Diary of a Witness (12 page)

“I bet you were hoping to see that big native brown,” Uncle Max said.

I called him Moby, but only in my own head. I wouldn’t tell Uncle Max that. It would sound silly. “Think he’s still in here?”

“My neighbor two cabins over said he caught a twenty-inch brown in this pool.”

My heart fell down. “Oh. He’s gone, then.”

“He threw it back.”

“Really? You’re not making it up?”

“I never lie to you, Ernie. I tell you the truth, not what I think you want to hear. He had so much respect for the fact that it lived to grow so big, without being caught, that he just couldn’t bring himself to keep it. I told him how you caught that fish—or one just like it—last summer, but then it threw the hook just as you were bringing its head up out of the water.”

“I would’ve kept him, though.”

“Well, that’s a decision we all have to make for ourselves.”

I put my rainbow trout in the creel and cast in again. I got nibbles right away, but when I went to set my hook, there was nothing there. I reeled in to check my bait, and sure enough, it’d been stolen. I put on another worm and tried again.

This time we both just sat for a while, and nothing even nibbled. But it was so nice, just sitting there under the waterfall right after sunrise. I was happy whether I ever caught another fish or not.

Uncle Max said, “How’s Will been doing since he got out of the hospital?”

“Hard to say. Because we don’t really talk. I mean, we
talk. But not about that.” We were almost whispering, because that’s what you do around trout. “The only time he ever mentioned it—” Then I decided I shouldn’t have started that sentence, and I didn’t want to finish it.

Uncle Max doesn’t push on stuff like that. He just said, “Up to you, Ernie.”

“Well, he didn’t sound real happy about the way it worked out. He didn’t seem like he appreciated being saved. He acted like he really wanted to die. But I don’t believe that, though. Because if he really wanted to die, he wouldn’t have tipped me to what he was going to do.”

“Sounded like a cry for help. I agree.”

“Then why isn’t he glad I helped him?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he is and he can’t admit it. Maybe he will be later. That’s not the important part anyway. The important part is, do you think you did the right thing?”

“Oh, absolutely. Yeah.”

“Then that has to be enough.”

After that we just fished quietly for another twenty minutes or so, but we didn’t get so much as a nibble. But we had four nice ones in the creel, so Uncle Max said, “I think they’ve just plain stopped biting. Let’s go back and have breakfast with what we’ve got. When Will’s eaten trout this fresh for breakfast, then maybe he’ll be happy to be alive.”

“That just might do it,” I said.

Thing is, we were only about half kidding.

*   *   *

About noon Will and I went fishing up by the waterfall at Brightwater Creek. I just really wanted to show him that. Him being from L.A. and all, I wasn’t sure he knew places that beautiful could even exist.

Uncle Max drove us down in his truck and gave us quarters for the pay phone at the campground, so we could call when we needed a ride back. And he packed us a good lunch. Big turkey sandwiches on whole wheat bread, with cranberry sauce.

We started out in the big pool down by the campground, but it did not go well. To put it mildly. We’d made the mistake of taking Sampson with us. Seemed like a good idea at the time. We walked right up to that pool, and Will sucked in his breath, and I could tell he was amazed to just see the trout gliding around under the water.

Unfortunately, Sampson saw them, too, and went diving right in. Galloped around in the pool, which is mostly less than two feet deep, biting into the water like he could catch one. Of course, by the time his front paws hit the water, the trout had all run to cover. So he didn’t catch one. And now neither would we.

Then he leaped out again, like he really surprised himself by how cold it was.

Sampson was a big, silly-looking yellow mutt. He looked like he had a lot of golden retriever or golden Lab, but then something wirehaired, too. So he had a kind of a stiff beard. Which was dripping wet. He shook himself and
sprayed freezing creek water over both of us. Good thing I wasn’t wearing my new jacket.

I leaned over a fallen log and looked into the pond. Not a trout in sight. Like they all moved and left no forwarding address.

“Well, that won’t help,” I said.

“Won’t they come out again?”

“Well, eventually.”

“How long a memory can a trout have?”

“They’re just very spooky creatures. You have no idea how easy it is to scare them off. I think we need to climb up to a higher pool. And this time we need to tie that dog up. Come on. I want to show you the waterfall anyway.”

We hiked up there, puffing a little. Well, I was puffing a lot. I had all the tackle in my backpack. Will just had his new rod, collapsed and sticking out of the waistband of his jeans. The sandwich was burning a hole in my pocket, so I ate half of it on the way up. When we got up there, his mouth fell wide open. At first I didn’t even look at the waterfall. I just looked at Will looking at the waterfall.

He said, “That’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”

I wanted to say, See? Now aren’t you glad you’re still around to see it? But I didn’t, of course. I wanted to, but I didn’t. I kept seeing moments to talk for real, but then they went by. I don’t know why I couldn’t just say what I wanted to say to him.

Will just kept going. “I thought places like this were only in pictures. Oh, that’s a stupid thing to say. I didn’t mean that exactly. I just mean I thought
I’d
only ever see a thing like that in a picture. I never thought I’d
be
in a place like this.”

While he was talking, I put a worm on his hook.

He looked down. “Oh. Thank you.” He sounded kind of surprised, like he just woke up or something. He was holding Sampson’s collar. Then he came around, like shaking himself awake, and tied Sampson to a tree with my chain stringer.

“Try to cast over to the waterfall. It’s deepest right underneath. That’s where all the good fish are. But be gentle when you cast. If you put too much of a snap on it, you’ll knock the worm right off there.”

“Okay.” He swung the rod back and forth a few times to get the feel of it. Then he cast in a nice, high arc, and the worm actually landed on one of the rocks under the falls. So he reeled it in a couple of turns, and it dropped right into deep water.

I bent down to bait my own hook, but before I even could, Will said, “I got a bite! I got a bite already!”

I watched as it came through the water, and my heart just sank. He was reeling in an enormous natural brown. A good twenty inches. Will had caught Moby.

“He’s big. He’s bending my rod almost in half.”

“Loosen the drag a little. It’s only a four-pound line. A
fish that big could break it. Don’t worry about the rod. It’s flexible. It won’t break.”

I watched him fight that fish in, thinking, There’s lots that could still go wrong. Moby could break the line, or wiggle off the hook. It happens. It happened to me. The question was, did I want it to happen to Will?

No. That’s what I decided. No. I wanted Will to catch Moby. I got to come up here all the time. I also got the best Christmas present, and the good family. I even got the lingcod. Will never even caught a legal ling, and when he finally did, he had to give it to me and pretend he didn’t. Even though something in my stomach still didn’t like it, I decided I was willing to let Will have Moby.

He pulled him up and out of the water. Holy cow, what a beauty. Speckled dark brown with a silvery belly. Biggest trout I ever saw with my own eyes. A trout is just the most beautiful fish in the world to me. Moby was the most beautiful trout.

“Careful,” I said. “He can still come off the hook. Turn him away from the water so he won’t fall back into the pool if he comes free. Here, I’ll get the towel.”

When I turned back with the towel, Moby had shaken the hook and fallen onto the ground. I threw Will the towel, and he dove down to grab him. But the fish gave one huge, thrashing flip of his body and landed in the water. Will was looking at his hands, like he couldn’t
believe the fish wasn’t in them. Then we both just stood there and watched him swim away. It was heartbreaking.

“I can’t believe I lost him. I had him. I just had him.”

“I lost that same fish last summer. Either that or his identical twin. I still haven’t gotten over it.”

“Gee, thanks. Here I was telling myself I’d feel better in a little while.”

I baited his hook again, and my own, and we both cast back into the deep water under the falls. We both got hits right away. We were both reeling in at the same time. Two rainbows, ten or eleven inches long. They came all the way in, too.

I took them both off the hooks carefully and put them in Uncle Max’s creel.

“Well, that’s something, anyway,” Will said. “At least I caught something. What’re the chances that same fish would bite again?”

“Not too good, I wouldn’t think. You hear about fish that’re so stupid they’ll get caught twice in one day. But I think they’re hardly ever trout.”

I caught another one about ten minutes later. A brown, but not a huge brown. Big enough, I guess.

Then I looked down and saw a good-sized brown hanging out in the shallow part of the pool, right near us. I pointed him out to Will. Quietly.

“Where?” he whispered.

“Right there.”

“I don’t see it. Oh, yes I do!”

They’re pretty well camouflaged. Until they move, you might not even see them.

Will reeled in and then cast his worm right in front of that fish, and he followed the bait. I could feel Will holding his breath while the fish poked at that worm.

“I can’t believe I’m watching this. I’ve never fished for fish I could see.”

“Be patient,” I whispered.

He was. Until the worm was gone. Then he set the hook and reeled him in. Will was so excited he just couldn’t contain himself. He had never in his whole life looked down through crystal clear water and watched himself catch a fish.

Then we caught at the same time again, but mine was only about eight inches, so I kept him in the water while I pulled the hook out of his mouth, and I let him swim away.

Will asked if there was a size limit.

I said, “No, but the bag limit is five. So I can only catch one more.”

“Hey, math genius, one more would make three.”

“But I caught two this morning. It’s five per angler per day.”

“Nobody’s going to know that! If we get stopped, they won’t see the two you caught this morning. We ate them, remember? No one will ever know.”

I shrugged my shoulders. “I’ll know.”

He just shook his head at me. “Then I’m going to catch
seven. That way we’ll be heading back with ten for the two of us. Or are you going to turn me in if I do that?”

I shrugged again. “No. It’s just one of those decisions we all have to make for ourselves, I guess.”

It didn’t matter anyway, because Will didn’t catch seven. I caught my three and he caught four, and then they just stopped biting. When you’re not used to trout fishing, you don’t get that. You’re reeling them in like crazy, and you think you can do that all day. But they either bite or they don’t, and sometimes they just stop and other times they just start. And nobody really knows when or why. Believe me, if anybody knew the solution to that mystery, they’d bottle it and sell it to fishermen all over the world.

We packed up to go, and Will opened the creel and looked in at our seven fish. Five rainbows and two browns. We didn’t know whose were whose anymore, and probably didn’t even care.

“Wish I hadn’t lost that big one,” he said. “That would’ve been so cool, to show your uncle Max that. But these are good, I guess. They’re so beautiful. Trout are such a beautiful fish.” He ran a finger down one of the fish’s slippery sides.

In my head I thought, Say it. Tell him we need to talk for real. Tell him you’re worried about him. That things are taking a bad turn. Tell him you brought him out here because something needs to change before we go back to school, otherwise just about anything could happen.

“Yeah, trout are beautiful,” I said. And kicked myself all the way down.

We fired up the barbecue and cooked the fish out on the back deck, on the grill, pressed into one of those fish baskets that keep the trout from falling apart when you turn them. It was nearly dark already. Will and I were sitting out on the deck, watching the moon rise over the mountains. This nearly full moon. And keeping an eye on the fish. The cabin is on a meadow, one of the High Sierra meadows, and this light mist of fog was lying down in the center of the meadow, but you could still see the stars come out above it. You could still see the early night sky.

I was wearing my new jacket.

Will said, “Trout is the best-tasting fish I ever ate, too. I know you probably thought I just said that for your uncle’s sake. But I really meant it. I never thought I’d eat fish for breakfast. But that was the best breakfast ever.”

We sat and looked at the first stars a minute longer. Now and then the breeze shifted, and we had to wave smoke out of our eyes.

Then Will said, “I’m sorry about that thing I said to you.”

“Which thing?” But he looked a little hurt, so I said, “I didn’t mean to make it sound like you say lots of bad things. I just don’t know what you said.”

“I’m sorry I said you should’ve let me die. That wasn’t
true. Well, maybe I thought it was at the time. But now I’m glad you didn’t.”

I didn’t answer, because I figured that was all that needed to be said about that. We just sat there and watched the stars come out, and waited for our dinner to be ready.

Just before I got up to turn the fish, Will said, “I just realized something. This is what people are talking about when they say they’re happy. How are we supposed to go back, though? I wish we didn’t have to go back.”

“I refuse to worry about that on the second day of our vacation.” After all, we still had time for things to change.