Hostages to Fortune (2 page)

The talk at the bar was of the hatches, the water conditions, of which sections of the stream had been most productive lately. The Pale Sulphur Dun was the fly for twilight these past several days. Last Thursday in Section Eleven a catch of thirty-four, five of them keepers, fish over a foot long, had been recorded. Yet another member had hooked and lost the big brown trout that lived in the pool behind farmer Frank Kemp's house.

While he pretended to listen to all this he stole glances through the doorway into the sitting room. Nothing had changed since he last saw it. Nothing had changed since he first saw it twenty and more years ago. Not just the mounted fish hung on its paneled walls but the entire place had undergone a kind of total taxidermy that stopped its clock at the date of its founding: 1900. Grand Rapids chairs of stamped wood from the Sears, Roebuck catalogue of that year furnished the barroom. Over its doorways hung the same trophy trout that had always hung there and on the wall beneath a mammoth bamboo rod, the tool with which the grandfathers of today's members had subdued such monsters, hung the same placard of snelled flies, their tinsel tarnished, the colors of their feathers faded, in gaudy, bygone patterns that had fooled a simpler generation of trout than today's more heavily fished and warier ones. A crazy, cranky old place it was, determinedly anachronistic, proudly run-down—what Tony used to call classy discomfort.

It was the sitting room that was the picture gallery, and without doubt the photographs on the walls were still the ones that had always hung there, with some additions since he last saw them, for life goes on, but with no removals, for that was not permitted. “Thumbs Up!” was their common theme, too, and sooner or later, if this test he was putting himself to was to be a test and prove anything, he would have to take a look at them. For now, having taken advantage of moments when heads were turned so that the shaking of his hand would not be noticed, he had drunk his allotted martini and was as ready as he would ever be for the terrace.

It was just as it had been on another June evening long ago, except that he was alone now and that made all the difference. Introduced and proposed for membership by Tony Thayer, whose grandfather had been one of the club's founders, he had belonged to it for only a couple of years then. He was still living in the city, still doing newspaper work, and taking every opportunity to get away to the country. The Thayers' daughter, Christy, his godchild, had been weaned and could now be left with others, so Tony and Pris and he and his guest, Cathy Warren, had left the city at daybreak and driven up, breakfasting by the roadside on the way. It was a Monday and they had the clubhouse to themselves.

Now it was the evening of their first day. They had come in earlier and had hung their waders and their rods in their racks, had entered their catch in the club's record book, had cleaned their fish and had a drink, then gone upstairs to change and now they were down again for another drink before supper here on the terrace overlooking the stream. Then as now the rays of the setting sun turned the water to molten gold. In the shadows fireflies flickered and the chorusing of the first frogs of the evening was like the tinkling of innumerable tiny bells. The ladies were sitting, Tony and he standing at the parapet looking out, and when together they turned around he had felt that the moment, with these people, here in this place, was one he wanted to prolong for life.

He said, “Cathy.”

She had looked up at him and it was like a flower lifting its head to the sun and, with her smile, blossoming.

“Marry me, will you?”

“Just name the day,” she said.

“Be quick, Ben!” said Tony. “Before she has second thoughts.”

“Yes, Ben, be quick!” Cathy said. “But as for second thoughts, I've had them already.”

She had not minded his proposing to her publicly like this, for the public was Tony and she knew the depth of their feeling for each other. She was as proud to proclaim her acceptance as he was to claim her. She knew that this was not entirely the impulse of a moment. She had been kept waiting a good while for this and she had not minded that either. She knew he wanted to be sure of himself and of her, for he meant to marry only once.

Tony led them inside to the record book. Scratching out the 6 that he, Ben, had entered as his catch for the day, he made it 7. When he laid down the pen Cathy took it, scratched out her 3 and made it 4. This was preserved in the book for that year along with the others on the shelves going back to 1900.

They had all four been on the steps of the county courthouse before it opened its doors the following morning to buy the marriage license. They fished away the days of waiting. Here on the terrace Cathy and he had vowed before a local minister to love and to cherish one another till death did them part. Champagne had flowed like the stream below, and full of it, Tony, the best man, brought a blush to the bride's cheeks with his supplication, “Lord, bless this union of thy servants Benjamin and Catherine, and send them, we pray thee, an evening rise.”

In just a week and a day their silver wedding anniversary was coming up.

Where was she now? he wondered as the bell summoned him to supper.

“Lazarus, come forth!” the bell cried to him with a loud voice.

“Lazarus stinketh, for he hath been dead four days,” he said to himself.

He tarried on the terrace to give his fellow club members time to drain their drinks and go to the dining room and seat themselves without having to feel that they must invite him to join them at their tables.

Not all, but enough about him and his affairs was known here to force a role upon him. Before making his entrance he composed his face into a suitable expression. A delicate balance must be struck. He must look undaunted but not unfeeling. He must show that he had buried his dead but that he had not forgotten them. He must respond to smiles with a smile but not with a broad one; he must respond to looks of commiseration with a grateful look but not with one that pleaded for more. Even to people familiar with only a part of his story, like these here, he would be viewed with a combination of curiosity and caution of which he would be conscious every moment but of which he must appear to be unconscious. He believed he was up to this now. He believed he could show a brave face to the world. Unfortunately he could do nothing about the ravage to that face which aroused suspicions of there being even more to his story than was common knowledge.

The bar, its countertop covered with empty and half-empty glasses, was deserted. He passed through it and went down the hall to the dining room. It was not the pain of entering it for the first time alone or with nobody awaiting him there that arrested him on the doorsill—the pain would come later; at first it was the novelty of it. Forgotten were the attitude and the expression to suit it that he had so carefully rehearsed. Not since his troubles all began had he been among people, and to his long disused and still oversensitive organs the talk and the laughter, the lights, the glitter were a shock. He stood at the door dazed and irresolute. The pain of remembering Cathy made him yearn toward a happiness in which he had once shared. Old associations momentarily obliterated present realities: he forgot who he was now and remembered who he had been for so long—one like these, here on a holiday, surrounded by his family and his friends. It was lucky for him that he went unnoticed. Anyone seeing him there with that smile on his face would have thought him a monster of forgetfulness, morally and emotionally deficient.

He had already been served when Ruth Rogers appeared at his table. For a moment he thought that one of his secrets was out and that he was now to experience the mockery of being considered “eligible.” The possibility of his patient's being exposed to a widow or two his own age had been the one aspect of this outing that his doctor approved of.

“Alone this evening?” Ruth asked.

“Every evening,” he replied, though to himself, not aloud. Aloud he said, “Yes. I'm not very good company, I'm afraid, but won't you join me?”

“Cathy's not with you?”

She asked it disbelievingly. So she did not know. In this there was some relief, more painful irony. Ruth was one of those—like himself—who supposed that after what they had been through together Cathy and he could never again bear to be apart for a moment.

“No,” he said. “Not this trip.”

He helped seat her. He had forgotten the scent close up of a woman's fragrance and it dizzied him like a lungful of smoke after long abstinence. He seated himself. The waitress came and set another place.

“Don't wait for me,” said Ruth, indicating his dinner. But he did wait, and she said, “It's good to see you here again, Ben. We've missed you.” She was letting him know that she for one did not think it improper for a man who had been through what he had to want to enjoy life once again.

He thanked her. Said it was good to be back.

She said, “Actually I may not be coming back anymore myself after this.”

“Oh?”

When she had been served she explained. “An old friend has recently proposed to me, and he's no fisherman—hates the thought. Besides, he lives out in Oregon. That all makes it sound like I've said yes to him, doesn't it? I haven't. But neither have I said no. If he asks me again—well, I'm not sure what I'll say.”

“You're here to find out.”

“Yes. Yes, I am,” she said, wondering at his perception.

“Do you love him?”

“Love,” she mused. “I'm not sure I know what it's supposed to feel like the second time around. Different from the first, I guess. I like him a lot. He's a good man. He says he loves me.”

He looked around the room, then back at her and said, “This place meant a lot to your Jack.”

“Yes,” she said, and with her eyes expressed her gratitude for his understanding.

He understood that she wanted not to cheat this suitor of hers, not shortchange him. Her whole heart he could not expect, it was not hers anymore to give, but she wanted to make sure she was giving all she had left, not holding back any part of it. In this place that had meant much to her Jack she was hoping to commune with his spirit and either lay it to rest or else live in its thrall.

Which outcome she foresaw, her next words revealed. “When I lost him I vowed I would never marry again. But as I needn't tell you, Ben, life goes on.”

She wanted confirmation of that. Wanted it particularly from him.

“Yes,” he said. “Life goes on.”

“And as I also needn't tell you, it helps to have someone to face it with.”

In that, too, she wanted him to second her.

He managed somehow to say it helped to have someone to face it with.

With a sigh that had in it some regret but rather more complacency, she said, “I'll miss this old place. I was never all that keen on fishing but it was always fun to be here.” She was fairly confident that her Jack's ghost, when she encountered it somewhere along the stream tomorrow, would let her off the hook, give her the old club sign, “Thumbs Up!” He hoped it did. A woman, he thought, could change her name—more than once. There was a boost toward getting a fresh start in life.

“It was a wonderful place for the boys when they were growing—Oh, Ben! How thoughtless of me! How could I? I'm so sorry. Oh, I could bite my tongue off!”

“Save it to say ‘I do' another time. And of the first may you remember what you want to remember and forget what you want to forget.”

To himself he said, “Do as I say, not as I do.”

After supper, in the game room, the bridge and backgammon regulars were at it. From the poolroom came the click and clatter of the balls. In the sitting room women knitted, plied their petitpoint needles while sipping coffee and chatting together. Seated at the vise on the table in the corner a flytier had drawn a circle of onlookers. He remembered a fellow club member's once asking whether Tony and he tied their own flies out of season. That was before their son and godson began supplying them with his flies, but even then their answer had been no. For them there had been no out of season. Their year was a succession of sporting seasons, with closing day for one soon followed by opening day for another: salmon, grouse, ducks, deer.

He felt obliged to put in an appearance in the bar. Life went on; one paid one's dues by demonstrating that it did. Here was a good place to do it. Thumbs Up! Here he was safe from sympathy.

The looks the patrons turned on him showed him his mistake. The atmosphere of the bar had undergone a change; the falling barometer on the wall seemed to be its gauge. He had ventured into the very vale of tears just waiting for someone to shed them over. The weekend bachelors enjoying an evening free from their wives' supervision had arrived at a state of emotional unsteadiness, their sang-froid had thawed, and emanations reaching him from several of them made him feel they would be willing to exempt him from the strict application of the club's code, his being such a special case, and that they felt he was wishing they would. When one of them detached himself from the bar and tacked toward him he took refuge on the terrace. To be shunned by sober men was painful, to be sought out by maudlin ones was worse. It seemed it was to be his lot now to endure both.

A breeze had risen and set the trees sighing. Above the everlasting murmur of the stream the first of the evening's chorus of peepers was tentatively tuning up. The light from the barroom mixed milkily with the mist rising off the water as it cooled in the chill of the night. Overhead a half moon shone and the sky to the north was sprinkled with stars but to the south it was black and the blackness was spreading rapidly northward. The quickening breeze now carried the smell, or rather the absence of smells, of approaching rain. A first, far-distant rumble of thunder was like the yawn of some awakening beast of prey about to begin its nightly prowl. The barometer of his disposition was beginning its nightly fall, only tonight it was falling faster as his quickening memories marshaled like a gathering storm.