Sleep with the Fishes (3 page)

“And Reverend Jim is come too. Why, do ya remember the first time ya brought that bird ’roun’ here? That was a sorry sight.” Phennel shook her head, rocked a moment, then stopped and put bent, oversized spectacles on her face.

“Yup.” Russ paused at the porch steps. “Found him with a mangled foot, brought him to you, and you fixed him up.” The crow was left with one good foot and one stump, and when he walked he limped like a peg-leg pirate.

“Ya mean the Reverend Jim Chattanooga fixed him up. I only doctored him. It was the five dollars I sent to Reverend Jim for a TV prayer that put the Lord’s healing in that bird. What ya got there, Mr. Smonig?” She knew, or should have known. He brought fillets every week. Maybe she didn’t want it to seem like charity.

“Shad and walleye. I had extra and thought maybe you could use some. Only seems right, what with you paying that five dollars for that prayer.” Russ ducked under the hanging sign and stepped up onto the porch. As he did so, the crow hopped onto Phennel’s shoulder and cawed in her bad ear.

“Why, that’s very thoughtful, Mr. Smonig. No roe yet, I suppose?” She looked up at him through her glasses, her wet sloe eyes searching his. Phennel was a sensitive, spiritual woman, and she could see pain in a person’s eyes.

“No, not yet. I’ll just put these in your icebox.” Russ made his way through the flimsy screen door, and Phennel nodded her thanks. He returned shortly, conscious both of the sport waiting at his trailer and of Phennel’s probing eyes. He tipped his hat, ready to mumble his good-bye. Miss Rowe interrupted.

“Ya missin’ Sandra pretty bad lately? If ya like, Russell, come by this evening for some Postum, and we’ll talk.”

The name Sandra stung. Russ nodded at the offer of instant mock coffee, smiled weakly, and moved off to his truck without a word.

When he climbed in, he discovered that the Reverend had jimmied the glove box and flown off with his Pabst bottle opener.

Sid arose
to the distant applause of the river and wandered into his knotty pine kitchen. In a dented saucepan he whipped up some instant coffee. Steaming mug in hand, he shuffled through the tackle-strewn living room and kicked open the door to the porch. Squirrels exploded out of the rafters and dove for a gnaw hole in the porch screen. They were gone. Sid casually examined the leafy nest they’d fled as he settled into a PVC lawn chair.

The weather had been unsettled, overcast skies spotted with teasing peeks of blue and the stray ray of sun. It was frosty out and early in the season for any frog or insect to make much racket in the morning. Only the river, which was running a little high, kicked up a fuss. All in all it was about as quiet as it got at Ballard Cabin, which was just about perfect musical accompaniment for Sid’s first morning alone in seven years. Piquant and piney country air filled his nose, an aroma he hoped would soon vanquish the lingering whiff of prison stench.

Everything had happened just as he’d mapped it out over the years. His lawyer, Endelpo, had hatched Sid’s various nest eggs, sent him real estate clippings, cinched the deal on the cabin, and gotten him an LTD to replace his long-gone Marquis. Acknowledging that keeping Sid in New Jersey during probation might be a death sentence, Warden Lachfurst had been instrumental in negotiating a parole that allowed Sid to relocate. Of course he had to keep in close contact with his probation officer, a man who by no coincidence was a “bronze back” enthusiast. His P.O. had accompanied him to his new digs, and after inspecting the river advised Sid that he didn’t really expect him to seek employment so much as find him the smallmouth bass. No need for Sid to visit him in Newark. He would be back often enough, rod in hand. As would, in time, Warden Lachfurst. And maybe one or two trout-mad members of the parole board.

So in effect, Sid had cut a deal with the prosecutors for a short sentence, with the Camuchis for eliminating anybody who would possibly come after him, and with the anglers on the parole board for the ability to relocate to a fishing outpost.

Ballard Cabin was a simple affair—bedroom, living room, kitchen, and screened porch facing toward the river, out over an embankment. The outside was shingled and painted brown, with forest green trim. The inside was knotty pine adorned with paint-by-number oils, numerous floor lamps, and two resident examples of taxidermy—a pickerel and a deer head that tendered the eerily ingratiating leer of the Great Bear Transmission logo. The cabin was nestled under a stand of white pine, and from the embankment at the back porch, overgrown grass and saplings cluttered the sweep down to a stony shoal and light rapids. Abutments from a washed-out bridge stood on each shore just downstream.

Sid sucked in the piney air and exhaled the prison stench. Now and again he took a sip of coffee as he admired the peaceful surroundings. But it wasn’t long before he heard a truck drive up the road and turn down his neighbor’s drive.

An Eldorado with a “Semper Fi” bumper sticker was waiting for Russ when he returned to his trailer. Russ marshaled his cheeriest demeanor and pulled up next to his visitor.

“How-do. I’m Russ Smonig. Ready to try for some shad?”

Russ hopped out of his truck toting the white breakfast bag. The iguana-like man leaning on the Eldorado stepped forward.

“I should say so! Been here twenty minutes. Was about ready to bug out. Don’t know why you had roll call so damned early if I was just going to come stand by this shed. And what’s this about
trying
for shad? By golly, Smonig, if you can get shad for that partner of mine, you’ll get shad for me.”

Russ just kept smiling. “Now that’s the spirit! Well, we’re wasting time. The boat’s all loaded, down by the river.”

The Iguana croaked, pushing up his sleeves. “Now hold it, Smonig. Seventy-five bucks for a half day, right?”

“That’s right.”

“From the time we hit the water, I assume?”

“O.K., yes, that’s right.” The cheery smile was withering.

“Well, let’s get this thing organized first, d’ya mind? I got rods here an’ I need to know which weapon to take. And ammo—I’ve got salmon flies. But if I run outta bullets I expect you to resupply me at no extra cost.”

“Excuse me.” Russ blinked. “You want to fly-fish for shad? It’s really a little early in the season for that. The water’s high. You’d need a full sink line and…”

“Smonig, you shoulda told me that over the phone….”

“Well, when your partner was here we used spinning tackle. I assumed you wanted to do the same.”

“Smonig, I never, ever, use spinning tackle.”

A squirrel small enough to fit in a coffee cup ventured forth from the nest in the porch rafters and spied on Sid for some time before drawing near.

Sid sipped his instant coffee, viewed the river, and kept an eye on the inquisitive young squirrel. At the same time he monitored the tone of garbled conversation from his next-door neighbor’s, which was out of view beyond a stand of tall weeds, a serviceberry hedge, some bulrushes, and a lopsided willow. Fly reels whizzed and clattered, doors creaked and slammed, two men conversed in earnest. At long last the activity subsided.

As Sid tried to figure where the activity had gone, he felt a tentative twitching on the shoulder of his bathrobe. Whiskers brushed his graying sideburn and a rapid wuffling filled his ear. The pup squirrel was searching his ear for pine nuts.

Years of wariness, both in prison and the Newark rackets, had trained Sid to react slowly but no less definitively to prodding, whether the stimulus be the barrel of a 9 mm, a shiv, or a baby squirrel. He turned his head slowly toward the wee rodent, who grasped at his lobe in a vain effort to keep the ear from drifting away. But he was diverted by Sid’s stare. The squirrel’s huge black pupils stared back. He sniffed for a moment, put both forepaws on Sid’s nose, and began to look up his nostrils.

“Cute lil’ mother.” Sid chuckled, just before two yellow incisors clamped on his nostril flange.

A zap of pain shot Sid to his feet. The pup squirrel vaulted for the rafters, where he chattered a warning from the confines of the leafy nest.

Sid held his nose, checked his fingers for blood, and looked up.

“You’n me have to have a little talk sometime.” He squinted at the squirrel’s nest. But the gurgling snare of a distant outboard motor snatched his attention.

Clawing through the pile of gear in the living room, Sid came up with trout-spotting binoculars and charged out the front door just as fast as his bedroom slippers would take him. With the agility of a kid scaling a fence, he hopped onto the portico’s wood rail, got a leg up onto the roof of the cabin, and scrambled on all fours to the limb of a white pine. Making his way along the limb to the trunk, Sid drew his red satin robe against the elements, tightened his sash, and trained the binoculars on a boat motoring down the rapids.

The well-placed mole on Sid’s cheek vanished in the grin that worked up one side of his face, a row of even wrinkles blending into his nicely pleated crow’s-feet.

A guy in a brown fedora stood at the stern working the boat backward through the rapids with practiced skill. Another guy stood in the bow waving his arms and pointing at the river.

The outboard was silenced. On the river’s far side, Captain Fedora draped a claw anchor over the side and fed it rope. Line taut, the boat swung around smartly in the heavy current, putting the bow downstream. In what appeared to be a demonstration for a pupil, Captain Fedora stood and began false casting in luxurious brown loops that finally unfurled his fly forward and across the current. After letting it drift down current, he reeled up and sat back down.

The pupil stood and prepared by slowly pulling line from his reel and looping it neatly in one hand. Captain Fedora cringed as his pupil’s fly zipped closer and closer to his head. But he didn’t interrupt Pupil, who finally let loose a noodly cross-stream cast. This was repeated for about twenty minutes. Nothing. Pupil started pointing fingers at Captain Fedora just as the latter weighed anchor and moved the boat fifteen feet farther downstream.

Pupil shrugged and looked as if he wished he could hail a cab. But after some fussing and finger-pointing, he got another cast out.

When his line snapped taut from the water, Pupil stumbled in surprise. Captain Fedora grabbed him by the jacket to steady him.

Silver arced like a shard of glass from the water in a high, shimmering leap of fish. Pupil fumbled, then reeled up his slack line. The fish was gone.

“Whoa.” Sid tugged thoughtfully at his ear. Except for a flounder outing off Sea Girt, New Jersey, Sid had never seen a fish caught, much less jump. His buddies referred to fluke as “doormats” for obvious reasons. Sid had dragged in his share of doormats that day, and some had fallen off the hook too. But here was a jumping, rocketlike fish—whatever it was—and it had gotten away.

“Huh,” Sid muttered, bolstering his morale. “That rocket-fish had been my fish? It’d be in the boat.” Sid’s own bravado made him a little uncomfortable. As he adjusted his footing, he noticed something twinkling in the deep crease where the branch and trunk met. Crouching, he brushed away some needles, uncovering a handful of coins, jigs, paper clips, keys, buttons, and a Pabst bottle opener. He stood, shrugged off his mild curiosity, and retrained his binoculars on the river.

An hour went by as the pupil hooked and lost one rocket-fish after the other. As soon as a fish was hooked, it blasted about thirty feet upstream and launched right out of the water, throwing the lure. Captain Fedora tried to make a few suggestions, but apparently Pupil didn’t care to be taught.

Eventually, a fish was soundly hooked, played, netted, and boated. Pupil sat down and pointed toward shore. Captain Fedora shrugged and hauled up the anchor. The boat wended neatly through the rapids and disappeared from Sid’s view. And high time. His shoulders and feet were worse for wear from the rough pine bark. Sid’s carpet slippers and satin bathrobe weren’t exactly lumberjack gear.

He was startled by the sigh of air brakes behind him. He turned to see the Red Eft Trout Farms truck lumbering down his driveway.

“Hey, neighbor. What ya doin’ up in that tree in your bathrobe?” A woman hollered from the cab as she brought the truck to a stop in front of Ballard Cabin. She jumped down from the cab. “Ya didn’t sleep up there, did ya? What are ya? An airline pilot? Ya like sleepin’ as close to the clouds as possible?”

Sid blinked and set his jaw. She was wearing crimson hiking boots.

“Yeah? And who the fuck are you?”

“Nice mouth, neighbor!” She jerked a thumb back at the tanker truck and snapped her bubble gum. “Red Eft Trout Farms. I’m Jenny. Here to stock your pond.”

“I don’t got no pond.” With the confidence of an alley cat, Sid made his way from the limb to the roof and made for the portico.

“Sure ya do. What, didn’t them real estate folks show ya the pond? Nobody told ya ’bout the pond?” Jenny walked up to the portico where Sid was brushing pine needles from his robe. He found them sticking to his fingers. Sap.

“O.K., so if there’s a pond, where is it?” He gestured broadly to his front yard, then rubbed his hands together to shoo away the pine needles. He only succeeded in rearranging them.

Five minutes later, Sid was still in his bathrobe but sporting hip boots. Rubbing a paper towel over the sap on his fingers, he followed Jenny into the tall weeds and serviceberry thicket. A few paces in, Jenny stopped.

“See? Now, do ya want trout in it or not?”

Weeds and hedge, left unchecked, had conspired to obscure the long, narrow pond from view. A rapidly flowing, skinny creek merrily winding its way to the Delaware met an elfin earthen dam at the edge of the embankment. Outflow coursed through a pipe embedded in the dam, which doubled as a bridge. Sid estimated Ballard Pond to be four times the size of a bocci ball court.

The prospect of owning a pond thrilled Sid almost as much as the prospect of Jenny’s red hikers, but you wouldn’t have known it to look at him.

“You call that a pond?” He finally balled up the tattered paper towel and stuffed it in his robe pocket, his hands flecked with paper towel.