The Sky Fisherman (10 page)

"Sure," Jake said. "We're sorry about the boy."

The old man set down his cup. "He was a good kid, but after high school, he sort of slipped away ... Tried a little gypo logging, odd jobs at the mill. After a while, he should have straightened out."

"You're looking for him, too," Jake said.

Sylvester nodded. "I built a little sweat house right where Deer Creek comes in. It's hid pretty good but you can stop by anytime, Jake. The boy, too."

"Thanks. I appreciate that," my uncle said.

"Last night, I had a good sweat, used sage and juniper to get out the impurities. When I was cooling off in the river, I heard them talking. Kalim's down around South Junction."

Jake nodded. "That's pretty far down. If you're right, we've got to run through Bronco Rapids." He squinted at Sylvester.

"My hearing's still good, but I can't walk that far."

Sylvester picked up the creels. "Going to the lodge while these are still fresh. Thanks, Jake." He disappeared into the tall sagebrush.

"How did you know he was out there?" I asked.

"Shh. Listen."

We were quiet for a good two minutes. I didn't hear anything but the river and some magpies scolding downstream. "I don't hear him," I said.

"I didn't know Sylvester was coming," Jake said. "But somebody was. First, it's what you
don't
hear. Things get quiet in a direction. Frogs quit croaking. The blackbirds hush. Something's coming. Then the magpies start scolding and you know company's arrived."

"I'll try to remember that," I said. "You think Sylvester is right about Kalim?"

Jake shrugged. "He's got to be someplace."

"Sylvester was talking about the
Steah-hah,
wasn't he? He was listening to the Stick Indians."

Jake snorted. "You catch on pretty fast. He
thinks
he was. Sylvester didn't want to say their name—speak it aloud. Indians are superstitious like that." Shaking his head, my uncle added, "I really didn't want to go through Bronco Rapids this trip. Chancy."

A
FTER BREAKING CAMP
we drifted downriver toward the Bronco and South Junction, leaving the tree-lined shore and occasional green meadows of the upper run. Now the landscape turned somber, with spindly junipers dotting the gray-brown talus slopes. The Lost entered sullen canyons where steep basalt walls squeezed the water into a series of deep channels. "The Narrows," Jake said, using the oar to push away from a boulder. "No fishing here. If Kalim's caught in a deep channel, the current will keep him down."

I nodded but didn't say anything. We both felt glum at the idea of not finding him.

With few places to search for a floater, we made good time. Just before noon, we left the Narrows and entered some of the best country on the Lost, according to Jake.

Blue-green firs timbered the high canyons and tall ponderosas bordered the riverbanks. Occasionally the sweet smell of mock orange drifted in the air. Chutes and rooster tails alternated with deep holes and slick eddies. The rich landscape lifted our spirits, and I was aching to break out the fishing poles.

Jake beached the boat at a small meadow dense with pines and shaggy trees I didn't recognize. Where sunlight penetrated the canopy, thick elk grass grew. Someone had fashioned a picnic table with weathered wood, and it rested on a thick pine-needle carpet. "How'd that table get here?" I asked.

"Hard work. This place used to be knee-deep in garbage from an old homesteader's dump, but Dave and I hauled it out two gunnysacks at a
time. That's all we could fit in our boat. Just one if the fish grew too big." He winked at me. "After cleaning up, we built that table so we could sit down to a half-civilized meal."

"What do you call this place?"

"Barn Hole. I thought you'd recognize it from that picture in the store. Some damn good fishing water."

I wouldn't have recognized the setting because the barn had fallen the way they do after one too many winters or windstorms. In Black Diamond we had rented a place with a dilapidated dairy barn, and even though Riley warned me to stay out, I played there whenever I had the chance. One morning I was amazed to discover the barn down; I hadn't heard it tumble in the night.

"Take a look," Jake said, and I poked among the weathered boards until I found the barn door they had almost covered with thick-sided fish. The door still held a rusty horseshoe, and I was surprised I had missed it in the photo.

When I returned to the boat, Jake had brought out two crayfish viewers from the storage compartments under the seat. The viewers were made from a pane of glass fifteen inches square and had wooden sides six inches high. He demonstrated how to hold the wooden sides and set the glass flat in the shallow water near the barn. It was like looking at the river bottom through a window.

"Roll over the rocks real careful," he said. "Don't muddy the water. Underneath are crayfish, some with soft shells. Right after they molt, they need protection and hide. Don't let Sylvester fool you. He wasn't using Salmon flies to catch those lunkers. I saw the way his pole was rigged. Crayfish."

If the crayfish had soft, flexible shells, we put them in a coffee can. Hard-shelled crayfish we left in the river. After forty-five minutes, we had a dozen. "Let's give these a try," Jake said, straightening and grabbing his back. "Got a damn cramp."

We carried the crayfish and spinning gear to the deep pools at the lower end of the sagebrush flat, a couple hundred yards below the barn. Jake rigged the crayfish by cutting a small piece of surgical tubing and running the spinning line through it. With his pliers he cut a two-inch strip of lead and shoved it into the surgical tubing, wedging the line between the lead and the tubing. "If the lead hangs on the bottom," he said, "you can pull it out of the tubing without losing the crayfish. This early in the season, good soft ones are hard to come by."

Jake tied a loop in the end of the monofilament line. Then he took
an ice pick with a flattened, notched end. Placing the loop in the notch, he stuck the pick into the crayfish behind the first section of tail, then shoved the pick through the middle of the crayfish, bringing the loop out just under the head. After withdrawing the pick, he tied a #6 treble hook to the line and pulled it back into the soft flesh of the crayfish.

Handing me the pole, he said, "Cast upstream and let it bounce along the bottom. When a fish takes the crayfish, he'll sort of mouth it to see if it's soft, and if it is, he swallows it. But if he feels the line drag, that odd pull, he lets go. So when it stops, you've got to give slack. Back off three turns, count to five, and set the hook."

The first try, I made an awkward cast that sent the crayfish and lead splashing into the water about twenty feet offshore. "That's a damn awkward rigging."

"Try again. Take a wide swing and let it sail. You got to cast farther and more upstream."

I flung off two of the precious crayfish before I got a cast right where Jake wanted, and I could feel the lead tick the gravel bottom during the drift. Jake watched the pole tip; the little bob showed the lead was bouncing along the rocky bottom. I felt the bobbing stop before the end of a drift and feared a snag, but Jake said, "Back it off now. Three turns."

I turned the handle backwards, feeding three coils off the spool and through the guides.

"Now!"

Snapping my wrist back, I set the hook. The pole bent nearly double.

"Loosen the drag, damn it!"

The pole jerked again and again, while I fumbled to release the drag screw. The line screamed out and the reel smoked as the fish coursed downstream with the current.

"Turn that bastard while you still got line."

I snubbed the fish, then began reeling slack as it turned back.

When it was in the deep pool, Jake warned, "Don't let him get snagged on the bottom. Keep the pole tip up."

I knew by the way the fish had run it was a lunker, and Jake didn't want it to die snagged on the river bottom, the crayfish and treble hook deep in its gut.

I played it for another five minutes, trying to force it to the surface, but it stayed deep. "Why won't he jump?"

"Hooked too deep. He's got a bellyache."

When the fish played out, I eased it to shore, and Jake moved quietly below him, wading in the shallow water. His hand and forearm sub
merged, he held the net close to the river bottom. I backed away from the river, forcing the trout into the shallows. A silver flame spurting out of the dark green pool, the fish paused in the current.

Taking care not to foul the line, Jake brought the net up, and as the fish lunged, he swept it into the net. Holding high the threshing fish, he grinned. "You caught a log!"

"What a fish!" It was as large as a steelhead, but thicker.

"A dandy." Jake clubbed the fish while it still struggled in the net. "Four and a half pounds. Maybe five."

"That's the biggest fish I ever caught," I said. And it was a beauty. The deep red rainbow covered half of its silver side.

"Get a couple more," he said. "I'll clean this one and toss it in the ice chest. Back home, we'll have a barbecue."

Before we ran out of crayfish I caught two smaller trout; each one was close to three pounds. Bringing them out in the net, Jake whooped and shouted like a boy at a circus.

"Good grits," Jake said, finishing the last bite of fish on his plate. He had baked them in the Dutch oven, adding brown sugar and onions for flavor. "Hats off to the fisherman." He removed his cap, then put it back on his head. "You caught some lunkers, damn nice fish."

"The chef didn't do a bad job of cooking them either," I said. Fish had never tasted so good. "I wish we could stay three days. Maybe we could cover the barn door with trout, like in the picture. Think so?"

He grinned. "These are damn nice fish, no flies on them. But to be honest, the fish were bigger in the old days. Now there's so many people. A lot more pressure on the river."

"We've only seen a couple other boats," I said. "And Sylvester."

He nodded. "It's still good water, don't get me wrong. But in the old days, maybe you wouldn't see anyone else for three or four days. Listen, you'll like this story. One time Dave and I were heading out to fish and we ran into a guy who spent opening day elbow to asshole with other fishermen on some pissy stream near the city, jockeying for eight-inch hatchery trout the fish commission planted. Now this guy was trying to do some serious fishing. Planned to go to Deep Creek. That's way up above here. Dave told him, 'Don't go there. It's all fished out.' This dude looked crestfallen. 'What do you mean?' he asked. Dave scowled and said, 'A guy was up there just
last
week.'"

We both laughed. "That would be something," I said.

"You know, I've got this idea about your dad—had it for a long time.
We'd bring down some cement, mix it up, and then think of fancy words to put on a plaque. See, we'd build a memorial for your father. Maybe say something about your grandfather and the old-time guides."

"That's a great idea," I said. "Mom could help us, too. She's got a way with words."

He held up his hands, palms facing out. "Whoa. Let's not bring her in quite yet, until we get the blueprint. Then we can surprise her. You know, she's pretty touchy about this river."

I broke a stick and tossed it into the fire. "She sure looked happy in that picture. But she told me she never went fishing again."

He squinted. "That was a great trip. A classic." Looking around, he took a deep breath. "Smell those pines. Dave loved this place. He claimed he could hear those big ponderosas breathing. And if you move a few yards away from the fire, you can see a couple trillion stars."

He stepped away, tilting back his head to stare into the night sky. I did the same, and my eyes swam at the sheer beauty of it. "What are those other trees? The shaggy ones?"

"Good eyes," he said. "Those are Lebanon cedars. This is the single place they grow on the river. Originally, they came from the holy land, but no one knows how those got here."

"One of the early guides could have planted them."

"It's a puzzler." He was still staring into the sky. "Flying saucers, maybe. One of Sniffy's buddies."

"On the bottom of that picture, Mom wrote she had a marvelous time."

"Did she?" He glanced at me. "I haven't taken it down in years."

"The date's on the picture. Dad drowned later that year."

Jake nodded and raised his hands to the stars. "Old Dave is looking down on us, I imagine."

I paused. "She almost never talks about his death anymore."

"She's carrying it deep, like a piece of flint way inside her belly."

***

"Right there," I said, pointing at a deadfall alder. "In the shadows." My gut had tightened exactly the way Jake had said it would as soon as I had seen the floating body.

Jake squinted a moment, then nodded. "Looks like we found him. Good eyes." He had to bring the boat around against the current, and as he rowed closer, I could see the body nudging back and forth against the
deadfall. The jeans and jacket were muddy and camouflaged with leaves, but a bit of one crimson sleeve showed each time the current gently rolled the body.

The floater was turned facedown in the murky water, and I was glad for that. The shadows and light made the river bottom difficult to see, so Jake measured the depth with an oar, just to be sure there were no deep holes. After snubbing the boat on a branch close to the shore, he took out the heavy rubber body bag from the storage compartment beneath the seat, stepped out of the boat, and carried the bag up the steep cutbank. Then he unfolded the bag and unzipped the wide, waterproof zipper. The dull gray rubber had blocked letters:
JACKSON COUNTY SHERIFF'S DEPARTMENT.

"Too bad there's no beach here," he said. "We'll have to pull him to shore and heave him up the cutbank."

"Can't we just put him in the boat?" I asked.

"We could, but it's better to let him drip dry a little." He slid back down the cutbank.

When I got out of the boat, I almost fell on the slippery rocks.