The Snowfly

by Joseph Heywood

  I checked my watch. My drift would be wondering where I was.

  “Well?” she said.

  “Well what?”

  “If you’re like psychic, you’d know.”

  “I’m not.”

  She looked irritated.

  “I’d better check on my drift,” I said.

  Creamer’s smile told the tale. He waved and enthusiastically pumped the air. When I got to the boat Creamer grabbed my hand and began pumping. “Two whoppers!” he yelled gleefully. “Can you believe it?” He took Polaroids from his pocket, shoved them at me and went splashing into the water. “Here,” he shouted, “up here.”

  I looked at the pictures. I was pretty good at guessing length, even when fish were finning under water, and could estimate weights based on length and girth. A scale would have been accurate, but we wanted to handle the fish as little as possible, so we estimated as best we could. The first fish was twenty-six inches and around nine pounds. The second was much longer. Thirty inches, but maybe only eleven or twelve pounds because it was lean. “Eleven pounds and change,” I said, tapping the photograph.

  “I shot the whole roll of film,” Creamer said. “I owe you.”

  “It’s included in the fee.”

  Creamer splashed back toward me. “Screw the film. I mean you. That chartreuse, Jesus! First cast, the fish rolled behind the streamer. I threw again, another flash. He was definitely interested. Third time, I sped up the retrieve and bam! I’m afraid I got excited and horsed him onto the beach too soon. He broke the tippet on the gravel, but I kicked him out of the water. It was strictly amateur hour. I hope he isn’t hurt.”

  Creamer suddenly sat down in the water. “I was ready to quit, but I thought, what the hell.” He pointed across the river. “I saw a fissure down there. See the rounded area?”

  I had seen it and knew he would too.

  “I thought, that’s a virtual cave. I’ve seen similar formations in southwest France. First cast, this thing hits so hard it nearly rips the rod out of my hand and I’m thinking, how much backing do I have, one-fifty, two, two-fifty? I don’t have a clue, but I remember what you said, keep him in the open, let the drag do its job. I got calm, my head cleared, I did it by the book, played him out, turned him in, eased him up, took him out. I’ve never seen anything so beautiful. I’m starved,” he added, staring downriver.

  He was smiling and content when we got into the boat and drifted down to lunch.

  Kelli was standing on shore at the downriver side of the island, which was actually a peninsula shaped like a hammerhead, holding a tray with two fluted glasses filled with champagne. I thought of James Bond movies and started to laugh. I beached the boat and stowed the oars. Creamer vaulted out and took a glass. I had to hand it to Sturdivant. He knew how to create an aura. Kelli looked like a very sexy saint.

  “Luck, gentlemen?” Kelli asked.

  “He’s the best,” Creamer said enthusiastically.

  Kelli’s eyes flashed briefly when I looked at her, but the pleasant, relaxed smile stayed perfectly in place. I took the other champagne glass and executed a small bow. “Mademoiselle.”

  “Merci,” she said. “Shall I serve, gentlemen?”

  “Mister Creamer?”

  “Call me Sam,” Creamer said. “I’m famished. What a fantastic day!”

  This was how hard drifts and their guides dined at the riverside: Cuvée Louis Pommerol 1965 to freshen the palate; Wisconsin whitefish roe on rye bread squares, with lemon, Belgian endive, grated Spanish onion, and chopped hard-boiled egg yolks, all of this served with ice-cold Finnish vodka; as a main course, chicken salad with red pepper vinaigrette on a bed of Maine fiddleheads; a small pan of Virginia spoonbread made with white cornmeal, washed down with chilled Scottish Silver Birch; dessert of apricot lace cookies served in a gold-foil tube with samuel creamer printed on the tube, left to right; and, to finish, a cup of strong, fresh coffee.

  After lunch Creamer sat on a boulder and smoked a black cheroot. “How far back to camp?” he asked, watching an attempted smoke ring dissipate before it could take form.

  Camp? The word struck me as ludicrous. Sturdivant’s was anything but a camp. “Twenty minutes. Climb up the ridge and head east.”

  “I’m thinking I might walk downriver, Bowie, then work my way back upstream. I’ll go to purple and black Muddlers as the shadows come in, work the holes slowly. That sound like a workable plan to you?”

  “Should do,” I said. “There are some interesting holes below here.”

  “I’d like to do it myself.”

  “You sure?”

  Creamer sat up and extended his hand, “Positive, Coach.”

  I asked Kelli if I could help her carry her gear back.

  “Sturdivant wouldn’t go for that.”

  “I won’t tell.”

  She had a pickup truck parked up the hill. Sturdivant’s logo was painted tastefully on the doors. I helped her carry her things.

  “Your drift seemed pretty happy,” she said. “And nice. A lot of them aren’t. They spend a lot of money and think they can have anything.”

  “Do they ever bother you?”

  She shrugged. “I can take care of myself.”

  I wondered.

  I went back down to the river, got into the boat, and headed for the pickup point. Creamer gave me a wave and a smile as the current took me past him. I couldn’t believe that people would pay a thousand dollars a day for what was essentially free. Collister was right about that. It did not feel right, but I was determined to stick with it and find out what Sturdivant would reveal about the snowfly. I had hoped that Hannah and I had buried my obsession with her father’s flies, and for a while I thought we had, but the big fish mounted in the lodge had rekindled the smoldering fire.

  With soft drifts everything was relaxed and informal, but dinner with the hard drifts was formal and, as it turned out, tense. Guides and drifts were seated at a long, polished table, dining banquet style. I watched the serving girls bring in the food and spotted Kelli, who smiled away at the drifts at the other end of the table and did not look at me. Sturdivant sat at the head of the table; he wore a black satin running suit with white trout embroidered on the shoulders, tasseled alligator slip-on shoes with black silk socks, and dark glasses. There was friendly banter around me, but I didn’t join in. I preferred to observe. Creamer was beside me and also content to listen and eat. There was a lot about this whole operation I didn’t yet understand and I felt keeping my mouth shut was the best way to learn.

  A square-jawed woman with flaming red-orange hair sat between Collister and me. She had feline mannerisms, those not of a housecat but of a puma, bursting into ear-splitting squeals at any hint of a joke. Her hair was short and heavily moussed forward. Like Woody Woodpecker. She wore gold and jade rings on all of her fingers.

  “Go all right?” Collister asked past the woodpecker.

  I nodded. “You?”

  “Carl helped me collect my twenty pretties,” the woodpecker said, interrupting and grabbing his arm. “It was great fun,” she added. “And I’m just learning,” she said. “On dry flies,” she went on. “Olives, I think? Just fantastic. Talk about a rush! It’s nearly as good as sex,” she said, shaking her head. Her rigid hair looked like a tomahawk being lined up to hack at something. Then she giggled. “Well, almost. . . .”

  Collister wore tan pants and a black shirt. “Congratulations,” he said to the woodpecker. He lifted his glass and she hers. The touch released a single clean, pure note. I saw that he held the glass to his lips but did not drink.

  The food was beautifully presented, served by the same girls who served lunches on the river. After the table was cleared, Kelli and the other girls brought trays of cognacs and boxes of cigars, and circulated among the guests distributing them.

  Samuel Creamer had moved next to Sturd
ivant, keeping the old man nodding attentively to a steady stream of conversation. Eventually Sturdivant struggled to his feet and held out his hands, silencing the congregation.

  “I trust our kitchen has proven satisfactory,” the old man began. “To our old friends we say welcome back and to our first-time guests we say welcome. At Sturdivant’s we have no other reason for existence than to satisfy our guests. There are grander and more elegant lodges and there are more beautiful settings, but nowhere in the world do trouters receive higher esteem, and nowhere in the world will you find finer fish than our beloved Dog trout. You pay dearly for this, but how dearly is largely up to you. Assembled at this table are the finest guides in the world, but that is only my view. I acknowledge my biases,” he said, pausing for effect.

  “When I created this establishment,” he continued, “I realized that only the finest of everything could assure success. I pay my people well, but pay alone is not sufficient to maintain excellence. I said to myself, there must be incentives, but incentives from me could become entitlements. What we needed here would be pure competition, with the customer making the final judgment. My investment guarantees the best people; your rewards guarantee their undivided attention and effort. If they serve you well, you reward them accordingly. If you are unsatisfied, well, that’s the way of the world. In order to maintain competition, I insist that rewards be distributed publicly. It is now time to see how clever Sturdivant has been, yes?”

  This drew polite applause and smiles all around.

  “Sturdivant is a gentleman,” he said. “Sturdivant does not embarrass his guests. I would ask you to retire to the garden deck, where our young ladies will see to your needs. We would ask you to come in one at a time and to evaluate your day. You must be candid. We welcome your criticisms; only by acknowledging our shortcomings can we improve your experience. At the conclusion of your presentation, you will give me the envelope provided upon your arrival. When this transaction is complete I would ask you to retire. My house is your house,” he added. “Checkout time is noon. When you are gone, I hope you will take fond memories and that you will come again next season.”

  He sipped his cognac before continuing. “I am frequently urged by many of you to allow guests more than one day a season, but I recognized long ago that a single day of the greatest value is superior to a longer visit. You, my friends, get one try at the river a year. My guides get one try at you. Such delicious tension affords a mutual effort toward excellence. It is the Sturdivant way, unique in the world. It is, my dear friends, the purest experience in the angling world, among we Brothers and Sisters of the Angle, as the eminent Mister Walton recorded it so long ago.”

  A hard drift, even a king, could come to Sturdivant’s only one day a season. In this way Sturdivant created demand among people whose resources assured they would rarely face such limiting circumstances. I was surprised when he first laid this out to me. I decided then that my employer, however ipse-dixitistic, was a brilliant promoter. Nothing so far had happened to change my mind.

  I wondered again why Sturdivant had chosen me, a drifter without credentials, to sit among this group.

  The first hard drift to come was the woodpecker. “I’m new to all this,” she told us. “I caught twenty gorgeous fish. They were small, I’m told, but size in many things is not the point.” She emphasized this with a lascivious grin. “I’ll be back,” she said in Collister’s direction. “Next season.” Having passed her envelope to Sturdivant she raised her glass in salute and glided across the carpet and out the door.

  This was how it went, one drift at a time, until Mr. Samuel Creamer stood before us, looked at me, shook his head several times, silently passed his envelope to Sturdivant, and departed without uttering a single word.

  I felt all eyes on me. “What happened?” Collister asked.

  I shrugged. The final two drifts talked eloquently of their experiences. Phaedra Allen had connected one of them to a seven-pounder; Edmann, the Montanan, had seen his client net a half-dozen fish in the five- to six-pound category and had hooked him to a larger fish, which had broken off.

  “It is my most fervent hope,” Sturdivant said after the last presentation, “that you will not let your rewards prevent you from being hospitable. We are professionals here. No need to say more. You may now open your envelopes, ladies and gentlemen. Let us see how you have done.”

  I checked the time. The long night had left me edgy. I watched the ­others open their envelopes and announce the amount of their tip. ­Collister’s woodpecker had rewarded him with four hundred dollars, twenty a fish. “Not bad,” he said. Bennett’s drift, who had complained sharply about his guide’s fly choices, had coughed up $650. Edmann got a thousand, as did Phaedra Allen. Dusty Whipkey got a mere hundred, but laughed it off. “It’s a hundred more than I had in my pocket this morning,” she said.

  “Mister Rhodes,” Sturdivant said. “Would you care to share your fortunes with your colleagues?”

  “I haven’t looked,” I said.

  “Please do so now.” Sturdivant’s voice had the raspy edge of sandpaper pushed across pumice. There were forced smiles all around. What had Kelli said? The other guides talked about me?

  I tapped the envelope on the table, tore off the end, and blew into it. When I saw the number on the check I blinked.

  “Well?” Sturdivant asked.

  The note read, “Better than Beluga caviar and worth the price.” “Twenty-three thousand,” I announced, reading it again to be sure it was real.

  Sturdivant slumped back into his chair, slapped the table, and bowed his head. “Excellence, Mister Rhodes. My God, excellence! We congratulate you.” The guides lifted their glasses, but there was no pleasure in their eyes.

  “This is fucking crazy,” I told Creamer when we met on the deck.

  “It’s only money, Rhodes. It costs me that much to ski for a couple of weeks in France with my wife every year and she’s a hell of a lot less fun. You get me a twenty-pounder next year and I’ll buy you a damn palace in India. That’s a promise.”

  Creamer had one drink. “Sorry to be a party-pooper, Coach, but I have to get out of here early in the morning. It was a hell of a day,” he added as we shook hands. We had gone from Rhodes to Coach in one day, all because of fish. What a strange and inexplicable world.

  The party was going strong when Kelli sidled up to me.

  It was a cool night with a clear sky. I could see stars blinking through the trees.

  “Is it true—how much you got?” she asked. “Everybody is talking about it.”

  “Yes.”

  “Damn. Is this a screwed-up world, or what?”

  “It has some peculiar wrinkles.”

  “You want something to drink?” She held up a small tray with snifters of cognac.

  “No thanks.”

  “Are you married?”

  “No.”

  “Ever been?”

  “No.”

  “I’m engaged,” she said. “His name’s Rick.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “It’s probably a mistake,” she said. “I’ve been here all summer and the only time we talk is when I call him. I’m thinking this is not a good thing. Have you got anything against marriage?”

  “No?”

  “I’ve got doubts. You know, like being with one person for the rest of your life? Can people really do that?”

  “Some do.” I thought of my father and Queen Anna, the Chickermans.

  “Do you like what you’re doing?”

  “It’s pretty good so far.”

  “Are you going to stick with it, you know, come back next season?”

  “I don’t know yet. It’s getting late. Maybe I’ll wake up one morning soon and think it’s time to go.”

  Kelli frowned. “You mean after the season’s over.”

  “Whenever
it’s time. Tomorrow, in a week, who knows?”

  “And leave your money behind?”

  I tried to see her face in the dark. “How’s that?”

  “You don’t know?”

  “I must not.”

  “If you leave before the season ends, Sturdivant keeps your tips.”

  “He can’t.”

  “Did you sign a contract?”

  “Some papers.”

  “Then it’s legal. It’s the same for all of us.”

  “Why?”

  “To keep us here. He makes a fortune because of us. No us, no fortune. Actually,” she said, correcting herself, “no guides, no fortunes. We girls are just accessories. He’s real picky about his help.”

  “I have the check.”

  “Look at it. It’s not signed. Sturdivant gets the signed checks. You think it’s possible to make a lot of money without being ruthless?” she asked.

  “I’ve never made a lot of money.”

  “You did today.”

  “But it’s not mine yet.”

  She laughed. “Sturdivant gives me the heebie-jeebies,” she said. “Do you know that he takes boats down the river alone at night? I’ve seen him.”

  “How does he do it?”

  “I don’t know and I don’t think I want to know,” she said.

  We stood in silence and I could feel her staring at me. “Got a drift tomorrow?” she asked.

  “A New Yawkah,” I said, mimicking the city accent.

  “They’re the worst,” she said, squeezing my arm.

  When Kelli left to help with cleanup I walked over to the guide house, where there was a room for the guides in the basement. There we had reports of insect hatches and every fish caught during the season. Guides with the most seniority got first pick of the runs. I looked over the reports, saw where the others were headed, and decided to take my New Yorker to the same section of river as Collister, following him down by two hours to give the fish a chance to settle.

  •••