After the crack up, he was hospitalized for six months. Twice the doctors warned Jane that they might lose him. Then, when they saved him, they warned that there was probably brain damage. When he was released, in November, they told him he’d be paralyzed on his right side for life. Four doctors con-firmed the verdict. There was nothing for it.
Perhaps there was a slight chance, but not likely, that regular exercise, steady exercise over a period of several years, might restore some small portion of his mobility. Not much. Possibly none. Frankly, Brannigan was not inclined to try. Why go through all the effort? So he sat silent and sullen in the wheelchair that grey afternoon and allowed the men in white to push him to the car, lift and place him into the front seat, collapse the chair and put it in the back, then tell Jane how he was to get in and out, how she was to rig the contraption and place it for him. Like a baby.
He said not a word on the long trip through the sere, dead countryside. Jane told him about the boys, and which friends had called; Mike Novak might come over that evening. He didn’t even nod. His great black-haired head thrown back and tilted to one side, he watched with dead eyes the fleeting fields of withered cornstalks, leafless trees, dark scudding clouds. There was nothing for it. He was forty-six and it was over. He couldn’t sell books or anything else anymore; he didn’t know whether he could drink beer with his friends, chop wood, tend his garden, drive, smoke, sing, read, write; and certainly the fishing season was over for him. Permanently.
The crash in all its stark detail, the fluky chance of it, kept flashing through his brain: Johnny Wohl driving, across the seat from him saying, seconds before, “Well, Billy, we made a day of it, didn’t we? I never saw the river so alive.” And Mike in the back. Laughing wildly and about to say something about having caught three Hendricksons. Then the rasp of brakes, the black car coming just that moment smoothly out of the side road, the jolt of fear, his hands flying up, his back thrusting backward against the seat, the hurtling forward—and darkness, and stabbing, raw pain in his shoulders, his head. Then nothing. Johnny Wohl and the two teenagers in the black car had been killed instantly. Mike came out of it with his right pinky broken. Well, good for him. Good for old Mike.
As for himself, it would have been better to have had it over then, right then when it happened. Quick. No more pain to die than to live, then. He need merely not have come out of the coma. After that first, searing pain, poof. For good. And they all said he’s only lived because he wanted to live. So he lived—like a half-squashed worm.
He saw suddenly in his mind the 20-gauge shotgun in the cabinet in his den. Would Jane have removed it? This was no time to ask. That night, when the boys were doing their homework, he’d wheel in by himself and just take a look-see. He’d take it out, break it open … take a look-see.
At dinner, Jane talked constantly—about the Murphy’s new Brittany spaniel; the good batch of slab wood Frank had hauled from the lumber yard, piece by piece, and cut himself; the threat of an early snow. Brannigan looked up now and then from his plate, spread his lips slightly in the best he could do for a smile, and nodded. He said nothing. He was still not sure what the cracked, alien sound of his voice— what remained of speech—would be to these people, whether he could put together all the words needed for one whole sentence. Whenever he raised his head and looked toward one of his sons, Frank to his right, fifteen, Junior on his left, a year older and dark-haired too, rebellious, they were looking at their own plates. They knew everything. When he looked back at his own plate and prepared his next strategy to get a piece of meat to his mouth, he thought he saw, peripherally, their heads raise slightly and turn toward him. He didn’t think he could bear it. Not that. He’d come through Normandy without a scratch; he’d never been seriously ill in his life.
Working diligently with the fork in his left hand, like they’d taught him in the hospital, he speared a piece of the steak Jane had cut for him, shifted the fork carefully in his hand, and brought it to his mouth. He chewed the meat slowly for a few moments, then lowered the fork to get another. But the prongs pressed against the gristle, slipped, and flicked the chunk of meat onto the floor. Brannigan looked after it, heard Jane say, “I’ll pick it up later, dear,” then slammed the fork down on his plate. Frank and Junior raised their hunched shoulders and looked up sharply. Jane took a deep breath.
“Nuff,” muttered Brannigan. “Nuff.” He pushed the wheelchair away, turning it, and, his hand on the wheel-rail, glided into the living and toward his den— hearing Frank say something low that ended with “like that,” and Junior’s heavier voice, and then Jane telling them in a normal voice to finish quickly and go up-stairs: they’d talk of it later.
He negotiated the living room and came to the door of his den. His room. The door was closed but he came against it sideways, took his left hand from the wheel-rail and reached out for the knob. As he did so, the chair slipped back a few inches and he was only able to touch a bit of the knob. He gritted his teeth, pounded his left hand down on the armrest, wheeled himself close again, and tried another time. Again the chair slipped back a bit and he couldn’t, hard as he strained, even touch the knob. Damned. Damned. He sat in the chair, breathing heavily for a few moment, then tried again, got it, flung the door open, gave the wheel-rail a sharp thrust forward, and was in his room. His room.
God, how many good hours he’d spent there. The soft old armchair. His own mount of the four-pound brook trout he’s caught in Canada that summer with Mike and Johnny. The humidor with those long black dago-ropes he loved so much. Fireplace. Little fly-tying table—just like he’d left it. Silver rod cases in the cabinet he’d built himself. The old black-bear rug he’d bought, over Jane’s hilarious objections. His room.
It was a room to which he slunk after a knock-down argument with Jane, a lousy road trip; he went there to plan his selling strategies, realign the world, read quietly in the evening or tie flies. He’d had most of his serious talks with his boys in this room; and he’d laughed and drunk beer and told stories half the night with Johnny and Mike here. Useless now. There was not one thing in the room, as he looked around, that he wanted.
The shotgun.
His eyes shifted sharply to the oak cabinet with the V-back that fitted into the corner so snugly. It was there. He went to his fly-tying table, opened the middle drawer, and felt with his hand among the capes and bobbins until his fingers found and closed tightly around the long brass key. Then, holding the key in the palm of his left hand, he used his fingers to push the chair over to the cabinet.
He had only that one gun, a beautiful 20-gauge with polished walnut stock, grey shoulder cushion, twin slate-grey barrels. He liked the feel of it in his hands, the power with which it jerked back when he shot. He’d gotten his first grouse with it last winter. Sam, Johnny’s Brittany, had frozen on point, Johnny had called for the flush, and the grouse, a single, had exploded with a whirr from the underbrush. “Yours!” shouted Mike, and he’d swung, led, and watched the bird pause, sputter, and fall. He remembered the deep satisfiaction he’d felt from that connection, that force which shot out from him and dropped that bird.
The shotgun.
Another moment and he’d have it in his hands, feel its sleek powerful lines, its smooth stock. The gun held power, energy, force; merely to have it in your hands was to feel some electrical current, some charge of strength shot into your veins, your body. “Look-see,” he said, flinching at the cracked, strange sound of his voice, inserting the key into the lock and turning, then opening the cabinet door slowly.
It was not there. The cabinet was empty.
His eyes blazed and he slammed the door shut. It was not there. She had taken it. Grasping the wheel-rail he thrust downward and began to roll across the carpet toward the closed door to the living room.
She had taken it. “Gun,” he said, his voice a rasping growl. “Gun. Gun.” Then, opening the door, he let his head fall, and he muttered, “Did she … really … think …”
“So the point is that I asked Jane for your goddamn shotgun because mine is at the gunsmith and I ain’t got one to use next week,” Mike said ten minutes later when they were alone in the den. “She didn’t want to let me have it. Nope. ‘Mike,’ she says, ‘Billy loves that rife.’ That’s what she called it, a rife, ‘and I don’t think I can let you have it.’”
Brannigan frowned. He looked intently at the bronze, hearty face of his friend, that bullish chest above toothpick legs, the straight black, always greasy and carefully combed hair, the mechanic’s hands, stained black.
“I says: ‘Look, Janie, he may not be out until after Christmas and I know he’d want me to put a few notches on it for him. One thing about Billy, he don’t like a good rod or shotgun lying around. Offends his Scotch-Irish blood.’”
“Lie.”
“I was going to take it out to the range, test it on some clays, but if you’d like it back, got some special use for it, I’ll …” He broke off, lowered his voice, and said: “It’s been rough, ain’t it, kiddo?”
“Ruh-uf.”
“Yeah, said Mike, turning his back and walking across the room to look at the big, bright male brook trout on the wall. “Remember when you got that one, Billy?” he said without turning around. “You’d cast that big funny fly from New Zealand, the Red Setter, looked like a whore’s hairdo, into the swirls below the falls. I was behind you. I’d gotten one about three pounds that morning and you was burning mad. Didn’t even speak to me at lunch. Well, maybe I was being a bit rotten about it.” He came and sat down in the soft old armchair. “I must’ve turned and the next thing I know your rod’s bent like a crescent moon and you’re yelling like a banshee. Johnny thinks you’ve fallen in or got bit by a snake, so he comes running up, and by this time there’s the goddamnedest smug look on your face! You’ve got the fish well hooked, you’ve seen him roll, and you know the size of him—and you know you got the greatest audience any mug ever had.”
He watched Brannigan’s eyes. They changed as he told the story.
“You’re using this ten-pound-test leader and can’t possibly lose that fish unless it gets into the rapids, and you’re acting just as cockeyed cool as a cock of the roost. Johnny and me, we may be a little green around the gills but we’re sitting polite as you please, murmuring a few friendly words of praise now and then—like, ‘Did that lemon have to get it?’—and you keep playing him gently, making maybe a bit too much of a show of fear when it heads downstream. Cool. Very cool, Billy. And when Johnny wants to net him for you, with the big net, what do you do? Wave him away, and fuss with that minnow net you carry.”
The faintest trace of a smile began to struggle around the corners of Brannigan’s twisted mouth and eyes.
“So this absolute monster of a brookie, the biggest trout any of us has ever seen, is beat, and over on its side, and you’re swiping at it with your net—probably trying to get it to rush off so’s the show can go on—and first you get the tail in, right?”
Brannigan nodded.
“Then when it flops out, you try to bend it in, from the middle, but the monster won’t be bent, so you go for the head, which barely fits into that guppy net, and then you’ve got it head first to about the gills and sort of clamp your hand down on the rest and come yelping out of the water, the line and rod and net and you all tangled together, and you fall on it. God, that fish was gorgeous—and there he is. That the way it happened, Billy? Something like that?”
Brannigan raised his left hand in a little shrug. “Ha-pinned … like … that.”
“So the point is, you got one. You got one bigger than any of us ever got, even Johnny, God rest his soul, and now you figure, ‘The big bird’s crapped on me. I’ve caught my last big fish and shot my last grouse.’ That it?”
“That-z-it.”
“Johnny doesn’t make it and you ain’t satisfied to be here. Instead of being pleased I come tonight, passing up some very possible quail, you’re going to stew in your own bile, right?”
“Rrr-ight.”
“There’s no one in particular to hate for it, so you figure you’ll spread the hate around, to Jane and the boys, and especially yourself, and maybe you’ll get lucky and not be around too much longer to be a burden to anyone. Well, I see your point, Brannigan. Lot of logic to it. Then say maybe there’s a chance in a couple hundred thousand that you get anything back on that right side, so you say, ‘Bad odds.’” He walked to the fly-tying table, picked up one of the capes, a pale ginger, and bent back the hackle of one feather. “A good one, Billy. First-rate dry-fly neck. Good small size, too.” Then he went to the humidor and drew out one of the twisted black cigars. “You don’t mind?” Brannigan, watching him closely, did not change his expression. Mike put the cigar in the center of his mouth, struck a match, and got the tip of the cigar glowing like a little coal. “Good cigar, Billy.” He puckered his lips, held the cigar in three fingers, and took a long puff.
Brannigan kept watching him. He had not moved his chair from the moment Mike had come in. Quail. Big trout. A grouse or two. Lives for that. Two wives, maybe have ten more. Funny guy. The way he holds that cigar—like he owned the world, all of it. Shotgun. Ask.
“So the point is, it would break my sweet heart if you wasn’t around, kiddo. Know what I mean? You know what I did when they told me you was”—he put out his hand, palm down, and rocked it slightly— “maybe not going to make it? I prayed. Me. Prayed. I said, ‘Oh, God, let old Billy come through with anything, any goddamnit thing at all, so long as he’s here and I can brag to him now and then about what quail I’m snatching—anything, God, just so long as he’s here where I can see his ugly black-haired head now and then’”—he puffed hard at the cigar—”when the quail ain’t flying and the trout is down. It’s rough, right?”
Ask about shotgun.
“Suddenly the rules is all changed.”
The gun.
“So the point is,” he said, puffing hard, exhaling three times in rapid succession—”Hell, I don’t know what the point is, Billy, but it will be awfully lonely next May when the Hendricksons start popping not to … Here, catch this”—and he tossed a softball, under-hand, directly at Brannigan’s chest. The left hand went up and forced the ball against the right shoulder. The right shoulder, limp and loose, twitched ever so slightly toward the ball. Brannigan held the ball for a moment, then took it in his left hand and tossed it back. Then he left his right shoulder and slowly dug his fingers into the muscle. “Not … much left.”
“You’ll cast lefty,” said Mike. “Once knew an old poacher name of Sven who had to learn because there was bad brush on the right side. Dry-fly purist of a poacher.” And the story went on for twenty minutes, and included a patrol dog named Wolf, five pound rainbows, two delicious young women, the true origin of “Sven’s left curve drop cast,” which only lefties could use, and then, just before the point of it all, Mike simply said, “It’s eleven. The quail will have flown. I’ll bring the 20-gauge tomorrow, eh?”
Brannigan smiled, a slow, deep smile that spread into his cheeks and eyes, and stayed, even when the twitch started. He nudged his right hand out with his left, so Mike could take and hold it, and Mike took it and held it in both of his own, rubbing the lifeless thing vigorously, then turning quickly for the door. Before he got there, Brannigan said: “The gun … yours.”
The limbs remember, he thought, working the rake lightly across the soil he’d just fitted with seed, and so does the earth. It remembers what it must do to these seeds, and the seeds, someplace deep within them, knew what they must do.
Back and forth he moved the rake, holding it firmly in his left hand, using his nearly useless right to steady it. The May sun was warm but not bright, and kneaded his broad naked shoulders. He could walk without the cane now—somewhat. With that bizarre arc. His hair had gone snow white, which he liked, but otherwise, if he didn’t move and didn’t talk, he looked nearly the same.
Everyone else had planted a week or two ago but he’d worked more slowly, as he had to—long patient hours, setting his fertilizer, running the hand plow steadily across the small garden he’d staked out last spring, seeding the soil. This would be a good year. He could feel it. He’s learned how to coax green from the brown soil, how important it was, always, to be patient—to lay the proper foundation, however long that took, before you could expect anything to grow. Tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots, radishes, onions—he’d had these last year; now he added kale, zucchini, tarragon, other herbs. Each day now he would work on his garden for several hours, bending down to it, plucking, feeling, watering, watching. It all mattered. Even the watching. Every day. He’d increased the size of his garden by a third this year. It would require more work but he could do it. He still forgot many things—names, events, people he had known; but he forgot nothing connected to his garden. It would be a good garden this year, as fruitful as anyone’s garden. Maybe better.
Got it all now, he thought, leaning against the rake, and Mike will be here soon to take us a-fishing. It would be good to be in the car, on a trip, listening to Mike’s excited patter, it would be good to try the river again. Mike had said the Hendricksons had started.
Three years. Days, weeks, months had ticked by, minute by minute, and imperceptibly the changes had come. The insurance had kept them from bankruptcy, Jane had begun to work for a real-estate agent in town—and had blossomed with it. Junior was earning his way in college, his own man, and Frank was a senior in high school and working part-time at Mike’s garage. They didn’t need what he’d once earned; he knew that what they needed most he could give them only after he had given it to himself.
He had done the exercises the men in white advised, with barbells and bicycle—over and over and again; he hated to do them and stopped when it came time to work in his garden. Several times last spring Mike had taken him to the West Branch, which they’d often fished together, before he got wrecked. At first he merely found a rock, sat down, and watched. But he had not been able to resist the tug, deep inside him, to be on the stream, part of it, fishing. Wasn’t that really why he’d done all those endless, tedious exercises, up and down, back and forth, hour after hour, all those months?
It had been impossible at first, after nearly two years. He had slipped twice on the rocks before he even reached the river. Even with the cane his right leg would not hold on broken terrain. Then he slipped again when he took his first tentative step into the water, careening badly, catching himself on his left arm. “No help, no help,” he’d said when Mike stepped toward him. Then he’d been unable to strip line an cast left-handed, and finally, after several mad minutes he had given it up and fallen again on his way out, slamming his chin into a rock, cutting it sharply. No. It was not possible. He could not do it.
But it was a warm May morning and Mike would be there soon and it would be better this year. He’d earned it. Perhaps he’d even take his first trout since the crash.
Mike came promptly at twelve, and in a few minutes they were in the car racing toward the West Branch. “Magnificent day, Billy,” Mike said, pushing the pedal harder. “The Hendricksons will be on in all their glory. They’ll be popping out and the birds will be working, and we’re going to get us a few. The cornfield run. I can feel a certain fat old brownie just waiting for you there today.”
Mike parked along a small dirt turnoff and they got out and began to rig their rods, put on the waders. Mike was suited up and ready before Brannigan had worked one leg into his hip boots. “Go on, Mike. I’ll be there … when I’m there.”
“So you’re tired of my company. Fine. I’m going upstream, you take the middle of the run. Where the current slows. Take your time: we’re a half hour early. Lousy luck, kiddo.”
Brannigan watched him stride off, his bull back bouncing even in waders. Then he finished raising his boots, strapped them to his belt, and got out his vest. He could use his right hand as a support now, to hold one section of the rod firmly enough for his left to insert the other section; he managed it, with guides aligned, on only the second try. Then he strung the line slowly through the guides until the end of the fly line and all of the leader were outside the tip top. It was well he had practiced all winter.
He got out a Hendrickson he’d tied before the crash, kept in mothballs, and held it as firmly as he could with his right fingers. Then he tried to insert the point of the leader. It would not go. He kept shoving it off to the side, or shaking the fly. Finally he dropped the fly in the grass and had to bend down, slowly, to look for it. When he found it, he stayed on the ground in the shadow of the car and held the fly up to the sky so that the light-blue would show through the hole and he could better fit in the leader. The operation took him five minutes.
As he began to walk along the edge of the cornfield toward the river, his right leg came up in a large, jerky arc, and then down again, one step after the other. Slowly. There was no rush. There was plenty of time. Mike had coaxed him out several more times last summer and fall, and each time he fell but there was some slight improvement. Not much. Not enough for him to know he could do it, like he could garden, not enough to get a line out far enough to tempt a trout—but some. You had to connive. You had to be cunning and crafty, and to forget how it once was. You had to remember always that it would not all come back, not ever. You had to work within the fixed knowledge that you continue to improve, always, and that this counted, but that even at your very best, some day, you would be, by the world’s standards, a lemon.
Perhaps he’d get one today. His first. It would be wonderful if he could get into a really large trout, perhaps seventeen or eighteen inches. You didn’t have to make many casts, just the right one at the right time. He’d practiced on the lawn and he knew he now could get enough distance to reach the lip of the current in the corn field pool. He’d once fished it many times. There was room for a decent backcast, and the shallow bar on his side of the run was hard earth and rubble, with only a few rocks that might trip him up. Mike had made a good choice; he’d be fishing upstream, in the fast water where the Hendricksons hatched, but there’d be plenty of fish falling back into the pool to pick up the duns as they floated down, especially once the hatch really got going
One step at a time—the right leg out first, and down, out and down. No hurry. You couldn’t rush a walk anymore than you could a garden. You couldn’t rush anything. Anyway, you saw more when you walked this slow—those crows pecking at corn seeds, that huge growth of skunk cabbage, lush and green and purple, the fuzzy green on the boughs of the willows. A gorgeous day, only slightly overcast now, perfect for Hendricksons.
As he neared the row of trees that bordered the river, he could see Mike upstream, wading deep; his rod was held high and had a sharp arc. Good old Mike. Got one already. Up and out, then down. Then again. And again. He worked his way through the alders to the edge of the river. The water was perfect—dark and alive, flecked with bubbles and eddies where the current widened and slowed. Like he’d dreamed it all winter. Yes, that was a fish. And another. He looked to the sky and saw four or five tan flies flutter and angle off into the trees. Yes. Yes.
He took a tentative step into the water and felt a touch of fear as he left the firmness of the earth. No matter. It would pass. All the old feeling was there; he could still feel, deep within him, something in him reaching out to the life of the river—its quick faceted run above the long flat pool below; its translucent dark green and gliding shadows. Flowing, always moving. Changing. The same and not the same. He picked out a dun and watched it bound, like a tiny tan sailboat, over the tail of the riffle, then swirl and float into slower water where it vanished in a sudden pinching of the surface.
Yes, they were moving today. He could see six, seven fish in fixed feeding positions, rising steadily. There was plenty of time. Don’t rush. Do it very, very slowly. They’d be going good for another hour; he wanted to pick out one good fish, near enough for him to reach with his short cast. Only one good fish. He didn’t want a creelful. Only one.
Upstream, Mike was into another trout, and a few minutes later while Brannigan still eased slowly, steadily into deeper water, inch by inch, Mike had another. We’ve caught one of those magical days, he thought. Another foot or so … At last, deep as he dared go, he stood on firm hard rubble in water up to his thighs. He stripped line deliberately by raising and lowering his right hand; then, holding the loose line as best he could, he made an extremely short cast. Good. Much better this year. Then he stood, rod poised, watching the spreading circles of feeding fish. There were two twelve-inchers in the middle current lane, feeding freely, and two small fish back ten feet; he couldn’t reach any of those anymore, though they’d once have been easy enough casts. He could never have finished to that rise in the far eddy, though: the currents were too tricky, the cast too long. Too bad. That was a large fish.
Then he saw the steady sipping rise directly up-stream from him, not thirty feet away. Sometimes the largest fish rose like that, but so did fingerlings. It was time to try. He could reach that fish.
His first cast was too short and too hard. His next was off to the right and too hard. The next two were not bad but the fish both times rose to a natural a second before his fly floated past. On his next cast, the trout rose freely, took, and, gripping line and handle with his left hand, as he’d practiced, he struck and had the fish on. A good one. A bright, large leaper that came out, shaking its spots at him and falling back, and then streaking up into the current, across to the far bank, boring deep, and then leaping again.
“Mike!” He usually didn’t talk while he fished but he wanted his friend to see this. He hadn’t shouted very loud and above him, Mike, busy with still another fish, did not hear. Again the fish came out. “A beauty,” he said audibly. “A fine brown.” Again the fish raced across the current, stripping line from the reel, arching the rod sharply. Got to get it. Can’t lose this one.
In ten minutes he could tell the trout was tiring. But it was still on the opposite side of the current. As he began to retrieve the line slowly, the fish came into the current and allowed itself to be carried downstream. Then, suddenly, it bolted directly toward him and the like went slack. “No, no,” he said, struggling but unable to strip back line quickly enough.
When he regained control, the fish was gone. He drew the line back slowly until he could see the bedraggled fly. The fish had merely pulled out on the slack line— because of his goddam right arm. His right arm—which might as well not be there.
He was sitting in the car, all his equipment packed away, when Mike came back. Mike had caught seven fish, all of size but none as large as the one Brannigan had lost, and said it was the best day he could remember, except of course the day he’d gotten the three-pound brookie in Canada and Brannigan that lucky male. Brannigan offered a weak smile but said nothing, and Mike looked at him and then said nothing as he took off his vest and waders.
In the car, heading home, he turned to Brannigan and asked quietly, “How’d you do, Billy? Take any?”
“I lost one … Mike. Pretty good fish. Then I decided I’d better quit because at least I hadn’t fallen in. Like every other time. So I headed … out. Slowly. Praising myself all the time … that at least I hadn’t taken … a bath this time.”
“You took some bad ones last year, Billy.”
“I’d lost a good one, a really good fish, and that didn’t make … me feel too cheery … Yet I’d hooked it and played it a long time … which I … never did before, not since I got wrecked, and I figured … if I could get out without a spill, I’d … still be ahead.”
“Was it really a good fish, Billy?”
“Big. Very big brown.”
“Sixteen inches.”
“More.”
“That’s a big fish.”
“So I was one step or two from the bank, smiling and praising myself … that I … hadn’t fallen, when … I went into a pothole.”
“Hell!”
“So I went down and over, ass … over teakettle. Almost drowned.”
“Billy!”
“Almost. My head went under … and I was on my right side and couldn’t … get leverage, and sort of forced my head out, and went under again, and gagged. Know I was going to die. I felt the grasp of brakes … in my brain. I suddenly … did not want to die. The water was shallow … but it was deep enough. Deep enough. Mike. I did not want to die,” he said quietly. “So finally I managed to twist over onto my left side. Broke my rod. Slammed my bone badly. Barely … got out of it.”
Mike looked over at this friend who had lost his fish, nearly ended it all. He had not one word to cheer him with. Brannigan was sitting in the same seat he’d been in when the accident smashed him, and there was a curious grin on his face. “Maybe we … really shouldn’t go anymore, Billy,” Mike said soberly. “Know what I mean?” He had hoped desperately that Brannigan would get one good trout, that this day might be a new beginning. He had for three years said everything he knew to say. He had no words left.
Faintly, as a slight pressure first and then a firm grip, Mike felt his friend’s left hand on his shoulder. “No,” he heard Brannigan say. And when he turned: “We’re going … to keep going … back.”