Sex, Thugs and Rock & Roll

High Limit by Scott Wolven

Stripers swam up the Hudson earlier than usual that spring, and right away the fishermen were talking. I was working near Woodstock, hauling shale and aggregate for my cousin, and every day the other drivers would bring back stories about who caught what. Describing the good fishing spots on the river in detail, or lying about them-to keep the good fishing to themselves. The truth depended on who you were talking to. Baseball scores came first, then the fish stories. As far north on the river as the Athens lighthouse and as far south as you felt like sailing, although most of the guys didn’t go below Poughkeepsie. My cousin’s materials outfit was acting as a subcontractor on a state job, so we weren’t hauling weekends. Saturday and Sunday were good days to be on the river. I was simply glad to be out in the world and earning money at the time. I got involved with the wrong side of things up in Canada-moving meth on the northwestern border of Maine-and had just come back after four years away. It was my first stretch and I wanted to put it behind me. Listening to the guys talk about fishing made me want to get out there and put a line in the water. They were catching some big ones.

I was living on an old run-down farm-thirty acres-between Saugerties and Catskill that had been in my family for years. My great-grandfather’s brother George had owned the property. Nobody remembered what George had done for work, but he must have enjoyed his privacy. The farm was set way back off the road-the dusty dirt trail that led to it was close to a mile and the mailbox on the road never had a name on it-with the two-story main house on a slight hill. The main house was white and blue, with a wraparound wood porch overlooking the pond. A couple large sturdy red barns and two buildings about ready to fall over. The property had three little gray cabins on it, facing the mountains. Someone, years ago, put the cabins up and tried to get people to stay there. It hadn’t worked. The cabins each were equipped with a sink and a stand-up shower in addition to a flush toilet, which was probably illegal given the size of the property. The cabins had black phones in them, hanging on the wall, and when you picked them up, they rang to a single phone in the main house. For the guests, I imagined. There was still a gas pump and buried tank next to the one barn. I suppose if I went through the trouble of having someone come out and inspect the pump, I could have had my own gas on-site. It was an empire of dirt, but it was paradise to me.

I pulled the truck up the road that Friday and my father’s silver truck was parked in front of the house. He was sitting on the front porch in a lawn chair with his ball cap on, drinking a soda. He’d retired two years before from a local lumberyard.

“Hey there,” he said.

“How’s it going?” I said. “How’s retired life?”

“Can’t complain,” he said. “What are you doing tomorrow?”

“Nothing,” I said.

“You’re going fishing with me and Rich, okay? Be the best thing for you.”

“Sounds good,” I said.

He was getting in his truck. “See you at six a.m. Catskill dock.”

“See you tomorrow. Say hello to Mom for me.”

“Will do,” he said. “She’s going to visit her aunt.”

“Wish her a good flight,” I said.

He waved as he pulled away from the house.

Rich had a new boat he kept at the Catskill dock. It wasn’t brand-new, but it was new to him and he kept it shining. He was retired too, from a state conservation job. He made extra money running fishing charters out of Catskill and did pretty well for himself. Rich knew where the fish were. The other guy in Catskill who knew where the fish were was Tom, the man who owned the bait shop. Tom was a big, tall guy, an old basketball player. He had owned the bait shop in Catskill for years, and it was the best bait and tackle shop on the Hudson. All the fishermen along the river knew to stop at Tom’s before they went fishing, to get the latest report on conditions and fish. And to buy bait and everything else-reels, rods, the latest lures. Maps and charts. Tom could wind your reel with new line while you stood there and have you back out on the river in half an hour. Listening to Tom could keep you from getting shut out. No fish was no fun. When I passed Tom’s on my way to the dock, I saw my father’s truck in the parking lot. He pulled into the dock parking lot behind me and we headed out onto the Hudson River with Rich driving the boat.

“Tom says go north,” my father said to Rich.

“We’ll try it,” Rich said.

My father turned to me. “I asked you here for a reason,” he said.

“Go ahead,” I said.

“Do you remember Bob?” he said. “Bob Threepersons?”

“Sure,” I said. “Still lives in Florida?” Bob had been in the army with my father and Rich. They hadn’t been in the same units, but met back here in the States when their tour of duty ended. Bob had been a tunnel rat. He was originally from Idaho. His whole family lived on a reservation out there. He still had a sister who lived on the reservation. He came and visited, almost twenty years ago. He stayed in one of the little cabins on the old farm. I remember Bob kept an owl for a pet.

My father nodded. “He’s having a heck of a time.”

“What type of problems?” I said. We were moving north through the water. The great Rip Van Winkle Bridge was overhead, with its huge stone pilings diving deep into the water around us. Rich stayed in a channel and we passed underneath. Rogers Island was on our right and the train tracks ran along the bank.

“Money,” my father said. “Drugs. Booze.”

“Is he ready to clean up?” I said.

“He says he is,” my father said.

“Does he need money?” I said.

“No.” My father shook his head. “Having extra money is part of his problem right now.”

“Are these the type of money problems that are likely to follow him up here?” I said.

“There’s a chance of that,” he said. “Anything can happen.”

We let the conversation sit, because he’d hooked a fish. Rich and I watched him bring it to the boat, as the pole he was using bent around. Rich got the net and we wrestled a good-sized striper to the deck. The fish had bright-colored scales and a white belly. After we removed the hook, my father tossed the fish back into the Hudson.

“You want him to stay in one of the little houses?” I said.

“Yeah,” my father said. “That’s a good plan. He kicked heroin there one summer, so he knows he can get clean there.”

“I never knew that,” I said. “I just thought he was visiting us.”

“He was,” my father said. “But he was having some problems at that time too.”

“Why do you guys keep helping him?” I said.

My father sipped his coffee. Rich shrugged.

“You can’t turn your back on people when you know what they’ve seen,” Rich said.

My father nodded. “War loves young men,” he said. “Those aren’t my words, somebody else said them first, but I don’t remember who. Anyway, Vietnam got hold of Bob and hasn’t let him go yet. We’re lucky”-he motioned at Rich and himself-“that we don’t have the problems Bob does.” He drank another mouthful of coffee. “I can’t watch TV anymore except baseball. The war coverage makes me think about those men and women overseas and how, even if they make it back and with all their limbs, it could still ruin their lives. I can’t stand people-ordinary, average, everyday people-suffering the consequences of politicians. Bob is like that. He’s nobody special, he’s just special to us.” My father finished his coffee and Rich nodded as he watched the water.

“And this time,” my father said, “Bob’s problems seem a little tougher and different.”

“These new problems,” I said. “Gun-type problems?”

“Yes,” my father said. “He might need some help watching his back.”

“I’ve got a brand-new shotgun,” Rich said.

“I’ve already got a shotgun,” I said.

“I meant for Bob,” Rich said. “Do you have a dog?”

“No,” I said. “I work too much to take care of one.”

“I used to have a good German shepard named Shane, but he’s long gone. I can’t help you with a dog,” Rich said.

“Okay,” I said. “When should I expect Bob?”

“Soon,” my father said. “Tonight.”

We caught another striper north of Hudson-Tom had been right-and headed back to the Catskill dock. After we moored the boat, Rich brought a gun case out of the backseat of his truck, along with three boxes of shells. I put the stuff on the backseat of my truck and shook hands with both of them before driving off.

I stopped and picked up some groceries on the way home. At the farm, I got things ready to have a guest. I cleaned out the cabin and put some food and a jug of water out there. I put a bar of soap and shampoo in the shower, a razor, shaving cream, toothbrush, and toothpaste on the sink. I put the gun case Rich had given me and the boxes of shells on the bed. Next to the gun I put a case of cigarettes, two plastic lighters, four bars of chocolate, and a couple candy bars. I started a fire with the coals and after it died down and the coals went white hot, I put some burgers on. I loaded my own shotgun, checked the safety, and leaned it inside the screen door. I sat on the porch and ate.

The sun had gone down when Bob pulled up. He was driving an old beat-up station wagon with fake wood paneling and Florida plates. The passenger’s-side front tire looked low. When I got close to the car I could see a long jagged crack in the windshield.

“Hey,” he said. We shook hands. He wore his long hair in a ponytail with gray in it. He looked tired and thin. He was wearing a long-sleeve shirt that he’d sweated through. “Well, hell, John,” he managed. He was carrying an old tan suitcase and a blue gym bag. He set the bags on the ground.

“Good to see you,” I said. “Do you want a hamburger?” I pointed at the grill, still glowing in the twilight.

“That sounds great,” he said. “No beer.”

“Yeah,” I said. “My dad told me. No problem.”

“I just need to relax a little,” he said. He shook a cigarette out of the pack and lit it. “We need to hide this car.”

I walked over to the big barn and swung the door open. “Pull it right in here.”

He guided the station wagon into the empty space between an old Jeep under a tarp and a pickup truck. He shut the engine off and took out a big screwdriver.

“Got to get these plates off,” he explained.

“Sure,” I said. He was sweating. “Can I help you?”

“Work on that back plate,” he said.

I lay on the rough concrete floor and sweated, using an oversized screwdriver to get the screws out of the license plate. I skinned my knuckles. We finished and put the plates on the front seat. I made Bob a burger with a roll and gave it to him.

“This is your cabin right here,” I said. I pointed at the middle cabin. “Hasn’t changed much since your last visit.” I carried his two bags up to the small porch.

“I really appreciate your help,” he said. He had taken a couple bites out of the burger.

“If you need anything, lift that phone next to your bed. It calls me in the house.”

“Okay,” he said.

“See you in the morning,” I said.

“Thanks,” he said.

I gave my father a call when I got back in the house.

“Bob’s here,” I said. “He ate and went to bed.”

“Good,” my father said. “Let’s try some fishing again tomorrow. Bring him with you.”

“Sure,” I said. “See you tomorrow.”

I shut the lights out and sat in a chair looking out the window. I could see the end of the driveway and the road and I watched for an hour. Cars passed in the dark, but nobody slowed down or stopped. I slept with my shotgun on the floor next to my bed. I didn’t know how big Bob’s trouble was and I wanted to be ready.

I drove Bob to the Catskill dock the next day. He didn’t look well-he was wearing a light blue jacket despite the heat-when he got in the truck, but we stopped at a gas station and I bought him a coffee. It was good to watch him drink something.

“That’s good coffee,” he said.

“Nice,” I said. “How’re you doing?”

“I’ve been better,” he said. “I’ve been much worse. This will pass.”

“Sure,” I said.

It smelled like gas and oil and fish at the dock. My father and Rich were already on the boat. Bob and I got on. Rich gave us all rods, all rigged up. My father and Rich shook hands with Bob and they both gave him a hug. Rich piloted the boat into the Hudson and nobody said anything. We were busy fishing. We were headed slightly south today. One of the large Hudson mansions sat on a hill on the east bank and we all looked at as we passed. Rich hooked a nice striper, brought it up into the boat, and released it.

“I remember the last time I visited,” Bob said. “We fished then too.”

“I remember we caught a couple good ones,” my father said.

“We ate those fish, didn’t we?” Bob said.

“We did,” my father said. “Things have changed in the river.”

“That’s too bad,” Bob said. Less than a minute after that, he hooked one and fought it to the boat. After he released it, a large hawk took off from a dead tree close to shore. The hawk gained altitude and floated high in the blue and the clouds.

“The sky is part of the color of that bird,” Bob said. “In a blue sky, the bird looks a certain way and in a gray sky, the bird looks another way. The bird doesn’t pick the color of the sky, he just lives in it. He doesn’t try to change it. I remember my grandfather telling me that.” He was crying now. My father and Rich sat close to him and I watched the boat. I couldn’t hear what they were saying. Rich stood up and took over, heading back to the dock. My father stayed close to Bob until we were getting off the boat.

“It’s hard to be off drugs,” Bob said. We were headed towards my truck.

“Everything’s hard,” my father said. “You can do it.”

“Good luck,” Rich said.

Bob and I drove back to the farm and when I came out of the house, he was sitting on the porch, looking at the sky. I fixed us some dinner and we both went to bed. I got up at 2:00 a.m. to take a look around. To be safe. The house phone rang and I picked it up.

“Hey,” Bob said. “Are you awake? I thought I saw a light.”

“Yes,” I said. “Checking things out.”

“I’m going back to sleep,” he said.

“See you late tomorrow,” I said. “I’ve got to work.”

“Sure,” Bob said. “I’ll fix dinner.”

“Sounds good,” I said.

We went fishing as much as we could that summer. We went out on the river with my father and Rich. One time, Bob’s pole bent so much, we all thought he’d hooked a sturgeon. It would have been a once-in-a-lifetime catch. Whatever it was spat the hook before he could land it. The next weekend, we were out on the river again.

“What did you do?” I said. Bob had been staying on the farm for five weeks and we were sitting on the porch, eating sandwiches.

“I counted cards at the high-limit table,” he said. He finished his sandwich. “More than once. At more than one casino, all along the Gulf Coast.” He scratched his head. “I learned I could count cards when I was in the Army,” he said. “Wish I never had.”

“How much did you get away with?” I said.

“Not enough to be worth this,” he said. He inhaled his cigarette. “That’s for sure.” He took another drag and then went on. “It used to be like I couldn’t tell if I was awake or dreaming. I had this big pile of chips and I’d cash out and the money would pile up.”

I nodded. The sky was night-dark except for the stars and on the edge of the mountains, we could see the static charges of heat lightning, flashing.

Bob seemed like he was talking to himself. “I had that money and off I’d go, on a bender. I shot dope again. I drank all the time. I did everything I could get my hands on. Until it was like I wasn’t real anymore. I came home to my house at one point and thought people had broken in, that’s what a wreck it was.”

“That sounds bad,” I said.

“Then the pit boss at the one casino, he must have seen me doing something because the next time I went to play, they wouldn’t let me sit at the table. So I went down the street and counted cards there and took them for all they could handle.” He shook his head. “Men followed me out of the casino and tried to beat me up, but I got away. I realized they must have put a price on my head. That’s when I decided to come up here.”

“What would they gain by killing you?” I said.

“Nothing,” he said. “Probably a couple thousand dollars from the casino management firm.”

“Can you pay them back?” I said.

“I don’t even know how many times I won off them, or what casinos I won it from. I took a couple loans from bookies to cover myself. It’s an ugly mess.”

“That sounds bad,” I said.

“I came home one night late and turned on the TV and I think I fell asleep. I woke up and there was a cowboy and Indian movie on and I started to lose my mind. I thought, that’s all they show, is us being killed.” He pointed at his head. “My own mind is my worst enemy.” He looked over at me. “What did you do?”

“Got into a scrape up in Maine,” I said.

He nodded. “Did your father ever tell you about the scrape I got into in the late seventies?”

“No,” I said. “He didn’t.” The lights from planes moved slowly through the night sky, among the stillness of the stars.

Bob put his cigarette out. “I tried to make some money as a big game scout. Signed on with a guy out of Florida named Mackenzie, who arranged hunting trips to Africa for wealthy clients.”

“What did you take them hunting for?” I said.

“When they signed up, supposedly it was for antelope. Large game deer, mostly. But we were really going over to shoot rhinos,” Bob said. “Everybody knew that.” He pointed through the darkness to the little cabins. “Imagine an animal the size of one of those cabins, faster than your truck and basically plated with armor.”

“I’ve seen them on TV,” I said.

“Well, I saw it in real life,” he said. “That last afternoon, a rhino came out of the grass after the truck and we all started shooting. Five men. I had one of those newer Mauser rifles, but it was still bolt action, and I’m slamming that thing home and firing and the rhino hit the truck like a fully stacked freight train, wham.” He made a flattening motion with his hands, then lifted them into the air. “Up I went and down I came.”

“What happened?” I said.

“I couldn’t fire anymore, because I was out of shells. The rhino stomped and gored everyone but me. Put a hole in Mackenzie that I could see through. The ground was so soaked with blood that the natives who rescued me were afraid the smell of death would bring other animals to the spot. The natives took me to a ranger station.”

“Jesus,” I said.

“Sometimes,” Bob said, “I used to stay awake for days at a time, so I wouldn’t have to dream about that stuff and what I’d seen in Vietnam. Drugs helped me keep the past quiet, in the short term. Till it got the best of me.” He paused. “Did you ever try to wash someone else’s blood off you?”

“No,” I said.

“For some reason,” Bob said, “it’s hard to get it off. Almost as if blood holds onto your skin, because it knows your skin is still alive.”

We picked up the plates and put them in the kitchen sink. I saw him smoke another cigarette on his small cabin porch before going inside.

It was about 4:00 a.m. when I heard the car door slam in the yard. I flipped the lights on downstairs and outside and opened my bedroom window. I put the barrel of the shotgun out first and racked the slide.

“What do you want?” I said.

The two men blinked against the light. “We’re looking for somebody,” the one man said.

“This is private property,” I said. “I’m calling the cops.”

“We’ll be gone before they get here,” the man said. He had a pistol holstered on his right side.

“Get back in that car or you’ll need an ambulance,” I said. “Last warning.”

I hoped that Bob was awake at that point, ready to back me up if shooting started. They weren’t sure where he was, so he could get off a couple rounds from the middle cabin before they knew what hit them.

Both men walked back to their car, turned it around, and spit gravel going back down the road.

In the morning, I walked to the middle cabin and opened the door. There was nothing there. It looked as though no one had ever slept there at all. I went around to the back barn and found what I was looking for. Under the tarp that used to protect the old Jeep was Bob’s station wagon. A set of New York plates was missing too. Bob was on the road again. I called my father and told him.

I came home from work in the middle of the week and found everything torn apart. Whoever those men were, they must have come back while I was gone. The beds were out of the cabins, stuff spread across the lawn by the pond. The big barn door was open, exposing the cars. The tarp was off the station wagon and the doors were open. The door to the main house had been jimmied open and sat on bent hinges. But there was nothing to find.

The first letter I got wasn’t really a letter at all. It was an envelope with an Idaho postmark and two photographs. The first picture was of a huge fish-what appeared to be a white sturgeon-half in the water, ready to be released back in. The second was a similar picture of the fish from a different angle and the photographer had allowed his shadow to fall out over the water and into the shot, along with the tip of his right boot. The boot looked like Bob’s, and the shadow looked like it had a ponytail.

Two months later, a postcard showed up in my mailbox. It bore a Vancouver postmark. “Still OK still sober” was all it said on it.

One night I was sitting there during a terrible lightning storm. The cabin phone rang. Scared the hell out of me. I answered it and in the darkness, it sounded like someone was there.

“Bob?” I said. “Bob?”

There was no answer. The lightning must have made it ring. I was alone.

The stripers were hitting in the Hudson in April and May this year. I caught my share on the weekends, with my father and Rich. I fished from shore some weekends during the summer and got a pass to one of the reservoirs. I saw some eagles early one morning and the fireworks got rained out on the Fourth of July, so they shot them off the following weekend. I watched them from the porch of the farm, what I could see of the lights above the trees. The shale business kept on and I drove every day and got dusty and dumped and hauled all the loads my cousin gave me. I was grateful for the work.

I pulled up the dusty driveway one Friday in late August and my father’s truck was close to the house. He was sitting on the porch with his ball cap off. I got out of my rig and walked to the house and he didn’t say anything. He was holding something and when I got closer, it looked like an envelope.

“Hi,” I said. “What’s going on?”

He just handed me the envelope. It had an Idaho postmark and my father’s address handwritten on the outside. Inside was a newspaper clipping from a week earlier, from a newspaper in Spokane, Washington. I read it.

A man the Idaho State Police had identified as Robert Threepersons had died from gunshot wounds in a parking lot outside a truck stop casino near the Idaho-Washington border. The police were investigating the shooting, although there were no clues at this time.

“I should have told him to stay here,” my father said. He indicated the clipping. “His sister must have sent this from the reservation.”

I didn’t know what to say.

“Between the war and the drugs and the gambling, the poor guy must have been afraid of his own thoughts,” my father said.

“He probably was,” I agreed.

“And people coming after him,” he said. “It was too much.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“I can’t draw a straight line from the war to Bob’s problems for you to see, but I know it’s there,” he said.

We sat on the porch till it started to get dark. My father headed home to his house and my mother. And I looked over at the middle cabin, to the place where Bob had been sober for a little while. To where my fishing buddy had lived for a summer.

What if it wasn’t him that died in that parking lot? What if somebody got the drop on him but he shot them and put his identification on them, to throw the cops off? Or what if he were finally dreamlessly asleep and peaceful, delivered by violence into someplace else. Off this earth, with the beautiful blue sky coloring him forever.