Hostages to Fortune (31 page)

The attraction of death was diminished by the thought of how very little we could ever gain on it. By shortening your years yourself how few at most you were able to subtract, how few add to the many you would be dead. Man that is born of woman has a long time to be dead. There was no such thing as a long life. There was such a thing as too long a life—eighteen years could be a weary lot; but there was no such thing as a long life.

He got into his gear and waded into the water and began fishing his way upstream.

Now he was back at the pool where he had set out in the morning. He turned for a look at the stretch of water he had twice traversed today. Above it now hovered a layer of mist like dust above a road after the passage of a vehicle, or like a visible exhalation, a sigh at the end of day and the coming on of evening. Shaded, the water was turning chillier.

A hatch of mayflies, the evening rise, was beginning to come off the pool in ever-thickening numbers. Splitting and shedding their nymphal shucks in their swift ascent from the bed, they exchanged elements, surfaced, and rode the current for the seconds required to dry their wings for flight. A miniature armada about to take off. It was these seconds in their life cycle that the dry-fly fisherman imitated with his artificial, for it was then, during their period of immobility and helplessness, that the trout preyed upon them. Those that escaped found perches for themselves among the leaves and branches of the streamside bushes. There overnight they attained their maturity. One last function of their brief lives remained to them. Hovering above the stream out of reach of leaping trout, males and females, a cloud of them, met and mated on the wing—fulfillment fatal to the males. The females dipped again and again depositing their fertilized eggs upon the surface, rose when all were shed in a last flutter of release, then fell thick as snowflakes to the water, spent, their carcasses now feeding the fish. Their winged lives would have lasted for a day. Next year's trout, those of that third of their kind that survived the winter, would feed on the nymphs and the duns that hatched from those eggs, they in their turn to feed the fishermen who made it back, licensed for another season. Ol' man river, that ol' man river, he don't plant taters and don't plant cotton, and them what plants 'em is soon forgotten, but ol' man river, he just keeps rollin' along. The water he had waded through this morning was miles downstream from him now and somebody else was fishing it. By this time tomorrow it would be part of a different river and by next week an ocean wave. And even now, over his native Kansas, were forming clouds that would replenish the stream with raindrops that once before, even more than once, times out of number, had mingled in it, when one of those old mustachioed members of the club, and after him his son, even that latter worthy's last cast framed and hanging on the wall, had stood where he stood now. The amount of moisture in our atmosphere and on our planet was a constant, fixed at the creation, perpetually being recycled, ours on loan in our time and place. Izaak Walton, fishing his River Dove, had fished this very water. And what was it we were told? That the human body was seventy-five percent composed of water. Around his feet now flowed a droplet condensed from the vapors of that one, flesh of his flesh, reduced to its components in Princeton on that October day. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be: world without end. Amen.

Now as he watched, fish began to feed on the emerging flies, though unless you knew how to interpret the signs you might not have known what was occurring. The rise came on like a summer shower, the surface of the pool dimpling here and there as though struck by large drops of rain as the fish slyly sucked the flies under from below. Soon, like a quickening shower as the flies began to take flight, there were rings made by rising fish all over the pond. Then the first one broke water, followed instantly by a second, a third, a troupe of them, as though a baton had been raised and brought down and a ballet corps of trout had made their orchestrated entrance. Pursuing the flies in their flight, they rose into the air and hung quivering there in defiance of gravity.

It was at times like this, when a large hatch was on, that trout, though most voracious, were at their choosiest. The fisherman had to present them with a fly the exact replica in color, shape, and size of the real thing on which they were feasting. The March Brown that was the only pattern they would take yesterday at this time was worthless today when the Gray Fox was on the evening menu, though the difference between the two was microscopic. Out of the swarm all about him he grabbed a fly on the wing, held and studied it. In size it was a number 16. Its pale, straw-colored body, mottled wings, and ginger tail could best be matched, he decided, with a Light Cahill. Among the rising fish he had seen several good ones, but as he was tying on his fly a fish leaped that he determined to try for. It was a fine one, over two pounds. He plotted his strategy.

His first consideration was not to hook some smaller fish and in fighting it disturb the pool and put down his fish. But his was a fish big enough to keep any challengers out of an extensive territory of its own. He watched it rise and rise again, clocking its timing, meanwhile studying the currents, positioning himself. He kept his line in the air with false casts. He reckoned the fish's resting station to be a yard downstream from the spot to which it consistently rose. Now immediately following a rise, as the fish was reentering the water, he dropped his fly a yard above that spot. Slowly it floated downstream. With a twist of his wrist he mended his cast. As his fly neared the fish's feeding circle he tensed for the strike. It was allowed to drift by untouched.

He let his fly float well below the fish's lie then gently lifted his line from the water. To dry his fly with false casts for a fresh float he turned aside so that the drops shed by his line would not fall where the fish might see them and take fright. He cast again, and again with no telltale drag, his fly drifted past the critical spot. Had he spooked his fish after all, put it down despite his care? He rested the water. During his recess the fish rose again. It was still on the feed. Was something suspicious about his fly? Was his leader too coarse?

The light was fading fast, and knowing that the hatch would soon end and their dinner end with it, the fish were feeding with abandon. Maybe in the frenzy his would lose its caution. Meanwhile, remembering the adage that a fly could never be too small, he changed his for a number 18. It was no bigger than a gnat, and to thread the leader through the eye of the hook with his trembling hands he had to hold it silhouetted against the sky. Again as he rested the water his fish fed.

The failing light now came to his aid, obscuring his leader, hiding any shortcomings in the faithfulness of his fly. He himself could just follow it. As it entered the target area he tensed in anticipation.

“Take it!” he said to the lurking fish.

And it did. Launched like a guided missile from underwater, it hooked itself in gorging the fly—no need for him to strike nor was there time to—and instantly it was as though a switch had been thrown and his line became a live electric wire crackling with current. Clear out of the pool and upstream into the narrows the fish shot, and in the shallow water its passage raised a bulge on the surface as a torpedo does. Fifty feet it ran before the opposing current and the rein of the line brought it to a halt. There it hung, and as it recouped strength, the vibration of his rod, the strumming of his taut line by the flowing water gave him the sensation of feeling the very heartbeats of the fish, frightened but still full of fight.

The rod allowed the fish no rest but, like the other tine of a tuning fork, responded to its every motion, forcing it to strain continuously against the tug. Now the frustrated fish turned and rushed downstream. Past him it went and, catching sight of its tormentor, fired its auxiliary rockets. In the depths of the pool it sounded. There for fully five minutes it sulked. Then the changing slant of his line warned him that the fish was surfacing, about to leap. Out it came, threshing, tossing its head, trying to shake the hook. It danced on air, its spots sparkling, its golden underside flashing.

Twice more the fish leaped and twice more sounded, but nearer to him each time as he regained line, reined it in. It was as though he were connected by telegraph wire to the fish: he could feel its distress signals weaken steadily and at last sign off. His rod ceased vibrating, his line leveled, and the fish, on its side, floated slowly to the surface. He scooped it up in his net and sloshed ashore.

The fish could be saved, and game as it was, it deserved to live. It looked lifeless but it was not, it was just exhausted from the fight, and if he held it head first into the current and gently rocked it back and forth its respiration would be restored and it would revive. He extracted the hook from its palate using his hemostat and submerged it. Then he changed his mind. Holding the fish as he would hold a club, he knocked its head against a rock. It quivered, then stilled and stiffened.

He changed his mind because into it had come thoughts of the moment on the clubhouse porch when everybody laid out his day's catch. If he appeared there with nothing they would all feel sorry for him, and God knew, people were tired of having to feel sorry for him. But if he brought in the day's finest fish—and it was unlikely that anybody had caught a better one than his—it would seem that he was proud of himself and pleased with his day. Nobody would envy him his luck. They would all be relieved. They would congratulate him and want to stand him to a drink. At supper Eddie would serve the fish to some party with his compliments and from across the dining room they would gesture with thumbs up and he would respond in kind. Then it would seem to all that he had really rejoined the club.

A Biography of William Humphrey

William Humphrey (1924–1997) was an American author and a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction in 1959 for his classic book
Home from the Hill
, which told the story of a small-town family in rural Texas. Indeed, themes of family life, hardship, and rural struggle are the defining characteristics of his writing, appearing in all thirteen of his works.

Humphrey was born on June 18 in Clarksville, Texas, to Clarence and Nell Humphrey. Nestled in the heart of Red River County, Clarksville in the early 1920s resembled the Old South more than the Texan West. It is from this time and place that Humphrey drew inspiration for much of his writing career. Daily life in rural, isolated Clarksville was built around cotton farming and was emotionally and physically taxing. Neither of Humphrey's parents attended school beyond the third grade, and the family moved frequently during his childhood: fifteen times in five years. His father, an alcoholic, hunted in the snake-infested swamplands of the Sulphur River to help feed his wife and son. Although Clarence was a difficult and quick-tempered man, Humphrey cared deeply for him, and his love for his father had a profound impact on his writing.

As the Great Depression progressed into the 1930s, so did the strain on the Humphreys' already-precarious finances. Clarence worked as a shade-tree mechanic, yet was too poor to buy a car of his own. He would test-drive the cars he fixed as fast as they could go, taking them screaming down the back roads of Red River County.

In 1937 Clarence was killed in an auto accident. Humphrey was just thirteen at the time. Much later, in his memoir
Farther Off From Heaven
(1977), Humphrey commented on this period, which was to be the end of his childhood: “What my new life would be like I could only guess at, but I knew it would be totally different from the one that was ending, and that a totally different person from the one I had been would be needed to survive in it.” Soon after his father's death, Humphrey and his mother moved to Dallas to live with relatives. He did not return to Clarksville for thirty-two years.

Humphrey exceled in school and was able to attend an art academy in Dallas on a scholarship. At the onset of the Second World War, Humphrey attempted to join the navy but was rejected for being color blind. Having seriously considered being an artist up to this point, Humphrey decided to focus on his writing instead. He attended the University of Texas and the Southern Methodist University for short spells during the early 1940s but did not graduate from either college. In 1944 he left SMU in his final semester and headed briefly to Chicago and then went on to live in New York City's Greenwich Village.

In 1949 Humphrey published his first short story, “The Hardys,” in the
Sewanee Review.
He was so excited to receive the letter of acceptance that he tripped and fell as he was running up the steps to his house to share the news with his wife, the painter Dorothy Cantine, and broke his ankle. On the strength of that story, Humphrey was hired to teach creative writing and English literature at Bard College. Starting around this time, renowned writer Katherine Anne Porter, Humphrey's contemporary and a fellow Texan, became a close friend and a firm supporter of his work, and remained so for many years.

The 1950s were a period of prosperity for Humphrey, who continued to publish stories in magazines like the
New Yorker
and
Harper's Bazaar.
These works drew on Humphrey's childhood in the Texan scrub, and many were collected in
The Last Husband and Other Stories
(1953). During this early stage of his career, Humphrey also formed a lifelong friendship with the poet Theodore Weiss and mentored playwright and author Sherman Yellen.

In 1957 Humphrey's debut novel,
Home from the Hill
, rocketed him into modern conversation and defined him as an author. Previously regarded as a Western writer due to his Texan roots and their resonance in his work, Humphrey now became firmly grounded in the Southern literary tradition. Comparisons to Faulkner were constant throughout his life and long after his death.

Home from the Hill
was an instant success and was made into a motion picture in 1960 starring Robert Mitchum.
Variety
reported that the film rights sold to MGM for $750,000, to which Humphrey humorously responded, “Unfortunately, they had one zero too many.” Still, it was enough money for Humphrey and his wife to travel extensively in Europe, moving to England in 1958 and later to Italy. Humphrey also used this time to focus on one of his greatest passions: fly-fishing.