Eleven

Lake Stantliner lay cradled in cupped palms of forest and granite. They were hiking downhill, and had started to walk slower, due to the grade, when the lake came into view, and now they were stopped, standing on loose rock far higher than the city, which is higher than the sea, which the planet’s gravity holds, as it holds the adventurers on their rock held in turn by the star scalding the blue.

It was hundreds of yards to the opposite shore where tall riparian spruce in dense community crowded forward toward the water, a thirsty herd vying. They had knocked some of their number forward, out of the forest, but not into the lake, so that lone evergreens hung diagonally out over the water like flagpoles from a building.

To the left was a grove of shoreline trees you could not see around.

To the nearer left, where the lake was not deep, and some boulders stood in it, a black beaver pond lay. It was a cul-de-sac bay. The expanse of silent lake lay undisturbed to their keen eyes save for some exquisite stirring along the distant shore where the spruce was impregnable and a few leaned out that odd way. Breezes were crossing the surface in riffling corrugation, making the lapped water a lighter hue where the tiny, endless wavelets traveled.

Cushioned at its edges by reed swamps and riprap of beautiful wild rock, the hundred-acre flat is only moderately deep at its center.

No one knows how big lake trout can get.

No bird, no jet trail, no cloud marred the stillness.

They were alone.

There was no longer a path. The lake lay before them, it was for them to get to it.

The sun stood directly overhead but did not penetrate the lake or reflect off it. No dull green or subtle walnut tint marred the continuum of Stantliner. The guide and the CEO stood on the rockslide. There had been a fire or something off to the right, tree blight maybe . . . branchless trunks without bark and only nubbins where they had had branches stood in the marshy mix where lake turned to reeds, rocks in shallows and swampgrass hillocks of twisted old roots.

Behind where they stood lay a downage of treetrunks strewn like jackstraws where the avalanche had crossed the valley swale with enough energy to rumble partway up the next steep.

There was no movement perceptible in forest or sky. The air was still and scentlessly fresh. There wasn’t a sound. Each riseform, circular, disappearing—mooncraters coming gently into being and expanding to disappear—was the signature of a feeding trout.

They watched it. It was to their left, where the depth was shallow . . . yet it was everywhere: noiseless circles like a giant delicate rain . . .

“Heh,” Boldt chuckled. “Yeh-ess.”

The rises were becoming widespread, increasing in both number and frequency.

“Heh,” Boldt chuckled. “Look at ’em. Yes sir,” he expanded, relishing the scene, “you’re a good man, um, okay, let’s go.”

He gestured for Rick to go first—cavalier armsweep, after you sir. It took them half-an-hour to walk the shoreline counterclockwise to get to what would be the best fishing. It would have been quicksand-mucky to go the shorter way. They lost their way in going that was marshy and too swaddled along the western shore, pathfinding in an environment of hummock, root labyrinth and minor bayou which extended further inland than Rick would have thought, and boulder stepping-stone and cairn, which forced them inland further still. When they came near the shoreline again they looked out, and sometimes the rises seemed to have stopped, but always—if you waited—there was one somewhere. A cutthroat or brown cruising under the great playing field would see something and come up. Other times, when they scanned, there was action aplenty, and Boldt would be chucklingly herding and spurring and orchestrating them forward.

When they got around the clock, Boldt could see (and would have been able to on his own, without Rick proudly showing him) that there were a dozen good places to try. Around the corner that they had been unable to see around were some inviting reedy shallows—one would be able to cast over them to the riseforms. Nearby were granite mammoths it looked like it might be possible to wade out to and clamber up on and cast from to the hundreds of disappearing soft reforming circles. On the way to the beaver pond were logs one could stand on, and in a couple of spots helpful hands had built log-and-branch walkways, rustic casting stations. At the beaver pond were plenty of places to stand—grass hump, fallen trunk, rock, patch of lawn, detritus dam. Rick made a nonverbal guarantee, blessing the pitch water with a palm-down sign, that brookies dwelt here. But after watching a time, and seeing the surface remain unbroken, they decided to hurry back to the boulder-filled shallows where the rises were continuing, and not that far out . . .

Boldt was pulling and pawing his rod from its case and sleeve, humming, chortling, heh-ing to himself, a veritable satisfied-noises factory.

Rick unshouldered his pack, glad to be unburdened. He swung the nylon tower, its pockets and pouches and zippers and buckles and flaps and straps and strings and compartments and aluminum frame and stout belt, onto an elevated haunch. He got a grip, and balance, adroitly lowering it to the ground.

He rested.

He leaned his pack against a convenient rock.

He looked at it, feeling a tingle of pride. He knelt. He unbuckled the buckles and loosened the straps.

Rick unflapped his pack’s middle compartment. He began taking things out. He took things out quickly, then, as he went, more slowly.

The more he took out, the slower he went.

He stopped.

His eyes, scarcely seeing, filmed over. It was an aeon in an instant, a galaxy of time encapsulated in a cat’s monocle, or so the body’s glandular stimulation can make it seem. The smaller part of a second elapsed, in which his center spun, safe-dial twirled, around the outer rim of everything and back to right here, unfortunately—back to these pebbles paining his knees.

He undid the flap of another compartment.

He lifted the flap, not slowly, not hurrying either, and took out the fastidiously packed top things.

He held them, staring at them.

“I don’t believe it.”

“Neither do I,” busy Boldt was chuckling, popping an eye shut to sight along his rod to be sure the guides aligned as he fit it together, “neither do I. At long last—hanh? What’d you say?”

“I said,” Rick said, and heard himself say, sick to his bones of who he was, “that I don’t believe it.” His voice was as pallid as his insides, his empty guts and heart that had fallen far lower than the lowest city.

“You don’t believe what?”

“What I don’t believe,” Rick said, dropping what he held.

“What I don’t believe,” Rick disorientedly explained, “is that I did what I did.”

The things he had taken from the pack—it did not matter what—lay on the grassy pebbles. More for something to do than from hope, he listlessly took out more.

“What don’t you believe you did?”

“I brought the wrong pack.”

Boldt had no idea. Boldt was more curious than he was worried, but above all he was clueless. Rick, on his knees, torqued at the waist, faced Boldt, who was holding his rod, which was about assembled but lacked its third section.

Boldt held his rod and its third section mildly impatiently, as a genius might hold in his mind the symbols of his nearly resolved equation while waiting to hear what the janitor wants.

“So? You brought the wrong pack. What’s that mean?”

“Well,” Rick said, holding a pair of rolled socks, “I brought my camping pack. That’s the pack with all my camping stuff in it.”

“So?”

Rick looked at the corrugated wool of the socks, a texture he loved. “It doesn’t have any fishing stuff in it.”

Boldt looked at his rod pieces, which were fishing stuff.

“So,” Boldt said. It was not a question.

“We don’t have any fishing stuff.”

In reply Boldt roared, a lion, a cannon, hurling his big head back. The salvo swept the lake rounding the varied shore like echo of twelve-gauge. You could hear the sound going, then coming back around.

Boldt got back to the business of getting his sections fitted together and was saying, in a normal voice, “that’s good. That’s very good. You almost had me.”

“No it’s true.”

“What is?”

“That I brought the wrong pack,” Rick told his warm socks.

“What’s true.” Boldt’s voice said this strangely and quieter, closer, less smoothly, mere inches behind Rick. “What is.”

“That I brought my camping pack.”

It was torture.

“I brought the pack with my camping stuff. I was up all night. I couldn’t sleep. I got to puttering. I threw stuff out and repacked. I threw away stuff I don’t use. I packed everything up in different packs more efficiently.”

Rick looked at the apparati and divisions of his Expedition Jumbo Trail Pack. He looked at the loops, the mesh pockets. He looked at his altimeter and maps and compass, which were in the “measurements” pocket, as he thought of it, which he had unzipped. He looked at the tightly folded maps, off which he had snipped unnecessary border. He looked at his sleeping bag and ground pad and spike tent bulging under still-tightened flaps and buckle-straps. He looked at the middle and lower storage areas open completely or partially to reveal corners of sky-blue poncho, navy long underwear, milky-white water bottles, variegated trail food in baggies, trail mix, power bars, cherry-red Swiss Army. He looked at his black camera, at his assorted fire-starting and light-making devices, at his hunter-green pile jackets and other plaid and earthtoned shirts and bandannas, gloves, caps, patches, guards, kits and utensils and repellents and pills in array like bright glistening innards laid bare in O.R. light by a number ten scalpel.

Boldt’s silence was speaking volumes. Rick continued to stare, gaping, useless, at his disemboweled pack.

“I couldn’t sleep for a variety of reasons. I went through everything, which was long overdue. I procrastinate, then it takes a crisis.”

“We don’t have any tackle.”

“We have no tackle.”

“We don’t have any flies.”

“We have no flies.”

“Lures.”

“Anything.”

“Lemme see,” Boldt said, getting down to.

“What I’m trying to remember,” vaguely said Rick, who had moved on his knees out of Boldt’s way, “is how I decided . . . why I put the . . .”

Boldt was opening and unloading—power bars, headlamp, gaiters, sweatervest . . .

“Blast,” Boldt said in a voice that would have been less scary had it been louder. He didn’t get up. He was pale.

A number of things happened.

Hunkered, pallor turning to disbelief and that to ire, Boldt was looking at Rick, and when Rick finally mustered the courage to look back he was astounded to see the broken face of a child. That face had taken over Boldt’s face completely—fear—the disorientation of . . . but then, and as swiftly, ire returned. Cold ire.

“We don’t have anything.”

Dropping his eyes, taking his punishment, Rick said: “That’s correct.”

Rick’s rage at his life imploded and exploded out into laughter. At first it was an inner big-bang universe, but increasingly, from the instant it started, it was hard to keep down.

Boldt had unfolded to his feet. This gave Rick his opened pack to return his attention to. “Heh,” he said, “so that, I mean, that is. We could always. I suppose. I mean I have high-strength binoculars for instance. We could look at things.”

“Look at things.”

Rick was trying not to laugh but he wasn’t succeeding. It wasn’t funny. It certainly wasn’t funny, which, logically, should cause one to feel like not laughing you would think. But it made him unbalanced with this unwanted updraft he was barely able to keep down.

“Well yeah, heh. We could look at birds. We could birdwatch,” Rick gulped, wide-eyed, scrambling up to jump away before Boldt could grab him. Boldt, having missed, did not try a second time. Boldt stood looking out from under bull brows.

Rick stopped laughing but he couldn’t stop smiling which made him want to laugh, which made it all the worse.

He poised, to flee again if necessary.

“Or we could tell stories,” he said with perspirative desperation, his whole personality loose now. It wasn’t a bit funny. “No, really, hey, I’m sorry, I don’t know what to say.”

His head hung, his false energy gone.

Boldt gave an animal snort.

Boldt strode off, needing to get far from such unwholesomeness.

Boldt fell, striding the water-walk of logs a considerate previous angler had made. Wet to his midriff, his pants dark-soaked, his upper half lighter, being dry, Boldt with lurching power gained one of the nearer water boulders. He got up on it and stood on it in his drenched pants.

He faced the lake.

Rick put everything back. Measuring devices go in the pocket dedicated to them. Spare long underwear is to be buried deep. Camera you cocoon in shirt. Sleeping bag stays rolled. Ground pad same. Small tent same. Fire-starting devices go in the pocket likely to stay driest.

Sapphire poncho: refold. Gloves take up less space unfolded. Flashlight—Jane—won’t fit. His flashlight was Jane. Due to what? He had put a water bottle filled with gorp in the wrong pocket, so quickly he corrected the error, making room for Jane. Oh my god. Jane equals flashlight. Test it, click, pupil light—bulb—iris reflector-flash, awninged by a hand in midday sun, is seen palely to shine. Okay. Click. Off. Jane slides conveniently between clothes and nonperishable food. A perfect mesh, so why not accept it? Accept the fact. Wife: lost. Daughter: lost. Son: lost. Not here, not coming. No reels. No line. No flies. Jane fits in and must, for it’s insanity to enter the mountains without light.

You had your choice. You had health. You had plenty of time, more than enough to get your tackle and flies right, but you must have been thinking of something else. What were you thinking of? Or else it wasn’t to be. It wasn’t to be and now, forever, is not. Wife, daughter, son. Hope they’re happy.

There is nothing to fish with. A rod without a line or flies is not a rod. And don’t think if only. Don’t tell yourself you were close to getting it right, because you didn’t get it right. You got it wrong. You didn’t spend the time. And when you did it was brief because you were itching to be alone in these hills or with friends or at a conference or on a call so don’t think it was a near thing. Don’t think you were almost a good husband and dad and just missed. If you had a second chance right now you would flee after a week. You would do the same things all over again. So don’t miss it. Don’t miss it because it isn’t here. You brought the wrong pack. So. Slide strap tight, buckle, click.

Swiss Army jam down because, too slippery-smooth, it sometimes falls out. They should coarsen the handle. Pack-weight in balance? Whoops.

Trail mix. Open flap, in. Secure. Weight is in balance. Even.

The boom of the noise was such that had it once been like a twelve-gauge now it was eight and shooting high brass as Boldt on his rock cursed, stentorious, rich, booming his rage lustily.

It was almost like singing. Almost not even angry. Boldt boomed, waited, listening to his sound coming back like a dog barking in the night listening to itself. He swore grandly, bestriding his boulder, his imprecations rolling ’round forest and stone, disturbing a beaver.

It swam out.

This was not in the backwater to the left. This was well across, along the marshy shore where the land gentled into the water in a boggy tributary of grasses, shallows, muck, roots, baitfish. Alarmed, it motored forth into the clear. It was making a wake. Its webbed hind feet were toiling out of sight, groomed, slick facial fur—pellet black eyes—aware. It was four feet long from rodent nose to the end of its broad tail that slammed the water and it dove.

Boldt cursed in spaced salvos.

Then he was done.

Silence followed silence.

Rick made his way out over the narrow log bridge, almost going in himself, and clambered up. He stood beside Boldt on Boldt’s boulder—grainy child of God the size of a Dumpster.

Rick stood, respectfully not for the first time, to one side and a pace behind.

“I may never come here again,” Boldt said in a voice that was too high.

He was facing away. Rick wasn’t able to see his expression, but it sounded sad, sad and resigned.

“I may never come to this beautiful place again.”

Whether due to Boldt’s spectacular yelling of moments ago or for some other reason, the broad field of rises had quieted for a time. But now, on the grayish still, with tint of gunmetal blue and mahogany, the delicate circles gradually resumed. They were forming maybe fifty feet from the boulder they stood on. Where one concentrically smoothed, leaving the water flat, no second appeared. But five feet to the right one appears in that peaceful dance of appearing and widening—or to the left—and one might appear at the original spot eventually.

Rick could have looked at it forever.

The rising of cruising trout unseen.

“It makes no sense to want to live forever,” he said without thinking. “Everything fun would be unbearable in eternity. Therefore it makes no sense to be afraid of dying. We should be afraid of not dying. Everything fun would get unbearable.”

They stood there.

There was a shadow now where there had not been one, along the stone’s big hip. It darkened a finger of water, and some of the forest had begun to lie on the lake, and they each, where they stood by their boots, which they had shed on the cooled lava, now had one: ink-dark, indistinct, moving only when they did except for the creep—leveraged through their forms—of the sun.

Rick’s and Boldt’s shadows stirred.

They grew, wobbled, stayed large, wobbled again, diminished and were still.

Rick sat cross-legged. Boldt sat with a knee up, the other leg out, a forearm on a knee, fingers dangling. His eyes were on the rises. His expression held neither yearning nor frustration. A composure had come over the Leader, the last thing Rick would have expected.

Boldt knew that neither ire nor scorn gets anyone anywhere in certain situations.

“To walk back down,” he said, “would take, what shall we say? Let’s say two hours.”

“That’s right.”

“Say two-and-a-half.”

“That’s about right.”

“Anything in the truck?”

“To fish with?”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“How far a drive to where we could buy stuff?”

“Half an hour, no wait, better make that—”

“All right. Three-hours-plus each way. An hour at the store, plus miscellaneous. Make it eight hours round-trip, which puts us back here at sundown.”

“Yep.”

Boldt phlegmatically uttered an obscenity.

“Stay another day?”

“No. I have a morning meeting. I have to appear. Then I’m in Caracas.”

“Something you can’t miss?”

“Won’t.”

Rick blazed with inspiration. He could feel his chest puffing. He cocked a barrel finger with a hammer thumb and pointed at Boldt, squeezing off.

“Your phone,” he reminded the CEO, “your magic phone. Call up. Commandeer. Fly what we need in. In less than an hour they could be here.”

“I didn’t bring my phone.”

“Oh. Well.”

“I didn’t want the distraction.”

“Oh.”