Beyond Deserving (43 page)

Fish stubs out the cigarette. It bothers Rhea that he hasn't answered her. She says, “I brought a school picture for you. It's in my suitcase at Michael's. I'll give it to you if you want.” She feels dumb, saying that. Why does he need a picture, when she is sitting right in front of him? If he would look at her, he could see her perfectly well. Her blond hair is all scraggly from not blow drying it or using a curler or anything. Granny warned her that a perm wouldn't look good if you didn't mess with it, but she said Rhea could find out for herself. She said they could cut it later and let it grow back straight. She said you have to make mistakes to learn. It almost made her not want to get the permanent at all.

Fish sucks in his top lip, and a lot of moustache with it. She wants to laugh but she doesn't think he knows he is funny, or that he means to be. He sometimes laughs when nobody else does, or he waits and laughs after everyone else is done. At night she hears him talking when she is falling asleep. He stays up late with Michael, and Carter when he gets home from work. They drink wine and talk and talk, after Ursula and Juliette and Rhea go to bed. Sometimes Katie is there and sometimes she isn't. She has worked at the theatre three nights and two afternoons. She promises she will take Rhea down to see where she works, but she hasn't, and now the time is almost all gone. Rhea hoped they would move into Fish's house before she left. She would like to stay in a house with both her parents at the same time.

“I knew what you looked like,” Fish says. “Katie and I came to see you when you were three. It was winter. The wind was blowing snow when we got to your house. A few days later we were in Mazatlán, hot as toast. Your grandmother wouldn't let you go. It probably wasn't a good idea, but I thought you'd look cute running around naked on the sand.”

Rhea used to dream about Fish. She has a snapshot Katie gave her of Fish standing against his truck, one foot propped up, his hand up to shade his eyes. She thought from the picture that he would be taller than he is.

“And the year after that your mother took a lot of pictures when she went to visit you.” He pushes their dirty dishes aside and opens his wallet. He lays out slips of folded paper. Some of them have lists, and some have lots of numbers. Some are yellow slips, receipts from things you buy. “Fuck,” Fish says. “It's got these little dopples on it, I got it wet.” He is holding a photograph and smearing it with his finger. “But here's one. Katie has the rest in a box somewhere.” He hands the photograph to her. “See that cloth tied around your head? A bandanna. That's the way I used to wear bandannas on my head in Vietnam. It was like a joke your mom made for me, dressing you like that. That's her scarf tied around your belly. I always figured you would be scrawny, but look at that belly and those legs. It'd take a truck to knock you down.”

The girl in the picture doesn't look like her. She knows you look different as a baby, but she can't imagine she ever looked like that. She doesn't think her grandmother would have agreed to her being dressed in a scarf.

“It's pretty old,” she says, and hands it back to Fish. He stuffs all the papers back in the wallet in wads, then slides the picture in last.

“Let's drive around the rim,” Fish says. “You might never see it again, or anything like it.” Rhea's mouth is dry in an instant. She can't believe he would say that. “You might never come to Oregon again,” he says, getting up. He isn't even looking at her when he says it.

As they come down off the mountain and drive along the river, she starts to cry. “I don't want to go home,” she says. She wishes Granny and Aunt Christine would move to Oregon.

Fish pats her leg. “It's not late. We can do something else.” He thinks she means now. “Let's see if Pop is still at home. Let's see if we can catch you a fish.”

58

After they pick up what they need from Fish's parents' house, he drives a few minutes and then pulls off the highway onto a graveled shoulder above the river. Down a steep, rocky bank, the water breaks over rocks, and then surges toward the opposite bank in a deep arc. “Salmon rest in deep water before they struggle up the next shallow, faster water,” her father says. He shows her how he ties the preserved eggs into a little cluster surrounding the hook at the end of the line, and how the weight above the hook will pull the eggs down deep, yet let them drift with the current.

They walk partway downstream, below the head of the deep water, and he casts the egg cluster upstream and slightly across the current. He turns the handle on the reel and gradually winds in line. “You've got to keep a little tension on the sinker,” he tells her. “You have to feel the weight as it drifts, bouncing along the bottom, so that if it suddenly stops, you can set the hook zip! just like that, when the fish snaps at the drifting eggs.”
Bait
, Rhea thinks. That's what bait is.

She does not know how much time goes by.
It must be an hour we've been here
, she thinks. In the steep canyon of the river, the sun is already setting. She has watched Fish carefully, but she is growing tired, and she is disappointed that he hasn't had a strike. He tells her that sometimes he has fished for days without catching a salmon. “The uncertainty is supposed to be part of the fun,” he says. Even as he says it, he lifts the rod in a sudden arc, both hands high over his head. At the same instant a high-pitched whine comes from the reel as line is stripped from the spool and pulled rapidly up the current toward the shallow water. “We've got a good fish if we can land it!” he shouts to her.

Rhea can't see the fish, but she watches the movement of the line as it swings upstream, and she sees her father's arms cocked against the buck and throb of the straining rod. He tells her, “Hooking a salmon and landing one aren't the same thing. I wish I'd thought to bring the landing net.”

In a moment he says, “Wily bastard's switching strategies on me.” The fish turns and races downstream so quickly that Fish can't wind in the line fast enough to keep it taut. “Holy shit!” he yells. He looks mad and happy at the same time. “That sucker is going to get off the hook if I can't catch up with its run,” he says. She sees the line tighten. The fish is stripping line from the reel faster than before. “It's got the current on its side,” Fish says. “If it gets into the rocks at the bottom of the hole, it'll break the line.” She steps closer to him, puts a hand on his hip as he arches. “I've got to stop its run,” he tells her. “It might break that way too, but I don't know what else to do.” He fumbles with the drag until the whining sound drops and then stops altogether. His face is set and she can see the strain in his arms and shoulders. If she were taller, she would put her hand up across his shoulders to feel how strong he is. She peeks out from around his body, and suddenly sees the fish churning at the surface in a flash of spray. She had no idea a fish could be so large. In an instant it dives and disappears. Her father holds the fish against the current for a long time. She hopes it will come up again so she can see it, and says so. “Let it sulk,” Fish says. “It'll tire itself out.”

She feels like she cannot wait another moment for something to happen, and then Fish begins walking slowly downstream, almost as if he is stalking something, holding the tension in the line, winding it in as he moves. She can tell they're getting closer to the fish, but the fish doesn't move.

Suddenly it is there again, rolling at the surface, larger than she thought before, its back a dark green with a bright, silvery side. Again it disappears under the water, and then she sees that it has turned and is heading upstream again.

“Hot damn!” Fish says quietly. “Hot fucking damn! The current is going to be on our side, honey.” He is now able to gain some line as the fish struggles against the water. Rhea can see it just below the surface. It is coming closer, almost out of the current. It makes a lunge, shaking its head, then pauses and rises slightly under the strain of the line. He speaks almost in a whisper, bending his head a little toward her. “We can land it if it won't panic,” he says. “If it just won't move and snap the line.”

He gestures with his head. “Stand behind me so the fish won't see you.” As she does, he swings the fish slowly inward toward the bank until the water is so shallow the fish's back comes out of the water as its belly touches the gravel. The fish seems to explode with panic. She hears a pop as the line parts, and her father steps aside, nearly losing his balance. For an instant the fish is motionless. Without thinking about it, she runs toward it, the water suddenly cold on her feet and legs.

She is astride the fish in the shallows. It twists and bucks, and she hears her father yelling. She tries to grasp the fish, but it is too slick and large for her hands. Then one hand finds a gill and she gets a hold on the fish, just as her father reaches her. He works a finger into the other gill and together they scramble onto the shore, pulling the fish between them.

“I didn't know,” she gasps. “I didn't know about fish.”

At the house he says, “You better go in first.” It is almost dark. At the door he gives her the fish. She grasps it at the gills, straining to hold it in front of her. Fish opens the door and lets her in. She hears a dog at the back door, whining and scratching. The cat streaks across the hall floor and into the front room. Then Rhea stumbles into the kitchen. Michael and Ursula and Katie are at the table in the breakfast nook. Gully and Geneva are at the table to the left, in the dining room. She stops in the kitchen and tries to hold the fish higher. Her chin touches the fish's head, and its tail slaps against her thighs. “Look at my fish!” she says, panting, as she loses her hold and the big fish falls to the floor, revealing her wet and bloody clothes.

Rhea sees that her mother is glaring at Fish over Rhea's shoulder. She feels her father come up behind her. He puts his hand on her shoulder. “Do you believe this kid?” he says. It makes her chest ache with joy. Ursula says, “How could you, Fish?”

Katie says, “You son of a bitch.”

59

Geneva says to Gully, “So can we go now?”

Gully says, “Give me a minute, Ma. They just got here.”

Fish says, “Salmon in an hour! Gonna cook our fucking fish!” He ignores Katie and goes to the back door, hauling the big fish. His shirt is smeared and wet.

Juliette comes in and says, “So you finally got here?” She gives Rhea a light pinch on the arm. “Come upstairs with me and I'll get you cleaned up, Rhea.”

The dog races in behind Juliette. Fish makes a show of jumping aside for the dog. Rhea says, “Bounder!” and falls to the floor to hug the dog and send him chasing off through the house at top speed. Then she follows Juliette upstairs. The dog reappears in the kitchen and skids to a stop at Gully's feet. “Good dog,” Gully says. “Good Bounder.”

Ursula says, “People have been and gone, Fish. We ate. There's still chicken left, and some stuff in the refrigerator.” Katie thinks Ursula looks and sounds weary.

Katie says, “I hate you, Fish,” though without vigor.

Gully says, “Happy birthday, son.”

Fish takes the salmon to the back yard to clean. Katie follows him. Her head is throbbing. She would like to sock Fish in the throat. She would like to scream and jump around. She brims with anxious energy, and she doesn't know what to do with it. She has a momentary flash of Fish and her in the back of the truck, arguing and sweating and making love. The image makes her angry at herself. She has been mad at him for hours.

Michael says, “I'll need to stoke the coals if you're going to cook that fish. You want to cut some filets and freeze the rest? Let me know if you want some help.” Katie thinks Michael's placid neutrality is as aggravating as Fish's delinquency. Peas in a pod, she thinks. Acting like the fish matters, like the fish can make everything all right.

“You couldn't call us?” she asks Fish. Now she has this picture of Fish and Rhea standing hip deep in the river, using a walkie-talkie.

He takes his knife out and slices down the belly of the fish. It makes her want to throw up. “You couldn't come to your own party? You couldn't wait until TOMORROW?” Her voice grates in her ear. Fish doesn't look up.

Ursula calls to her from the kitchen door. “You want to make a plate for Rhea, Katie?” Katie sighs and leaves Fish and Michael with the salmon. She can't think of any more accusations anyway.

Rhea comes back downstairs in clean shorts and a shirt.

“Aren't you hungry, darling?” Ursula says. Katie says sharply, “I'll find her something.” She wants them all to recognize who's in charge of this child, whose child she is. Maybe she hasn't been in charge before, but she's going to be now. If her mother knew Rhea went off with Fish alone, she would scream until Christmas.

She finds Rhea a shrunken strip of chicken breast on a plate of meat; Michael has cleared the grill and added coals to it. Rhea takes a pickle and some carrot sticks from another plate in the refrigerator and sits at the table, careful to move her chair quietly. “You want some pop?” Katie asks her. Rhea nods but still doesn't say anything. Katie gives her a Sprite in a can and she takes a little sip. She eyes her plate as if something might be moving around on it. Katie knows Rhea is avoiding her eyes, and it is wounding and frustrating and unfair. Katie isn't the one who went off and ruined the day for everyone. Katie isn't the one out in the yard making a lot of noise and commotion and not even bothering to speak to his parents, who have waited hours and hours to see him.

Gully pulls up a chair and sits down near Rhea. “Where's Bounder?” she asks him.

“I put him in the back yard,” Gully says. He looks at Katie and says, “We'll take the dog back with us. Rhea likes him so much, I thought she'd want to play with him today.” He's so tired his face seems to have shrunk, like the chicken on Rhea's plate. To Rhea he says, “Maybe you can come out and play with Bounder tomorrow.”