June 12, 1956
Wabash, Minnesota
Eastern Bank of the Kettle River
“Let’s split up,” Vicktor said, eyeing the river beneath them like a battleground. “Dan and Walter, you guys head north. Christopher and I will go south.”
“I don’t want to go south—” Christopher whined, and Walter held his breath. Holy Crap, Christopher, it’s like you want to get smacked.
“I didn’t ask you what you want, did I?” Vicktor didn’t even look at Christopher.
“No sir,” Christopher whispered, and under his mustache Dad’s lips twitched in a smile. Slowly, Walter let out that breath.
It had been a good morning so far, but Christopher’s whining could ruin everything.
“Remember,” Dad said, looking over at Walter with his cold, hard eyes.
Don’t flinch, he thought. Don’t look away.
“You don’t catch anything, you don’t eat anything.”
He said it like he already expected Walter to come up empty. I’m good, he wanted to shout. I’m patient and careful and I’m better than Christopher, not that you notice.
But what he said was, “Yes sir,” and nodded at Dan before stepping through the trees along a deer path that ran beside the river.
They walked for about twenty minutes until the trail ended at a granite lip that jutted out into a small set of rapids. Dan dug something out of his pocket and sat down, leaning against a dead tree stump, his pole forgotten at his side.
Walter stepped up to the water and made a big show of looking through his tackle box, but mostly he watched Dan out of the corner of his eye. Dan could still roll a cigarette even though he didn’t have his right hand. Mom said he had to be nice and not stare, but Jesus. Dan was rolling a cigarette with one hand!
“You want one?” Dan asked, holding out the finished product of his efforts.
“No,” Walter muttered and peered back into his tackle box, moving things around like he hadn’t been watching, his heart beating hard against his ribs.
Dan made him nervous these days and it wasn’t just the hand. He’d turned fifteen this year. And seemed different because of it. Like he knew things Walter would never know.
Dan pulled a lighter from the pocket of his blue jeans and lit the cigarette.
They used to be friends. They’d ride bikes to each other’s houses after school. But now...Walt didn’t know what they were.
Just cousins, maybe.
“Your dad must hate you,” Dan said. He pulled a flake of tobacco off his tongue and squinted at Walter.
“No, he doesn’t.” Walter selected a mayfly lure and tucked his pole between his knees so he could tie the little bit of feathers and plastic to his line.
“He always puts you with me.”
“So?”
“Well…” Dan chortled. “He definitely hates me, so I figure that’s why he puts us together.”
“He doesn’t hate you,” Walter said, but he couldn’t be sure. Dad really acted like he didn’t like Dan. Always had. Which didn’t make any sense considering Dan used to be the nicest guy. He still was nice, he just wasn’t...polite, maybe. The guy was smart. He could jump higher than anyone else at the high school, he’d even made the varsity basketball team as a freshman. But Dad always treated Dan like he’d done something wrong.
“Christopher’s little, is all.” He took the line between his forefinger and thumb and cast into the still area around the rocks just this side of the rapids. The fish liked those places best.
“Christopher can’t fish!” Dan cried and started laughing. “Your Dad gave him that hat and Christopher hates it!”
“That’s not true.” Walter looked over his shoulder at Dan. But it was. Christopher didn’t like the bugs and he said that Dad was too mean to make it fun. Dad made it hard.
Which was true, but that’s the way Dad did everything.
“Why didn’t he give you the hat?” Dan asked. “You love fishing.”
Walter swallowed and pulled his line a bit, jerking the lure to attract something, anything that might end this dumb conversation.
He liked the hat. The lures Dad had taken all that time to tie and put on the band glittered and gleamed in the sunshine. It was a serious hat. A great hat.
“It was Christopher’s birthday,” Walter muttered. Mom told him he needed to be kind to his brother. But he wanted to take that hat. Christopher didn’t treat it well, he left it balled up under his bed, but Walter always pulled it out and hung it over the lamp so the lures wouldn’t get tangled and the hat kept its shape.
“So?” Dan tapped the ash from the cigarette beside him on the stone.
“So what?”
“Why doesn’t he like you?”
“He likes me just fine! Why doesn’t he like you?”
Dan blinked. And then smiled and shrugged like the answer didn’t really matter to him. “I don’t know.”
Walter swallowed the ball of guilt. He shouldn’t have said anything. They didn’t talk about the accident. After the fight between Dad and Uncle Mark, not even Grandma talked about “poor Dan.”
“The thing with the firecracker was an accident, you know,” he felt compelled to say.
“You sure about that?” Dan looked down at his cigarette as he ground it into the stone. He pulled his supplies out and started assembling another one.
“He thought it was a dud.”
“Good,” Dan smiled. “Everyone should believe good things about their dads.” He nodded out toward Walt’s line. “I think you just got robbed.”
Walt turned and started reeling in. Sure enough, his hook was empty and his lure was gone. Damn it!
“I’m going to take a nap,” Dan said.
Walter didn’t say anything, he tied on a new lure, slung back his arm, let his elbow and wrist go fluid like Dad taught him, and set the lure spiraling out through the sunlight and swarms of mosquitoes that hovered over the still places on the river. He got it as close as he could to the rapids and then, like he’d been taught, he waited.
He counted trees on the opposite bank of the river.
He stood in one spot as long as he could, counting to a hundred, sometimes a hundred and ten, and then he shifted and started all over again.
He named all the states that began with the letter A and all the countries that started with the letter C.
And then, just as the heat and the drone of the bugs began to wear on him, lull him into boredom and weariness, his line went taut and the tip of his rod bent so far it almost touched the water.
He was pulled off balance, but he quickly braced his legs and leaned back, reeling as fast as the mechanism allowed, bracing the butt of the rod in his belly, right at the top of his jeans.
Oh man, it was a big one.
The muscles in his back burned and the rod in his belly felt like it might push all the way through his gut. He bit his lip and reeled as hard as he could until finally he saw the trout on the end of his line. A sleek shadow that darted left and zagged right.
A monster. A big, giant monster.
Walter took three steps backward, and putting his entire body into it, he pulled that fish in, reeling and tugging as hard as he could until it landed, panting and flopping on the stone.
A footer for sure.
The hook had caught the fish right through the gills and Walter knew there could be no careful freeing of this fish. He stepped on its slithery body and yanked the hook out.
Blood sprayed across the stone and the fish’s flopping slowed. Walter watched until it stopped moving and reminded himself of what his science teacher told him—fish don’t feel it.
He grabbed the wicker creel his mom had made him last Christmas. She made one for him, Dad, and Chris, each of them different so they wouldn’t get confused. Walt’s was yellow cane with a big brown W on the lid.
Happy with every aspect of that fish—its beautiful coloring, its superior size and weight, the tremendous fight it gave him—he tucked it into his basket.
It was a very fine fish.
Walt tied on another June bug and recast, and then the real fun began.
It was the best day of fishing he’d ever had. He couldn’t miss. He never lost another lure and never had to wait more than a minute for a nibble. It was like the fish were just lining up waiting for him.
It was an epic day, not even his dad could have done so well.
Two hours later, muscles sore but with ten beautiful keepers tucked into the wicker creel slung over his shoulder, Walter kicked his cousin awake.
“Let’s go find Dad,” he said.
“You catch something?” Dan asked, pushing himself upright.
“Boy, did I,” Walter said with a grin. “I’ve got dinner and breakfast for the rest of the weekend.” He swung the box around to his waist and lifted the lid to show Dan his catch.
They were gorgeous. Green and black and rainbow colored along their lean bellies where the sunlight hit them. Each one of them as long as his forearm.
Dan smiled like the cousin Walter remembered. “Good, I’m starved!”
Walter led them back toward the spot where they’d split up and then he kept going south along the deer trail. He imagined his father would take Christopher toward the falls, so he ignored the mosquitoes, drunk and hungry on the smell of the blood that seeped from the basket down his pants leg, and pressed on.
He could hear Dan behind him, cursing.
“You can stop,” he said. “Head on back to the cabin.”
“And miss seeing your dad when you show him those fish! Forget it,” Dan said, his face red and wet with sweat.
Walter grinned, swallowing the delighted little chirp he felt in the back of his throat.
They broke out of the forest onto the edge of the river, just above the falls. The falls weren’t anything big, just a foot-tall drop. Christopher sat on the granite, his legs curled into his chest, scratching at his ankles like he wanted to touch bone.
“Chris! What’s wrong?” Walter asked. He looked for the long shadow cast by his father but he wasn’t around. “Where’s Dad?”
“He got mad and left,” Christopher muttered. He’d been crying, and crying hard from the looks of him.
And his lip was split. Dad’s ring could do that if he hit you just right.
“You okay?” Dan pulled out his canteen and handed it to Christopher, who opened the screw cap and took huge gulps of the water like he’d been dying in the desert.
The idiot was sitting next to a river; if he was thirsty he could have just dunked his face into the water.
Walter shook his head like Dad did when Christopher or Walter did something dumb.
“You’re such a whiney baby,” Walter said. “That’s why he hits you. You gotta learn to keep your mouth shut.”
He didn’t want to carry the fish any farther. They were heavy and the strap of the creel dug into his shoulder and hurt. Not to mention the black flies that followed him like a cloud.
“Which way did he go?”
Chris pointed south.
“To the big bend?” Walter asked, and Christopher nodded.
It was too far to walk. Walter shrugged out of the strap and set the fish in the cool shallow water closest to the bank. At least they’d stay fresh.
“We’ll wait here, then,” he said, splashing water onto his face. He felt like a grown-up saying such things. Saying such things with ten fish in his creel. He smiled at his distorted reflection in the water. “Did you catch anything?” Walter asked.
Christopher kicked over his empty wicker creel.
“Every time we go fishing he gets mad at me,” Christopher began to wail. “It’s not my fault I’m no good at it.”
“Of course not,” Dan said, and Walter wanted to tell Dan not to encourage Christopher. That it wouldn’t help him in the long run. Christopher just had to become a better fisherman, that’s all there was to it. He had to learn to ignore the bugs and the heat, or Dad would just get meaner.
“Give me your creel,” Walter said.
Christopher reached out his foot and kicked it closer to Walter. Walter scowled at him. “You’re acting like a baby. No wonder Dad left.”
Christopher scowled back and Walter headed over to his creel in the shallows.
He was going to just put a few of his fish into Christopher’s so it would look like he’d caught something, and then maybe Dad would leave him alone. But—that would diminish the day Walt’d had. Ten fish—each of them more beautiful than the last. Someone deserved to have the bragging rights to a day like this.
If Walt didn’t have any fish, Dad would turn on him, call him a waste. Or maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe, excited for Christopher, proud of the little kid whom everyone (except Dad) knew hated going to the river, he wouldn’t even notice what Walter did or didn’t catch.
Christopher was just a kid. Walter, as of today, was a guy who took care of his family. Caught them dinner when they were hungry.
“What are you doing, Walt?” Chris asked.
“Giving you my fish.”
“All the fish?” Dan asked and then hooted. “Your Dad won’t believe Chris caught all them himself.”
“Sure he will,” Walt said. He carefully lifted each slithery body out of his basket and into his brother’s. Drops of blood fell onto the stone and ran into the water, attracting little minnows along with water striders and other bugs. He swatted at a horsefly.
Maybe he would believe it. Or maybe not. Walter guessed he would. Dad believed the best in Christopher—saw things that just weren’t there—he’d given him that hat, after all.
“Walt?” Chris asked, beside him. He had mosquito bites on his legs that had swollen up like acorns. Poor guy, he really did hate this.
“Yeah, Chris.”
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Hey!” Dan cried, and both Walt and Chris turned to look at him. He stripped down to his drawers and tennis shoes. “Last one in is a rotten egg!” He streaked past them and charged into the river, sending spray into the air and scaring away every fish for miles.
Walter laughed, tore off his shirt and pants, and hurled himself into the river after Dan, the cool water hit his body and fixed him. It made the itch go away, the heat and the regret that his dad probably would never guess the day he’d had fishing.
“Come on, Chris,” he said, turning back to his brother, so small and thin on the edge of the river. “The water’s great!”
He cupped his hand and smacked the surface sending a wave over the rock and into the sunshine, where for a brief second it turned to diamonds and then fell, just water again, back to the river.