The Fly Caster Who Tried To Make Peace With the World Read online

  Chapter 9

  I decided the risk of going to the Beaverkill was worth taking, and that if I saw Izzy I would tell him the truth about his fly rod and offer him mine.

  A week later I carried my fly-fishing equipment and a small suitcase and walked into Penn Station. The white, marble station was about as long as a football field and about half as wide. The arched ceiling was so high, it reminded me of a low, dusk-gray sky. Cut into the sky were decorations that looked like an upside-down stack of bigger and bigger, eight-sided plates. As I looked at the decorations I told myself plates or steps could never hang in the sky; so instead I saw the decorations as wide, flat stars that, ironically, were made more visible from sunlight pouring through the big, arched windows. The sunlight reflected off the marble floor and walls. The marble, however, didn’t shatter the light the way riffled water did. Maybe marble liked the sunlight and therefore wanted to keep it intact.

  The ceiling sky was held up by thick, round pillars. Suddenly I felt I was in a Gothic cathedral and back in the Middle Ages, but I was thankful I didn’t have to ride a horse 120 miles to the Beaverkill! To me, even though Penn Station was formed out of marble cut by men using modern machines, the station was as beautiful as anything I had ever seen, including the Harlem Meer and the East River. It didn’t seem possible, therefore, that the Catskill Mountains and the Beaverkill River were as beautiful as Penn Station.

  I bought a train ticket, walked through one of the arched passageways and boarded the O. & W. Train. I took my Leonard rod out of its case and ran my fingers over its gold-like finish. Could a fly rod be a work of art, I wondered, that will one day hang in museums like great paintings? Or are fly rods really works of science, like electric lights?

  I wrapped my fingers around the rod’s cork handle. I whispered, “Isn’t this a beautiful rod, mom? Sometimes a person doesn’t have to go far to see beauty. Isn’t that what you tried to teach me?”

  I saw mountains all around me. But not the mountains I saw in pictures or in my mind. Those jagged-sided, snowcapped mountains looked like beautiful weapons that stabbed the sky and made me feel small.

  The Catskill mountains didn’t fight the sky. Maybe because these wide, tree-covered mountains looked squashed down, as if they had been defeated and turned into giant hills that flowed into each other at different angles and formed a giant maze.

  The train sped through the maze. Some of the walls of the maze were the bottom of mountains that had been amputated to make way for the railroad.

  I wondered if mountains were a way of joining the earth to the sky, or a way of adding variation and beauty to the earth. Or were mountains just there for the heck of it and not really a way at all?

  I looked at my watch. Roscoe was only a half-hour away.

  I saw a change in the face of some of the mountains. Many had big clearings that looked like strange, zigzagged haircuts. Some of the haircuts had cut away the monotony of the mountains and added to their beauty, but other haircuts had left tree trunks looking like blemishes or fat whiskers. To me it seemed strange that man had redesigned the face of nature and left some of it looking worse.

  The train pulled into the Roscoe station. The station, a single platform covered with a long, low roof, was a very distant relation to Penn Station.

  Across the street was a three-story wooden building that would have dwarfed most of the unique-faced, Fifth Avenue mansions, but only in size. Had it not been for the green shutters and long canopy, the building would have seemed lost in its own whiteness.

  Sitting in the shade of the canopy were three men wearing wading boots and smoking cigars. Next to the doorway were two small signs. The black sign stood out and named the building: The Beaverkill House. The white sign blended in but spoke for the building: We have a good Christian clientele.

  Maybe, I thought, I won’t find Izzy up here.

  I was at the end of a one-block, dirt street. On the other end were two small white buildings that looked like peering eyes. Behind the eyes was a mountain that—at the risk of stretching my description—looked like a high, egg-shaped forehead. The mountain was steeper than the ones I saw from the train. Maybe it had been lucky and escaped being squashed down, or maybe it had somehow changed to the winning side.

  The street, Main Street, was a mishmash of wood and brick buildings. Some of the buildings had canopies. The street’s long sidewalk was made of narrow planks. Because I had never been in a small town, the street seemed out of a different world, out of the wild west, maybe.

  I wondered, Do I really want to cross into this new world, especially all by myself? But Izzy crossed into it.

  In the middle of the street stood two men, carrying fly rods. A trickle of five people walked up and down the street. Their light-skinned faces looked more like the faces I saw on Fifth Avenue than those I saw on Orchard Street. Maybe my crossing wouldn’t be so rough, after all.

  The first building on Main Street was a wide, three-story, red-brick building. On the ground floor were two stores. The first was L. Sipple’s Meat Market. In the store window was a handwritten, cardboard sign: Live Worms.

  Believing real fisherman used only artificial flies, I didn’t want any worms.

  Next to the meat market was W. E. & O. P. Sprague’s grocery store. I wondered why the store owners, like some of the competitors in the fly-casting tournament, used initials instead of first names. Personally, I wanted to be an Ian rather than an “I.”

  A well-dressed man walked toward me. I asked where the Antrim Lodge was.

  He pointed. “Two blocks that way.”

  The Antrim Lodge wasn’t as big as the Beaverkill House. The lodge’s yellow sides shined like a weak sun. Its two porches—one for the roof, one for the wrap-around porch—seemed riffled with blood. But the riffles, I knew, were really red shingles. Hanging over the porch’s railing were two pairs of waders.

  Would I ever see waders hanging on the clotheslines of the Lower East Side?

  Hoping I would, I walked up the lodge’s steps and into a big dining room. About twenty round tables covered with white tablecloths filled the room. The walls of the room were dark and paneled. Two of the walls had rows of windows. Sunlight poured through the windows, but not enough of it to make the room seem bright, unless I compared it to the hallway of 97 Orchard Street. Like the hallway, the dining room was decorated with paintings of streams and forests, but also with paintings of trout, deer and birds. In the far corner of the room two men sat in front of small vises and tied flies. On the near side of the room was a wide staircase. Two waiters wearing white jackets and carrying trays full of glasses came out of the kitchen.

  No one noticed me.

  I smelled sweet smoke. I put my suitcase down and peeked into the adjoining room. Two men wearing sports jackets and ties smoked pipes and read books. They sat in red winged-back chairs. The chairs were on opposite ends of an oriental rug. The men and the chairs looked like bookends. No one sat on the brown leather couch or the wooden rocking chair. Hanging on the room’s walls were more paintings of trout, deer and birds. To me, the room felt warm, like a real living room.

  Loud, muffled laughter broke the quiet of the lodge. The laughter came from downstairs.

  “And that’s the damnest thing!” someone yelled.

  Feeling lost, I wondered if I should leave and go home. I looked at one of the waiters. “Excuse me. Who do I see about Mr. Roberts room?”

  “Ralph, the bartender. Downstairs.”

  I walked down the staircase and into a big, dim tavern, crammed with about ten round wooden tables. High up on the paneled walls were small windows. Below the windows were small electric lights that gave off about as much illumination as candles. Four men stood at the bar that stretched from one end of the tavern to the other. The men wore hip boots and sports jackets.

  Was fly fishing, I wondered, a semiformal affair?

  Above the bar was a long row of stuffed trout. About a foot above my head was a white ceiling that mad
e me feel closed in. The ceiling was supported by four square pillars. Hanging on the pillars were mounted deer heads. I wondered how fake eyes could seem to shine with so much life. Behind the bar, Ralph cleaned glasses.

  “I told you, Clay,” a potbellied man said, “you’re using too light of a leader.”

  “Wallace, hell no!” a tall man insisted. “I just didn’t play him right. Had I been completely sober, I wouldn’t have forgot to wade downstream of the fish.” The man had combed his red hair to hide a big bald spot but hadn’t done a very good job of it. To me, his combed-over hair looked more comical than the cartoon-like hair of the clock on the Metropolitan Life building.

  “Clay, you’re stubborn and you’ll always be stubborn.”

  “Well a man’s got a right to be.”

  The men laughed wildly, like hooligans, even though Clay’s answer didn’t seem funny to me.

  Ralph noticed me, finally. I told him who I was. He opened a drawer and took out a key. “Room 7, second floor.”

  “Hey kid,” Clay said, “that looks like a Leonard rod case.” Clay grinned stupidly. He was drunk, obviously.

  “It is.”

  “What’s your name?”

  I told him.

  “Would you like to make some money?”

  “How?”

  “My new bride expects me to prove that I was fishing instead of drinking. I’ll pay you a buck for every fish you catch.”

  “Sir, thank you, but I don’t keep the fish I catch.”

  The hooligans laughed again.

  I wondered if the fly-fishing world overlapped the hard-drinking world.

  I hoped not.

  “Kid, Ian, are you religious or something?” Wallace asked. “Even preachers kill fish.”

  “I’ll tell you what,” Clay said. “If the fish is over two pounds, I’ll pay you two bucks.”

  “No thank you, sir.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “New York.”

  “You’re a city boy. With curly hair like that you must be Irish, or Scottish.”

  “Maybe Jewish,” the short, bald man said.

  Clay laughed, louder than before.

  In my mind I saw myself punching him.

  “Does he look like a Hebe to you?” Clay asked. “Besides, Hebes don’t fish.”

  “Weren’t Jesus’ first disciples fishermen?” the bald man asked.

  “That was a long time ago,” Clay said. “Kid, what are you?”

  “What you’re not: a sober fly fisherman.”

  Clay glared at me.

  I glared back.

  “Kid, whatever you are,” Clay said, “you took more of a ribbing than I could. You see, deep down inside, most of us drunks break like glass. You’re all right with me.”

  The men were silent, suddenly, as if they waited for me to thank Clay for his compliment.

  I said, “Well, I came here to fish.”

  “Do you know how to get to the Beaverkill?”

  “No.”

  He gave me directions to the closest pool, the Forks, then said, “But just be careful, the bottom of the pool is real steep. We don’t want to lose you. Ian, sometimes I’m a jerk, but to show you I’m not bad I’m going to share one of my secret holes. It’s near the tail of the Forks, about twenty feet in front of the island. That’s where this monster trout lives. If you land him, please take out my fly, for the fish’s sake and for mine. It’s my lucky fly, a Green Drake.”

  “For a buck I will.”

  Clay laughed. “A buck for a fly? Maybe you are a Hebe.”

  “You said it was your lucky fly.”

  The drunks laughed wildly.

  I picked up my suitcase, walked upstairs and found my room. It was tenement-sized, with barely enough space for the bed, dresser and small table.

  I sat on the bed and wondered, What kind of place am I in? A lodge? A nut house? A bad dream? Why did my mother die while obnoxious drunks lived? Yes, she too was once a, a drunk but—damn you God!

  I cried.

  Ten minutes later I wiped my last tears away. I stood up and told myself, I came to fish the Beaverkill and maybe find out what happened to Izzy—and that’s what I’m going to do. And maybe I’ll hook Clay’s monster trout and do what Clay couldn’t: land him.