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from
A River Runs through It
by Norman Maclean
University of Chicago Press
“The son of a bitch still has fight in him,” I thought I said to myself,
but
unmistakably I said it out loud, and was embarrassed for having said it
out loud
in front of my father. He said nothing.
Two or three more times Paul worked him close to shore, only to have him
swirl and return to the deep, but even at that distance my father and I
could
feel the ebbing of the underwater power. The rod went high in the air, and
the
man moved backwards swiftly but evenly, motions which when translated into
events meant the fish had tried to rest for a moment on top of the water
and
the man had quickly raised the rod high and skidded him to shore before
the
fish thought of getting under water again. He skidded him across the rocks
clear back to a sandbar before the shocked fish gasped and discovered he
could not live in oxygen. In belated despair, he rose in the sand and
consumed
the rest of momentary life in the Dance of Death on his tail.
The man put the wand down, got on his hands and knees in the sand, and,
like an animal, circled another animal and waited. Then the shoulder shot
straight out, and my brother stood up, faced us, and, with uplifted arm
proclaimed himself the victor. Something giant dangled from his fist. Had
Romans been watching they would have thought what was dangling had a
helmet on it.
“That’s his limit,” I said to my father.
“He is beautiful,” my father said, although my brother had just finished
catching his limit in the hole my father had already fished.
This was the last fish we were ever to see Paul catch. My father and I
talked about this moment several times later, and whatever our other
feelings,
we always felt it fitting that, when we saw him catch his last fish, we
never saw
the fish but only the artistry of the fisherman.
While my father was watching my brother, he reached over to pat me, but
he missed, so he had to turn his eyes and look for my knee and try again.
He
must have thought that I felt neglected and that he should tell me he was
proud
of me also but for other reasons.
It was a little too deep and fast where Paul was trying to wade the river,
and
he knew it. He was crouched over the water and his arms were spread wide
for
balance. If you were a wader of big rivers you could have felt with him
even at
a distance the power of the water making his legs weak and wavy and ready
to
swim out from under him. He looked downstream to estimate how far it was
to
an easier place to wade.
My father said, “He won’t take the trouble to walk downstream. He’ll
swim
it.” At the same time Paul thought the same thing, and put his cigarette
and
matches in his hat.
My father and I sat on the bank and laughed at each other. It never
occurred to either of us to hurry to the shore in case he needed help with
a rod
in his right hand and a basket loaded with fish on his left shoulder. In
our family
it was no great thing for a fisherman to swim a river with matches in his
hair.
We laughed at each other because we knew he was getting damn good and
wet, and we lived in him, and were swept over the rocks with him and held
his
rod high in one of our hands.
As he moved to shore he caught himself on his feet and then was washed
off them, and, when he stood again, more of him showed and he staggered to
shore. He never stopped to shake himself. He came charging up the bank
showering molecules of water and images of himself to show what was
sticking
out of his basket, and he dripped all over us, like a young duck dog that
in its
joy forgets to shake itself before getting close.
“Let’s put them all out on the grass and take a picture of them,” he
said. So
we emptied our baskets and arranged them by size and took turns
photographing each other admiring them and ourselves. The photographs
turned out to be like most amateur snapshots of fishing catches–the fish
were
white from overexposure and didn’t look as big as they actually were and
the
fishermen looked self-conscious as if some guide had to catch the fish for
them.
However, one closeup picture of him at the end of this day remains in
my
mind, as if fixed by some chemical bath. Usually, just after he finished
fishing
he had little to say unless he saw he could have fished better. Otherwise,
he
merely smiled. Now flies danced around his hatband. Large drops of water
ran
from under his hat on to his face and then into his lips when he smiled.
At the end of this day, then, I remember him both as a distant
abstraction in
artistry and as a closeup in water and laughter.
My father always felt shy when compelled to praise one of his family,
and
his family always felt shy when he praised them. My father said, “You are
a fine
fisherman.”
My brother said, “I’m pretty good with a rod, but I need three more
years
before I can think like a fish.”
Remembering that he had caught his limit by switching to George’s No. 2
Yellow Hackle with a feather wing, I said without knowing how much I said,
“You already know how to think like a dead stone fly.”
We sat on the bank and the river went by. As always, it was making
sounds
to itself, and now it made sounds to us. It would be hard to find three
men
sitting side by side who knew better what a river was saying.
On the Big Blackfoot River above the mouth of Belmont Creek the banks
are fringed by large Ponderosa pines. In the slanting sun of late
afternoon the
shadows of great branches reached from across the river, and the trees
took
the river in their arms. The shadows continued up the bank, until they
included
us.
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