Catch & Release (6 page)

Insto-conflagration. The flames roar into life, and sparks fly up looking for a new home. Smokey Bear would not be happy.

Odd is unconcerned. He takes a couple of six-packs out of the trunk and hauls them down to the creek to sink them so they will get cold. I am deeply surprised. Beer in the trunk, and it only shows up now. There were no empties rattling around in the car. It didn't even smell like beer. In fact the car interior was spotless. It is weird, now I think about it. I know guys are car-proud sometimes, but it's not like Odd's dinosaur Cadillac represents the local masculine standard. It isn't fast. It isn't tough. It doesn't even have decent speakers. It's more like the idea of a car some little kid built out of Legos and living room furniture.

Now the beer's in the creek, and Odd brings out a plastic milk crate with a box of cereal, a cast iron skillet, and a can of Crisco in it.

“Gimme the fish.”

So I hand the one-eyed trout to Odd. He sticks it in the pan with a gob of Crisco. He takes some time fiddling with it until he gets it set on the least tippy rocks by the fire. The Crisco melts and runs like clear water. The eye of the trout turns milky white and shrivels. This is a terrible way to cook a fish.

 

The beers come out of the river cold. I'm thirsty and hungrier than I was before I had a couple of bites of trout to whet my appetite. I pour the first one in me like it was a drink of water.

We both walk down to the river's edge for round two.

Odd cups his hand and squats with his weight on his live leg. He shakes his two hands together. “Hopper,” he says. Then he tosses it out onto a still place in the river. A rainbow rises, silver and pink, and sips the bug off the top of the water.

I dive for a hopper of my own but miss. It's hard to know where anything is. How big is that rock? Rocks come in all sizes. Did I miss by an inch or six? The hopper flies right into Odd's chest. He reaches down and picks it off. “For the lady,” he says.

I can feel the hooked feet of the grasshopper tugging at the skin of my hand when I pick it up. Then I toss it. A widening, nervous ripple grows out from the place where it lands. And then another circle is born when a little trout bangs the surface and the hopper is gone. We keep catching grasshoppers and tossing them into the water. This is the best kind of fishing. At least I think that is the opinion of the fish. By the time we finish the next beer, the sun drops and the shadows rise up until a river of twilight fills up the whole canyon, and it's too dark for grasshopper catching. Odd pulls the rest of the beer out of the water like a stringer of fish. I see there's a grace in his movements. He doesn't bend or rise or turn with ease, but he moves. He is always moving.

“You're doing good, Odd, with the leg, I mean,” I say when we settle beside the fire.

“I'm getting there,” he says; he clacks his beer can against the metal below his knee. “This ain't gonna change, so I got two choices. I can blow my brains out, or I can get the fuck on with it. You musta tumbled to that, too, Polly.”

I don't tell him all I do is sleep, eat, and watch TV. It's kind of a middle option, it seems to me, frozen between dead and doing something.

I don't drink six beers, but I drink five. The fire dies down. The stars come out—and so many mosquitoes even DEET can't keep them from trying to get at my blood. I unzip my tent and crawl in quick before every vampire bug on the planet can follow.

 

I am wide awake.

I should be able to fall asleep. I've peed three times and I should be able to fall asleep now. But it is one thing to climb into a sleeping bag and it's another to go to sleep. I slept most of the afternoon in the car, so I'm not exactly tired. I think that the bigger issue is a break in routine. I don't sleep that much at night anymore.

I sleep late in the morning—no school, no job—why get out of bed? I do a lot of evasive nap-taking. If I'm asleep or pretending to be asleep, the mommybot tippytoes around, tucks me in, but doesn't expect me to look at her or say anything.

When everyone else is asleep, I take my laptop to bed. I look really, really awful by the screen light. I know because I've taken pictures of myself with the webcam on my laptop. And then I proved it wasn't just my opinion. I checked with the whole wide world.
Polly Furnas
just watched TV with her friends Kyle and Cartman. June 8 at 1:22
A.M
.
Polly Furnas
has zero friends. June 8 at 1:26
A.M.
Polly Furnas
is playing a little ChatSees. June 8 at 3:22
A.M
. “Welcome to ChatSees random video chat. Enable A/V. Press
STRAT
to begin.”

I still don't really know how long anyone will look at me, because I don't let them look at me for more than a moment. I cast myself out into the world. I drift along on the current. Somewhere out there is a raisin-brain who wants something that I almost am. I catch their eye and there is a moment, a moment of connection. Then the lie breaks and I see the recognition or, as happens more often, it's obvious it's just some pervert whacking off. Am I different than the perverts? Not really. I'm after the exact same thing.

 

On really bad nights I keep wishing that the next face I'll see when I click will be Bridger's. I wonder how long it will take him to recognize me. Part of me knows that he won't pause long enough to see who I am. He won't pause long enough to see who I was. I click and click through hundreds of strangers all around the planet. It is never Bridger.

 

Sometimes I'm more pissed at Bridger's mom than I am at him. I want to know why she doesn't just make him do the right thing. He should at least call once in a while until we could both pretend that we were losing interest. Seriously, since that letter in the hospital, nada. And his mom— “Call me Mom-B, Polly”— hasn't called either. I used to eat dinner there every Thursday. She taught me how to make Bridger's favorite mac and cheese, full of Asiago and white cheddar, baked in muffin cups so there is more edge of crispy toasted cheese. We used to go shopping together because we trusted each other to tell the honest truth about how we looked when we tried on clothes.

That's over. I can't trust her to tell me how I look because Mom-B doesn't even want to see me. There was a get-well card in the mail right after I got out of the hospital. A get-well card: when you care enough to do the very least. I opened the envelope. I saw a goofy little dog with plastic googly eyes and a bandaid on its nose. Inside it said, “Heal!” because—haha—that's what you say to dogs. “The Morgan Family,” that's how it was signed. No “Love,” no “Bridger,” no “Mom-B,” just, “The Morgan Family.”

One-big-happy-family, that was The Plan. But onebig-happy-family involved Polly-That-Was. She was going to be part of The Morgan Family, not me. That Polly saw things differently. That Polly didn't pick off one of dog's plastic googly eyes and flick it across the room, but I did.

 

Come morning, there is nothing to eat but dry cereal, Lucky Charms, that Odd eats by the handful. Last night's little bit of fish and lot of beer isn't what you would call a sustaining meal. We could probably pull more fish out of the river here. It looks plenty fishy. But then there would be the cooking, which I don't want to do and I sure don't want Odd to do. I think we should just head home. Odd agrees. Maybe he is hungry too.

But Odd has a plan for the way back, not that I know about it. He hangs a left past Mcleod on the Boulder road instead of heading straight to the interstate. There is more than one way home. We'll catch the interstate again at Livingston, that's Odd's plan. He's delaying my food and shower, but he's the driver.

Then he snaps on the radio. We are high enough or there is a transmitter station or something, because the reception is great. I only wish there was anything worth receiving. Turns out there is something I enjoy less than Odd's brother on the radio with his forecast of next season's Class-B football ones-to-watch. What's on now is definitely worse. Last time I heard this song, it was good as true. I could be up high on some ridge and half-drunk Bridger would shout my name into the wind and give me everything he had to give. That was how it was to live. But that asshat Bridger won't be shouting my name anymore. So I just grit my teeth and glare out the window at cows and antelope, because that's what's there. The cows swivel around on their stumpy meat-box legs and stare at us while we pass. I can practically read their minds: “Can I eat it? No. Will it hurt me? No. What should I do? Chew.”

Antelope are slightly more interesting. They bounce up and down the hillsides like wind-up bunnies. From a distance they are adorable. They can out-Bambi Bambi in the giant eyes and spindly legs departments. That doesn't make them cute. In fact, it makes them a little creepy once you see one up close.

How they look isn't the half of it, though.

Antelope are sex fiends, and speed drives them crazy with desire. It makes sense, since speed is pretty much all they have going for them in survival-of-the-fittest contest. But they are sort of indiscriminate in their fetish. One attempted to rape a field researcher on a dirt bike. Dirt bikes go really fast, so he was asking for it, from an antelope perspective.