Crow Fair: Stories

An Old Man Who Liked to Fish

The Smiths were a very old couple, whose lifelong habits of exercise and outdoor living and careful diet had resulted in their seeming tiny — tiny, pale, and almost totemic — as they spread a picnic tablecloth on my front lawn and arranged their luncheon. Since I live with reckless inattention to what I eat, I watched with fascination as they set out apples, cheese, red wine, and the kind of artisanal bread that looks like something found in the road. The Smiths were the last friends of my parents still alive. And to the degree we spend our lives trying to understand our parents, I always looked forward to Edward and Emily’s visits as a pleasant forensic exercise.

Edward was a renowned fisherman, much admired by my father, and me, but given his present frailty, it was surprising that he thought he could still wade our rocky streams. He had a set rule of no wading staff before the first heart attack, and as he had yet to suffer one, he continued picking his way along, peering for rises, and if he ran into speedy water in a narrow place, he’d find a stick on the shore to help him through it. My father, by contrast, had always used a staff, an elegant blackthorn with a silver head that was supposed to have belonged to Calvin Coolidge.

Emily had been an avid golfer and considered fishing to be an inferior pursuit, with no score and thus no accountability. Therefore, she never followed Edward along the stream, instead taking up a place among the cottonwoods, where, with her binoculars, she quietly waited for something to happen in the canopy, hopeful of seeing a new bird for the list she kept in her head. She had done this for so many years that she felt empowered to report the rise and fall of entire species, extrapolating from her observations in the cottonwoods. This year she announced the decline of tanagers; last year, it was the rise of Audubon’s warblers. Lately, she would too often describe her sighting of Kirtland’s warbler, which occurred thirty years ago on Great Abaco. Not a good sign. At the last iteration, I must have looked blankly, because she said “wood warbler” in a sharp tone. Still, her birding represented mainly an accommodation of Edward, enabling her to stay close by while he fished, though he had never made a secret of his disdain for golf, golfers, and golf courses.

I fished with Edward for an hour or so, just to be sure that he could manage. He lovingly strung up his little straw-colored Paul Young rod, pulling line from the noisy old pewter-colored Hardy reel. Holding the rod at arm’s length, sighting down the length of it, he announced, “Not a set after forty years.” But I could see the leftward set from where I stood ten feet away. His casts, on the other hand, were straight as ever: tight, probing expressions of a tidy stream craft, such simplicity and precision. They took me all the way back to my boyhood, when from a high bank on the Pere Marquette, at my father’s urging, I had first observed Edward with utter rapture at seeing it all done so well. Now watching him hook an aerial cutthroat from a seam along cottonwood roots, I concluded he would be just fine on his own. He gave me a wink and cupped the fish in his hand, vital as a spark, before he let it go. I could see the fish dart around in the clear water, trying to find its direction before racing to mid-stream and disappearing. Edward held the barbless fly up to the light, blew it dry, and shot out a new cast. “I’m sorry your father isn’t here to enjoy this,” he said, keeping an eye on his fly as it bobbed down the current.

“So am I.”

“We had quite a river list. He was the last of the old gang, except for me and the wives.” Edward laughed. “The Big Fellow is starting to get the range.”

“My dad was a great fisherman, wasn’t he?”

“Oh, not really, but nobody loved it more.” My father and I hadn’t gotten along, so I was surprised to find myself feeling defensive about his prowess as a fisherman. But it was true: his style of aggression was ill suited to field sports. He had played football in college, and I could recall feeling that baseball, my sport, was a little too subtle for him. And slow.

Edward promised that when the sun got far enough to the west to put glare on the water, he’d head back up to the house, and meanwhile he hoped that I would be patient with Emily. She had begun to slip further, something that I had noticed but not much worried about, because she could still be talked out of the most peculiar of her fixations. I had seen the very old — my aunt Margaret, for example — slide into dementia good-naturedly, even enjoying some of its comic effects or treating the misapprehensions as amusing curiosities. But Emily demanded to be believed, and so perhaps her progression had not been so pleasant. Edward did say that they’d had to light the flower beds at home when she began to see things there that frightened her.

Edward said, “Well, I’m going to keep moving. I want to get to the logjam while there’s still good light.” He looked down at the bright water curling around his legs. “Amazing this all finds its way to the sea.”

Edward wasn’t seen again. That’s not quite accurate: his body turned up, what was left of it, in a city park in Billings, on the banks of the Yellowstone. It had gone down the West Fork of the Boulder; down the Boulder to the Yellowstone, past the town Captain Clark had named Big Timber for the cottonwoods on the banks; down the Yellowstone through sheep towns, cow towns, refinery towns; and finally to Two Moon Park in Billings, where it was found by a homeless man, Eldon Pomfret of Magnolia Springs, Alabama. In a sense, Edward had gotten off easy.

At sundown, Emily came out of her birding lair and asked, “Have you seen Edward?” She had binoculars in one hand and a birding book in the other, and her eyes were wide. I was still in the studio, and her inquiry startled me.

“Maybe he stayed for the evening rise or—”

“I wonder if you should go look for him. He doesn’t see well in the dark. It will be dark soon, won’t it? What time is it, anyway?”

“I don’t have my watch, but I’ll walk up and see how he’s getting along.”

“Don’t bother him if there are bugs on the water. He gets furious. What time did you say it was?”

“I left my watch on the dresser.”

“What difference does it make? We can tell by the sun.”

“Okay, here I go.”

“And if he’s intent, please don’t disturb him.”

“I won’t.”

“He gets furious.”

When I got back, I sat with Emily on the sun porch waiting for the sheriff. She was weeping. “He’s with that woman.”

“What woman, Emily?”

“The one with those huge hats. Francine. I thought that was over.”

I refrained from noting that Edward would have had no means of conveyance to “Francine.” Perhaps, she knew more than I thought and was escaping into this story. As time went on, “Francine” came to seem something portentous. Emily hung on to the idea even after the sheriff arrived, who seemed to us old folks an overgrown child, bursting out of his uniform. He listened patiently as Emily explained all about Francine. He nodded and blinked throughout.

“She met him in the lobby of the Alexis Hotel in Seattle and lured him to her room. That was back in the Reagan years, and she has turned up several times since.”

“Ma’am,” said the sheriff — and I remember thinking that this big, pink, kindly, bland child of an officer was the right person to say “ma’am” as slowly as he did—“Ma’am, I can’t really comment on that other lady, but this creek comes straight off the mountain, and we’re a long way from town.” Emily watched him closely as he made his case. She was quiet for a moment.

“He’s dead, isn’t he. I knew this would happen.” Emily turned to me. “I suppose that settles it.” I couldn’t think of one thing to do except wrinkle my brow in affected consternation. “Well,” said Emily. “I hope she’s happy now.”