Catch & Release (11 page)

The Firehole River cuts a deep channel. There is no pussyfooting with a gradual bank at this spot. The grassy mud curls over in a slumping lip and then there's nothing but river, pure and urgent as melted glass. The bison tracks all run parallel to the water, because crossing here would be dumb, and the big, boneheaded hairballs know it.

I actually have a little stretch of water to myself, which is never guaranteed here in the people zoo. This is the piece of river nobody else wanted. There is no good place to park near here, so I had to hike for a ways. The water's gone a little warm, which is a matter of degree considering that this river absorbs trickling streams of steaming thermal runoff every day of the year. There are fish in the water at my feet, and they want to stay there. Lips have been ripped. Photos have been taken. A free lunch is greeted with suspicion.

Suspicious fish, warm water, a place that gets whipped into a froth most days when there isn't snow three feet deep: that's the situation, and it makes me happy. My one advantage is the overcast sky full of clouds that blunt the light. The silhouette cast by bright sun behind a fly can ruin the illusion. The key will be setting that drift to exactly match the current, no drag on the line, no telltale twitch. I can give a little flick that mends the line. I can use tippet fine as a unicorn's whisker, just this side of unethical. I'm the girl who knows how to do that.

Assuming I can get my Bead Head Prince on the line, that is. Bead Head Prince nymph, size 12, be steady, I'm your princess. I hold my breath, and it's on and it's knotted. I'm still not taking chances with my crappy vision, though. I add a bright pink water balloon as a strike indicator. If I get a fish on, I'm going to know it fast as the speed of light, way faster than the time it takes a tug to actually reach my fingers.

And so, you, there under the water, let's dance.

I put this moment, I put this moment, I put this moment—here.

The river teaches me to have a smooth and moving surface, and the air teaches me how to breathe when I cast so my arm doesn't get heavy, and that's pretty much all there is to life until twilight starts to shut down the day and I need to walk back along the blacktop's edge to meet up with Odd where D'Elegance is parked beside a picnic table.

 

“Catch anything?” says Odd when he sees me coming.

“Nope.” There are all kinds of lies told about fishing. This is one of them. I caught three fish, each one prettier and bigger than the last. And I set them all free. But Odd doesn't need to hear that.

“Me neither, but I got my picture took with three Japanese girls. We all made peace signs. They were hot.”

“Good thing I wasn't with you then, 'cause I would have scared them off.”

“I dunno about that. You might not a had the power. They thought I was real photogenic.”

“They said that?”

“I think so. It was all in Japanese, but I'm pretty sure that's what they said.” Then he reaches around behind him and picks up a box of cereal and shakes it, “Dinner? We got Lucky Charms and Oreos and stuff to make s'mores. . . . And hey, thanks for loaning me those flies. I lost that Bead Head Prince, though. Sorry for that.”

 

I put my hand into the Lucky Charms box and pull out—mostly crumbs. And a yellow-and-orange marshmallow hourglass. This piece of sugar can stop time . . . or speed it up . . . or reverse it. I just don't know how to make it work. And I don't know what I would want it to do, either. What if I reverse time, but nothing changes and I just have to live through everything again? Who would want that? The hourglass makes a little squeak when I crush it between my teeth. I can feel it dissolving on my tongue. Lucky me. I have no milk for my cereal.

I reach for the red aluminum flask and take a deep draw of water. Only, it isn't water; it stings. It stings all the way down and spurs the tears out of my eye.

“Welcome to flavor country, Polly.”

All I say is “Water?”

“Didn't take you for a hard-liquor prohibitionist.”

I don't say that I like a sloe gin fizz while I play threehanded pinochle with my parents or that Bridger's mom let us have mojitos on the Fourth of July.

“But, if you want water, you got a river. I only brought vodka,” says Odd.

“We can't drink the river. What if it isn't clean? We'll get giardia. We're more susceptible to infections. . . .”

“Hey, if we need to pull over 'cause you get the runs, OK. But you aren't going to get that sick, Polly. Death had a shot at you and passed you right up. He took a nibble out of each of us and spit us back out. Until he gets hungry enough to eat leftovers, nothing we do matters. We could drink pure piss and battery acid if we wanted.”

I take another sip from the bottle. I am expecting it this time. It isn't so bad. It might be pure piss and battery acid, but I'm ready for it now.

We pass the flask and the cereal box back and forth in silence for a while. Then the cereal box is empty. Odd takes the plastic bag out and scrounges the last bits that have been hiding under there. He hands me a pink marshmallow heart.

Odd lifts the red flask and says, “To Gramma Dot and Meriwether Lewis.” Then he passes the bottle to me. I raise it and say, “To Odd's Grandma Dot? And Meriwether Lewis?”

I feel like I need to join in the toast, but I don't know the particulars.

“You know what, Polly? They are going to sell all her shit. They are gonna sell it all. They are going to sell her furniture and books and even her lawnmower.”

I'm ready to say how sorry I am . . . and your grandma wouldn't want you to feel sad . . . and maybe they will let you choose something to remember her by . . .

“So they take her on a fuckin' two-week cruise of the fjords of Norway, like she can be homesick for a place she never been, and then they're just going to take her to the new place afterward and hope she's forgot all about her own home.”

“What?”

“Gramma Dot, she's got the Alzheimer's. They say she does. Look, can't a person forget they were making a grilled cheese sandwich? Burnt toast don't mean Alzheimer's. Shit happens. I figure you make enough sandwiches, some are going to catch fire. They could cut a person some slack.”

“All she did was burn a sandwich?”

“The curtains caught on fire a little bit, no biggie. My mom didn't even like those curtains. Now they're all, ‘It's for her own safety,' and ‘It's a nice place,' but you know what? That's crap. They just don't want the responsibility.”

I don't have anything to say about this. And, considering everything I heard so far, I don't even want ask what Meriwether Lewis has to do with it.

After about ten minutes Odd says, “D'Elegance, that's Gramma Dot's. It was the last car her and Granpa Odd bought before he died. She calls it Granpa's car. Everything on it is original.”

When it is finally too dark to see, Odd says, “She thought I was Granpa Odd once. She grabbed my ass. That was weird.”

 

When I wake up to pee, there is a unmistakable wetness, a sticky heat. I hardly need to touch myself with my fingers to know it's happened. I've got my period. Last time I this happened, I had two eyes. It's been months. Why now? Did my body just suddenly remember it wasn't a child? Is this the first time I have blood to spare? Maybe it's just some biochemical reaction to Odd's monkey-house armpits. Whatever. It's a mess. And I've forgotten the number-one rule of the Vagina American: be prepared. I really doubt Odd or Odd's Gramma Dot has stashed a supply of tampons in the Cadillac for this possibility, so I reach down and pull off one of my socks and sacrifice it. Come morning I can replace it with a wad of paper towels. That'll be fun, sitting on a wad of that mess until we hit a pocket of civilization and I can do better.

Suddenly, for the first time I can remember, I'm afraid of bears. I imagine I smell hot and bloody as an elk roast. My tent doesn't feel safe anymore. It just makes me blind. It makes me listen so hard my cheeks start to ache.

I give up, unzip the tent, and crawl out. The stars are bright enough to make me dizzy, but starlight doesn't open up the shadows. I drag out my sleeping bag and head for the Cadillac. I want a barrier a little more substantial than ripstop nylon. D'Elegance will protect me. When I pull the door shut, all the world has to stay outside. She is my protective quarantine. The backseat is too small to feel comfortable, but I fold my legs up and cuddle my cheek against the velvety cushion. My sleeping bag is warm. It's quieter inside the car. I can't hear the constant motion of water and air. All I can hear is the stuff inside my head. I hear the song.

 

Come away, human child

To the water, and the wild

With a faery, hand in hand

For the world's more full of weeping

than you can understand.

 

I hear the song, but it's not in my voice. It's in others' voices, the voices I heard when my mom played the CD over and over again while I was in the coma.

 

Weaving olden dances,

Mingling hands and mingling glances.

 

She found it in my room on my desk and decided it must be special to me. It wasn't. It was just part of a multimedia thesis on Yeats for English. It was all the versions I could find of people singing and reciting the same poem.

 

In pools among the rushes

That scarce could bathe a star.

 

I know my mom was sitting there, watching me sleep, because her whisper is all tangled up in the song, “It's OK, Babykid. It's OK. Mommy's here. Mommy's here. Mommy's here.”

 

We seek for slumbering trout

And whispering in their ears

Give them unquiet dreams.

They don't have what I need at the gas station. They have tampons, but I need pads, with wings. I'm not being picky, it's a matter of life and death according to Mom. If I use a tampon, I'll die from toxic shock. My body is a compromised system. A two-inch wad of cotton and string can kill me. Everything can kill me.