When Is a Man (11 page)

And yet he spent his afternoons in pursuit of the trout. At first, he hadn't understood what the scope actually did, as simple as it sounded. One morning after breakfast, he went down to Basket Creek to maintain the traps and fence. As he scooped a handful of twigs and leaves off the wire mesh, he suddenly realized he could use the scope to check for holes and damage underwater. Returning from his quick march to the trailer, he plunged the fish scope into the middle of the channel. The sudden clarity surprised and delighted him, and for a split second he remembered (or imagined) snorkelling in a lake as a boy. What water did to light, and what light did to rock, looked almost artificial, like a digitally enhanced photo. Near the vivid orange and white of larger stones lay pebbles flecked with red and black glitter, or streaked with cheerful jades and pinks, the subtle varieties of colour and grain magnified. Flakes of bark slipped through the gaps in the wire, the current tumbled pebbles downstream. A tiny stonefly nymph clung to the underside of a rock near the toes of his waders.

Stooped over the scope's eyepiece, he worked his way along the length of the fence and then upstream, sinking into the type of reverie a silent film can induce. Things drifted past the narrow circumference of his view. He even heard the creek differently, as though his ears had become more invested in the polyphonic roar of the stream, more receptive to sounds occurring beneath the surface.

He reached the bridge that crossed Basket Creek and kept going. At the edge of a pool, he spotted a flash of movement. He crouched and angled the scope until he saw a broader portion of the creek. Cutthroat hovered close to the surface, their small, football-shaped bodies dwarfed by the bull trout staging below them. The bellies of the male bulls blazed, iridescent and molten. In the shallower water, a female trout with one of his new, bright blue tags scraped the gravel with industrious flicks of her tail. As she dug her redd, the finer sands rose and glittered. Diffused, refracted light in the floating sediment created a distorted world—each pebble, each blue-tinged halo on the trout's flank, preternaturally glorious.

No one had come by the camp since Jory, and he finally felt alone—felt it too keenly, choked up by certain sights: the silver flash and distant rumble of a jet passing overhead, a satellite breaking loose from the static cluster of stars to continue its monotonous loop. Clouds blew in toward the end of the week, and the night air grew colder. Huckleberries ripened by the paths down to the water, and the leaves of the ash and willow began to turn. Sometimes a mist rose in the early mornings and filled the river valley, the landscape showing the grey face of its isolation.

He began following the Immitoin upstream with the fish scope, a little smug that he was getting into the secret stretches of river reserved for people like Jory.
Dixon's Gold
said that nearly every tributary of the Immitoin had been prospected. He searched for old things—pans and tins, a knife, the sole of a boot. History gave context to the wildness, mapped and defined it somewhat. He was someone who needed scale, limits. The early stories of settlement were all tipped lanterns and lightning strikes, avalanches and mudslides.

In the hills are the charred or buried remains of villages that had believed, for brief, shining years, that they would become prosperous cities, hubs of culture and wealth. They imported pianos and established health spas on the mineral spring that some prospector had stumbled upon. They became expendable when the railroads changed the face of the frontier. Towns died before their names could be put on a proper map. They were reclaimed by the forest and forgotten.

One day he wandered up a small stream, its banks lush with false hellebore, arnica, and foamflower. The water tasted floral, alpine. He saw nothing of interest, other than a few rainbow trout and sculpins, and returned to the Immitoin. A shadowy cluster of large fish dashed into a trough that ran along the opposite bank. Water buffeted his knees and hips as he squatted in the gravel to peer through the scope. The riverbed, beautifully illuminated for most of its width, dropped away into indigo darkness as it met the trough.

As he manoeuvred to get a broader look, he stepped deeper into the current and, forgetting himself, crouched too low. Water poured into his waders, the loose substrate slid away beneath him, and the torrent yanked him underneath, slamming his face into the riverbed. A high-pitched note sang in his ears as he began to slide downstream. He planted his arms and thrust his eyes and nose above the surface—he needed to cough water out, but the river battered his lips, seeking entry. His body seized with the shock of frigid water, his hands numb, the swamped waders a heavy sack he would drown in.

He managed to wrench himself sideways and turn over so that he looked downstream, the current buffeting his shoulders as he coughed and sucked in air. Then the bottom dropped out again and he tumbled forward and beneath. The water was silver and disordered, flecks of light within bubbles that gathered and attacked. His feet hit the shallows, and he managed to take another quick gulp of air. The river hauled him over rocks and tumbled him this way and that, as if he were wood. He flailed his arms trying to stay upright, and he choked and sobbed between breaths.

He twisted toward the shore and clawed at the ground. His fingers were stiff and nearly useless, but his momentum slowed enough to let him wrap his arms around a boulder at the edge of the bank. It shifted, slid a few inches, then held. He kicked and squirmed until he pulled free of the waterlogged waders and hauled himself onto ground. Retching up water, weeping, he reached back for the waders and tugged them to shore. He wiped the water and mucus from between his nose and upper lip and saw that his numb and trembling fingers were scraped and cut. He wiped blood from small gashes on his cheeks and dabbed the raw mess of his forehead. His ribs and shoulders throbbed with every movement. He rose unsteadily, legs threatening to cramp and buckle, and staggered through the willow whips and cottonwood saplings. On his way back to camp, he found the scope precariously lodged in a cluster of driftwood and debris along the bank.

In the trailer, he piled blankets and sleeping bags on top of himself and passed out for the rest of the afternoon. He woke up in the dimming light, exhausted and battered, and troubled by a feeling that he'd been watched while he slept, exposed to a strange witness.

Last winter, he'd felt this same fear and loneliness. His body's quiet betrayal had been not unlike the babbling menace of the Immitoin. Here, animals passed by at night, snapping twigs and snuffling outside the trailer while he rolled onto his stomach trying to ignore his bladder. At home, it had been the walks down the dark hallway to the bathroom six or seven times after midnight. Dribbling into the bowl, frightened by jolts of pain. Then waiting for the doctor's word. No comfort, no refuge: not in other people, not in one's own body.

He was hot under the blankets, feverish. He held one arm tight across his sore ribs, hand in his armpit. With his other hand, he reflexively pawed and cupped his groin. No pleasure in it. His cock and balls lay warm, soft, and limp in his fingers, and after another light, testing squeeze, he brought his hand up under his other armpit and settled deeper in his blankets.

The next morning he woke to a light rain hitting the camper roof. The air smelled sweet when he opened the door. A raven called, a single note,
tock
, like a pebble being dropped into water. The sounds were muffled, as though the air had turned to loam. He stepped outside and saw that the hills had disappeared under clouds and the trees shone with rain. His waders, which he'd turned inside out to dry, were still saturated and cold. They'd been torture during last night's count. He pulled them on and shuddered. The huckleberry bushes and rhododendrons drooped across the path, their leaves soaking the shoulders and arms of his fleece pullover. The rain and overcast sky conspired with the creek to hide the fish beneath the grey mirror of the surface. His world had become increasingly and unpleasantly aquatic.

Last night the traps had taken four hours to empty. Stiff muscles and a chill made him inefficient and slow: whenever he thought he'd processed his last trout, five more would swim into the upstream trap. The spawning run hadn't quite hit its peak, and would only get worse over the next week or so. He needed to rest and then dig in for the long haul.

Nine days had passed since he had last gone to town, seven since he'd driven Jory to the Flumes. Food was running low, and a trip to Shellycoat loomed on the horizon. Dr. Tamba's e-mail still nagged at him, surfacing now and then with an uncomfortable sharpness: procrastination induced its own particular nausea. If he went to town, he would feel obliged to reply, which required a plan for the future, and he had none. He thought about life back on the coast. The fieldwork and writing he would have to continue in order to maintain his income, all the lost momentum he would have to regain. A desperate, strung-out sort of restlessness gripped him over breakfast. Bad weather would end the wandering that distracted him from his thoughts. He wasn't ready to be trapped inside the trailer yet.

The tree-planting camp appeared in a shallow valley clear-cut on both hillsides. Clouds in the treetops and mist along the ground framed the scene, dreamlike. Among the burnt stumps, the dry streambeds, thistles and fireweed, bloomed a colourful collection of tents, trucks, rusted
GMC
vans, and Volkswagens. Two long industrial trailers, the ones he'd seen drive by Basket Creek, formed the hub of the camp along with a pair of large, dirty canvas tents. Off to one side of the camp, near a small copse of ash and rhododendron, stood three porta-potties spaced a few metres apart. The camp looked like a post-apocalyptic shantytown. He stopped for a long time at the crest of a hill where the skid road descended to the camp, and might have turned around then if someone hadn't stepped out from inside one of the trailers and given him a wave. He tapped the gas lightly and rolled down to her.

“So you finally come visit, right on the last day,” Gina said. Flour clumped and clung to her hands and wrists and sauce stains covered her apron. Beneath, she wore shorts and a grey, long-sleeved shirt. She let the rain soak her hair, the early grey strands damp and shining.

He stared at her as he stepped outside. “Last day?”

“Every contract ends with lousy weather. I don't know why.” She brushed off her hands. “Lunch?”

He followed her into one of the trailers, knocking the mud from his hiking boots on the edge of the steps. A rich smell of broth, onions, and baking bread greeted him. Rows of cupboards and long countertops stocked with fruit, vegetables, and tins lined the counters on both sides of the trailer, except for a space near the back where a small table and two chairs rested against the wall. A pair of fridges and a large grill, a four-burner propane stove and oven, and a double sink completed the kitchen. A shotgun was mounted on a rack above the back door.

“A bear comes by every now and then,” she said, following his glance. “He scares easy, so far. Coffee?”