Plain Heathen Mischief

by Martin Clark

  Edmund was due to arrive in Missoula any day now—Joel had no idea where and when—and Joel did all he could to keep his mind elsewhere when he went to work Saturday morning. Dixon was in his office, humped over a vise and a pile of fur, thread, chenille and loose feathers. He motioned for Joel to enter but didn’t immediately interrupt what he was doing, finished winding a hackle around the front of a small hook and secured it with black thread.

  “Good morning, Joel,” he said as he was unclamping the tiny fly he’d just built.

  “Morning. Looks like a fine day for it.”

  “Does indeed. You got a dentist and his wife today. They’ve never done much fishing, so it’ll probably be mostly sightseeing and a long lunch.” Dixon smiled. “They’re here from South Carolina. Seein’ the country, you know?”

  “Maybe we’ll get into a few nice fish for them.”

  “I hope so. Pull up a seat, partner. Sit down a minute.” There was something odd about Dixon’s tone, an anxiousness Joel hadn’t heard before. Instead of pouring Joel coffee and stirring in two sugars and cream, he stayed behind his desk and began skating his eyes over the walls and floor. “You know September will be gone before you realize it?” he said.

  “Right.” Joel had no idea where this was headed.

  “Then October, and that’s it.”

  “It?” Joel stammered. “It for what?”

  “The season, Joel,” he said gently. “We shut down at the end of October. No fishing again till spring. I thought you’d know—most people around here do—but I got to thinkin’ about it and figured you being new and all, you might not be aware of how things operate.”

  “I’d really not considered it. I mean, well, I just haven’t thought ahead. So there’s nothing, not a single trip?”

  “Sorry.”

  “I’m getting laid off soon is what you’re telling me?”

  “I’ll give you the first trip I schedule next spring,” Dixon promised. “You’re a good guy, Joel. I like you and you’ve been an excellent employee, honest and reliable. It’s simply the way of the world in Missoula. Seasonal. Can you ski or hunt?”

  “No.”

  “Not at all?”

  “Nope.”

  “Well, I’m damn glad I mentioned it. At least you’ll have a little lead time.”

  “Huh.” Joel was speechless. He felt stupid, embarrassed.

  “You still got your job at the Station, right?” Dixon asked.

  “Yeah,” he said forlornly. “I hope it’s not seasonal too.”

  “Things will be okay.”

  “You don’t have any work around the shop? I’d be more than happy to sweep floors, clean, whatever.”

  “I knew you were going to ask me that.” Dixon slowed his eyes, allowing them to light on Joel. “I got Bo to pay all winter—he’s been with me from the start—and I keep Cheryl on the clock to do my books and run the register. We get some mail order at Christmas, and sales here and there in March and April, but the sad truth is I’m already carryin’ more people than I need.”

  “I understand. It’s hard to imagine how I was so shortsighted and didn’t see this coming. I’ve talked to folks about the winters here, the snow and cold. I don’t know what I was thinking. In Roanoke, you can fish year-round. I mean, you know, we have ice and snow and so forth, but I’ve caught trout in December. I just thought things might slow down some, fewer tourists maybe, and I’d have to buy a heavy jacket and . . .” He sighed. “And . . . when do you start booking trips again?”

  “Late April.”

  “Okay,” Joel said. “Okay. I appreciate the heads-up.”

  “No problem.”

  “So how about my coffee?” Joel asked, full of false cheer.

  “Sure, comin’ right up. I’m sorry to have to tell you this. You know it has nothing to do with you—I don’t keep any of my guides after October.”

  “I understand. You’ve been good to take me in and give me a job, and you’ve been a fine friend.”

  Dixon went to the coffeepot and filled a cup. He came around his desk and offered the cup to Joel, but didn’t let it go when Joel took the handle. “Hell, if things get rugged, give me a call and I’ll find something for you to do.” The cup was still between them, both of them holding it. “I can pay you minimum wage to come by on Saturdays or maybe give you a little advance against next year’s trips.”

  Joel noticed that the back of Dixon’s hand was covered with faint red hair and freckles the color of brown beans. Dixon released the mug, and Joel stayed focused on the coffee. He saw the spotted hand, kind and awkward, long after it was gone, etched it within his mind and marveled at the span of a generous soul. “Thanks,” he said before he tasted the first sip.

  Joel could sense from the very beginning that the dentist and his wife were not on happy terms. The dentist walked in front of her to the store’s entrance, never slowed or checked over his shoulder, and he went through the door without holding it open or waiting for her. She inspected hats and T-shirts two aisles away while Dixon started his canned speech about big fish and ancient mountains and introduced Joel to the husband.

  The man’s name was Karl, and he was chubby and had woolly black eyebrows. “That’s my wife, Lisa,” he said without so much as glancing at her. He walked out of the store several paces ahead of her and hogged the front seat of the Royal Coachman’s jumbo pickup, making her take the jump seat in the rear. They didn’t speak to each other, and Joel finally gave up trying to talk to either of them, left the cab quiet, the radio switched off, and drove thirty minutes in silence.

  They were scheduled to do an easy float down the Blackfoot. Joel loaded the boat and put in by himself without any help from Karl and Lisa. As he was lugging the cooler down the skinned bank and uneven trail to the water, he noticed Karl glare at his wife and form several words Joel couldn’t hear because of the noise coming from the stream. She didn’t appear to answer him and turned her back on his nasty stare.

  The day was splendid, maybe a little too bright and warm for active hatches and great fishing, but altogether agreeable for two tourists navigating the river for the first time. They’d catch some twelve-inch cutthroats and a few rainbows and maybe even luck into a respectable bull trout. Joel rowed across the river, latched on to a lazy current and handed them each a rod. Lisa was looking all around, her face receptive and amazed like so many Joel had seen on these trips, the uncontradicted majesty of the tamaracks, hill pines, mountains and endless sky awing her in a matter of minutes. The river was wide and changed colors all along its surface—white bangs spilled over rocks, pools turned from sandy brown to green to grayish as the water became deeper, and thousands of brilliant ripples and dents would appear and vanish depending on the boat’s location and the sun’s humor.

  “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Joel said, holding the oars against the river’s pull to slow them.

  “Yes,” she answered. “I had no idea.”

  “Let’s find you guys a fat trout, and it’ll look even better. Last weekend this stretch was truly hot. We landed about thirty, including a nice bull trout that went close to six pounds.”

  “I guess we’re a day late and a dollar short,” Karl said. He was sitting in the front of the boat and didn’t turn around when he spoke.

  After twenty minutes it was apparent that Karl had a vile temper and no aptitude for casting a fly. Joel switched him to nymphs—easier fishing— and gave him simple advice and put him directly on several pods of feeding fish. Karl cursed and thrashed the water and snarled his leader and said, “No shit, chief,” when Joel mentioned he needed to be more delicate with the line. Lisa wasn’t fishing, hadn’t taken her fly from the keep, and was content to drift along on a pretty day, separated from her bully husband and enveloped by the remarkable sights.

  “Lisa, you sure you don’t want to wet a line?” Joel asked her.

  “Oh, I’m great. I’m enjoying the ride. Down in South Carolina, you don’t see anything like this.”r />
  “Why don’t you let me tie on a big streamer?” Joel encouraged her. “You can dangle it off the back of the boat, sort of troll it. We’re out of the really good bull trout water, but who knows what you might pick up. We’ve caught some big fish in the section coming up.”

  “If you say so,” she said. “I couldn’t be much better than I am right now, though.”

  “Yeah—a fuckin’ three-hundred-dollar amusement park ride,” Karl griped. “And I’m guessing Robinson Crusoe here is looking for a tip at the end of the day.”

  “Tips are completely optional,” Joel said, unruffled. “If we don’t land any fish, I wouldn’t accept a tip and you shouldn’t offer one.”

  “Don’t worry,” Karl said.

  Joel persuaded Lisa to drop a line behind them, telling her to watch for logs and snags and hold on tight if a big one hit. Karl finally caught a fish, and he fought it like an excited child, horsing it out of the water and heaving it through the air into the boat. He made Joel beach them and take pictures of him and his ten-inch trout, then complained bitterly when Joel instructed him to return the fish and explained to him for the third time the importance of catch-and-release. Lisa stayed in her seat during the photo shoot, her fly hanging off three feet of line, blowing in the breeze.

  Karl landed two more fish in the next hour, bragging to his wife after each and demanding more pictures. But he was nicer to Joel, seemed to be coming around. “This isn’t so bad,” he said after they’d turned back his last catch. He gave Joel several vigorous pats on the shoulder and thanked him for removing the hook.

  They were in a quiet, glassy section of the river when Lisa screamed. Joel wheeled around, and he saw her rod pulled parallel to the water and knew she’d hooked a large fish. He stroked backward to give her some room, then started upstream toward the fish. At first he thought she had a big bull, but a huge rainbow erupted from the water, showing its deep red streak from gills to tail. The trout was strong, a slab of a fish, rolling line off the reel and charging for a sunken sanctuary. Lisa screamed again and asked, “What do I do?” over and over.

  Still pushing against the flow, Joel pivoted quickly so he could face her. She was watching her line disappear, holding the cork handle of the rod with both hands and doing nothing else. The actual fly line was gone from the reel, and now the twenty-pound test backing was vanishing too, the reserve left on the spool getting smaller and smaller. Joel maneuvered the boat into a center eddy that would allow him a few moments away from the oars. He lunged forward and helped her lift the rod, raised the tip to bring pressure on the fish. Lisa said, “I don’t know what to do,” and Joel assured her she was doing fine, began loosening his grip and transferring the full feel of the trout to her.

  The boat nosed into a channel of fast water and started a cockeyed drift, and he did the best he could with one hand and a single oar to keep them pointed at the trout. He reached around Lisa and placed his palm against the reel’s spool, making the fish battle harder to earn distance. She had, at best, another ten yards of backing to give, and when that was spent, the fish would break the leader or pull loose or—God forbid—snap the whole works and make off with sixty dollars’ worth of fly line.

  “Keep the rod tip high, keep your palm against the reel but don’t press too hard. Tip up, palm on the reel. Consistent pressure. He’s going to come ripping back at you sooner or later, so be ready.” Joel had released the rod; the trout was all Lisa’s.

  In the midst of the effort and excitement, Karl continued to fish. His casts were unpredictable, all over the place, and Joel was afraid he’d get his rig tangled with his wife’s, especially if the fish made a run in their direction.

  “Karl, please stop for just a second.” Joel was crouched over his seat, his butt barely touching, the majority of his weight in his legs. He was struggling with the current, chasing the rainbow and keeping an eye peeled for rocks and tricky swirls, ready for anything. The fish was slowing, and Lisa had a good tight line on it.

  “I’m not causing her any trouble. I came to fish, okay? Paid some serious bucks.”

  “She’s got the trophy of a lifetime, Karl,” Joel admonished him. “Sooner or later that fish’ll make a sudden turn or be up here at the boat, and we don’t need your line getting wrapped around hers.”

  “Hell,” he said, “it’s going to shake off anyway.”

  Joel considered grabbing the rod from his hands, simply seizing it, but realized that would most likely cause more problems than it cured. “At least try to keep your casts up there,” Joel urged him.

  The fish erupted from the water, shot straight up so that its impressive length and brilliant colors were revealed, hung airborne for an instant and then splashed into the water, tipping over like felled timber.

  “Oh oh oh!” Lisa squealed.

  “Let’s try to recover some line,” Joel told her, and she took the reel’s crank and began fighting the fish.

  “Is this right?” she asked. “I don’t want it to get loose.”

  “Nice and easy. No rush.”

  “This is so exciting,” she said.

  “If he comes at us fast, you won’t be able to play him from the reel. You’ll have to strip him in, pull in the line with your hand. Did you see me show Karl how?”

  “I think. I think so. Uh-oh—he’s doing something.”

  “He’s just turning. Keep the tip up. Keep winding.” Joel had the boat in good shape, had found a route upstream and was closing down on the fish. He swung them a few degrees off center to give Lisa better leverage.

  Karl hadn’t stopped his oafish whips and whiffs in the bow of the boat, and one of his casts had sailed past Joel’s ear, the hook so close that Joel thought it might have brushed his skin. Joel heard him shout, and when he glanced over his shoulder he saw Karl’s rod bent and his line taut. “I’ve got one too,” he yelled. “A monster.”

  A monster snag, Joel thought. A log or rock or piece of the riverbed. “You’re hung, Karl.” Lisa’s fish had made it to a sluice of swift water and was rushing the boat. She couldn’t reel quickly enough to take up the slack, and her line started to sag, drooping onto the surface.

  “Use your hand to strip it. You can’t use the reel. Strip!” He pushed them downstream now, reversed his stroke to help her eliminate the loose line between her and the fish.

  “I am fucking hung,” Karl cursed. “What do I do?”

  “Nothing. You’re exactly where you ought to be. I’ll take care of you when I’m done with your wife. Let some line go if you need to. Or better yet just break the leader and reel up.”

  “Great. I’ll just sit here and watch.” Karl yanked two or three times, but his fly didn’t budge.

  Lisa had filled the bottom of the boat with coils of line and managed to catch up with her trout. “Good job,” Joel told her. The fish jumped again, but this time it was more of a wallow, lacked the altitude and defiance of the earlier leaps. Joel rowed and Lisa turned the reel, and the fish lost ground.

  Karl’s line was stretched across the water, stuck in the middle of the river, and when they floated even with it, Joel saw the line twitch and go limp, assumed the leader had broken and the fly was lost. Unfortunately, though, they’d drifted below whatever snag was holding Karl’s hook, and the new position had freed his tackle.

  “Hey, I’m in business again.” Karl checked his nymph and flopped it back into the river. “I think that was a damn nice fish you just screwed me out of.”

  “Pardon?” Joel was tracing Lisa’s line, trying to catch sight of the rainbow.

  “I had a big-ass fish. I could feel the son of a bitch wiggling and swimming. And you let it get off, fucked it up with your sorry boat driving.”

  “I apologize. We’ll get you another one.” Joel almost added something about there being thousands of other boulders and sunken logs in the river but didn’t, kept his tongue.

  “Oh, goodness! I just saw him. He’s so big and gorgeous.” Lisa was on the edge of the wood
en board that provided her seat.

  “We’ll have to leave the boat to land him, okay? I’m going to row us about twenty yards farther, onto that shoal. I want you to step out nice and slow, keep the tip high and watch your line. If he takes off, palm the reel, make him use his energy and don’t panic.”

  “Please don’t let him get away.”

  “He won’t,” Joel said.

  He bumped the boat into the shallows, leapt over the side and gave it two rapid tugs, stuck its front well into a bar of smallish stones and low water. He helped Lisa climb out, watching her and the fish and the river. Karl had finally, thank the Lord, stopped casting and was scanning the water, doing his best to get a glimpse of his wife’s fish. The trout made two more runs and thrashed and shook when Joel had her lean into it with more rod, and after five tense minutes the spectacular fish was on its side, sliding toward them. Standing knee-deep in the stream, Joel scooped up the rainbow with a long-handled net, didn’t stop the net’s sweep until the fish was level with his head, raised high in delight and accomplishment. “All right!” he exclaimed. “Yes!”

  Lisa had dropped her rod and was tiptoeing toward Joel. “Let me see. Oh, my goodness. Look, Karl. How beautiful.”

  “Yeah, it’s a fish,” Karl said.

  The trout was easily twenty-five inches and five pounds. Its gills labored from the fight and the absence of oxygen, fanned and shut, fanned and shut. The length of its back was emerald green dotted with black, and its dorsal fin was almost as long as Joel’s middle finger. He took three photos of Lisa and her trophy, then they slipped the fish back into the water and watched it swim away, disappearing in a bolt of refracted color after regaining its strength.

  “Thank you so much,” she said to Joel as they stood at the river’s fringe, the water lapping over an apron of plum-size rocks. She reached around him and gave him an abbreviated hug, her hand pressing against his ribs, her shoulder touching the side of his arm when they came together for a sudden second.