|
...A River Runs through It, Continued
A river, though, has so many things to say that it is hard to know what
it
says to each of us. As we were packing our tackle and fish in the car,
Paul
repeated, “Just give me three more years.” At the time, I was surprised by
the
repetition, but later I realized that the river somewhere, sometime, must
have
told me, too, that he would receive no such gift. For, when the police
sergeant
early next May wakened me before daybreak, I rose and asked no questions.
Together we drove across the Continental Divide and down the length of the
Big Blackfoot River over forest floors yellow and sometimes white with
glacier
lilies to tell my father and mother that my brother had been beaten to
death by
the butt of a revolver and his body dumped in an alley.
My mother turned and went to her bedroom where, in a house full of men
and rods and rifles, she had faced most of her great problems alone. She
was
never to ask me a question about the man she loved most and understood
least. Perhaps she knew enough to know that for her it was enough to have
loved him. He was probably the only man in the world who had held her in
his
arms and leaned back and laughed.
When I finished talking to my father, he asked, “Is there anything else
you
can tell me?”
Finally, I said, “Nearly all the bones in his hand were broken.”
He almost reached the door and then turned back for reassurance. “Are
you sure that the bones of his hand were broken? he asked. I repeated,
“Nearly all the bones in his hand were broken.” “In which hand?” he asked.
“In
his right hand,” I answered.
After my brother’s death, my father never walked very well again. He
had to
struggle to lift his feet, and, when he did get them up, they came down
slightly
out of control. From time to time Paul’s right hand had to be reaffirmed;
then
my father would shuffle away again. He could not shuffle in a straight
line from
trying to lift his feet. Like many Scottish ministers before him, he had
to derive
what comfort he could from the faith that his son had died fighting.
For some time, though, he struggled for more to hold on to. “Are you sure
you have told me everything you know about his death?” he asked. I said,
“Everything.” "It’s not much, is it?” “No,” I replied, “but you can love
completely
without complete understanding.” “That I have known and preached,” my
father
said.
Once my father came back with another question. “Do you think I could
have helped him?” he asked. Even if I might have thought longer, I would
have
made the same answer. “Do you think I could have helped him?” I answered.
We stood waiting in deference to each other. How can a question be
answered
that asks a lifetime of questions?
After a long time he came with something he must have wanted to ask
from
the first. “Do you think it was just a stick-up and foolishly he tried to
fight his
way out? You know what I mean–that it wasn’t connected with anything in
his
past.”
“The police don’t know,” I said.
“But do you?” he asked, and I felt the implication.
“I’ve said I’ve told you all I know. If you push me far enough, all I
really
know is that he was a fine fisherman.”
“You know more than that,” my father said. “He was beautiful.”
“Yes,” I said, “he was beautiful. He should have been–you taught him.”
My father looked at me for a long time–he just looked at me. So this
was
the last he and I ever said to each other about Paul’s death.
Indirectly, though, he was present in many of our conversations. Once,
for
instance, my father asked me a series of questions that suddenly made me
wonder whether I understood even my father whom I felt closer to than any
man I have ever known. “You like to tell true stories, don’t you?” he
asked, and
I answered, “Yes, I like to tell stories that are true.”
Then he asked, “After you have finished your true stories sometime, why
don’t you make up a story and the people to go with it?
“Only then will you understand what happened and why.
“It is those we live with and love and should know who elude us.”
Now nearly all those I loved and did not understand when I was young are
dead, but I still reach out to them.
Of course, now I am too old to be much of a fisherman, and now of
course I
usually fish the big waters alone, although some friends think I
shouldn’t. Like
many fly fishermen in western Montana where the summer days are almost
Arctic in length, I often do not start fishing until the cool of the
evening. Then in
the Arctic half-light of the canyon, all existence fades to a being with
my soul
and memories and the sounds of the Big Blackfoot River and a four-count
rhythm and the hope that a fish will rise.
Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The
river
was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement
of
time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the
words, and some of the words are theirs.
I am haunted by waters.
|
