Crow Fair: Stories

River Camp

“Anytime you’re on the Aleguketuk, you might as well be in heaven. I may never get to heaven, so the Aleguketuk will have to do — that, and plenty of beer! Beer and the river, fellows: that’s just me.

“Practical matters: chow at first light. If you ain’t in the chow line by 0-dark-thirty, your next shot is a cold sandwich on the riverbank. And don’t worry about what we’re going to do; you’ll be at your best if you leave your ideas at home.

“Now, a word or two about innovation and technique. You can look at these tomorrow in better light, but they started out life as common, ordinary craft-shop dolls’ eyes. I’ve tumbled them in a color solution, along with a few scent promulgators distilled from several sources. You will be issued six of these impregnated dolls’ eyes, and any you don’t lose in the course of action will be returned to me upon your departure. I don’t want these in circulation, plain and simple.

“The pup tent upwind of the toilet pit is for anyone who snores. That you will have to work out for yourselves. I remove my hearing aid at exactly nine o’clock, so snoring means no more to me than special requests. From nine until daybreak, a greenhorn can be seen but not heard.

“Lastly, the beautiful nudes featured on the out-of-date welding-supplies calendar in the cook tent are photographs of my bride at twenty-two. Therefore that is a 1986 calendar and will not serve for trip planning.”

Marvin “Eldorado” Hewlitt backed his huge bulk out of the tent flap, making a sight gag of withdrawing his long gray beard from the slit as he closed it. Sitting on top of their sleeping bags, the surgeon Tony Capoletto and his brother-in-law Jack Spear turned to look at each other. Tony said, “My God. How many days do we have this guy? And why the six-shooter?”

Tony, the more dapper of the two, wore a kind of angler’s ensemble: a multipocketed shirt with tiny brass rings from which to suspend fishing implements, quick-dry khaki pants that he’d turned into shorts by unzipping them at the knee, and wraparound shades that dangled from a Croakie at his chest. His pale, sharp-featured face and neatly combed hair were somewhat at odds with this costume.

“I have no idea,” Jack said. His own flannel shirt hung loose over his baggy jeans. “He seemed so reasonable on the Internet.”

Some sharp, if not violent, sounds could be heard from outside. Tony crawled forward in his shorts, carefully parting the entry to the tent to look out. Jack considered his friend’s taut physique and tried to remember how long he’d had his own potbelly. Tony was always in shape — part handball, part just being a surgeon.

“What’s he doing, Ton’?”

“Looks like he’s chopping firewood. I can barely see him in the dark. Not much of the fire left, now.”

“What was that stuff he made for dinner?”

“God only knows.”

The tent smelled like camphor, mothballs; the scent was pretty strong. When Jack let his hand rest outside his sleeping bag, the grass still felt wet. It made him want to take a leak, but he didn’t care to leave the tent as long as Hewlitt was out there.

Tony went back to his sleeping bag. It was quiet. A moment later his face lit up with blue light.

“You get a signal?”

“Are you kidding?” said Tony. “That would only inspire hope.”

Tony’s wife — Jack’s sister — was divorcing him. There were no kids, and Tony said the whole thing was a relief, said that he was not bitter. Jack was quite sure Tony was bitter; it was Jack’s sister who was not bitter. Jack had seen Gerri at the IGA, and she’d been decidedly unbitter — cheerful if not manic. She’d hoped they would have an “outtasight” trip. This was part of Gerri’s routine, hip and lively for a tank town. Tony might have been a bit serious for her, in the end. Maybe he needed to lighten up. Jack certainly thought so.

Jack’s wife, Jan, was one of the sad stories: having starred, in her small world, as a staggeringly hot eighteen-year-old when Jack, half cowboy and half high-school wide receiver, had swept her out of circulation, she had since gone into a rapid glide toward what could be identified at a thousand yards as a frump, and at close range as an angry frump. Gerri and Jan had driven “the boys” to the airport for their adventure together, each dreading the ride home, when in the absence of their men they would discover how little they had to talk about. In any case, they could hardly have suspected that they would never see their husbands again.

But the divorce wasn’t the reason that Tony was so bent on a trip. He’d made some sort of mistake in surgery, professionally not a big deal — no one had even noticed — but Tony couldn’t get it out of his mind. He’d talked about it in vague terms to Jack, the loss of concentration, and had reached this strange conclusion: “Why should I think I’ll get it back?”

“You will, Ton’. It’s who you are.”

“Oh, really? I have never before lost concentration with the knife in my hand. Fucking never.”

“Tony, if you can’t do your work in the face of self-doubt, you may as well just quit now.”

“Jack, you think you’ve ever experienced the kind of pressure that’s my daily diet?”

Jack felt this but let it go.

Marvin Eldorado Hewlitt was now their problem. Jack had tried plenty of other guides, but they were all either booked or at a sportsmen’s show in Oakland. He’d talked to some dandies after that, including a safari outfitter booking giraffe hunts. At the bottom of the barrel was Hewlitt, and now it was getting clearer why. So many of the things they would have thought to be either essential or irrelevant were subject to extra charges: fuel for the motor, a few vegetables, bear spray, trip insurance, lures, the gluten-free sandwich bread.

“But Marvin, we brought lures.”

“You brought the wrong lures.”

“I’ll fish with my own lures.”

“Not in my boat.”

Lures: $52.50. Those would be the dolls’ eyes.

“Marvin, I don’t think we want trip insurance. I’m just glancing at these papers — well, are you really also an insurance agent?”

“Who else is gonna do it? I require trip insurance. I’m not God, but acts of God produce client whining I can’t deal with.”

Trip insurance: $384.75.

“Tony, give it up. There’s no signal.”

Tony looked up. “Was that a wolf?”

“I don’t think it was a wolf. I think it was that crazy bastard.”

The howl came again, followed by Marvin’s chuckle.

“You see?”

Tony got out of his sleeping bag and peered through the tent flap.

“He’s still up. Sitting by the fire. He’s boiling something in some kind of a big cauldron. And he’s talking to himself, it looks like. Or it’s more like he’s talking to someone else, but there’s no one there that I can see. We’re in the hands of a lunatic, Jack.”

“Nowhere to go but up.”

“You could say that. You could pitch that as reasonable commentary.”

Jack felt heat come to his face. “Tony?”

“What?”

“Kiss my ass.”

“Ah, consistency. How many times have I prayed for you to smarten up?”

Jack thought, I’ve got him by forty pounds. That’s got to count.

The two fell silent. They were reviewing their relationship. So far, Tony had come up only with “loser,” based on Jack’s modest income; Jack had settled for “prick,” which he based on the entitlement he thought all doctors felt in their interactions with others. This standoff was a long time coming, a childhood friendship that had hardened. Probably neither of them wanted it like this; the trip was supposed to be an attempt to recapture an earlier stage, when they were just friends, just boys. But the harm had been done. Maybe they had absorbed the town’s view of success and let it spoil something. Or maybe it was the other thing again.

Outside, by the fire, Marvin was singing in a pleasant tenor. There was some accompaniment. Jack said, “See if he’s got an instrument.” Tony sighed and climbed out from his sleeping bag again. At the tent flap, he said, “It’s a mandolin.” And in fact at that moment a lyrical solo filled the air. Tony returned to his bag, and the two lay quietly, absorbing first some embellishment of the song Marvin had been singing and then a long venture into musical space.

Shortly after the music stopped, Marvin’s voice came through the tent flap.

“Boys, that’s all I can do for you. Now let’s be nice to one another. We’ve got our whole lives ahead of us.”

In a matter of minutes, the camp was silent. Stars rose high over the tents and their sleepers.

Morning arrived as a stab of light through the tent flap and the abrupt smell of trampled grass and mothballs. A round, pink face poked through at them, eyes twinkling unpleasantly, and shouted, “Rise and shine!”

“Is that you, Marvin?” Tony asked, groggily.

“Last time I looked.”

“What happened to the beard?”

“Shaved it off and threw it in the fire. When you go through the pearly gates, you want to be clean-shaven. Everybody else up there has a beard.”

The flap closed, and Jack said, “I smelled it. Burning.” Then he pulled himself up.

Jack fished his clothes out of the pile he’d made in the middle of the tent. Tony glanced at this activity and shook his head; his own clothes were hung carefully on a tent peg. He wore his unlaced hiking shoes as he dressed. Jack was briefly missing a shoe, but it turned up under his sleeping bag, explaining some of the previous night’s discomfort.

Tony said, “It’s time for us to face this lunatic if we want breakfast.”

The sunrise made a circle of light in the camp, piled high with pine needles next to the whispering river. Hewlitt had hoisted the perishable supplies up a tree to keep them away from bears; a folding table covered by a red-and-white-checkered tablecloth was set up by the small, sparkling fire. Stones on either side of the fire supported a blackened grill, from which Hewlitt brought forth a steady stream of ham, eggs, and flapjacks.

Jack rubbed his hands together eagerly and said, “My God, it’s like Chef Boyardee!” Tony rolled his eyes at this and smiled at Hewlitt, whose surprisingly mild and beardless face had begun to fascinate him. The beard, it was explained, was something Hewlitt cultivated for sportsmen’s shows: he hated beards.

“I’m not ashamed of my face,” he said. “Why would I hide it?”

Hewlitt had already eaten, and so Jack and Tony sat down at the table while he headed off toward the trees. Halfway through the meal, Jack noticed the man making slow, strange movements. Tony, thoroughly enjoying this breakfast, which was miles off his diet, hadn’t looked up yet.

Finally Jack said, “I think the guide is having some kind of a fit.”

Tony glanced up, mouth full of unsaturated fats.

“No, Jack, that’s not a fit. That’s Tai Chi.”

“Like in the Kung Fu movies, I suppose.”

“No.”

They continued to eat in a less-pleasant silence until Hewlitt bounced over and joined them. Tony smiled as though they were old friends and asked, “Chen?”

“Uh-uh,” said Hewlitt.

“Yang?”

“Nyewp.”

“I’m out of ideas,” Tony admitted modestly.

“Wu,” said Hewlitt, in subdued triumph.

“Of course,” said Tony. “What was that last pose?”

“Grasp-the-Bird’s-Tail.”

Jack listened and chewed slowly. He let his eyes drift to the other side of the river: an undifferentiated wall of trees. The water seemed so smooth you’d hardly know it was moving at all if it wasn’t for the long stripe of foam behind every boulder. Invisible behind the branches, a raven seemed to address the camp.

Fried eggs on a metal plate. Jack ate more cautiously than usual: Tony was always on him about his weight. But then Tony was a doctor, and Jack felt he had his well-being in mind despite the often-annoying delivery. It was pleasing to notice these signs of old friendship, such as they were. Jack knew he should take better care of himself, and he had complied when Tony had wanted him to give up the cigarettes. It had been hard, and they were never completely out of his mind. In an odd way, that had been his own gesture of friendship, despite Tony’s main argument having been that financially Jack really couldn’t afford to smoke.

Tony was telling a story to Marvin that Jack already knew. He’d heard it a hundred times.

“We went on vacation to Mexico one year, and I brought back these little tiny superhot peppers to cook with. We had Jack and his wife, Jan, over for dinner one night, and I told Jack what I just told you, that these were the hottest little peppers in the world. Well, Jack, he’s had about five longnecks in a row, and he says, ‘Nothing’s too hot for me!’ right before he puts a spoonful of them in his mouth. Buddy, that was all she wrote. Tears shoot out of his eyes. His face turns … maroon. His head drops to the table, and what do you think he says?”

“I don’t know,” said Hewlitt.

“He says, ‘Why is it always me?’ ”

Hewlitt stared at him for a moment. Then he said, “What’s the punch line?”

Tony’s face fell with a thud. Hewlitt got up to feed the fire.

“Our host doesn’t seem to have much of a sense of humor,” Tony said, when the man was gone. Jack just smiled at him.

There were a lot of Italians around the meatpacking plant, and that’s where Tony’s people had settled. He had come a long way. Jack’s family was cattle, land, and railroad: they’d virtually founded the town but hadn’t had a pot to piss in for generations. Gerri liked to point out that half of her and Jack’s relatives were absolute bums, which generally made Jack’s wife respond that Tony’s family was right off the boat. Nobody crossed Jan: she wasn’t witty; she was angry. He may be a doctor to you, but he’s a wop to me. Jack was fundamentally too fragile for this kind of badinage, unfortunately, because he had to admit that Tony and Gerri were far less snippy when Jan was around. She’d say to Jack, “You want respect, you better be prepared to snap their heads back.” Or she’d put it the way Mike Tyson did: “Everybody’s got an attitude until you hit them in the face.”

Jack’s roots in town were so deep that he thought that Jan’s bellicosity was just a result of having grown up somewhere else. She was from Idaho, for crying out loud. This was before he found out Jan had had a slipup with Tony back in the day, while Jack was off doing his time with the National Guard.

When Tony and Gerri took them to New York to see Cats, that’s when it really hit the fan. Tony had made a big thing about Cats winning a Tony Award, which Jan thought was such a hoot because Jack had no idea what a Tony Award was. He’d thought Tony was flirting with Jan again, with his so-called humor. Jack and Jan moved to their own hotel, leaving the room Tony had paid for empty. In their new room, Jan went on the defensive and blamed alcohol for the flirtation. She seemed to think that with this citation, the issue was settled. Jack didn’t buy it, but he’d never been willing to pay the price for taking it further. Instead, he absorbed the blow. Having Tony know he just took it was the hardest part.

But somehow the problem between the two of them evaporated when they were back in town. “New York just wasn’t for us,” Tony said, amiably, and Jack accepted this gratefully. Jan, however, twisted it around; she took it to mean that she and Jack just weren’t good enough for New York.

“Who wants to go there anyway?” she’d say. “All those muggers, and that smelly air!”

Meanwhile her slipup was consigned, once again, to history. Full stop. Jack couldn’t stand any of it.

They all pitched in to tidy up the camp, and then they headed for the boat. It was tied to a tree, swinging in the current; a cool breeze, fresh and balsamic, was sweeping up the river. Hewlitt carried a Styrofoam chest — their lunch — to the shore and put it aboard. Fishing tackle had been loaded in already.

A moment later the three men climbed in, and Hewlitt started the engine. Once he was sure it was running properly, he stepped ashore and freed the painter from the tree, sprang aboard again, and turned into the current. Tony said, “This is what it’s all about.”

Jack nodded eagerly and then felt a wave of hopelessness unattached to anything in particular. Maybe catching a fish, maybe just the day itself. Hewlitt gazed over the tops of their heads, straight up the river. He seemed to know what he was doing.

He had looked more competent when he’d still had the beard. Now he looked like a lot of other people. God was always portrayed with a beard — for Jack it was impossible to picture him without one, even if he strained to imagine what he assumed would be a handsome and mature face. The only time you ever saw Jesus without a beard, he was still a baby. Tony had grown his own beard right after med school. Sometime later Jan had told Tony that he needed to get rid of it; that was one of the worst arguments Jack and Jan had ever had. Jack had said it was for Gerri to say whether or not she liked the beard, since it was her husband. Jan said that a person was entitled to her own opinions.

“Who taught you to cast?” Tony said. They had started fishing.

“You did,” Jack replied.

“Obviously you needed to practice.”

Jack just shrugged it off. He was still getting it out there, wasn’t he? Maybe not as elegantly as Tony, but it shouldn’t have made any difference to the fish. The casting was just showing off. It seemed to have impressed Hewlitt, though, because he took Tony upriver to another spot, leaving Jack to fish where he was, even though nobody had gotten a bite. Jack thought it was probably a better spot, this new one, and of course it was perfectly natural that Hewlitt would take Tony there, since it was Tony who was paying for the trip. Nevertheless, after another hour had passed, he felt a bit crushed and no longer expected to catch a fish at all. He thought, None of this would be happening if I had more money.

The sun rose high overhead and warmed the gravel bar. Jack’s arm was getting tired, and eventually he stretched out on the ground with his hands behind his head. The heat felt so good, and the river sounded so sweet this close to his ear. Let Tony catch all the fish, he thought; I am at peace.

“How are you going to catch a fish that way, Jack?”

Tony was standing over him. He hadn’t even heard the motor.

“I’m not. Did you catch anything?”

“No.”

“See? You could have had a nice nap.”

Tony sat down next to Jack on the gravel and glanced over at Hewlitt, who was carrying their lunch box from the boat to the shore. “You know what old Eldorado did before he was a wilderness outfitter? Guess.”

“Lumberjack?”

“Way off. He was a pharmacist.”

“I’m surprised they even had them up here.”

“This was in Phoenix.”

Jack thought for a moment, and then asked, “Do you think he knows what he’s doing?”

“No.”

“Are we going to catch fish?”

“It seems unlikely.”

They were interrupted by a cry from Hewlitt, whose rod had bent into a deep bow.

“Jesus. I didn’t even see him cast,” Jack said.

The two men hurried over. Hewlitt glanced at them and said, “First cast! He just mauled it.”

The fish exploded into the air and tail-danced across the river.

“Looks like a real beauty,” said Tony grimly, his hands plunged deep in his pockets.

After several more jumps and runs, Hewlitt had the fish at the beach and, laying down his rod, knelt beside it, holding it under its tail and belly. It was big, thick, and flashed silver with every movement as Hewlitt removed the hook. Tony and Jack craned over him to better see the creature, and Hewlitt bent to kiss it. “Oh, baby,” he murmured. Then he let it go.

“What’d you do that for?” Tony wailed. The fish was swimming off, deeper and deeper, until its glimmer was lost in the dark. “We could have had fresh fish for lunch!”

Their guide, in response, got right in Tony’s face. “Don’t go there, mister,” he said with an odd intensity. “You don’t want that on your karma.” Then he walked back to the boat and dragged the anchor farther up the shore.

“My God,” Tony said. “What have we got ourselves into?” But Jack was simply pleased with everything.

A few minutes later, he even made a possibly insincere fuss over the bologna sandwiches. “Is there any lettuce or anything?”

“Doesn’t keep without refrigeration. Where do you think you are?”

“The Aleguketuk. You already told me.”

“Nice river, isn’t it?”

“I wish it had more fish,” said Tony. “Although it’s obviously not a problem for you.”

“Nyewp, not a problem.”

As Hewlitt went to the boat to look for something, Tony said, “Ex — pill salesman.”

“But fun to be with.”

Jack had gone through times like this with Tony in the past: just be patient, he knew, and his friend would soon be chasing his own tail. It had already started. Tony had come unglued once when both couples had gone to a beginners’ tennis camp in Boca Raton — thrown his racket, the whole nine yards. Jack had just let it sink in with Jan, what she had done with this nut. He knew he shouldn’t feel this way: Jan had made it clear she regretted the whole thing, but he felt doomed to rub it in for the rest of their lives, or at least until she quit marveling over how fit Tony and Gerri were. He always suspected she included Gerri only as camouflage when she mentioned it. He’d seen this fitness language before: buns of steel, washboard abs, power pecs — all just code for Tony hovering over Jan like a vulture. And now, because Tony and Gerri were divorcing, Jack feared that further indiscretions might be on tap.

Tony threw his bologna sandwich into the river. “I can’t eat it.”

Hewlitt had his mouth full. “Plan on foraging?”

Tony sat down on the ground, elbows on his knees, and held his head in despair.

No other fish were caught that day, and neither man slept well that night. The next day a hard rain confined them to their tent; Tony read Harvey Penick’s Little Red Book: Lessons and Teachings from a Lifetime in Golf, and Jack did sudoku until he was sick of it. The weather finally lifted in time for the third night’s evening fire, and Hewlitt emerged wearing only his long underwear to prepare the meal, which was a huge shish kebab with only meat the entire length of the stick. When it was cooked, Hewlitt flicked the flesh onto their tin plates, which were so thin you could feel the heat through their bottoms. Afterward Hewlitt recited a Robert Service poem—“There are strange things done in the midnight sun”—so slowly that Tony and Jack were frantic at its conclusion.

“Where exactly was that drugstore you worked in?” Tony asked.

Hewlitt stared at him for a long time before speaking. “A pox on you, sir.”

Back in the tent, Jack asked, “Aren’t you concerned that he’ll confiscate the impregnated craft-shop dolls’ eyes?”

“What difference does it make? They haven’t worked so far.”

“Tony, it was a joke. Jesus, for a fancy doctor with a five-thousand-square-foot home on the golf course, you sure haven’t lost your sense of humor.”

“Fifty-two hundred. Get some sleep, Jack. You’re getting crabby.”

Jack had worked for the county all those years since the National Guard. In ’96 he had denied Tony a well permit for his lawn-sprinkling system, and Tony had never gotten over it. It was payback for the little nothing with Jan, he was convinced, even though in reality it was no more than a conventional ruling on the law, which Tony, as was often the case, thought should be bent ever so slightly. Jack had explained the legal basis for his decision without denying that it was pleasant seeing Tony choke on this one. Tony had put his hand in Jack’s face and said, “This is for surgery, not for holding a garden hose.”

“You might want to tone down the square footage, if your time is limited,” Jack had replied. “That’s an awful lot of lawn.”

“What the fuck are you talking about!” Tony had shouted back. “You don’t even have a lawn, you have fucking pea rock!”

Hewlitt must have been throwing more wood on the fire. You could see the flare of the flames through the walls of the tent. From time to time, he laughed aloud.

“Do you suppose he’s laughing at us?” Tony asked.

“Things can still turn out. We have time.”

“At least we got away together,” Tony said. “We used to do more of this. It’s important. It makes everything come back. We’re kids again. We’re who we used to be.”

“Not really,” said Jack. “You used to be nicer to me.”

“You’re joking, aren’t you?”

Jack didn’t answer. He wished he hadn’t said such a thing, and his throat ached.

“What about Cancún in 2003? It didn’t cost you a nickel.”

Jack didn’t know how to reply. He was in such pain. The tent fell silent once more. When Tony finally spoke, his voice had changed.

“Jack. I don’t have another friend.”

Jack wanted to make Tony feel better then, but it wasn’t coming to him yet. Tony was right about one thing: they were who they used to be. Jack was still doing okay in his little house, and Tony was still just as lonely by the golf course as he’d been by the meatpacking plant. He had to take it out on somebody.

In the morning, there was frost on everything. Jack and Tony, arms stiff at their sides, watched as Hewlitt made breakfast and merrily reminisced about previous trips.

“Had an English astronaut here for a week, just a regular bloke. Loved his pub, loved his shepherd’s pie, loved his wee cottage in Blighty.”

Tony and Jack glanced at each other.

“Took a large framed picture of the Queen Mother into space. Ate nothing but fish-and-chips his whole month in orbit, quoting Churchill the entire time.”

Tony whispered to Jack, “There were no English astronauts.”

“I heard that,” Hewlitt said, standing up and waving his spatula slowly in Tony’s face.

“Did you? Good.”

Hewlitt resumed cooking in silence. The silence was worse. He served their meal without a word, then went to his boat with his new bare face, and in his hand he grasped a handful of willow switches he had cut from the bank. With these, he scourged himself. It was hard not to see this as a tableau, with the boat and the river behind him and Hewlitt, in effect, centered in the frame. His audience, Jack and Tony, turned away to gear up for a day of fishing and standing with their rods at their sides like a sarcastic knockoff of American Gothic.

Right out of the blue, Hewlitt stopped his thrashing and turned to fix them with a reproving gaze. “I’ve spent my entire life as a liar and an incompetent,” he said.

“Don’t be so hard on yourself, Eldorado,” Tony said, with poorly concealed alarm.

“Bogus vitamins on the Internet? How about swingin’ doors and painted women?”

“That’s all behind you, now.”

“If only I could believe you!” Hewlitt cried.

Tony was paralyzed by the strangeness of this, but Jack stepped forward and snatched the willow switches away. He got right in Hewlitt’s face.

“How much of this do you think we can stand?”

“Well, I—”

“We’re not on this trip to hear about your problems. We don’t even know you. I came here to be with my friend because we need to talk. This is a freak show, and we shouldn’t have to pay for it. We thought we’d catch some fish!”

This seemed to sober Hewlitt, who replaced his look of extravagant self-pity with one of caution and shrewdness.

“I’m the only one who can get you out of here, son. No brag, just fact. You make me feel respected or you’re SOL. I’d like to be a fly on the wall when you try backing this tank down a class-five rapid. That’s the only way home, punk, and I’m unstable.”

“Jesus,” said Tony. “This is insane! This trip was my reward as a vassal of Medicare!”

Hewlitt responded by pretending to play a violin and whistling “Moon River.” Jack raised a menacing finger in his face, and he stopped. Then Hewlitt was talking again.

“How about you try going broke on eating-disorder clinics to wake up to find your wife still gobbling her food? Forty K in the hole and she’s facedown on a ham!”

Jack turned back to Tony. “I don’t know what to do.”

Hewlitt’s lament rushed onward. He had dug deep in his pharmacist days to throw a big wedding for his daughter, apparently; she had married way above their station thanks to her big blue eyes and thrilling figure. It was, in Hewlitt’s words, a hoity-toity affair with the top Arizona landowners, the copper royalty, and the developers, and Hewlitt’s caterer food-poisoned them all. Several sued, his wife and daughter blamed him, and in this way Hewlitt found himself at the end of his old life and the beginning of the new. He took a crash course in wilderness adventures at an old CCC camp in Oregon, graduating at the top of his class and getting a book on the ethics of forestry in recognition. Hewlitt seemed to think that this was all an illusion, that no one really cared about him at all.

Tony and Jack maintained compassionate, respectful smiles throughout this tirade. By the end Hewlitt was so upset his cheeks trembled. When he finished, Jack raised an imploring hand in his direction, but to no avail: Eldorado Hewlitt walked past them and into his tent.

“Doesn’t look like a fishing day,” Jack said.

Once they were back in the tent, Jack stretched out on his sleeping bag, and Tony turned to grab a thick paperback from his pack, a book about zombies with the face of someone with white eyeholes on the cover. He slumped back on his bedroll, drew his reading glasses from his shirt, and was on the verge of total absorption when Hewlitt flung open the tent flap. Tony slowly lowered the zombie book.

“Sorry to disturb you,” the man said, though there was no evidence of that. “I have to ask: What is your problem? ‘Old friends’? Is that what you are, ‘old friends’? Grew up together in the same little town? I know I have problems; I’m famous for my problems. I’m told by qualified professionals that I have ruined my life with my problems, but these few days with two ‘old friends’ have completely unnerved me. What did you two do to each other? Where is this bad feeling coming from? I’m terrifically upset, and I don’t know what it is. But it’s coming from you two, I’ve figured out that much. Can’t you work this out? You’re killing me!”

Hewlitt hurled down the flap and left. Jack and Tony looked at each other, then quickly glanced away.

“What was that all about?” Tony asked, unpersuasively.

Jack said nothing. He had found his box of lures and was lifting one up as though to examine it. A blue frog with hooks.

After a minute he got to his feet. He went out of the tent, looked around, and came back in with their rods. He made a show of breaking them down and putting them back in their travel tubes. Tony, staring determinedly now at a single page of his zombie book, barely lifted his eyes to this activity, which caused Jack to raise the intensity of it. He held up a roll of toilet paper in his hand. Tony couldn’t look at him.

“Might as well take a shit. Nothing else to do around here.”

Tony kept his eyes on the book and gave him a little wave.

A short time later, the toilet paper flew back into the tent, followed by Jack. He slumped on his bedroll with a sigh.

“I’ve got another book,” said Tony.

“I hate books.”

“No, you don’t. You loved The Black Stallion.”

“I was twelve.”

“So don’t read. Who cares?”

“What’s the other book?”

“Silent Spring.”

Jack snorted. “Thanks a bunch.”

Tony dropped the book to his chest. “Jack, what do you want?”

“In the whole world?”

“Sure.”

“I’d like you to tell me in plain English what my wife saw in you.”

Tony exhaled through pursed lips and looked at the ground. “We did this a long time ago. Either you shoot me or throw her out, but otherwise there’s nothing more to say. The whole thing is both painful and negligible to me, and kind of an accident and kind of ancient history. We have managed to stay friends despite my very serious personal crime against you. It is a permanent stain on my soul.”

“What do you mean by that?” Jack said. “You don’t even believe you have one.”

“Well, you do, and you’re innocent. I have a soul that is blemished by shame. All right? I’m not proud of myself.”

Jack lay facedown on his bedroll, chin on laced fingers, and looked miserably toward the tent flap. He fell asleep thus, after a while, and so did Tony, glasses hanging from one ear. Hours later, they were awakened by the cooling tent and diminished light.

Jack got to his feet abruptly, seeming frightened, and rifled through a pile of clothing until he found his coat.

“You going to find us something to eat?” Tony asked.

“I am like hell. I’m going to have a word with our guide.”

Tony raised a cautioning hand. “Jack, we’re dealing with a very unstable—”

“Well put, Tony. That’s exactly what I am, but I plan to do something about it. I’m upset. And it’s his fault.”

“Jack, please—”

But Jack had already gone. Tony slumped back with his hands over his face. It went through his mind that patiently putting up with Jack was an old habit. That’s what had started their mess. Jack had done something dumb — gotten drunk and driven his car on the railroad tracks, in fact, nearly ruining it — that had caused Jan and Tony, in an accidental encounter at the post office, to commiserate with each other, and the next thing they knew they were in bed, bright sunlight coming through the thin curtains of the Super 8. It wasn’t anything, really, but Jan threw it into an argument with Jack the next year during the Super Bowl, and the half-life was promptly extended to forever.

Jack came back in through the tent flap, slapping it open abruptly. He crouched down, staring at Tony. Then he said, “He’s dead.”

Tony sat up. The zombie paperback splattered on the dirt floor. He stood and walked straight past Jack, out through the flap, then came back in, kicking the book out of his way, and lay down again.

“He sure is,” he said.

“So what happened?”

“He took something.”

“Jesus. Did you see this coming?”

“No. I thought it was an act.”

“Is the food in there with him?”

“He hauled it back up the tree. Where the bears couldn’t get it.”

“Bears. Jesus, I forgot about bears.” Jack dashed out of the tent once more. When he returned, dangling Hewlitt’s gun by its barrel, he had a wild look in his eyes. Tony knew what it was and said nothing.

“I’ll get a fire going,” Jack said. “We’ve got to eat something. Why don’t you get the food down and see what we’ve got.”

Outside they felt the strangeness of being alone in the camp, the cold fire, Hewlitt’s silent tent. The boat meant everything, and separately they checked to see that it was still there. Tony ended up crouched by the fire pit, shaving off kindling with his hatchet, while Jack puzzled over the knots on the ground stake: the rope led upward over a branch, suspending the food supplies out of reach. Once the rope was free, he was able to lower the supplies to the ground and open the canvas enclosing them: steaks, potatoes, onions, canned tomatoes, girlie magazines, schnapps, eggs, a ham. He dragged the whole load to the fire and stood over it with Tony, not quite knowing what to do next.

“If I’m right about what’s ahead, we go for the protein,” Tony said.

It was getting darker and colder; the flames danced over the splinters of firewood. Jack was quite still.

“What’s ahead, Tony?”

“The boat trip.”

“Oh, is that what you think?”

“That’s what I think.”

Jack looked up at the sky for a moment but didn’t reply. Instead, he lifted two of the steaks out of the cache and dropped them onto the grill.

The bedrolls became cocoons without refuge. They were in a dead camp with a dead fire and a corpse in a tent. They thought about their wives — even Jan’s misery and Gerri’s demand for freedom seemed so consoling now, so day-to-day. Tony’s small slip with the scalpel was now nothing more than a reminder of the need for vigilance — a renewal, in a sense. Jack had a home and all his forebears buried on the edge of town. He could wait for the same. No big deal, just wink out. Nothing about this bothered him anymore. He had sometimes pictured himself in his coffin, big belly and all, friends filing by with sad faces. He belonged.

They couldn’t sleep, or they barely slept; if one detected the other awake, they talked.

“I don’t know what the environmentalists see in all these trees,” Jack said.

“Nature hates us. We’ll be damn lucky to get out of this hole and back to civilization.”

“Well, you want a little of both. A few trees, anyway. Some wildflowers.”

“You try walking out of here. You’ll see how much nature loves you.”

There was no point worrying about it, Tony said; they would have the whole day tomorrow to work on their problems.

“So what do we do with the body?” Jack asked.

“The body is not our problem.”

It couldn’t have been many hours before sunrise by the time the bears came into the camp. There were at least three; they could be heard making pig noises as they dragged and swatted at the food that had been left out. Tony tried to get a firm count through a narrow opening in the tent flap while Jack cowered at the rear with Hewlitt’s gun in his hands.

“It’s nature, Tony! It’s nature out there!”

Tony was too terrified to say anything. The bears had grown interested in their tent.

After a moment of quiet they could hear them smelling around its base with sonorous gusts of breath. At every sound, Jack redirected the gun. Tony tried to calm him, despite his own terror.

“They’ve got all they can eat out there, Jack.”

“They never have enough to eat! Bears never have enough!”

Tony went to the flap and tied all its laces carefully, as though that made any difference. But then, as before, the sound of the bears stopped. After a time he opened a lace and looked out.

“I think they’re gone,” he said. He hated pretending to be calm. He’d done that in the operating room when it was nothing but a fucking mess.

“Let’s give them plenty of time, until we’re a hundred percent sure,” Jack said. “We’ve got this”—Jack held the gun aloft—“but half the time shooting a bear just pisses him off.”

Tony felt he could open the flap enough to get a better look. First light had begun to reveal the camp, everything scattered like a rural dump, even the pages of the girlie magazines, pink fragments among the canned goods, cold air from the river coming into the tent like an anesthetic.

Tony said, “Oh, God, Jack. Oh, God.”

“What?”

“The bears are in Hewlitt’s tent.”

Jack squealed and hunkered down onto the dirt floor. “Too good, Tony! Too good!”

Tony waited until he stopped and then said, “Jack, you need to take hold. We’ve got a long day ahead of us.”

Jack sat up abruptly, eyes blazing. “Is that how you see it? You’re going to tell me to behave? You’re a successful guy. My wife thought you were a big successful guy before she was fat. So tell me what to do, Tony.”

“Listen, start by shutting up, okay? We’re gonna need all the energy in those big muscles of yours to get us out of this.”

“That’s straight from the shoulder, Tony. You sound like the old guinea from down by the meat processor again.”

“I’m all right with that,” said Tony. “Up with the founding families, piss poor though you all are, it must have been hard for you and Jan to know how happy we were.”

“Somebody’s got to make sausage.”

“Yes, they do.”

“Linguini, pepperoni, Abruzzo. Pasta fazool.”

“I can’t believe you know what pasta fazool is, Jack.”

Jack imitated Dean Martin. “ ‘When the stars make you drool, just like pasta fazool.’ Asshole. Your mother made it for me.”

He was gesturing with the rifle now. When the barrel swung past Tony’s nose, the reality of their situation came crashing down on them as though they had awakened from a dream. Jack, abashed, went to the front of the tent and peered out. After a moment, he said, “All quiet on the western front.”

Tony came to look over his shoulder, saw nothing.

“They’re gone.”

The two men emerged into the cold, low light, the gray river racing at the edge of the camp. There was nothing left of the food except a few canned goods scattered among the pictures of female body parts. The vestibule of Hewlitt’s tent was torn asunder, to the point that the interior could almost be inspected from a distance. Jack clearly had no interest in doing so, but Tony went over gingerly, entered, then came out abruptly with one hand over his eyes. “Oh,” he said, “Jesus Christ.”

They picked through the havoc the bears had left until they’d found enough undamaged food for a day or so in the boat. They put their bedrolls in there, too, but the tents they left where they were. Any thought of staying in camp was dropped on the likelihood of the bears returning at dark.

“We’ll start the motor when we need it,” Tony said. “All we’re doing is going downstream until we get out.”

Jack nodded, lifted the anchor, and walked down to the boat, coiling the line as he went.

The river seemed to speed past. As they floated away, Tony thought that this was nature at its most benign, shepherding them away from the dreaded camp; but Jack, looking at the dark walls of trees enclosing the current, the ravens in the high branches, felt a malevolence in his bones. He glanced back at their abandoned tents: already, they looked like they’d been there for hundreds of years, like the empty smallpox tepees his grandpa had told him about. This might be good country if someone removed the trees and made it prairie like at home, he thought. With the steady motion of the boat, he daydreamed about the kinds of buildings he’d most like to see: a store, a church, a firehouse.

Tony said, “My dad was a butcher, and I’m a surgeon. I’m sure you’ve heard a lot of jokes about that around town.”

“Uh-huh.”

“The funny thing is, I didn’t want to be a surgeon — I wanted to be a butcher. The old second-generation climb into some stratosphere where you’ll never be comfortable again. Where you never know where you live.”

“I don’t think you’d like it back there at the packing plant.”

“Not now — I’ve been spoiled. But if I’d stayed … I don’t know. Dad was always happy.”

“And you’re not?” Jack asked.

“Not particularly. Maybe after Gerri goes. Now that I’m used to the idea, the divorce, I can’t wait. I think I’m overspreading my discomfort around.”

“Jan and I don’t have the option,” Jack said. “There’s not enough for either one of us to start over on. We’re stuck together whether we like it or not.” He was thinking of how life and nature were just alike, but he couldn’t figure out how to put it into words.

Boulders, submerged beneath the water, could be felt as the boat rose and fell, and the river began to narrow toward a low canyon. In a tightening voice, Tony said, “Most of humanity lives beside rivers. By letting this one take us where it will, we’ll be delivered to some form of civilization. A settlement, at least.” He reached inside his coat and pulled out a wallet. “I thought we better bring this.”

“Is that Hewlitt’s wallet?”

“That’s not his name. There are several forms of identification, but none of them are for a Hewlitt.” He riffled it open to show Jack the driver’s licenses and ID cards, all with the same picture and all with different names.

“He had a lot of musical talent,” Jack said, and let out a crazy, mirthless laugh.

“See up there? I bet those are the rapids he was talking about.”

“Oh, goody. Nature.”

Indeed, where the canyon began, and even from this distance, the sheen of the river was surmounted by something sparkling, some effervescence, a vitality that had nothing to do with them. Shapes appeared under the boat, then vanished as the river’s depth changed, the banks and walls of trees narrowing toward them and the approaching canyon walls. You couldn’t look up without wanting to get out through the sky.

At the mouth of the canyon was a standing wave. Somehow the river ran under it, but the wave itself remained erect. A kind of light could be seen around it. Tony thought it had the quality of authority, like the checkpoint of a restricted area; Jack took it for yet another part of the blizzard of things that could never be explained and that pointlessly exhausted all human inquiry. Carrying these distinct views, their boat was swept into the wave, and under; and Jack and Tony were never seen again.