Robert Crews (11 page)

His own choice of female intimates at that time favored those with jobs but not professions. He was attracted by a young woman who worked at the counter of a bakery until he discovered that with her husband she owned the business, whereas the daughter of an owner might have been okay. He assumed that for a female to be attracted to him, she would have to be a subordinate in her current situation and unfulfilled. He still had some of his own money in those days, but he also still had enough pride not to reflect on such allure as it might be expected to give him. In this he was, uncharacteristically, justified: none of his women ever tried to put the bite on him until the divorce, and then not they but their lawyers were the sharks.

What he saw as his principal appeal was good humor. He embarrassed many a woman, but he tried to avoid quarreling with any. Crews reserved his combative feelings for his fellow man. With women he was agreeable even under adverse conditions. He would rather be abused by a woman than admired by a man, perhaps because men dismissively took him as he was, while women expected something more. At least at first, they believed there was a possibility he would prove capable.

Here in the wilderness he must finally have gone to sleep, for he woke up in daylight, but had no sense of having rested. He drank a lot of water and washed the mud off his face and the backs of his hands. Once again he needed to find food. He had not yet looked for the upstream continuation of the brook that the beavers had dammed to make the pond. He decided to do so now. It was possible he could catch some fish there.

From the tackle case he took some of the little compartmented clear-plastic boxes of artificial flies. He had never yet delved into the depths of the case. He did so now and belatedly discovered, below the plastic boxes, spools of different sorts of line; a scissorslike thing that proved to be tiny forceps; little bottles identified by label as containing dry-fly spray and fly dressing, whatever they might be; a small folder lined with fleece; a miniature reel of measuring tape; and other clips and tabs and gadgets and oddments the purposes of which he could not have known but which seemed infuriatingly useless to a man in his situation … but then a most precious treasure, an extraordinary tool that would answer every need. In his elation he went too far. He had been sick, weak, starving, lost, but with this instrument could prevail over any challenge of the wilderness. It was, in one small unit of stainless steel, a little saw, a knife, and a pair of pliers, to name only the features of obvious value to him. He might have no bottles to open or screws to drive, but simply recognizing the potential for such civilized services was morale-lifting.

He enjoyed a burst of emotion for a few moments and then returned to the level of practicality at which he must live or perish. The tool was six inches long. The saw blade itself, when extended, less than five; the knife, even shorter. It was a happy discovery and would enable him to do more effectively and neatly that which he had done with makeshifts, but the multipurpose gadget was not an ax or a full-sized saw, nor was it a gun.

He returned everything to the tackle case and hung its strap on one shoulder. On the other he slung the tube that contained the segmented rod. He set off on the expedition.

On circling a growth of rushes, he saw what previously he had not: a dome of sticks and mud rising from the water, looking almost man-made. This was surely the beavers' lodge, a nice piece of construction for a creature without opposable thumbs and no cutting tools but its front teeth. The roof looked impervious to natural enemies, and the entrance apparently was underwater. The animals probably remained there while he was in residence.

He found the stream that fed the pond. It was no more than four feet wide, and, obstructed, it was scarcely swift-running. Owing to the trees that overarched it from both banks, he could not have fished there with a long rod. It was difficult to walk along the right bank, which between the trees was thick with undergrowth, but he persisted, stopping now and again to pluck himself or his gear from the clutch of importunate branches. The other bank looked less overgrown but only slightly so, and he was reluctant to wade across, if only because he was completely dry for the first time in days.

Though the changes of direction were indiscernible as they were happening, the brook obviously bent or even twisted here and there, for the sun was frequently in another part of the sky than where it had been the last time he looked—and then of course the sun itself was in incessant though slow motion. Only now did it occur to him that the sun unassisted could not serve as a reliable directional guide. That it rose in the east and traveled to set in the west was true only in the most general sense. Without better orientation than that, in the absence of any fixed coordinate, you could have no real sense of where you were. He had the courage to make that recognition now, because however crookedly the stream flowed it continued to be the same brook, and so long as he followed its course, he could never be lost—that is, within his immediate area, whatever his situation relative to the greater world. And as long as he knew where he was in this limited way, he was not helpless.

Eventually the line of trees on his side receded from the bank of the stream. The ground was rising. He climbed for a while and reached a sheer rock face, at the foot of which the water ran with such force as to throw up a spray that misted his face as he paused to rest. If this current was not rapid enough for the legendary trout, then there was none such in the universe. He assembled the eight-foot rod. He opened the tackle case. When fishing the lake, he had chosen flies that to him looked realistic, namely the drabbest of the lot, and had not gotten a bite. Now he plucked up the gaudiest he could find in the plastic boxes. Remembering the trouble he had had at the lake in attaching the fly to the thick line, with the knife on his new tool he sliced off a length from a coil of transparent, synthetic twine or thread that for all he knew might well have been designed for the purpose, and knotted one end to the proper line and tied the eye of the fly's hook onto the other.

He went to the stream at a point at which, having undergone the worst of the turbulence, the water, though still flowing swiftly, was not frenetic. He knew no more of these matters than he ever had, but it simply seemed to him as a fellow creation of God that when swimming full tilt you would not be searching for food, but you might well be in the market for a snack once the going got easier.

He cast the fly as deftly as he could. He had learned something of what seemed the correct technique from his experience at the lake. The fly came down to the water with less force than the line, and the light length of clear plastic made little impact and was almost invisible. The bogus insect with the red midsection, orange mane, and long striped tail floated high in the fast-moving water, but not far. Within six feet of where it had reached the surface, it vanished into the snapping mouth of a sleek fish hitherto unseen in water that though in swirling movement was pellucid.

Crews was unprepared for the speed of this event. He payed out line much too slowly. He had tied the knots to the plastic line not tightly enough: the one attached to the fly instantly unraveled at the onslaught, and the trout, if such it was, disappeared with the imitation insect from which it would get as little nourishment as it would furnish Crews.

At least he had learned that the fanciest of the artificial flies had been good enough to dupe one fish. Now if he could only find its like. He sorted through the segmented boxes and in fact soon found several examples of what seemed to be the same though with slight variations from each to each that owed, presumably, to their being handmade. In addition to those for whom it was a hobby, there were people in the world who tied flies as a profession, as there were those who carved duck decoys and goose calls, and did other things that until only four days earlier he would have thought foolish if he considered them at all.

Since his utter failure in recovering the bodies, he avoided thinking of his late companions with particularity, especially of Dick Spurgeon, the best friend a human being could ever have, for whom in return he himself had been the unworthi-est. The tackle case and rod had belonged to somebody now lost at the bottom of the lake, perhaps Comstock, whose daughter wanted to study art, or Beckman, of whom Crews inexcusably knew next to nothing. Maybe there would be some point to his miserable existence if he survived for no better reason than assuring the families left behind that their men had died as heroes. Dick now had a different wife from the one with whom Crews had had the short-lived liaison that was so loveless for either. It was hardest of all to think of Spurgeon's two children. In three marriages of his own, Crews had come closest to being a father only with Michelle's abortion, and surely the world was better for that negative fact, though no doubt he was worse.

He was in no position to surrender to shame. He attached the new fly, with what he meant to be a nonslipping knot, and cast it upon the water. This time, and for a number of repetitions, he had no taker for his bait. Maybe there had been but one trout extant today, and it had painfully learned its lesson. After countless casts, the fly was getting bedraggled, its fuzzier parts soaked, and soon was more in than on the stream. At last he pulled it out and substituted another of the same general type but not quite so colorful.

It was taken immediately. He had no reason to make a sport of it, and quickly jerked the line to set the hook, then with brutal speed, using both hands on the line, yanked the fish from the water with such force that it flew over his head and landed on the boulders behind. The impact was such that the fish was killed. That had not been Crews's intention, but that it happened was convenient. He brought in the next catch more carefully, which meant he had to kill it or let it pantingly drown in air. The minnows had not bothered him much, simply because they were so small. There was a morality for you, one founded on inches and ounces. But you had to admit it was only human to stride nonchalantly over a colony of ants while deploring the vivisection of mammals. Spraying fur coats with red paint while they were being worn: though she had not yet done it herself, his third wife approved of the practice. They never quarreled about such things, though he had not shared her zeal and when not in her company heedlessly ate meat. Molly stuck to her principles. She turned down more than one job on discovering that the prospective clients wore mink, and then there were the woman who asked her to upholster a chair in unborn calf and the man who wanted the walls of his study covered with zebra skin.

Crews kept fishing until he had a half-dozen of the lovely speckled fish that were presumably trout, though of another breed than he could remember eating in restaurants. His immediate hunger could no longer be denied. He had tucked the magnifying mirror into the tackle case before starting out. He removed it now and, having collected tinder and heartier fuel among the desiccated driftwood flung up onto the rocks by bygone floods, quickly made a fire during the brief period the sun moved between two high, feather-pillowy clouds. He was getting good at the trick.

The variegated, iridescent beauty of the trout as they had come from the water was fading in death. With his new knife he slit one from gills to tail and cleaned out the innards. Then he strung it lengthwise on a long green stick. He slowly turned it over the flames. The stick quickly dried and caught fire from time to time, and despite his care in turning the spit, the fish was charred in one place and almost raw in others, for the flames were too high and he was impatient. But when eaten the trout was no less than glorious. He burned his fingers and tongue during the meal but checked his impulse to gulp without chewing.

He was able to limit himself to only two fish. These examples were six or seven inches long and, smoked, would have served only as appetizers back in civilization. But however ravenous, he could not afford again to abuse his system as he had by bolting down the minnows. Smoking would seem the best means to deal with the remaining fish. There was a generous choice of stones along the banks of the stream. He was able to find just what he needed for a frame around the fire, now reduced to embers much hotter than the preceding flames on which he had impatiently burned his meal.

He went downstream to a point at which the cliff declined to a grade which he could conveniently climb to reach green foliage. He brought back an armload of fresh pine boughs. These went onto the hot coals within the circle of rocks, across which he placed the four cleaned fish, spitted on green twigs. Soon they were bathed in dense smoke. He hoped that while preserving the trout he was also sending into the sky an unmistakable signal that a human being was in the forest below. But the brisk currents of air that flowed down the stone face of the cliff dissipated his hopes along with the smoke.

Leaving the trout in their fragrant fumes, Crews explored upstream, proceeding gingerly because only rocks were underfoot here, some with sharp edges against his unprotected soles. He came to a place at which the cliff had been divided as if with a giant wedge. Between the halves was a notch, stony but with enough vegetation to make a climb possible, and he undertook the ascent, which once underway proved much more demanding than it had looked from below. When he finally toiled onto the summit he found himself within the grove of tall pines that had been visible all the while but which he had failed to evaluate. To see beyond, he would have to climb one of them. He had not been in a tree as an adult. The task was not only physically taxing but so scary in the upper reaches of the ascent that subsequently coming down would be unthinkable. Therefore he did not think, and so managed to reach the topmost branch thick enough to bear his weight, and from which he saw a universe of unbroken green, except for the visible portion of the blue lake, from where he was to the horizon on a circuit of 360 degrees.

He successfully came down from the tree, a task not so forbidding as the anticipation of it had been, and then descended the cliff, of which the reverse was true, and finally returned downstream to the fire, which was no longer smoking. The trout had turned to brittle leather—but in fact when tasted were exquisitely tender inside the crackling carapace. Not only was it tastier than the fish he had cooked so badly at lunch, but with their smoke the boughs had supplied additional flavor, in which even the welcome illusion of salt was included.