The Bad, The Good and Two Fly Fishing Women, and a Life-Changing Day on a River Read online

CHAPTER 2

  I left for school; but as I sat in that small, dingy classroom, all I thought about was how my grandmother probably wasn’t strong enough to fish, and about how my grandfather had died fishing by himself. Suddenly terrified, I wanted to be with my grandmother more than I wanted anything.

  “Amanda!” My teacher called my name and pulled me out of my fears and back to the classroom. Folding her arms, she stared at me.

  “Amanda, didn’t you hear my question?”

  I shook my head no.

  Everyone laughed. I wanted to crawl under my desk.

  “You’re a fish brain!” yelled Mark Klinger.

  I jumped up, clenched my fist, and ran up to him. I froze for a moment, then opened my hand and slapped him hard on the back of his head.

  “Amanda!” my teacher yelled.

  “I’m not a fish brain!” I ran out of the school, and away from the wrong I had done. I kept on running until I reached home and opened the door. Shana jumped all over me.

  Grandma never lied! Why now?

  I looked into Shana’s eyes. “We’re going fishing.”

  She licked my face and followed me to my room. As quickly as I could, I put on my waders, my vest and my hat. I turned to get my rod. My grandmother’s rod was in its place. On the floor was my grandfather’s antique fly box.

  Maybe the cancer, the pain, is really why she took her gun. Maybe she’s going to—I’m not going to let her leave me.

  I stuffed the fly box into my vest pocket. “Let’s go, Shana.”

  I could barely breathe when I reached one of my grandmother’s favorite spots on the Junction River, the wide, slow-moving bend just below Bennett’s farm.

  My grandmother wasn’t there.

  Vernon was. He sat on his wooden milk box. He was a very big black man, older than my father. His tile-like teeth looked too big and white for his mouth. Often I wondered if they were just bad fakes. Vernon’s big straw hat had a hole in the brim. He worked, I knew, as a night watchman in the glass factory, and always fished worms on an old spinning rod. My grandmother, however, had told me not to hold it against him. He fished for food instead of for sport. Besides, he never broke the law and took only trout shorter than the eighteen-inch limit.

  A half-full bottle of whiskey was near his feet.

  I asked if he had seen my grandmother.

  “No.” He didn’t look at me.

  I read a lie. I walked toward him.

  “I told you, I ain’t seen her.” His tone jabbed. Vernon was like a boxer trying to keep me away.

  I ducked his punch and stepped closer. On the other side of his milk box was a creel, decorated with the small trout my grandfather had painted. It was my grandmother’s creel.

  I asked, “Did you try downstream, just behind the fallen tree?” He turned. I snatched his bottle of whiskey and ran. When I felt far enough away, I stopped and faced him.

  “What you take that for?” he shouted.

  “Because you lied to me, and if you come after me I’ll put Shana on you. How come you have my grandmother’s creel? Did you steal it from her?"

  “Looky here, I never stole anything, since I was a kid, I mean.”

  “Then how come you have it?”

  He didn’t answer.

  I pulled the cap off the bottle. “You’d better tell me the truth or I’m gonna start pouring this on the ground.”

  “It ain’t yours to pour.”

  “That creel isn’t yours, either. Tell me the truth.”

  “She gave me the creel as a present.”

  “No. She loved that creel!”

  “She often gives me things, like flies she ties herself.”

  “You don’t even know how to fish with flies.”

  “I still like havin’ and lookin’ at them. To me they’re little pieces of art.”

  “Just tell me which way she went, upstream or down?”

  “I promised her.”

  “She’s very sick with cancer. She shouldn’t be fishing by herself. Remember what happened to my grandfather?” I poured out a little of his whiskey; I tried to look mean and stared into his eyes.

  “She went down river.”

  I pushed the cap back on his bottle.

  “Let’s go, Shana.” I put the bottle down.

  “Wait!” Vernon yelled out. “You ain’t goin’ by yourself.”

  “I am, too!”

  “You’re a girl and girls shouldn’t be alone.”

  “I’m alone all the time. Shana will protect me.”

  “I’m goin’ with you.”

  “You’re not!”

  “I am, too!” He got up and reeled in his line.

  I knew I couldn’t stop him. Besides, was his coming with me such a bad idea, especially because he had always been so nice to me?

  It wasn’t.

  He put his whiskey into my grandmother’s creel.

  I suggested, “Why don’t we hide your milk box?”

  “When we come back it will still be there. You’ll see.”

  With the bright, hot sun shining on our backs, we hiked downstream on the narrow path by the riverbank.

  At first Vernon and I didn’t say anything. We reached Heartbreak Run. The run was long and narrow, and strewn with boulders that reminded me of tombstones. The run got its name because its water was fast and foamy, allowing trout to easily refill their gills with oxygen-rich water and, like a determined boxer, mount a strong fight.

  Someone fished the back of the run.

  It was Bill Lovett, an angler I didn’t like because he always lied about the size and number of fish he caught.

  He looked at me and waved. “Caught two big ones!”

  I whispered, “He thinks I’m stupid. He should know I see right through his lies.”

  “His lies aren't about you, Amanda. His lies are about himself, about him not really feelin’ too good on the inside.”

  “You mean with all his expensive fly rods, he still has shadows deep inside? I don’t believe it.”

  “What shadows?”

  “Never mind.”

  “Bill, save some for us!” Vernon yelled.

  We hiked on and seemingly into a life-size picture postcard: Paradise Lost, a long, shaded pool. Dividing the pool into two equal halves—at least they seemed to me—was a wide, two-foot-high waterfall. The top half of the pool was like a mirror, and therefore seemed like a life-size, upside-down photograph of the trees lining the bank.

  Nature, unlike photographs of people, never needs a frame.

  The bottom half of the pool was fast and riffled, so its reflections were broken. I was grateful they were, because, even though they gave big trout needed cover, they also distorted their vision and prevented them from seeing approaching anglers, like me. I guessed the broken reflections, to the trout at least, were a two-edged sword.

  "Looky how beautiful God’s work can be, like a giant camera,” Vernon said. “I’ve never fished above the falls. Maybe tomorrow I finally will.”

  “You’ll be wasting your time. The bottom is gravel and has no big rocks that trout can hide behind; and because the sun is blocked from the river by all the trees, the bottom has few, if any, plants. The pool is trout-starved.”

  “Sometimes I guess even God wants places where he can be left alone.”

  What the heck is he talking about? Is he really just stupid? “Vernon, your shoes are getting all wet and muddy.”

  “Don’t you worry about my shoes.”

  “All right, I won’t. They’re yours to ruin.”

  “You did a bad thing back there, pourin’ my whiskey.”

  “Says who? I had to know the truth, didn’t I?”

  “The truth was; no, the truth is, it wasn’t your whiskey.”

  “You shouldn’t be drinking so much whiskey.” He’s as bad as my pot-smoking mother.

  “You ain’t no judge.”

  “Neither are you.”

  “I hope you never know how it hurts when God takes yo
ur son, your only dream.”

  “I never knew you lost your son.”

  “That’s why my wife and I moved to this town, to forget. But we didn’t.”

  Yes, he has a right to run from his shadow. It doesn’t seem right that good people have to endure such horrible tragedies. Why can’t the world be like one great, big Shana: filled with endless love?

  I waited for Vernon to tell me how his son had died. He didn’t. I had the sense not to ask, but not the sense to know what to say to comfort him. Instead, I said to myself that pouring some of his whiskey on the ground had been a bad thing to do. Without talking, we hiked down the soggy bank, then around the wide, trout-filled Restoration Bend. The silence between me and Vernon seemed to turn into bulletproof glass.

  I wanted to break through it, but wasn’t sure how. Should I apologize? A part of me—a good part, I suppose—wants to, but I just can’t. Maybe I’m just tongue-tied, the way I was that day when I got stage fright and Billy made fun of me and I ran out of my school’s auditorium.

  The river, I saw, ran straight again.

  I broke the silence. “Vernon, why would Grandma leave her favorite rod in my room and then give you her creel? It doesn't make sense to me."

  “She must’ve had a reason.”

  “What?”

  “Well, maybe the cancer is just makin’ her think real hard ‘bout things. She’s always been a generous woman, so maybe givin’ away things she loves makes her feel better than any medicine can. Yeah, that must be it.”

  Should I believe him? How many times did I believe my mother? And didn’t she leave me? But Vernon goes to church. He doesn’t lie the way I sometimes do.

  I looked at his cheap spinning rod and wished I had a good one I could give him. “Vernon, when I get old enough I’ll buy you more whiskey.”

  He smiled. “And I’ll be happy to take it.”