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

  Chapter 11

  I didn’t see Clay in the dining room. Thankful, I sat by myself at a corner table and ordered dinner. Feeling out of place, I opened Huckleberry Finn and read. Huck was walking with Buck, who, for no apparent reason, shoots at Harvey Shepherdson. Huck is surprised. Buck says that his family and the Shepherdson family are trying to kill each other off, even though no one remembers how the feud started.

  The waiter served my Shepherd’s Pie. The creamed potatoes were heavy and spicy, the way I liked. The meat was sweet. Again I read, but soon, instead of hearing the words of Mark Twain, I heard the words of the people sitting near me. 

  “Whirling Eddy is really fishing well right now. ... Those dry flies aren’t worth a damn. ... There ought to be a law against these worm fishermen taking so many fish. ... I don’t care what the law says. I fish on Sundays. ... With all these women fishing nowadays, pretty soon women will want to play in the major leagues. ... ”

  One by one, the other diners finished eating. Many went downstairs to the tavern. A few, however, went to the living room. When I finished, I went to my room, opened Huck Finn, then closed it. I didn’t want to be alone.

  Maybe I should go down and see what’s going on in the living room. After all, it’s filled with anglers, like me.

  I went downstairs. Six men sat in the living room. A man wearing a tweed jacket and smoking a pipe looked at me. He had a big nose and a narrow face. If Ray’s face was on the moon, this man’s was on the pointy end of a football. Ray, I thought, got the better end of the deal. There was only one moon and it didn’t get kicked around. Luckily, the man didn’t have the cauliflower ears of the old man sitting in a winged-back chair. Had he, he would have looked like a mouse.

  “Come in young man,” the pointy-faced man said. “We’re trading stories.”

  I walked in and sat on the floor.

  “Get a chair from the dining room,” the man said. “I’ll wait.”

  I got a chair. The men introduced themselves. The pipe smoker was John. The old man was Gus. The others were Hank, Colin, Steve and Thomas.

  “Tonight my story is a short one,” John said. “Once upon a time there was a farmer married to a beautiful woman he loved to show off, but one day the woman left him for another man, and the farmer became the butt of jokes. He was so angry, he stopped people from fishing the long pool of the upper Beaverkill that ran through his farm. Then one day a beautiful woman rode up on horseback. She carried a fly rod and told the farmer that her husband had left her with two children to feed. The farmer, intoxicated by her beauty, invited her to fish his pool. As she fished, he couldn’t take his eyes off her. She landed three big trout. Later, she offered the farmer one. The farmer told her to keep all the fish for her children and invited her to come back whenever she wanted.

  “She often did, and the farmer fell more and more in love with her. Soon he began to wonder where she lived, so one day, after she rode away, he got in his buggy and followed her. He was surprised when she rode to Ferdon’s Eddy, got off her horse, and walked to a man who was sitting on the bank. The man was drinking whiskey out of a bottle. The beautiful woman kissed him, opened his creel and put her trout inside. The woman then got on her horse and rode off. The drunken angler got up and staggered to the Antrim bar right downstairs. The farmer followed him. The drunken angler put the trout on the bar and boasted that he was the best angler the Beaverkill had ever seen.

  “Crushed, the farmer rode back to his farm. A few days later he saw the beautiful woman fishing his pool. And that was the last time anyone saw her alive. Later, the farmer told the police he found her floating face down. Since there was a big bruise on her head, the police had no choice but to accept that the woman fell and hit her head on one of the big rocks.

  “Did she? Well, before long the farmer began drinking heavily. One day he got real drunk and went out and fished. A week later his brother found him floating on his back and looking up at the sky. But he really wasn’t looking at anything at all. He had drowned.

  “About a year later someone bought the farm and opened the pool to all anglers. But soon the only anglers who came were ones who didn’t know the story, because to this day anglers swear that at night they see two ghosts fishing, a man and a woman, but always at opposite ends of the pool. And so the moral of the story is—”

  “John, wait,” Henry said. “The moral should explain itself.”

  “John, Henry’s right,” Colin said.

  “All right,” John said coldly. “I won’t say anything more.”

  “I think the story is missing something,” Gus said. 

  “Gus, you’re always complaining,” John said. “What’s missing?”

  “I don’t know. Besides, no one believes in ghosts anymore. We’re not kids.”

  “And no one believes in your talking fish,” John insisted.

  “It depends on how you define believe,” Gus said.

  Personally, I didn’t mind the business about ghosts. After all, a ghost played a crucial role in Hamlet. Though I wasn’t a critic, I felt the story was contrived and would never make it into the annals of American literature. But I wasn’t going to tell John that, especially because his telling the story was such a spirited effort, like that of the travelers in the Canterbury Tales.

  I wondered if I was back in the world of the Middle Ages.

  John looked at me. “What about you, Ian?”

  “Me? I don’t have any stories.”

  “Everyone has stories,” Hank said. “They just don’t always know it.”

  Did I? I closed my eyes. I remembered Doc’s story. But could I tell it as well as Doc? I didn’t think so, but didn’t I want to be a writer? Yes, but not an actor.

  “He does have a story,” Thomas said. “I can see it in his face.”

  I pleaded, “I’ve never told a story before.”

  “Well, there’s nothing to be scared about,” John said.

  A hundred pair of eyes seemed to stare at me.

  “I, ah, I, ah—well, the only story I know is about how a man became an angler, but I don’t even know the man’s real name, so I’ll use his nickname: Doc.”

  “And the story—does it have a name?” John asked.

  “No.”

  “Make up one.”

  I thought for a moment. “‘An Angler From The American Civil War.’ How’s that?”

  “Fine,” Gus said.

  “Now when Doc was a young man he cared about only one thing: drinking ... ”

  And so, feeling nervous, I retold Doc’s story. The funny thing was, the deeper I got into the story, the less nervous I became, maybe because I seemed to remember every one of Doc’s words, maybe because I saw fascination in my fellow anglers’ faces. It therefore became easier and easier for me to look into their wide-open eyes.

  “ ... He used the money to go back to school and eventually became a doctor and got the nickname Doc.”

  The room was silent. Some anglers looked down, others looked right at me. I tried to read their expressions but couldn’t. Had I messed up Doc’s story? If so, I wanted to apologize to him.

  “Now that was the damnedest fishing story I ever heard,” Hank said, finally.

  “Damn right it was,” Thomas said.

  “You boys shouldn’t be cursing after hearing a story like that,” Gus said.

  “The old man is right,” John said. “I’m sorry, Ian.”

  “But to me,” Gus said, “it was really a war story.”

  “A story can be about both war and fishing,” John said.

  “No,” Gus stated. “Fishing and war don’t go together.”

  “Well, evidently you’re wrong,” Hank said. “Right Ian?”

  “I never really thought about it.”

  “You should’ve before you told your story,” Gus insisted.

  I said, “I’m sorry.”

  “Ian, you don’t have to apologize to me,” Hank said.

  “Me too,” John added. “Wel
l, I think now I’m ready to sleep like a baby.”

  We said good night and went up to our rooms.

  I got into bed and wondered if I would ever be able to write a story as good as Doc’s, especially because I would never volunteer to go to war. I closed my eyes and dreamed about being a famous writer, but the next thing I knew, morning sunlight shined through the window. I got out of bed, dressed and went downstairs.

  John, Hank, and Gus sat at a table. They waved to me and invited me to eat breakfast with them. I sat down and felt like I was a member of their club.

  They asked about me. I told them where I lived and where I went to school. As I did, I glanced around the room. I didn’t see Clay. Hank asked what I wanted to be. Afraid they would laugh if I told them I wanted to be a writer, I answered. “A lawyer, like my father.”

  “Being a lawyer is good,” John said.

  “I think there’s already too many lawyers,” Gus said.

  I smiled. “Yeah, maybe. By the way, I’m hoping to find someone.” I described Izzy.

  No one recalled seeing him. Disappointed, I finished eating.

  “Where are you off to fish, Ian?” John asked.

  Was he inviting me to fish with him? If so, I could invite him to fish the Forks. But John was well-dressed and well-spoken. Ray, therefore, would think he was well-off and probably wouldn’t like him. I wished I could be in two places at once.

  I said, “I’m meeting someone at the Forks.”

   

  Ray wasn’t at the Forks when I got there. I set up my Leonard rod and cast over the swirling eddies. The eddies, however, weren’t as strong as they were the day before; and neither were the armies flowing into the pool. Unlike the stone faces of mansions, the faces of the river had faded closer to anonymity, but I still recognized them.

  Twenty minutes later, Ray still hadn’t arrived.

  Had he deserted me, like Izzy? If so, why? Had I said the wrong thing? Or had he just assumed that I was a rich kid from New York?

  A fly line unrolled upstream. Was it Ray’s?

  I walked upstream. Mr. La Branche stood in the river. Tucking his rod in his armpit, he wrote something in a small book.

  I yelled out, “I think you’re right!”

  “About what?”

  “Dry flies and fast water.”

  “Dry flies and fast water. I like the ring of that.”

  I told him about the rises I saw on Ferdon’s Eddy.

  “Right now,” he said, “I’m trying to create my own hatch of flies by casting to the same spot over and over again.”

  Though I didn’t know if he wanted me to, I walked to him.

  “Watch,” he said.

  He cast. Again the loop curved downstream. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Did you tell me your name yesterday?”

  “My name is Ian.”

  “Ian, you see, according to my theory, closely matching artificial flies to hatched ones isn’t crucial. I’ve cut open trout and found little sticks and different insects in their stomachs; so I think what’s crucial to catching trout is landing the fly gently on the right spot, and then drifting the fly without drag.” Mr. La Branche’s voice sounded calm but passionate. I was impressed at how well he fit the opposite tones together.

  “To get the fly to land gently,” he continued, “I aim about five feet over the target and slightly downward. You see, Ian, the trick is to get the line to land first and to therefore slow the leader and fly as they float down. Right now I’m landing my fly three feet upstream of that long seam. To get a longer drift, I’m curving my casts so the fly lands downstream of the line.”

  “I didn’t know a person can curve his casts.”

  “To make a downstream curve, I cast with the rod forty-five degrees to the ground. Then I let go of the line before I stop my cast and gently pull back the rod. To make an upstream curve, I don’t let go of the line until I stop my cast. The more horizontally I hold the rod, the more my cast will curve. Sounds easy, doesn’t it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Curving my casts has taken me months and months of experiments.”

  I thought of my own casting experiments. Suddenly I admired Mr. La Branche, in spite of his two middle initials and his dressing like a dandy.

  He took out his gold pocket watch. “It’s almost ten. I have to meet Mr. Theodore Gordon at the Covered Bridge Pool.”

  “The writer?”

  “So you heard of him?”

  “Kind of.”

  “He’s also a great flytier. We’re having a running debate on how to fish dry flies. Ian, why don’t you come with me, and I’ll tell you more on the way.”

  Ray, I assumed, wasn’t coming, so why should I miss a golden opportunity to learn about dry-fly fishing and to see another pool? Besides, Mr. Gordon was a writer. I had never met a real writer.

  I said, “Sure.”

  Mr. La Branche owned a brand-new black Ford. We put our rods in the back seat. Ray strolled down the road, as if he had all the time in the world—until he saw me and glared.

  I wanted to apologize to him, even though he was an hour late.

  “How are you, Ray?” Mr. La Branche yelled out.

  “Fine,” Ray answered coldly.

  “We’ll have some more work for you at the club.”

  I got in the car. Mr. La Branche drove back toward town, then turned left and drove past a long row of quaint homes with porches; and I realized I was beginning to like the look of a small town. Mr. La Branche turned onto a narrow road that ran alongside a river. The river had a lot of riffles and runs. The bank was lined with trees, posted with small signs that read: Fishing And Hunting Prohibited.

  I asked. “Is that the upper Beaverkill?”

  “Yes.”

  On both sides of the river were cornfields and farmhouses. Which farm, I wondered, was owned by the farmer in John’s story? I looked back at the river. Which pool is haunted? This one? But ghosts aren’t real. What a fool I am for believing, even for a second, all of John’s story.

  “You see,” Mr. La Branche said, “to get trout to see dries on fast water, we have to tie them differently than they’re tied in England. Our dries have to float higher on the water ... ”

  Mr. La Branche told me how his experiments led him to believe some of the best places to fish dry flies were the mouths and tails of pools. Without stopping for a breath, he explained how to fish those parts.

  I was lost in his explanations, the way I once was in Izzy’s. Was Mr. La Branche a mad scientist? If so, did I want to be his mad pupil?

  Thinking I didn’t, I looked forward to reaching the Covered Bridge Pool.

  “Ian, to summarize, I think the order of importance to fishing dry flies is: action, position, size, form and, last, color. Now, Mr. Gordon does not agree with me. He thinks the order is size, form and color.”

  “What made you come to these conclusions?”

  “You mean theories. My gut, at first. We’re here.”

  Mr. La Branche drove down a hill then through a one-lane, covered wooden bridge. I felt as if we drove through a rattling barn. I imagined miniature Brooklyn Bridges connecting the banks of Beaverkill, but I didn’t like the images, especially when Mr. La Branche parked on a clearing and I saw how beautifully the wooden bridge matched the pool. Besides, I didn’t like the ring of the name: Suspension Bridge Pool.

  “That’s Mr. Gordon’s car.” Mr. La Branche pointed to an older-model Ford.

  The pool was about half the size of the Forks. Its turquoise-colored water looked as if it flowed in from the Mediterranean. The far bank of the pool was a high cliff, divided in half by a narrow waterfall and covered with small trees and bushes. Suddenly I felt I was in the Hanging Garden of Babylon. But the garden, I remembered, was ancient and man-made. Wanting to be closer to modern times and to natural beauty, I imagined I was on the Tahitian island Fletcher Christian and his mutineers sailed to.

  The tail of the pool narrowed, sped up and rushed down what s
eemed a long, long sliding pond that dropped into an unseen abyss.

  How high up was I? I wondered. On the top of the world? If so, it wasn’t because an upside-down reflection seemed to put me there, but because the Covered Bridge Pool, like the Forks, was one of the most beautiful places on earth—so beautiful that only a God could have created it? God didn’t create Penn Station. So man and God—if there was a God—created beautiful things and horrible things like wars and earthquakes.

  I hoped that an earthquake never ripped the Beaverkill apart so, like Humpty Dumpty, it couldn’t be put back together again; and that dead soldiers never lay on the banks, the way dead soldiers once lay on the banks of Antietam, Manassas, Chickamauga. What was it about rivers that made them sites of so many bloody battles? Was it because armies tried, often in vain, to use them as barriers? Would armies one day climb down the steep bank of this pool and attack and be picked off by snipers? The survivors, at least, would then be protected by the walls of the covered bridge. The Union soldiers who crossed the Antietam stone bridge weren’t so lucky, even if, as my father said, they fought on a battlefield of great ideas.

  Thankfully, no great ideas were on the Covered Bridge Pool. Armies therefore wouldn’t march up the narrow mountain road and kill and die just to capture a small piece of beauty. The pool’s only strategic importance was to anglers, not to generals. And if a general was also an angler, he wouldn’t want his soldiers to bleed and bloody the turquoise water.

  Maybe Gus was right: war and fishing stories weren’t meant to go together. If I wrote a fishing story about the pool, I would leave out all hint of war and put in long descriptions of beauty.

  But could I?

  Using the pen and paper of my mind, I tried to describe the pool. My mind, however, whitened into a blank sheet. Feeling like a failure, I wondered, if great descriptive writing, like Cooper’s, is more beautiful than nature, maybe writing and nature can’t be judged against each other because they are, in the end, different things, linked by an invisible bridge. Is this bridge stone or suspension? Or is it lacking shape or form? If so, how does it connect things? Certainly not by charging tolls. But regardless of how they’re connected, if writing is created by man, while nature is created by a power I can’t understand, which is more important? Nature? After all, it came first. But nature is plentiful. Great writing isn’t, maybe because it has to be revised four, five, or even ten times. Does nature have to be revised?

  “Let’s walk to the mouth,” Mr. La Branche said.

  The pool semi-circled to the right. Upstream of the pool was a long, narrow run. Standing in the end of the run was a small man wearing a plaid jacket and a gray cap. His hair and mustache were streaked with gray. He looked about ten years older than my father.

  “Theodore!” Mr. La Branche called.

  “George, who’s your friend?”

  “Ian. He has the curiosity to become a great angler.”

  I was proud.

  “Nice to meet you,” Mr. Gordon said.

  We shook hands. His grip was weak, like a girl’s. He looked suddenly ten years younger than my father, maybe because of his diminutive size or because of the way the sunlight brightened his smooth, baby-white face.

  “George, here are the flies I tied for you.” Mr. Gordon handed Mr. La Branche a small matchbox.

  “Thank you. The hatch should start soon.”

  “Yes. I already tied on my fly.” Mr. Gordon held up a tiny, dark-brown fly. “Here’s the one I tied for you.” Mr. Gordon spoke softly, as if his voice were a fly he was scared of splashing on the water. He opened his silver fly box, took out a fly and gave it to Mr. La Branche.

  Mr. La Branche studied the fly, then tied it on.

  “Theodore, I see two good seams: the vertical one at the mouth and the horizontal one up there.”

  “Fine. Ten minutes at each seam. Ian, we’re having a sort of contest. My fly is a little bigger and darker than those that are going to soon hatch. Let’s get ready. Ian why don’t you stand in the middle. Let us know when ten minutes have passed.”

  “Sure.”

  “George, how are things at the club?” Mr. Gordon asked.

  “We had a knockdown, drag-out debate last night over your last article. Some members just don’t want to see that there might be a new truth to fishing dry flies. Instead, they prefer to sit in judgment and look down at us.”

  “George, they’re just people, like me and, and—look, the hatch!”

  Mr. La Branche walked upstream.

  Mr. Gordon, I soon saw, was a good caster but not as good as Mr. La Branche. Several times his fly missed the seam or splashed on the water.

  Ten minutes later the anglers switched positions. As I watched the contest, I wondered if I witnessed history being made. If so, how important was the history in the scope of the history of the wide world? It certainly didn’t compare to Gettysburg, or perhaps even to the Hudson River celebration. But at least at the Covered Bridge Pool, I was the only witness. Besides, was there any way to tell how big small histories would one day become?

  Three more times Mr. La Branche and Mr. Gordon switched positions. When the contest was over, Mr. La Branche had hooked four trout but lost one. Mr. Gordon had hooked and landed two trout. Both anglers released their catch.

  “George, if you had a softer rod, that trout wouldn’t have broken off.”

  “If I had a softer rod I wouldn’t have been able to hit the target so many times.”

  “The fish that count are the ones an angler lands.”

  “Not to me.”

   Mr. Gordon smiled. “Stubborn as ever.”

  “Maybe, but remember: I believed in you when almost no one else did.”

  “Let’s fish for the love of it,” Mr. Gordon said. “Ian, take my favorite spot, the tail.”

  I walked downstream and studied the tail. It had many seams. I decided, therefore, to fan cast the tail with Doc’s backwards streamer. And so I cast about 20 feet straight across, let my fly swing directly downstream, then waited, gently moving the rod tip up and down. Finally, I retrieved my fly, cast five feet farther and let my fly swing downstream in a wider arc.

  I continued the fishing cycle until my cast almost reached the bank, then I waded five feet downstream and restarted another cycle.

  An hour or so later, I didn’t have a single take even though Mr. La Branche and Mr. Gordon each had several. Embarrassed, I was angry at myself for choosing the wrong strategy. Wanting to prove to the men I was a real angler, I decided to change strategies and cast directly to some of the seams. I retrieved my line. It felt heavy, as if my fly were caught on something. I pointed the rod up. The line seemed to pull back. A massive brown trout jumped. Quickly, I lowered the rod and reeled in slack line. Knowing I had to keep the brown out of the fast tail water, I baby-stepped backwards toward the bank, then jogged downstream, reeling in more and more line. The brown broke upstream for slower water. The first tactical advantage went to me. Pointing the rod up, feeling it throb, I slowed my whirling reel with my palm and kept steady pressure on the brown. He broke for the far bank. I lowered the rod, waited, and turned him. The throbbing weakened into a pulse. Reeling in line, I quickly waded to the middle of the pool. The brown swam in a small oval. I waded right up to him. He swam right into my hand, as if he knew I was going to let him go and wanted to say hello. He was as big as Clay’s monster trout. I held him up.

  Mr. La Branche and Mr. Gordon applauded. I held the trout underwater and let him go. Like Mr. Rainbow, he didn’t seem to want to leave, as if he liked being with me. Still, I splashed water and chased him away.

  A few minutes later Mr. La Branche yelled, “Ian, I have to head back.”

  I reeled in my line and walked upstream.

  “Ian, what did you catch the brown on?” Mr. Gordon asked.

  I showed him Doc’s streamer. “Mr. Gordon, could you tie the fly for me?”

  Mr. Gordon studied the fly. His brow wrinkled. He looked older again. “Bac
kwards? Interesting. I’ve never seen anything like it. Who tied it for you?”

  “A drunk who fought in the Civil War, then became an angler and a doctor.”

  “Give me your address, Ian, and I’ll tie and send some to you. In the meantime, here’s some dry flies for you to practice with.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Gordon.”

   

  Mr. La Branche and I rode back through the covered bridge.

  “Ian, what does your father do?”

  “He’s a lawyer.”

  “I’m in investment banking. Is that what you want to be, a lawyer?”

  I decided to tell Mr. La Branche I wanted to be a writer.

  He grinned.

  Was he laughing at my dream?

  “I envy Mr. Gordon for being a writer,” Mr. La Branche said.

  “So you don’t think I’m crazy for also wanting to be one?”

  “In the end, we all have to do what we believe in. Mr. Gordon could have been successful in business, but he chose not to. True, I don’t understand how he can live with just a dog on the Neversink River. It must be lonely as hell, especially during the winter. He used to fish with a woman. I think she broke his heart and that’s why he shuts people out. But who knows? Maybe his heart was broken for a reason, because he needs the time alone to write. One day he’ll be remembered for revolutionizing fly fishing in America.”

  Will wanting to be an angler and a writer, I wondered, lead me to living alone, like Mr. Gordon?

  We passed another farm.

  Could Mr. Gordon really be the ghost in John’s story? Is that why his skin is so pale and why his age seemed to keep changing?

  “What will I be remembered for,” Mr. La Branche muttered. “Making money?”

  “But aren’t you writing something?”

  “Just taking notes. I’m not a writer, even though Mr. Gordon wants me to write an article.”

  “Why don’t you?”

  “Ian, supposing at the end of my long, long day, it’s proven that on fast water, wet flies take more fish than dries? Or supposing it’s proven the size, form and color of the fly are more important than the presentation? What a fool I’ll look like. I wouldn’t want to publish anything unless I know I’m right; and sometimes, sometimes, I get so tired of all my experiments. Sometimes I wonder just what the hell I’m doing. When I fish I don’t even see the beauty of the rivers anymore. I don’t, don’t—.”

  A silence. For me, an uncomfortable one. I tried to think of the right words to say. Finally they came to me. “But you do see the beauty of your experiments.”

  He smiled. “I guess that’s one way to look at it.”

  Another silence. This one wasn’t uncomfortable. I looked at the Beaverkill River and wished I could turn into a bird and see the whole river in a few hours.

  “Ian, where can I drop you off?”

  I still hoped to see Ray. “At the Forks. I have a few hours before my train.”

  “Next season would you like to fish at my club?”

  “Sure, Mr. La Branche.”

  He reached into his pocket and took out a business card. “Next spring telephone me and we’ll arrange something.”

  We reached the Forks and said good-bye. His firm handshake, his warm eyes, his gentle nod told me his invitation was sincere. Grateful, I walked to the banks of the Forks. Ray wasn’t there. My gratitude gave way to disappointment. I tied on one of Mr. Gordon’s dry flies and fished the tail, often looking over my shoulder and hoping Ray appeared.

  Like Izzy, he didn’t.

  I looked at the fast rapids and wondered how many men, beside Ray’s father, were killed there. Maybe throwing men from their rafts the Beaverkill’s way of striking back at men for cutting down trees, for killing Indians.

  I walked to Ferdon’s Eddy. Ray wasn’t there. I waded below the mouth and practiced what Mr. La Branche had explained about casting. First, I aimed five feet above the water and slightly downward. The line landed first. The fly floated down like a leaf. 

  Proud, I pointed the rod to the side and cast, trying to make the leader curve.

  I couldn’t.

  What if I cast vertically and pretend to throw a curveball? I wondered.

  I did. The leader curved upstream! Again I cast, pretending to throw a screwball.

  The leader curved downstream!

  Thrilled that I had combined techniques of casting and pitching, I decided to forget about Ray and to enjoy the hour of fishing I had left. I tied on Doc’s fly and cast 45 degrees downstream. After every third cast I waded about five feet downstream. Though I tried to watch the line for takes, in my mind I kept seeing beautiful images of the Forks and the Covered Bridge Pool.

  Suddenly I realized I wasn’t lonely or, for that matter, wasn’t anything except lost in the beauty of the Beaverkill. Where I came from and where I was going, no longer mattered; so even though I didn’t catch another trout, I wasn’t disappointed about anything, until I looked at my watch and saw the time.

  I walked back to the Antrim Lodge, packed, went downstairs and heard loud laughter in the tavern. I opened my fly box and looked at Clay’s lucky fly. I walked down to the crowded tavern but didn’t see Clay.

  Ralph looked at me. “You’re too young to drink.”

  “Can you give this to Clay for me?” I held up Clay’s fly.

  “Sure. Sooner or later he always ends up here.”

  A half hour later I sat in the train, looked out the window and saw a green clearing that stretched across two mountains. The clearing looked like a beautiful lake. A few minutes later, the mountains disappeared. Maybe I had left the Catskills too soon. Now I had to wait eight long months, an eternity, to see them again.

  I saw two distant mountains, one behind the other. Their slopes seemed to crisscross like swords. I was proud of my simile, until a minute or so later when I realized it wasn’t right for me to compare the peaceful Catskill mountains to weapons, and to compare the Beaverkill to a long battlefield. To apologize, I told myself I would see the mountains and the river differently, the way they really were: soothing, comforting—yes, motherly—images of a wider, more mysterious, often unseen world.

  I closed my eyes and leaned my head back. I was proud I hadn’t given in to my fear and stayed home, and therefore had come to believe that, in spite of the death of my mother and the death of so many young soldiers, maybe the world, or at least some of its smaller worlds, were beautiful. But could I be a part of the Beaverkill world and, at the same time, a part of the New York City world?

  I hoped so, then I wouldn’t have to leave my father and sister. You see, already I knew the Beaverkill was going to be a part of my life, or should I say, I was going to be a part of its.

  I wondered how big a part.