The Evening Rise
Dave Motes
We leaned against the drift boat in neutral early evening light, the river purling in the background. Southward toward town a brooding gloom had gathered over the hills, but the sky to the west was clear for the setting autumn sun. There were cigars, of course, and some whiskey. It had been quiet a while when Mallory cleared his throat and began to speak.
"The devil. Pah. The devil don't buy souls. No, no. She bargains.”
We all settled in for one of his inconclusive tales. He shifted slightly, continued.
"I've seen it.
"First, imagine tailored breathables that fit like a Donna Karan, and red hair that seemed to smoke against the leaves. I didn't hear her walking up; either I was concentrating too hard or she didn't make any noise at all. Suddenly the air was full of big mayflies, so thick I had 'em in my mouth. Chewed one; it was sweet, not chalky like you’d think. I looked at them on my sleeve: they were Adams. Bushy, exact Adams. A few Humpys mixed in, reds and yellows, but mostly Adams. I was in a hot hatch of #12 Adams. Then I saw her, twenty feet away, just looking at me. She was luminous, somehow fuzzy and clear at the same time. I got that feeling you get when the permit turns toward your fly and puts his head down.
"The hatch was centered on her. I know I should have been suspicious at this point, but how can you? This gorgeous woman appears on your trout stream wearing a halo of domesticated mayflies? The gloom seemed to lift, and the stream suddenly organized itself around her.
"I became aware of a new sound, though my eyes were held by that Mona Lisa half-smile. If my optic nerve had been a flyline I'd have been well into the backing already. The sound was rises. Loud, reckless rises. All around us trout had appeared and were sucking bugs, bashing bugs. I tore my gaze from those agate eyes and saw the same big rainbow I'd been working, a picky bastard, I saw him swimming along the surface with his pink mouth open, vacuuming bugs, slurping them--and smiling. It's true, trout can smile. I felt a nudge on my knee and looked down; a twenty inch brownie was holding in the riffle behind my right leg. He rubbed up against my knee and licked off a clump of Adams spinners like a kid working an ice cream cone.
"I looked up again, and she was standing beside me. I swear I never heard her move. She had a gorgeous custom three-weight and a tiny reel that looked like it had been made from polished bone. Her line and fly trailed in the water and a phalanx of leglong trout hung just below, mirroring every movement. They were a new breed to me, with a strange reddish tint and obsidian eyes.
" 'Doin' any good?' she asked in an oddly intimate voice, low and rough but sensuous like a Daiichi on the skin of your throat.
" 'Uhh no, not much,' I had to answer. Like an idiot I babbled on. 'Midges, mostly, well, before... you know, just now, I guess, we got a, us a, you know, better hatch coming off now... it looks like....'
"She smiled, an indulgent, understanding, minister's smile. 'Not doing too well, eh?' She looked off across the stream, now puckered with rises and rolling fish, and did that half-smiling, half nod thing we always do when we are talking to a neophyte who's hacking while we nail 'em. It was chilling, but for a moment I saw myself there, the king of the stream, the hoary old minimalist, self-satisfied pompous zen-quoting son-of-a-bitch that I am, it was uncanny, I tell you. I felt cold in the pit of my stomach. I remember just last week, working that same stretch, that weird guy was out there, remember, Jim?"
Jim shifted a bit and grunted. It was evening now with just a hint of red-gold in the south as fall came on. I could see Mallory leaning against the flank of the driftboat, hands out, palms up. A long pause and he began again.
"Jim and I were on the Hard-on Hole that day and this weird guy was out there. They were hot on the black midge, about a 28, and we were knocking 'em pretty good. We were joshing on the beach and this guy came by, kind of simple-looking guy, and we asked him how he'd done even though we knew how, we could see him up there, goose-egging. He said 'not too good' and we both gave him that look, you know, where you nod like in sympathy and you look out across the river so you don't have to meet his pathetic eyes, but inside you’re glad he sucks and you don’t. It’s a competition thing, I guess, hard-wired in our hearts. It’s still cruel. Anyhow, I finally tell him to take the black midge and clip the tail, that that makes all the difference, and he seemed really happy about that, almost more about the fact that we'd talked to him, you know, not that he could catch fish now. We were smug, that’s it.
"So here's this vision, this vivid smoking woman standing thigh-deep in my stream, with that same look, and some fabulous thighs, too, you could see it even through the Gore-tex. I was like a little kid, totally flustered, while trout cavorted around me.
"I heard a commotion on the shore, and here came these three guys we knew from the club--Don Keeler, and Rick, and that guy they call Beeper. Tramping along the path, wading staffs, talking loudly about something like they owned it. Keeler looked out at the creek and looked right through me, like I wasn't there. They kept on walking.
"I look back at her, and she's smiling again, pleased with me, I could tell. And she says, 'Here. Try this.'
"Hands me a gaudy fly, about a size 4, a big old-fashioned dry, but that's all I can remember. Honest. Looked like one those Irish guys tie without a vise. Big and shaggy, with colors, some I recognized, and materials! My god, there were things in that fly I'd never felt before. It had its own glow.
"I really wanted that fly. It seemed to hum and spread gravity, I felt it pulling. But I pulled back, something about it was wrong, too seductive, too good. It had grown quiet, the light was fading. It was the time I'd been waiting for, the evening rise; the fish should have been popping all over but it was still as ice. I tore my eyes from that fly and looked out over the stream myself. I tried to assert control, fished for something to say.
"'Nice rod. Is it custom?' was all I could come up with.
"She gave this low chuckle, a hair-raiser of a chuckle. 'Yeah. I've got a guy, makes rods to die for.'
"’It’s handsome,' I said. I must admit, I was fascinated.
"'Yeah. Well, he got real good real fast. Do you want to try it?'
"I did, of course, but I was struck with a sudden fear: Could I cast? Winner of the Gold Cup Challenge, the Letort Precise, and I was worried. I took the rod.
"It was ungodly light. The grip seemed to press upward into my hand; Reverse Angel grip, but warm and soft, and it filled my hand like it was custom-fit. The reel was tiny. The line was an odd deep red. I asked her about it; 'custom-dyed' was her answer, same half-smile. I stripped out some line and shook it out. She was using the same big gaudy dry-fly but hers looked ancient, faded somehow. I couldn't even see the tippet.
"'Fishing light, huh?' I asked as I stripped out more line.
"'10X,' she said.
"I dropped about six rod lengths, shaking the rod a bit as if to assess the action but really trying to tune in so I could pick up into a good loop immediately. I wanted to impress her, but I screwed up.
"As I went to lift, turning a bit downstream, the line slipped out of my hand. I was sneaking a little haul in there, trying to go to maximum line speed, and it just popped out of my hand. Nothing happened; the line seemed frozen in place. I grabbed the line again, loaded the rod, and threw a sweet, tight, two-laner of a false cast deep into the dusk behind me. I had felt a twitch and--you're not going to believe this, but I swear it's true--the stripping guide had closed down on the line and held it for me, kept from killing the loop. The rod had saved my cast. I delivered as crisp and perfect a loop as I've ever seen, a rocket, and shot hard into it. The line was slick as air and it slid out in a clean, quiet feed, and I believe the reel rotated to add more line. The loop snapped open in mid-air and whole system seemed to pause as the leader rolled out and that fly drifted out like a vibrant red butterfly, then paused and settled onto the surface. It was a living thing, it pulsed in my hand like a living thing.
"She stood there smiling, holding my rod—eight grand worth of antique Tonkin cane—like it was a fly swatter. In her other hand she still held the fly out to me. I knew her then, but I was less afraid. The choices seemed clear. I felt a light breeze begin to blow.
"'What's the catch?' I asked her.
"She chuckled again, smiled, nodded. We understood each other.
"'Easy. Take my fly. It will last forever. If you lose it in a tree, it will return to you. If you break it off on a fish, the next fish you catch will be wearing it.'
“'You will become the best flyfisherman on the planet. No one will outcast you. No hatch will elude you. Latin names will curl off your tongue. Your dubbing will always hold. Your casts will be undefinable in their excellence, beyond the cleverest metaphor. You will tie better than A.K, cast cleaner than Lefty. You will catch bonefish in the wind. You will catch rainbows on the San Juan on a Royal Coachman. They’ll name a pool on the Miramichi after you. You will win the Bassmasters Classic. You will release world records with cavalier indifference. You will never nymph again. You will become a legend.'
" 'Better than Lefty?' I asked.
" 'Better than Lefty. Either hand.'
"We paused there in the stream. A moon had come up over the trees, and the breeze had brought the vaguest hint of paper mill. We both waited for my next question.
" 'What's in it for you?'
“I knew her answer.
" 'Simple. You must kill one fish per year. On purpose. You will know which fish it is. You must catch it, and kill it, and clean it, and fry it, and eat it.'
“A long quiet pause.
" 'That's not so hard,' I said.
"Again the smile, the look across the river, the secret little nod.
" 'Then take the fly. Complete the bargain.'
"I reached out to her, in the gloom. I really intended to take that fly. I could see it, glowing there in her fingers. Around us the trout were rising again, with a peculiar speed and sound, a rhythm. It made music. I placed it after a moment: Orff. Carmina Burana.
"Kill one fish a year? Simple. Hell, I probably did it anyway, ten times over. Trout die. That rod, that fly, that little polished-bone reel! That cast, that living, pulsing cast! I wanted it! One fish a year, killed, gutted, breaded. A creel! A Fish-n-Filet! Shore Lunch!
"I reached. I reached for it. I reached out for that fly, but a chill stopped me. It seemed to grow from my groin, from my very center, a rising level of cool thick liquid. Kill a fish, on purpose. It wasn't that I didn't want to; it was that I did! There was no fear, no regret. I felt it in my soul, in my very guts: I liked it. I wanted to. It was right, it was real, it was me! The horror! The horror!
"In the moment my hand was out and I closed the last inches--or she pushed it to me--and it burned, it twitched in my grasp. I recoiled, staggered back, turned and ran with heaving, lunging steps through the shallows and through the trees, staggering and falling in the shingle, into the sweet roughness of gravel on my cheek, then nothing.
"When I awoke it was daylight. I had slept as well on that gravel bar as I had never slept at home. The stream slid by, pocked by rises and secret random whorls. I looked around, smiling, at the lonely perfection of an autumn mountain morning, smiling like an idiot.
"I never once thought it was a dream, you know. I know it wasn't, of course, but even in the moment of waking there I remembered it truly. I laughed to myself and stood, turned, walked.
“I still had her rod. In the daylight it was no less magnificent. The blank had a strange, rough, scaled finish, a deep burgundy with gold tints. At the end of a nearly invisible leader dangled that fly, frowsy in the daylight but still weird and wild and foreign. I remember trying to see it so I could imitate it later--not to fish, but to show--but it seemed to shift and change as I looked. I didn’t touch it. I clipped it free into the stream. It rode high for a time then sank in a slow, dark, coiling rise.
"Oh, and after I clipped the fly? That flyrod faded, faded. I have it still, but it's ordinary, or something less than ordinary, and the reel--just a reel now. I cast it occasionally, but I never fish it."
Mallory stopped, a still silhouette against a riotous sunset of all the most forgiving colors.
"We've missed the best of the hatch," somebody said.