“Feeling okay?”
“Feeling okay.”
That was it for medicine. Bob said, “About five this morning, there was a wolf on the baseball diamond.”
“What was he doing there?”
“I don’t know.”
“Out by the fence?” I asked this because just past that is woods.
“Oh, hell no. He was in the infield licking the baselines. Might be there’s salt or something he needed in them baselines.”
“Did you see this?”
“The kids seen it.”
“You sure you don’t have anything to report healthwise?”
“Not really. I suppose something will jump out and bite me on the ass but not yet.”
“Well, okay. See me this winter, unless something comes up.”
Bob was my last patient for the day. I no longer knew what the rules were. I guessed I wasn’t supposed to be here at all. I was quite disturbed by what Jinx had said, and it had the effect of widening my outlook on my life. Lately, I’d been dreaming about my mother. Sometimes she was in the dream; sometimes she was not but I got letters from her. In neither case did she do anything significant except that it must have been significant that she was in my dreams at all. She just walked around, did a few chores; or I went to the box and got the letters but I didn’t open them. I was sometimes awakened by the longing for something to happen in these dreams, but they remained maddeningly innocuous. I suspected that this was the way we dreamt of our late parents; what we wished to have fulfilled was simply their presence. Psychologists focus on symbolism of events in dreams, which is part of their own wish fulfillment. The ones that meant the most were remarkably bland, like mine of my mother. Usually, she was in a room. That’s it: she was in a room. It was unclear whether I was in the room as well. For some reason, it was heartbreaking. How it would have cleared the air if she could have shouted, “You destroyed me with your indifference!” or something along those lines. The dreams somehow told me that the significance lay in the disparity between someone who was there and someone who was not there. I wasn’t alone in finding simplicity and plainness unbearable. I wished she’d speak up. Instead, she dusted the piano that no one ever played.
I awakened feeling confused. I remembered how I had met boyhood confusion with fishing, and I thought to try it one more time. The only other doctor still coming to work on a regular basis (“Hiding behind her gender,” said Laird McAllister) was Jinx, and she said she’d fill in for me. I could tell she wished she hadn’t said what she had and was trying to make it up to me. I knew just by the way people were looking at me that trouble was headed my way, and it was getting to me: this was my town!
8
ALONG THE UPPER RIVER the old forest was a corridor that led to the face of the glacier. Whether I was fishing or walking or just working around camp, it was hard to keep my eyes off it as it changed with the light and seemed to have a story that was going somewhere. Wherever that might be, I was never going to find out, but I watched the glacier anyway and wondered what was next. What was next was change, change of color and of shapes that arose and vanished with the advance of day. The glacier was always the last thing to sink into darkness.
I would be heading out in the morning. Not much was left of today. I didn’t have a fish yet, and I was rather working at it. I’d had several unsuccessful days during the previous week, but it seemed unlucky to end the trip on a blank, especially since the point of the trip was to change my luck. The helicopter was to arrive at first light; with packing up to do I would miss the twilight bite, as I had to be able to see to pull my belongings together for the chopper guy, who demanded all gear be spic-and-span and arrayed in one or two bundles that could go in the pod. Moreover, I was counting on eating this fish I hadn’t caught yet.
Fishing alone could be unproductive, as it turned into something ceremonial without the competition of other anglers. But I got lost in space as the long line opened over the water and settled. There was something ancient and fatalistic about it, like making the sign of the cross: I had done my part; the line tightened and swung through the world of the fish. It was not up to me. I just made the cast and awaited the results.
The double-handed rod felt light and purposeful. As it swung on the surface of the river the line had the pure curve of a bow. The river was pale green over white stones, darker green over the slots. On the far side, a tributary entered that was coming from the sunny face of the glacier. It was full of glacial milk and made a dense white streak against the bank. You couldn’t fish there. A fish would never find your fly, if there was a fish there at all, which there probably was not. I couldn’t imagine the suspended rock flour was good for their gills.
The cast that pumped down into the cork of the handle, the float and settle of the line, the taut curve of the swing, the progress down the run. The only reason anyone did this was to touch the eternal feeling, the circadian bigger-than-yourself feeling.
The arc of line flattened. A fish! It seemed to have come at the right time, and once I’d beached it, this fish so recently in the ocean, I could see through its fins to the gravel underneath. It was a hard cold bar of silver, gasping on the stones.
I used the rest of the light to pack everything but my sleeping bag. My fish was dripping grease over a small bed of coals. The glacier looked huddled in the incomplete dark of the wilderness, the stars growing closer. I didn’t want to close the double-sided battered aluminum fly box Dr. Olsson had given me long ago just yet, not while I could still see the small colors inside, run my thumb over the clips that held them, feel the hook points. I ate in the dark. I ate all I could, my chin dripping, like a bear’s. Tomorrow I’d want a napkin. This was certainly not my way of life, but it was surprising how quickly it came to seem so. In a day I’d be home, back in the loop, Dr. Pickett. I’d be the fish.
The sun was just up. I got into my down coat before I crawled entirely out of the sleeping bag, then rolled the bag and stuffed it in its sack. This I managed to get into the waterproof river duffel, and all was as orderly as the helicopter pilot could wish. I scoured face and teeth at the river, put the last items away, and using the duffel as a backrest, stretched out, hands inside my sleeves, to wait for my ride.
The helicopter never came.
I spent the day pacing up and down the riverbank, pausing hopefully at every sound, and in the end I unpacked my sleeping bag for the night. I had eaten of the fish three times, and now it was gone. I never looked at the glacier.
For the last ten days, I had lain in my sleeping bag and listened to the wolves as I fell asleep. Their songs assured me that this was no place like home, that no sensible wolf would sing with such majestic assurance without owning the place. Now I found them disquieting and eerie. I was sure they knew about me.
At last I faced the fact that no one was going to pick me up, that the arrangements I had made and paid for in advance were not to be followed. I tried blaming it on my declining the various added services the pilot offered. He may well have been disgruntled at my not electing side trips to see petroglyphs, totem poles, or grizzly bears, to fly to Mesachie Nose or Jump Across, requesting only a ride in and, at the appointed hour, a ride out. But he took the money. He should have picked me up.