way to the sandbar without splashing, fearful of waking them. I think we thought, “When they wake up they will start peeling.” I know what I thought. I had worked several summers in rattlesnake country in late August, and I thought when they wake up and find out how hot it is they will shed their skins and be blind for a while and strike at anything they hear. I can remember I kept thinking, they will be very dangerous when they wake up, so I walked around them warily, staying beyond striking distance.

  When we got close to them, they developed anatomical parts that couldn't be seen from shore. They developed legs between their asses and their feet, and they sprouted backs and necks, especially necks, between their asses and their hair. It was red into their hair, which was curly. It was hard to know whether their hair was naturally curly or whether it had frizzled in the sun. Each hair was distinct and could have been made with a hot curling iron.

  Paul had gone over to see what was left in the bottle of 3-7-77, but I stayed to study the anatomy. Each hair was sore at its root, but that's not what I backed off to tell Paul. I was so studious I backed off until I bumped into him.

  “She's got a tattoo on her ass,” I told him.

  “No kidding,” he said.

  He circled her as if to get on the downwind side of big game before trying to approach it. Then he backed off and completed the circle back to me.

  “What are the initials of her cowboys?” he asked. “B. I. and B. L.,” I told him.

  He said, “Are you sure?”

  I said, “Sure, I'm sure.”

  “Well,” he said, “they don't fit, because she has LO tattooed on one cheek of her ass and VE on the other.”

  I told him, “LOVE spells love, with a hash-mark between.”

  “I'll be damned,” he said, and backed away, circled around and started to study the situation all over again.

  She jumped straight up like a barber pole. She was red, white, and blue. She was white where she had been lying on her belly in the sand, and her back completed the patriotic color scheme, red into her hair except for the blue-black tattoo. Somebody should have spun her around and played “The Stars and Stripes Forever.”

  She looked wildly about her to get oriented, and then streaked for the clothes pile and pulled on her red panties. When she was sure you couldn't look without paying at the part that made her living, she relaxed. She didn't put on any more clothes, but came sauntering back, took one look at me, and said, “Oh, it's you.”

  Then she looked at both of us, and said, “Well, what's on your mind, boys?” She was ready to entertain company.

  I said, “We came out to get Neal.”

  She was disappointed. “Oh,” she said, “you mean Buster.”

  I said, “I mean him,” and when I pointed at him he groaned. I think he did not want to wake up and find out about his sunburn and hangover. He groaned again and sank even deeper into the sand. Her white belly was covered with sand, and had creases in it where her skin had folded over when she was lying on it. Sand ran out of her navel.

  Paul said, “Get your clothes on and help us with him.” She looked indignant. She said, “I can take care of him.” Paul said, “You already have.”

  She said, “He's my man. I can take care of him. The sun doesn't bother me.” And I suppose she was right—it's under the sun where a fisherman's whore makes her
money.

  Paul said, “Get your clothes on or I'll kick you in the ass.” Both she and I knew he meant it.

  Paul went over to the clothes pile and started separating out Neal's clothes from hers. They were in the order in which they had come off. That's why her red pants were on top of the pile, and her belt on the bottom.

  I said to Paul, “That's a good thing to do, but we can't put any clothes on him. I don't think he can stand their touch.”

  “We'll take him home naked, then,” Paul said.

  When Neal heard the word “home” he sat up so suddenly that the sand ran off him in streams.

  “I don't want to go home,” he said.

  “Where do you want to go, Neal?” I asked. “I don't know,” he said, “but I don't want to go home.”

  I told him, “There are three women there who know how to take care of you.”

  “I don't want to see three women,” he said, and more sand ran off him.

  Old Rawhide held her clothes under one arm. I reached down, picked up Neal's clothes, and put them under his arm. “Here,” I said, taking his other arm, “I'll help you wade back to shore.”

  He jumped away in pain. “Don't touch me,” he said. To Old Rawhide he said, “You carry my clothes. They hurt when I hold them.”

  “You take them,” she said to me, and I did, and she took Neal by the arm he had pulled away from me and led him to the edge of the water. Part way out, she turned around and said to me, “He's my man.” She was a strong woman and very tough. The Blackfoot is a big river and hard to wade. The man couldn't have made it without the strength in her legs.