Читать книгу Yellow Stonefly - Tim Poland - Страница 12

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OPPORTUNITIES FOR SANDY TO GET TOGETHER WITH HER friend Margie Callander were occasional, at best, for all the usual reasons of work and family obligations. Margie worked as a nurse in the intensive care unit of the hospital up in Sherwood and did her best to manage two young sons from her first marriage, encroaching on their teenage years, and her husband of the last four years, J. D. Callander, the good-natured but overworked game and fish warden for the Ripshin Valley. That she and Sandy would both have a day off at the same time was rare, indeed. Margie agreed readily to Sandy’s proposal of meeting for breakfast at the Damascus Diner, followed by a little fishing up in the headwaters afterward.

“Oh, hell yes,” Margie had said when Sandy called. “I need a day away like you can’t believe. J.D.’s been spitting piss and vinegar for days now, and these boys will be out of school for the summer in a couple of weeks, at which point they’ll really start to drive me nuts.”

Damascus was a tiny patch of human congregation collected at a bend of Route 16 along the lower Ripshin, the road most locals referred to as the old river road. Midway between Sherwood to the north and Willard Lake to the south, it survived as a point of convergence for people driving north to jobs in Sherwood, if they were lucky enough to have them, and for fishermen towing their bass boats south to Willard Lake. Other than a few modest houses and mobile homes stretched along the bend, the meager social and economic life of Damascus emanated from two places, the Citgo station and the Damascus Diner. The Citgo station was an amalgam of gas station, convenience store, and bait shop and managed to make a go of it selling fuel, beer and cigarettes, lottery tickets, and incidentals to the locals who inhabited the homes and farms in the fields and ravines spread through the hills around Damascus. It sold more fuel, more incidentals, and tubs of night crawlers to fishermen passing through. For anything not available at the Citgo, which was quite a lot, folks drove the twelve miles up the old river road to the Walmart in Sherwood.

The Damascus Diner, the other half of community life in Damascus, sat across the road from the Citgo. A refurbished squat cinder-block building that had once been a welding shop, the diner sat in the middle of a fan of asphalt that provided space for parking. An oversized glass window where the garage door of the welding shop had once been fronted the diner; the rear of the diner reached within a few feet of the bank of the river. A large plywood placard hung over the front door. On a background of dark green paint, in meticulously hand-painted white block letters, “Damascus Diner” was written above a rudimentary outline of a fish around an equally rudimentary cross. The diner was operated by the women from the commune tucked in the ravine off Wilson Hollow Road. Furnishings inside the diner were of a simplicity in keeping with the sign. Scarred, thickly painted wooden booths sat around tables covered with red and white checkered vinyl tablecloths. On the walls, generic watercolor prints of rustic scenes interspersed with varnished wooden plaques engraved with Bible verses. The food was oily and heavy, ample and inexpensive, making the diner a popular spot with both local residents and those just passing through. The women who cooked the food and waited on the tables all moved through the grease-heavy air of the diner in their informal uniforms of straight, modestly restrained hair nearly as long as their ankle-length denim skirts.

Margie thanked the waitress when she topped off her coffee. Sandy held her hand over her cup and shook her head gently. She rarely drank coffee and when she did, only a little of it.

“To tell you the truth,” Margie said, “I have to wonder how a guy like that ever got through med school and residency. Such a priss. One of those, oh, what to call them? Sort of, the overgroomed type, if that makes sense. Every hair in place. Thin little beard, all so carefully trimmed. Always a tie on under his lab coat.”

Sandy grinned, nodded, and dabbed at the pool of egg yolk on her plate with a half-eaten piece of toast as Margie continued.

“I don’t know, there’s just something off with someone who spends that much time and effort fussing with himself. One time he’s in with a patient, and the woman’s having a reaction to the antibiotics he’s got her on. And while he’s examining her, well, she hurls all over him. Oh god, he goes running out of the room, tearing his lab coat off, screaming for a towel, and gagging like he was going to barf too. All I could do to keep from laughing. If I hadn’t been busy trying to take care of that woman, I’d have been rolling on the floor, howling. I swear, he shrieked like a little girl. Seriously, how does a weenie like that get through medical school?”

“I’ve come across a couple like that,” Sandy said.

Margie slid a forkful of home fries into her mouth and pointed her fork at Sandy’s plate. “You gonna eat that bacon?”

“It’s for Stink,” Sandy said, and glanced out the diner window to see Stink in the truck cab, his nose sticking through the three inches of open window. “But if you want it, go ahead.”

“No, no. Wouldn’t want to take food out of your child’s mouth. Besides, I’m getting fat and stuffed enough as it is. Not used to these big, greasy diner breakfasts.”

“Something to last you through a day of fishing.”

“More like last me into next week.”

Sandy smiled and wrapped Stink’s bacon in her paper napkin.

“Really, honey,” Margie said, “I’m so glad you called. Your timing was perfect. Not to mention it’s been weeks since I’ve heard from you.”

“Well, busy with work. The usual.” Sandy shrugged, even winced with a bit of guilt in her face, knowing full well she shouldn’t run the risk of falling out of touch with the only real friend, other than Edith, she had.

“We all have work and other shit to attend to. We do, if we’re lucky these days. That’s not what I worry about. I worry about you reverting to a wild state, spending so much of your life out there in the wilderness, just you and James and your smelly dog. I half expect to hear that you’ve been found wearing animal skins, living off raw meat you’ve killed with your bare hands, keeping house in a cave.”

“Oh, stop it,” Sandy said. She chuckled, but knew the image had a certain appeal to her as well.

Only rarely did Sandy ever see anyone other than herself and Keefe up along the headwaters. Perhaps an occasional pair of day hikers or particularly ardent bird-watchers, only once that she could recall, another fisherman willing to trek up the rugged slopes for such small fish. No practical place to park outside the fire-road gate. The fire road itself, steep and badly rutted. The trail along the river, little more than an old game trail, snarled with exposed tree roots and stone outcroppings. Forbidding terrain for the casual visitor. Margie was closer to the truth than she might have imagined.

“It’s not a wilderness and you know it,” Sandy said.

“Pretty close. Plus it can get a little weird out there in places. Some spaced-out back-to-nature hippie commune or these toothless fucks out there in their so-called hunting camps.” Margie formed quotation marks in the air with her fingers. “J.D.’s told me about coming across that sort of kooky shit from time to time.”

“Nothing like that up near us.” Sandy startled herself by speaking of her and Keefe in the first person plural. She wondered if Margie had noticed and quickly moved the conversation on to cover her odd phrasing. “You afraid to go fishing up there in the wilds today?”

“Wild horses couldn’t keep me from it, honey.”

“How is J.D. these days?”

“Bless his heart, what an insufferable grouch he’s been lately.” Margie caught the eye of their waitress and pointed to her empty coffee cup. “Budget cuts are just giving him fits. Laid off a bunch of people, so there aren’t enough wardens in the field. Poor baby, now he’s responsible for the better part of three counties. And if that isn’t enough, they’re expecting him to be on the lookout for that guy that went missing a couple weeks ago. You hear about that?”

“Yeah, I heard about it. God, that’s really too much to ask of one person.” Sandy smeared a glob of the diner’s homemade blueberry jam on her last bite of toast.

“No shit.” Apparently caught off guard by Margie’s language, the waitress paused abruptly before filling her coffee cup. “Thanks so much,” Margie said to the waitress. “We can have the check now.”

Margie took a sip from her fresh coffee and continued.

“So he’s overworked, worn out, and cranky. Not that I can blame the poor guy, but he’s been a royal pain to live with lately.”

“I’m sorry he’s in such a state,” Sandy said. “He’s such a good man. Doesn’t deserve that.”

“Oh, he’s a sweetheart. Don’t I know it,” Margie said. “But sometimes lately, let me tell you, it can test a person. And now he’s all worked up about bear poachers or some such.”

“Bear poachers?” Sandy knit her brows and leaned back in the booth.

“Yeah. About a week ago someone found a dead bear. Guts cut open and its paws cut off. That just flat out made him furious. Says poachers sell the gall bladders and paws to Asia, for aphrodisiacs, of all things. That’s about put him over the edge. The boy has an unnatural love for bears.”

The waitress stopped at their booth and laid their checks face down on the tabletop, one in front of each of them. “Thank you. And have a blessed day,” she said, and turned to another booth.

Margie leaned across the table, motioning Sandy closer, and whispered behind her cupped hand. “‘Blessed,’ my ass. I swear, these religious kooks work my last nerve. Surely not living in the same world I am. But I have to admit the food’s good. Then again,” Margie said, resuming a normal tone of voice, “my children are in school, wreaking their havoc on their teachers for the day, my loving but cranky husband is off doing his game warden thing, and I get to hang out all day in your wilderness with you. Maybe I am having a ‘blessed’ day after all.”

After they each paid for their breakfasts, Margie laid a large tip on their table and followed Sandy out to the parking lot. Stink pushed himself up on all fours, and his tail thumped against the seat back in the truck cab as Sandy and Margie approached. Sandy had waited for close to two months before Stink finally accepted her presence and warmed to her. He had taken to Margie immediately and continued to be partial to her.

“How’s the old skunk-killer doing today?” Margie’s voice was high-pitched and cajoling as she opened the passenger side door and laid her hands to each side of the dog’s face and scratched and petted him vigorously. His tail whacked against the seat faster as he extended his head and licked his pink and purple tongue across Margie’s face. She indulged him a moment, then pulled her face out of his range and wiped her face on her sleeve.

“I’m touched, Stink. But believe it or not, I’ve already had a bath today.”

Sandy handed her the greasy paper napkin containing the bacon. “Here, give him this. Ought to keep him off you for a while.”

“Look what your mother brought you, you old thing,” Margie cooed as she fed him the strips of bacon, which he gulped down instantly, hardly chewing at all. She dug in her purse for a wet wipe and cleaned her hands and face. “I’ll ride with you, okay?” she said. “We can keep yakking.”

Sandy would have liked nothing more. While Stink’s eyes followed Margie, she stepped to her minivan, retrieved her waders from the back, and tossed them into the bed of Sandy’s truck. Margie Callander was no angler. Fishing was not a passion, but rather something to do, only on rare occasions and only with Sandy, as an excuse to get away from it all for the day. A sort of girls’ day out. About the only sort of girls’ day out she could have with a woman like Sandy Holston. Margie had her own waders because, as she said, she had to have “something to fit over this ass of mine.” Beyond that, she used Sandy’s gear and didn’t care one lick whether she caught a fish or not. When Vernon came for Sandy, it was Margie who was with her, Margie who had stuck by her, Margie who had actually taken a shot at Vernon with the little pistol she carried in her purse. It was into Margie’s arms that Sandy had collapsed when it was over and Vernon’s body was drifting downstream. Other than Keefe, Margie was the only other person Sandy would fish with.

Stink looked back and forth at Sandy and Margie, panting happily between them in the truck cab.

“Okay to leave my van here?” Margie asked.

“I’d think so,” Sandy said.

“Suppose we’ll have to trust to their Christian charity, eh?”

Both women grinned as Sandy pulled the truck out of the lot and headed south.

“So,” Margie said, “I’ve been blabbing away about my life all morning so far. What’s up with you and yours? How’s James these days?”

“Oh, he’s fine.” A rote response, but Sandy paused involuntarily before saying it, and now she could feel her jaw muscles tense, could feel her fingers clutch more tightly around the steering wheel. She knew, at least in part, that this was why she had invited Margie to go fishing today, that this was the question she hoped Margie would ask. A simple question with a difficult answer that she didn’t quite know how to begin to give. But she knew Margie would be the one to tease the first thread loose from the knot.

Margie turned toward Sandy and leaned her back against the cab door. Her hand rested on Stink’s back, scratching at his spine. A glint shone in her eye and an irrepressible grin spread over her face. “Uh-hunh. Hell, girl, the dog didn’t even believe that one. Now spill it. What gives?”

“Really, he’s fine, Margie.” Sandy stumbled over her tongue, trying to speak and not speak at the same time. “It’s just that, well . . .”

“I’m still sitting here waiting, and that chick is still pecking pretty hard at the shell. Come on, honey. Let it out.”

Sandy pursed her lips, inhaled, and tightened her grip on the steering wheel. “It’s probably nothing, but, it’s just that . . .”

“Keep going.”

Sandy spoke in a halting, tentative voice, groping cautiously, slowly through her concerns as the truck followed its course along the old river road, up around Willard Lake, and down the county access road to the gate on the fire road that followed the headwaters up to Keefe’s bungalow. She tried to play it down, admitting she had precious little evidence on which to found her fears. One minor mental slip about her gate key and a couple of faulty trout flies hardly amounted to proof of developing dementia. And yet, it was out of keeping. Keefe was focused, thought carefully about what he was going to say before he said it, and his flies were always tied with such precision and expertise. Working in a nursing home, she’d obviously become quite familiar with the various signs and symptoms of dementia, but then again, she wasn’t a specialist, just an LPN, and residents in the home with serious forms of dementia were housed in another wing of the facility, one in which she’d never worked. Keefe was normally a withdrawn, introspective man, and even an expert would have found it difficult to catch signs of aberrant behavior. Still, she couldn’t shake the feeling that on that day she’d met up with Keefe in the clearing, he’d been lost, unable to remember the way back to the bungalow. That he’d been sitting there, waiting, confused, hoping she’d come along to guide him home.

When they turned into the entrance of the fire road, Sandy stopped the truck and got out to open the gate. “Like I said, it’s probably nothing. I’m probably just overthinking it all.” Sandy stood by the open door of the truck, lightly shaking the ring of keys in her hand.

“Maybe. This stuff is tricky, you know. So, what do you want from me? A second opinion?” Margie leaned forward in the seat and looked past Stink as she spoke.

“I guess so.” Sandy stepped around the open truck door and started toward the gate. “What I really want is for you to tell me I’m full of shit and to stop fretting about nothing.”

Margie leaned her face out the open window on her side of the truck cab. “I can do that for you right now, without further investigation.”

Sandy worked her key into the rusted padlock that fastened the link of heavy chain holding the gate closed. As was often the case, she struggled with the old lock, inching her key back and forth, seeking the right spot where the key would catch with the corroded tumblers.

“You sure you’ve got the right key for that lock?” Margie’s head leaned all the way out her window, a wicked grin on her face.

Sandy scowled good-naturedly over her shoulder at her friend. “There’s a trick to it. Gotta catch it just so. There,” she said, as the lock finally gave way and she walked the gate open. Sandy moved her truck through the open gate, got out to relock the gate, and returned to the truck cab.

“All right,” Margie said. “Let’s go see what your aging boyfriend is up to.” She lifted her hand from Stink’s back and reached to Sandy’s shoulder and squeezed it gently. “I’m sure it’s nothing, honey,” she said. “Really, now that I think of it, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that you’d think too much about such things. Think about it. You spend almost all your time with the elderly, so to speak. James, not that he’s really elderly, bless his heart. Your residents at the nursing home. And let’s not forget about this old guy right here.” Margie patted the top of Stink’s head, causing his tail to slap back and forth between the two women beside him. “I think I may be the only person you know who’s actually your own age.”

As was his wont, when they arrived at the bungalow and let him out of the truck, Stink walked around to the front of the cottage, hiked his leg on the bottom step, then walked up the remaining steps to wait on the front porch. Keefe was fishing in the wide, gentle pool across the small clearing in front of the bungalow, but Stink didn’t appear to have seen him. Neither did Sandy and Margie, until they retrieved their gear from the bed of Sandy’s truck and followed Stink around to the front of the house. When she saw him, Margie froze in place, her arms limp at her side, and her mouth dropped open slightly. Sandy paused, ran her fingers over her forehead, and chuckled softly, before moving in beside Margie and dropping their gear to the ground.

Keefe stood in the middle of the pool, fly rod in his right hand, plying the seam of the current with his usual deft, efficient casts. As always when fishing, he wore his weathered brown fedora. Otherwise he was completely naked. His forearms, neck, and face showed only a slight tanning of the skin from limited spring sunlight; the rest of his body, surprisingly sinewy for a man his age, displayed a predictable winter pallor. No sooner had they spotted Keefe than a fish responded to his elegant cast with a strike. Sandy had always admired the graceful serenity in Keefe’s retrieval of a caught fish—never rushed, never any undue strain, never a hint of excitement or uncertainty. Caught up in her appreciation for Keefe’s technique, Sandy forgot for a moment they were watching a naked fisherman. Keefe squatted as he brought the fish to hand, the tension in his thigh muscles visible even from their distance as he did so.

As Keefe released the brook trout back into the pool and retrieved his loose line, a vague sound began to rumble up in Margie’s throat. “Uh, much as I’d like to say otherwise right now, you’re not overthinking it, honey.”

Keefe emerged from the stream, revealing that, in addition to the brown fedora, he also wore a pair of old deck shoes. He started across the clearing toward the bungalow, and his pace remained steady when he saw Sandy and Margie there.

“Well, this actually is nothing, believe it or not,” Sandy said to Margie, recalling her own awkward embarrassment the first time she encountered this particular eccentricity of Keefe’s. “Does it from time to time. Has since I’ve known him. Says it’s good for the soul to fish naked every now and then.”

Keefe’s stride continued evenly as he approached the two women. He raised his thumb and forefinger to the brim of his hat and tipped it slightly toward them.

“Ladies.” His voice was as steady as his gait as he continued past them, up the steps, and opened the front door. As he did so, he looked down at Stink, whose bent tail had begun to wag vigorously when he noticed Keefe’s approach.

“Come on, old fella,” Keefe said to the dog as they both passed through the doorway. “Let’s see if we can stir up a pot of coffee and make ourselves decent. It appears we have company.”

Sandy sighed, shrugged, and knelt to her gear on the ground while Margie tried hopelessly to stifle a giggle behind her hand.

“And this is normal, you say?” Margie asked.

“Sort of,” Sandy answered.

“Oh, honey. I’m sorry, but if this is normal, well, what you were talking about before is going to be even trickier than I thought.”

Sandy began to assemble her fly rod.

“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking.”