Abbeville (27 page)

“It was a long time ago,” I said. “Here you and I meet as equals.”

I pulled on a short wading jacket. A pair of sunglasses on a lanyard and an old Cubs hat completed the outfit.

Johnny, waist-deep in the river now, held the boat steady as we got into it. Then he pushed it gently into the current and hopped aboard
with much more ease than I would have imagined possible for a man in boots up to his armpits.

“It's awfully dark,” I said. “Will you be able to see what's ahead of us?”

“This stretch is pretty clear,” he said. He handed me something heavy. “When I tell you to, push the switch and aim that lamp straight over the bow. Don't do it yet. I want you to look up over your head first.”

The sky was so thick with stars that in many places they formed a seamless cloud of light.

“Look, Rob,” I said.

“I am,” he said.

I was listening for exasperation but heard none.

“Now turn on the lamp,” Johnny said.

I fumbled for the switch, sure that if I didn't get it on in time, I'd end up impaled on a branch. When I finally succeeded, the obstruction Johnny was looking for was still twenty yards ahead. He rowed deftly around it and then told me to turn the lamp off again.

“In a few minutes the sky will start to brighten,” he said. “We're out early because there are a few stretches of river that are mighty good if you are the first to get there but slow down after a bunch of folks have been slapping the water with their fly lines.”

He asked me to turn on the lamp again, which I did more easily this time.

“We'll be fishing for brown trout and rainbow,” he said. “In the fall the king salmon come up to spawn and die, and in the late fall and spring there are steelhead. These are big fish, gentlemen. You may see some. But I've got to tell you, give me a fat old brown on a dry fly and a four-weight rod any day.”

“A dry fly is the one that floats?” I said.

“You've done this before,” Johnny said.

With the sky pinking up he didn't need me to wield the lamp anymore, so I stowed it under the seat and leaned up against the gunwale to gaze into the forest we were passing through. I couldn't imagine what it must have been like when Grampa had first come here and explored places where it was possible no European had ever set foot before. I remembered the stories he told, about the bear and its cub, about the young brave spearing a fish, about how when he left, it was a wasteland as far as the eye could see.

“Your great-grandfather would have loved you, Rob,” I said.

“You've said that before,” he said.

Johnny leaped out of the boat and put out his hand to Rob for balance. Then to me. It made me feel a little lady-like, but at least I was able to stay upright.

He led us out into the river to a point where the water was no deeper than our knees. It surprised me that the center was so shallow. Still, moving in the current proved trickier than I remembered. Large rocks that could send you sprawling punctuated the slippery gravel on the bottom.

Johnny gave each of us a rod, placed us a distance apart, and then began to demonstrate casting technique. His line looped fore and aft, graceful as the wind in the trees. It was no wonder fish rose.

Soon Rob was throwing long, gentle loops that seemed to hang in the air and then flutter down like a leaf. The fly would drift until it was directly downstream, then he would pick it up in one movement and lay it down again, exactly the same each time. Eventually he actually got a fish on. I watched as Johnny showed him how to strip it in without using the reel. The trout turned out to be no bigger than Rob's grin.

“Now you are a man,” I said.

Johnny turned his attention to me and got me to the point where I was not embarrassing myself. Still no fish came to my fly. I looked into
the sliding sheet of water and saw the gravel and sand bottom, as lifeless as the surface of the moon. Then Johnny put out a cast for me. Life appeared in the void, and he hooked it. He let me reel it in.

As time went by, it seemed to me that we must have chased all the fish away, but then Rob's rod bent again. With Johnny at the net he landed a pretty trout more than a foot long. As I cast over and over with no success, the lyric, “They're writing songs of love, but not for me,” came into my head and I could not get it out.

The afternoon wore on. My mind went to the moving river, the cycle of the salmon, the way the forest healed itself, the rise and fall of markets. Suddenly I felt something throb at the end of my line.

“Fish on!” shouted Johnny, as if he were Melville's Starbuck.

I felt the line whine off the reel as the fish took off downriver. I did not know what to do, so I did nothing, which turned out to be just the thing.

“That's a good fish,” Johnny said. “Let him run. When he jumps, bow to him. Then when he slacks off, start reeling in slow and steady.”

Within a minute or two the guide made his way downstream, and suddenly the fish was in his net.

“Fourteen, fifteen inches at least,” he said with authority. I waded down to see. “Nice, fat little rainbow. He just hooked himself, didn't he. They won't always be so obliging. You want to focus on your fly at all times.”

As he talked, he popped the hook out of the trout's mouth. I stared at the deep, textured color of the fish until Johnny tipped the net and sent it back into the river. I followed it for a couple of feet, then it vanished.

Johnny stuck out his wet hand, and I shook it.

“Now you are a man, too,” he said. “But it's time to get back into the boat.”

We managed that somehow, though my way was utterly without
grace. Johnny took to the oars and put Rob in the front of the boat and me in the back so we could both cast toward shore as we floated downstream. This turned out to be a lot different from casting with both feet on the riverbed. For one thing, the boat rocked in response to every movement. For another, it was all so quick. By the time you recognized an opportunity, the current had pulled you past it. The river ran relentlessly toward the lake, where the water evaporated and made the rain that drove the underground springs that fed the river that floated the boat past fish you could not catch. History repeated, but you only got one chance.

“Fish on!” shouted Johnny.

I looked up to see Rob's rod bent almost double. The reel sang as the fish ran. Then suddenly the surface of the water shattered into a million stars as the fish flew straight upward from the deep and fell back with a mighty splash.

“That, young man, is a nice rainbow,” said Johnny. “Don't try to force it. But take in line when it lets you. Whenever it isn't gaining on you, you should be gaining on it.”

Rob had turned as he received this instruction. I loved the thrill in his eyes. I yearned to catch a fish like that.

“Careful, now,” Johnny said. “He may have one more jump in him.”

Johnny reached down into the boat and pulled up a net.

“Easy,” he coaxed. “Here, I'll duck so you can get the line over me. Now reel gently until I say, then smoothly lift the rod above your head with both hands.”

Rob did exactly as he was told, and the beautiful fish, streaked blood-red along its sides, came up out of the darkness and into the swooping stroke of Johnny's net.

“You've got a future as a guide, young fella,” said Johnny. “You're a natural.”

Rob beamed.

Marine biology perhaps, I thought. A Ph.D. from the leading university in the field and then a fellowship at Woods Hole. There were worse things a person could do, though I nurtured the hope that my son would choose something I could help him with.

“What a fish!” I shouted.

“Let's get a picture,” said Johnny, handing a point-and-shoot to me.

Johnny pulled the fish up out of the net and held it out in front of Rob while I proudly recorded his victory.

“Everybody sit down now,” said Johnny. “We're coming up on a little bit of a rough patch.”

The boat began to bounce and tip and thud off rocks. I put the rod between my knees and took hold of the gunwales.

Johnny was paddling madly now, holding the boat back as he maneuvered around the bigger rocks. On one side of the river the bank rose almost vertically a couple hundred feet. Suddenly it wasn't Michigan at all. It was the western wilderness. Rob whooped. I held on so hard my hands ached.

Soon we were in softer water again. Johnny lightened up on the oars.

“You okay, Rob?” I called.

He turned around.

“That was dope,” he said. I did not like the word, but I had to admit that I had felt a rush myself.

“You're going to have another ride down below here a piece,” said Johnny. “It's a little hairier, as a matter of fact. Up above it are some pretty good lies. We'll stop and do some fishing before attempting it.”

“I have total confidence in you,” I said.

Johnny turned around again and looked at my hands.

“I guess then you can let go of the boat,” he said.

We drifted through a stretch of water as flat as a mirror. Johnny dipped an oar in from time to time to make subtle adjustments. Rob
and I laid out our lines and let our flies dead-drift alongside us in the current. But nothing rose.

“It's all sand in here,” said Johnny. “Just get some casting practice in, 'cause you won't be catching nothing. Up ahead's where we'll find Moby Dick.”

“What's with all the suds?” Rob asked, pointing to foam that gathered in a backwater. “Did somebody dump detergent in the river?”

“They better not,” said Johnny, “or they'll have about a hundred guides coming after them. But don't worry. The foam don't mean nothing. It's just nature blowing bubbles.”

The boat picked up speed until Johnny had to work the oars continuously to keep it headed straight. A few hundred yards farther on he let loose the anchor chain, which went down with the roar of a sea monster.

He went over the side as easily as a man dismounting a horse. Rob was next. I got one heavy, awkward boot over the side, then found myself hopelessly stuck. I leaned outward, feeling for the river bottom or a rock that would give me some purchase. There was nothing but ceaseless motion.

“Here,” said Johnny. “Put your hand on my shoulder.”

Rob looked on in amusement. With one feeble push I was free. My boot found something that seemed solid. But it wasn't. I was ready for the shock of cold water, but Johnny held me upright by my suspenders like a marionette.

“Careful there, partner,” he said.

He led us a bit downstream of the drift boat, reminding us to take small, careful steps and keep right behind him.

“Pretty good vertical drop along here,” he said. “There's a deep pool ahead that always holds good fish.”

It lay about twenty yards downstream. The current poured over the
rocks along the right bank and into a black boil no more than six feet out from where we stood.

“If you do tie into a fish here,” Johnny said, “you've got to stand your ground. Follow it down too far, and you'll go in over your head.”

Johnny placed himself below Rob and me near where the gravel dropped off. I secured myself by jamming my left foot between two big rocks and bracing my right leg against a boulder. The river surged around my knees, making intricate patterns of turbulence like clouds from a satellite.

My first cast fell way short. But after a few minutes, I began putting the flies into the right general area. Much good it did me. The best I could offer summoned absolutely no response from the deep.

Patience has never been my strong suit, but I soon forgot everything but the 10
A.M.
and 2
P.M.
arc of the fly rod, the eddies and runs of the current, the drift of the fly.

Which suddenly vanished.

I lifted my rod to bring it back to the surface—and something surged at the end of the line.

“Don't even think about touching that reel,” said Johnny.

The fish raced downstream, taking line. Soon I was afraid I would lose this magnificent creature, which now loomed as large to me as love.

I started to wade after it, stumbling on rocks, moving faster than I was comfortable with, propelled by the force of the current.

“Watch yourself there, partner,” said Johnny. “Ain't a fish in this river worth dying for.”

I managed to slow the fish and myself down and turned sideways to the flow to reduce its pressure on me. I took a lateral step, reeling in slack until I felt the shuddering terror on the other end of the line.

“Put some wood to it,” said Johnny. “There's no two ways about it: If you don't gain on it, it'll gain on you.”

“That's two ways right there,” I said.

“Win or lose. Live or die,” said Johnny. “Eat or be eaten.”

I took one more step downriver onto a rock, but when I lifted my upstream boot, the rock gave way. Water poured into my waders, then closed over my head. Something stronger than anything I had ever felt in my life pulled me down.

I managed to fight it until I got my head above the surface for an instant. I gulped in air, but water came with it, and when I went down again, I was struggling so hard that I coughed beneath the surface, which brought even more into my lungs.

My eyes opened and I saw far above me the bright, living, inaccessible sky. Then suddenly some terrible creature grabbed hold of me as if to tear my head from my body. I struggled against it. But it was no use. I went limp. At that very moment I felt something levitating me until I broke the surface.

“You're all right now,” Rob said. “Just let your feet down. It's shallow here. We're still above the rapids. You're safe.”

I was coughing when I felt the bottom under one heel. Rob's arm beneath my chin let go, and I came to a standing position. The water in my boots was so heavy I could barely move.