A Kind of Flying: Selected Stories (46 page)

I cursed the pathetic confectioneer who had invented wine coolers and turned to see Glenna reach down and pull her tank top over her head, liberating Romulus and Remus, the mammoth breasts. Shuddered by the shirt, they rippled for a moment and then settled in the fresh air.

“No topless fishing,” I said to her. “Don’t do that.” I handed her the shirt.

She threw it in the river. “I’m not going to fish,” she said back to me. Toby had put his pole down again. This river trip had become more dangerous than he’d ever dreamed. I put one hand on his shoulder to restrain him from leaping into the sweet Green River. When I felt him relax, I turned back to Glenna and her titanic nudity. It was still a day. The sun touched off the river in a bright, happy way. We fell out of the long straight stretch into a soft, meandering red canyon. It was still a day.

“Look, Glenna,” I said. She had opened another wine cooler. “Look. We’re going to fish. This is a raft trip and we’re going to fish. It would help everything if you would take your drink and turn around and face forward. Either way, you’re going to get a wicked sunburn.” I moved the three plastic-covered sleeping bags in such a way as to make her a backrest. She looked at me defiantly, and then she turned her back and settled in.

It was still a day. I took the bubble off Toby’s line and showed him how to troll the triple teaser. “There are fish here,” I told him. “Let’s go to work.” I tied an oversize Royal Coachman on my line and began casting my side of the river, humming—for some reason—the Vaughn Monroe version of the ominous ballad “Ghost Riders in the Sky.” I knew the words, even the yippie-ai-ais.

WE PASSED
Little Hole at three o’clock and I knew things would get better. Ninety-nine percent of the rafters climb out at Little Hole and we could see two dozen big GMC pickups and campers waiting in the parking lot. We’d already passed a flotilla of Scout rafts all tethered together in a large eddy taking fly-casting lessons. It was a relief to see that they didn’t have enough gear to spend the night on the river.

It had been an odd scene, all those little men in their decorated uniforms, nodding seriously into the face of their leader, a guy about my age who was standing on a rock with his flyrod, explaining the backcast. It was his face as it widened in surprise that signaled the troop to turn and observe what would be for many of them the largest breasts they would ever witness in person no matter how long they lived. Glenna had smiled easily at all of them and waved sweetly at their leader. I said nothing, but put my pole down and paddled hard downstream, just in case Glenna had really got to the guy and brought out the incipient vigilante all Scout leaders have. I didn’t want to be entangled in some midstream citizen’s arrest.

Anyway, it was a relief to pass Little Hole and know that we would see no more human beings until tomorrow noon when we’d land at Brown’s Park and the end of the trail, so to speak.

By this time, Glenna was relaxed. She’d slowed her drinking (and her speech and about everything else) and seemed to be in a kind of happy low-grade coma, bare-breasted in the prow of our ship like some laid-back figurehead. Toby had been doing well with the triple teaser, taking three small trout, which we’d released. He handled the fish skillfully and made sure they returned to the river in good shape. I had had nothing on the Coachman, but it was not the fly’s fault. I had been casting in time with “Ghost Riders in the Sky”:

Then cowboy change your ways today, (cast)

Or with us you will ride, (cast)

and a fish would have been lucky to even catch a glimpse of its fur.

A-trying to catch the Devil’s herd (cast)

Across these endless skies. (cast)

So there had been a little pressure, but now the long green shadows dragged themselves languorously across the clear water. It was late afternoon. We were past Little Hole. It was still a day. We dropped around two bends and were suddenly in the real wilderness, I could feel it, and I felt that little charge that the real places give me.

I had been here before, of course, many times with Lily. In the old days I thickened my favorite books in the bottom of rafts. Lily and I would leave the city Friday night, spend two days fishing scrupulously down the Green River, and drive back five hours from Brown’s Park in the dark, arriving back in town in time for class with a giveaway suntan and the taste of adrenaline in my mouth. My books,
The Romantic Poets, The Victorian Poets, Eons of Literature
, were all swollen and twisted, their pages still wet as I sat in class, some of them singed where I had tried to dry them by the fire. Those trips with Lily were excruciatingly one-of-a-kind ventures—the world, planet and desire, fused and we had our way with it. I remember it all. I remember great poetry roasting cheerily by the fire in some lone canyon while Lily and I lay under the stars. Those beautiful books, I still have them.

MY LINE
tripped once hard and then I felt another sharp tug as my Royal Coachman snapped away in the mouth of what could only be a keeper. I set the hook and measured the tension. The trout ran. I gave him line evenly as the pressure rose, and he broke the surface, sixty yards behind us in the dark swelling river.

“Whoa!” Toby said.

“Watch your line, son,” I told him. “It’s the perfect time of night.”

But even as I worked the trout stubbornly forward in the river, I was thinking about Lily. I’d never grown up and now fishing wasn’t even the same.

THAT FISH
was a keeper, a twenty-inch brown, and so were the two Toby took around the next bend as we passed under a monstrous spruce that leaned over the water. Four hills later we drifted into the narrows of Red Canyon. It was the deep middle of the everlasting summer twilight, and I cranked us over to the bank, booting the old wooden oars hard on the shallow rocky bottom. We came ashore halfway down the gorge so we could make camp. The rocky cliffs had gone coral in the purple sky and the river glowed green behind us as we unloaded the raft.

Glenna finally grabbed another T-shirt and struggled into it, something about being on land, I suppose, and said, “Oh, I gotta pee!” stepping stiffly up the sage-grown shore.

By the time she returned, the darkness had thickened, and Toby and I had a small driftwood fire going and were clearing an area for the tents. Glenna hugged herself against the fresh air coming along the river. She was a little pie-faced, but opened another wine cooler anyway. I fetched a flannel shirt from my kit and gave it to Toby, and then I settled down to the business of frying those fish. Since we were having cocktails, Glenna already reclining before the fire, I decided to take the extra time and make trout chowder.

Here’s how: I retrieved my satchel of goodies, including a half pint of Old Kilroy, which is a good thing to sip if you’re going to be cooking trout over an open fire while the night cools right down. In there too was a small tin of lard. You use about a tablespoon of lard for each trout, melting it in the frying pan and placing the trout in when the pan is warm, not hot. If the pan is too hot the fish will curl up and make it tricky cooking. If you don’t have lard or butter, it’s okay. Usually you don’t. Without it you have to cook the trout slower, preventing it from sticking and burning in the pan by sprinkling in water and continuously prodding the fish around. Cut off the heads so the fish will fit into the pan. Then slice both onions you brought and let them start to cook around the fish. At the same time, fill your largest pot with water and put it on to boil. In Utah now you have to boil almost all your water. There is a good chance that someone has murdered his neighbor on instructions from god and thrown him in the creek just upstream from where you’re making soup. Regardless, with a river that goes up and down eight inches twice a day, you have a lot of general cooties streaming right along. This is a good time to reach into the pack and peel open a couple cans of sardines in mustard sauce as appetizers, passing them around in the tin along with your Forest Master pocketknife, so the diners can spear a few and pass it on.

Okay, by the time your water boils, you will have fried the trout. When they’ve cooled, it will be easy to bone them, starting at the tail and lifting the skeleton from each. This will leave you with a platter of trout pieces. Add a package of leek soup mix (or vegetable soup mix) to the boiling water and then a package of tomato soup mix (or mushroom soup mix) and then the fried onion and some garlic powder. Then slip the trout morsels into the hot soup and cook the whole thing for another twenty minutes while you drink whiskey and mind the fire. You want it to thicken up. Got any condensed milk? Add some powdered milk at least. Stir it occasionally. Pepper is good to add about now too. When it reaches the consistency of gumbo, break out the bowls. Serve it with hunks of bread and maybe a slab of sharp cheddar cheese thrown across the top. It’s a good dinner, easier to eat in the dark than a fried trout, and it stays hot longer and contains the foods that real raftsmen need. Bitter women who have been half naked all day drinking alcoholic beverages will eat trout chowder with gusto, not talking, just sopping it up, cheese, bread, and all. Be prepared to serve seconds.

AFTER HER
second bowl, her mouth still full of bread, Glenna said, “So, quite a day, eh, Jack?”

“Five good fish,” I said, nodding at Toby. “Quite a day.”

“No, I mean . . .”

“I know what you mean.” I moved the pot of chowder off the hot ring of rocks around the fire and set it back on the sand, securing the lid. “We rescued a day from the jaws of the nudists.”

The cooking had calmed me down, and I didn’t want to get started with Glenna, especially since she was full of fructose and wine. Cooking, they say, uses a different part of your brain and I know which part, the good part, the part that’s not wired all screwy with your twelve sorry versions of your personal history and the four jillion second guesses, backward glances, forehead-slapping embarrassments. The cooking part is clean as a cutting board and fitted accurately with close measurements and easy-to-follow instructions, which, you always know, are going to result in something edible and nourishing, over which you could make real conversation with someone, maybe someone you’ve known since college.

I ran the crust of my bread around the rim of my bowl and ate the last bite of chowder. It was good to be out of the raft, sitting on the ground by the fire, but I could feel there was going to be something before everybody hit the hay.

“Did you have fun, honey?” Glenna said to Toby. “Are you glad you came?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you like old Jack here?”

“Aw, he’s okay,” I said and smiled at Toby.

“I’ve known Jack a long time.”

“I know,” Toby said.

“When did we meet, Jack?”

I broke some of the driftwood smaller in my hands and fed the fire back up. Toby had already filled the other kettle with water and I balanced it over the flames on three rocks.

“You want some coffee?” I said. I did not want to get started on the old world. We had met in the lobby of Wasatch Dorm my junior year. Glenna had come up to take my picture for the
Chronicle.
It was the Christmas of the White Album and Warren had decided I should run for class president. That afternoon she introduced me to her roommate, Lily Westerman.

“I don’t think so,” she said, showing me her bottle of Cabernet Lemon-Lime.

“Get your cup, Toby,” I said. When I heard the boiling water cracking against the side of the kettle, I poured him a cup of hot chocolate. I fixed myself a cup of instant coffee and poured in a good lick of whiskey. Toby was standing to one side, a bright silhouette in the firelight.

“I think I’ll go to bed,” he said. “You guys are going to talk ancient history for a while. Dad was a big man on campus. This was during the war and he ran the paper, and Mom was the head photographer. You were all students, sort of, and Jack was going with Lily, who was Mom’s roommate, and their house was like a club in the days when things mattered.” He sipped his chocolate and toasted us. He knew how smart he was. “This was years ago.”

“He’s older than I am.”

“Oh Jack,” Glenna said, suddenly looking at me with eyes as cool and sober as the night. “Everybody’s older than you are. That’s always been your thing. It’s kind of cute—about half.” She must have seen me listening too hard, because she immediately waved her hand in front of her face and said, “Jack, ignore me. I’m drunk. That’s what I do now: the drunk housewife.”

“I don’t believe her,” I told Toby.

“I don’t either,” he said.

“Are you mad at your mother for embarrassing you today?” Glenna said. She was slumped against a rock opposite me. Her voice was now husky from too much sun, too much wine, too much lemon-lime.

“Mom,” Toby said. “I’m tired. It was a pretty wild day. Good night.” And he stepped down through the sage to his tent.

Halfway in the dark, he turned. “But Mom, you know what you said to that guy today, the naked guy?”

“Yeah?”

“It wasn’t right. We weren’t fishing with worms. The Green River is artificial flies and lures only.”

“Okay, honey.”

“But it was pretty funny, given the situation.” He nodded once at us. “Good night.” Toby disappeared in the dark.

“He’s a good kid,” I said.

She nodded the way people nod when their eyes are full and to speak would be to cry.

“It’s okay,” I said. “It was a good day.” I looked at her slumped on her suitcase, her hideous and beautiful suitcase, which seemed now simply something else trying to break my heart.

“Oh, Jack, I’m sorry. I’m so surprised by what I do, what anybody does. I guess I’m surprised any of it gets to me. If we’d just met, this would be a fun trip. If we were strangers. We’re two people who know too much.”

It was the worst kind of talk I’d ever heard around a campfire, and I wanted it to go away. “You’re all right,” I said. “You’ve got Toby.” That, evidently, of course, was exactly the wrong thing to say and I sensed this from what I could hear in Glenna’s breath. She was going to cry. The whole night seemed wrong.