CHAPTER FOUR

The Price of a Fly Fisherman’s Soul

For years, Sean Stranahan had told anyone who cared to ask that the reason he went fishing was to think. On the river, thoughts didn’t pile on top of each other the way they tended to on land. Rather, his mind became elastic, adapting itself to the creative demands of catching trout. Sean would never make an important decision without turning it over first with a fly rod in his hands. But lately, it seemed, he came to the river for the opposite reason. He fished to erase the burden of thought, to immerse himself in the moment, and to find recognition in his reflection on the surface of the water—to see there the boy he had been. For the wonder of a trout had nothing to do with its spots or the sheen of its flanks, but its ability to pull the angler back though time until he was no longer what the world had made of him, but who he was when that world was new.

On this evening, stopping to fish the Bear Trap Canyon of the Madison River on the drive back from Sphinx Mountain, Sean tried to relax into the rhythm of casting, to let the tension in his mind ride out through his hands while his heart hitched a ride with the fly. He tried to put behind him the long hike back to the trailhead, carrying an evidence bag containing bones from the second gravesite. But a vision kept coming back. It was the first skull that the recovery team had unearthed. When Ettinger gingerly examined it, her latex-sheathed thumb poked through the crust of soil to reveal a nickel-sized hole in the temple. Turning the skull over, her fingers scooped dirt from a second hole, this one as large as a beefsteak tomato. She had glanced up at the gathered heads of the crew, her expression grim.

“Gentlemen, something bad happened here,” she had said.

Stranahan had thought yes, and more than once, and months or perhaps even years apart, if the eroded bones of the second body were an indication.

He felt his line tighten. He’d been pulsing a slim marabou streamer fly through a current seam that held fish in high water, and this one was out of the river as soon as it felt the steel. It ruptured the quicksilver surface, then ruptured it again, and once more. He let the trout have its head, listened to the click of the old Hardy Perfect reel as the line sung out, and after a couple short runs was able to lead the trout into a shallow cove.

“How ’bouts you let an old hound have the honor.”

The man walking up the bank was backlit in the slanting rays of a dying sun, his face cast in shadow, but Sean would have known the lumbering gait anywhere.

“Sam. What the hell are you doing here?”

“I had an afternoon float from Papoose to Palisades and got to the ramp late. Saw your rig. Figured you were such a fuckup you might need my help.”

The big man stepped into the water in his sneakers and bent over, ringlets of coppery hair falling forward and his silhouette stretched thin as a heron’s. He deftly unhooked the trout and kissed it on the nose, sending it on its way without ever lifting it from the water.

He grinned, straightening up. Now that he was facing the sunset, Sean could see the grooves in the front teeth where Sam Meslik had nipped the tag ends of a few thousand leader tippets, too impatient to use fingernail clippers. Meslik, who was known in the angling community as Rainbow Sam, had given Sean his start in the profession—it was under Sam’s outfitter’s license that Sean guided—and he was Sean’s best friend west of the Battenkill River in New York State. That’s the way he thought about it. All Stranahan’s reference points were mountain ranges or trout streams.

Sam sloshed out of the water, muttering something about his “goddamned Reebok shoes.”

“Took your bud out this evening,” he said, “the black barber fella. Good angler, had me laughing to split a gut. Offered me a haircut. Told him I was like Samson. I’d lose my strength if somebody cut my locks.”

“Why didn’t he book me?” Stranahan said. He made a face as if he was hurt. He was a little hurt.

“His flight was canceled, so he didn’t know he could go ’til this morning. Told me he tried your cell. But I think he just wanted somebody who could actually put him into some fish.”

Stranahan nodded. “I was out of reach this morning.” He wanted to tell Sam about the discoveries on Sphinx Mountain, but knew Martha Ettinger would frown upon it, even though the cops reporter at the Bridger Mountain Star would have the story in the morning.

“Did Mr. Winston tell you about the guy who came into the salon to get a haircut?”

“He tried to. I told him the last time I heard that joke it was a Swede farmer walking into a car dealership. ‘Are you thinking about buying a Cadillac?’ says the salesman.”

A short silence.

“Sean, you’re such a gullible trout. You were had, my man.”

Stranahan nodded up and down, then shook his head. “I’m a rube,” he said.

“Come on, rube. Let’s go shoot eight-ball at the Inn. Maybe some cowgirl will like that haircut so much she’ll have a wardrobe malfunction.”

•   •   •

Twenty-four hours later, no wardrobe malfunctions but a persistent seam leak in the crotch of his waders, Sean Stranahan was standing behind an easel in his studio at the Bridger Mountain Cultural Center, exercising his second love on a twenty-by-twenty-four-inch canvas. The previous summer, a vintner from California’s Santa Ynez Valley had hired him to paint eight watercolors and four oils for his riverfront mansion on the upper Madison. No pens being handy, the contract was signed in Montana fashion with a handshake and a tumbler of whisky—Johnnie Walker Black Label, as Stranahan recalled. Richard Summersby would be arriving at his summer residence on the first of July, leaving Sean little more than a week to complete the last of the paintings, which was slated to hang in the master bedroom.

He dipped his paintbrush into a Mason jar of turpentine and stirred it absently, the paint thinner clouding while he stared at the canvas, a riverscape of British Columbia’s Copper River dressed in the rich palate of autumn. The angler in the painting was casting a Spey rod in a run called Silver Bear, gold rocks reflecting light from the riverbed, the broken teeth of the Telkwa Range buttressing the horizon. In the interests of verisimilitude the man did not have a fish on. In steelhead fishing you almost never do. It is like an agnostic’s prayer in that regard, hoping that there is reason to hope.

Sean knew this firsthand, for Summersby had paid for him to fly to BC the previous September. Sleeping in a rental car and fishing with an old single-handed eight-weight fly rod, he had hooked exactly one steelhead in four days casting. It had bulked out of the river, flipped upside down, and smacked the surface with a tail as wide as a bear’s paw. There are some fish that your heart knows you’ll never land, that are placed in the path of your fly only for the memory. It was such a fish.

Recalling the sinking sensation in his chest when the leader parted from the fly, Stranahan touched the tip of a #2 Filbert brush onto the sienna and cadmium yellow mix on his palette. He had poised it to add a dab of color representing a rock on the riverbed when there was a rap at the door. The travertine floors of the cultural center echoed as loudly as marble, something Sean knew all too well, for the futon in the corner served as his bed. But he had not heard the faintest footstep and was so surprised by the knock that he inadvertently jabbed the canvas, fortunately in the exact spot he’d intended to.

“Come in.”

Kenneth Winston entered. “Captain,” he said.

Sean switched his brush to his left hand and came around his easel extending his right. The slim hairstylist was wearing cherry red sneakers; perhaps that’s why he hadn’t heard him arrive.

“Sam told me your flight was canceled, but that was yesterday,” Sean said. “I thought you’d be in Louisiana by now.”

“Well, so did I. So did I. But here I am, still in White Castle.”

“White Castle?”

“You know, the Caucasian Kingdom.”

“Ah. Well, what brings you to my door? For that matter, how did you find me? I’m not in the book.”

“Sam Meslik told me a little about you on our float yesterday. Sounds like you’ve led quite the life since moving here.”

“I won’t argue,” Sean said. “But hey”—he raised a finger—“I don’t know if I ought to be talking to you after you pulled that joke on me, took advantage of my naivety. Don’t look innocent. You know what I’m talking about. ‘Sir, are you thinking about getting a haircut?’”

“Oh now, where’s the harm? All I did was tell a little story, and as I recall you laughed hard as I did. I wasn’t taking advantage of you, it was just part of my effort to make your day enjoyable. You want to know what a man’s true worth is, money aside? It’s how many people did he make happy. Saint Peter asks for my credentials at the Pearly Gates, I want to be able to say that I put a smile on someone’s face every day.”

Sean had to smile. “So what can I do for you, Kenneth? You didn’t come to book me tomorrow, did you? I’m free. Have boat, will fish. You buy the gas, bring some more of those ribs, this time we forget the guide fee.”

“No, I’d like that, I really appreciate the offer, but I’m on my way to the airport. I’ll be in Baton Rouge in time to get lucky or watch Conan, depending on the whim of the wife.”

“Well, sit down then.” Sean dropped his brush into the jar of turpentine and took a chair opposite Winston. He put his hands behind his head.

Winston was examining the canvases on the walls. “You are a fine painter. Very fine if I say so, and I do.”

“Thank you. But you didn’t come here to look at art.”

“No, I didn’t.”

Sean followed Winston’s eyes as they roamed over the room, his gaze falling on a tea saucer by a small hole in the corner of the wall.

“Are those crumbs I see? Sean, tell me you’re not feeding a mouse.”

“I’m not feeding a mouse.”

“Yeah, and I’ll bet it doesn’t have a name, either.”

Sean brought his arms from behind his head and leaned forward, his elbows on the desk.

“Okay, okay.” Winston held up his hands. “I’ll come right to the point. I lost a fly box out of my vest last night, after fishing with Sam Meslik.”

“Sure it didn’t fall out in Sam’s truck? You could hide a dead Doberman in there and not smell it for a week.”

“Well, that’s the thing. Sam gave me a ride back to my rental after we fished, and there were a good three hours of light left so I drove up to Three Dollar Bridge to see if there was a hatch. I had the vest on, I was wearing it. I didn’t open the box but I patted the outside of my pockets, you know how you do that to make sure everything’s there”—Winston waited for Sean to nod—“and I remember feeling it there, the shape of the box.”

“But you never unzipped the pocket to look at it.”

“No, I was fishing caddis pupa and I keep them in a small box in the right lower pocket. The box with all my good dries is in the left, so I never had occasion to open it.”

“When did you notice it missing?”

“Only about an hour ago. I was packing up.”

“So what are you thinking? The pocket was unzipped and you dropped it along the river?”

“I must have. I fished until dark, about ten I’d say, and I was at least two miles below the bridge. When I waded out of the river I took a leak before hiking back up.”

“And you have to take your vest off to pull down your waders,” Stranahan prompted.

“You got it, Captain. I’d have hung it on a bush if there was one. But I don’t think there was. I think I just laid it in the grass.”

“So where exactly were you?”

“You know that log mansion that’s on the west bank, set back in the creek basin? There’s a break in the bluffs. Not the first break but the second. It’s maybe the third house you see when you hike down the river. You really can’t miss it. There’s a little cottage below it, a couple hundred yards away, that’s closer to the river.”

“You mean that old homestead cabin that’s held together with baling twine and prayer.”

“I think somebody must have fixed it up. I was fishing below that cabin, maybe a five-minute walk.”

“So you’re asking me to go down there, huh?”

“I’d do it myself if I had the time. I called the airlines soon as I saw it was missing and tried to change my flight. But it’s getting close to the Fourth, all the flights in and out of Bridger are booked. And I have to open the salon tomorrow.”

“What kind of box is it?”

“It’s a Wheatley. Early twentieth century. I found it in an antiques store in Kemnay, Scotland. Cost me sixty pounds. It’s worth at least three hundred dollars to a collector.”

“I can see why you want it back.”

“It’s not just the box. I must have two hundred dries in it—PMDs, tricos, Callibaetis, you name it.” Winston shook his head. “Each fly worth about three bucks if you bought them at a shop, plus the box, I got more than a thousand dollars lying on the riverbank. But what makes me sick is I tied those flies. When I think of the man-hours I spent putting together that box, you can’t put a figure on it.” Winston took in the disorder of Stranahan’s tying desk. “You roll your own, you know what I’m talking about.”

“I suppose it would be too much to ask that you put your name on the box.”

Winston sighed. “I’ve thought about it, one of those little waterproof tape labels. Good intentions, you know.” He shrugged. “I’ll pay you, of course. What’s your day rate?”

Sean waved a hand. “Tell you what. You front me fifty dollars for gas, another fifty for taking me away from my brushes, and I’ll drive down this afternoon. There’s a good chance nobody’s hiked that far from the bridge today, so if the box is there I ought to be able to find it.”

“I really appreciate it.”

Winston stood up. He drew a slim brown wallet from his hip pocket, the movement so fluid and quick it was reminiscent of a gunslinger drawing his Colt. Counted out the money with a flourish of his long fingers, added a business card to the stack, and fanned the bills on Sean’s desktop.

“I’ll bet you deal a mean hand of poker,” Stranahan said.

Winston chuckled. “Let’s just say more than one gentleman’s lost the graces of a good woman finding out. I slipped a few more Andrew Jacksons in there, by the way. Thought you might need the incentive to keep your eyes on the ground. Wouldn’t put it past a man of your nature to pocket my money and go down to the river and fish.”

“Why Kenneth, I wouldn’t even think of carrying a rod. You didn’t just buy my time, you bought my soul.”

“Your soul comes cheap,” Winston said. He glanced at his watch. “Shit. I got to hit the road. You can bet some TSA queen’s going to pat me down so thoroughly we’ll have to share a cigarette at the gate.”

He extended his hand. “Call me tomorrow?”

“Either way,” Stranahan said.

When Winston had left, Stranahan rubbed the fingers of his right hand. Shaking the hairdresser’s hand was like grabbing the steering wheel of his Land Cruiser on a July afternoon.

Maybe it’s why they call him Hot Hands, he mused.