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108 Last Cast He had worn the vest for al­ most fifty years. Half a cen­ tury. Worn it so often and so long only a few crin­ kled tan­ gles re­ mained on the wool patch and the ­ once-tawny cloth had dark­ ened with fly floa­ tant and sweat. He held it ­ briefly in his ­ gnarled hands be­ fore shrug­ ging it on over his shoul­ ders, the satis­ fy­ ing ­ weight of his fly boxes pull­ ing the pock­ ets down ­ against his with­ ered waist. Un­ zip­ ping them, he dis­ carded all but the light­ est box—a sil­ ver cache of a dozen tar­ nished ­ squares hold­ ing the few ­ nymphs and the ­ selftied dries that had ­ served him best and long­ est: four or five Adam­ ses, some Quill Gor­ dons, a hand­ ful of Elk Hair Cad­ dis whose pea­ cock herl and ­ bright red band­ ing shone dimly in the ­ room’s pre­ dawn light. The re­ main­ ing com­ part­ ments held ti­ nier flies—gray and black ­ midges and Blue Wing ­ Olives and as­ sorted oth­ ers so small a half dozen could have­ rested on the yel­ lowed nail of his thumb. He ­ dropped them all back into their ac­ cus­ tomed slots but an un­ matched pair, non­ de­ script and name­ less. Flies he’d ­ bought ten or fif­ teen or ­ thirty years ear­ lier on the South ­ Platte or the Mad­ i­ son or the Bea­ ver­ kill. Or per­ haps they too were flies he’d tied him­ self, work­ ing from a ­ Swisher or a Schwie­ bert vol­ ume open on the table in front of him—flies he’d used once or twice or maybe never on the Kick­ a­ poo or Trout Run. For years, ­ against the ad­ vance of age, he had ­ thought one of them would be the ­ stream he would walk last. More than ­ likely on a day whose fi­ nal­ ity he would rec­ og­ nize only later, look­ ing wist­ fully back from some hos­ pi­ tal bed or hos­ pice, if by then he was still able to rec­ og­ nize any­ thing 109 Last Cast at all. A room where, if the gods were be­ nev­ o­ lent, he’d re­ cline com­ fort­ ably after a ­ stroke or ­ broken hip. Can­ cer was some­ thing else en­ tirely. He had ­ switched off the lamp and ­ reached the door when a last image rose and held ­ briefly in the flood of mem­ ory. The first Min­ ne­ sota trout he’d ever ­ caught had come on a ­ streamer, the only fly he’d felt con­ fi­ dent fish­ ing back then. Re­ turn­ ing to the table, he ­ opened one of the dis­ carded boxes and re­ moved three big Mar­ i­ bou Mud­ dlers—by far the larg­ est flies re­ main­ ing in his col­ lec­ tion. Un­ used for . . . how long? A­ decade? More? He had long since con­ vinced him­ self that he no ­ longer­ fished them be­ cause he’d come to pre­ fer the del­ i­ cacy of ­ nymphs and dries—the pulse of a trout work­ ing up ­ through a thin ­ nine-foot ­ leader. And he knew that this was true. But so too was the blunt fact that a­ streamer as he aged had be­ come more dif­ fi­ cult to fish, es­ pe­ cially on big water, where wind and the some­ time need to ­ weight it could leave his arm heavy with labor and his brain ­ fraught with the ner­ vous ­ thought of a hook in the neck or the eye. Yet now, star­ ing down at the out­ sized flies in his hands, he re­ al­ ized with a sud­ den pang that he’d ­ missed them.­ Missed that dra­ matic mo­ ment when the bel­ ly­ ing line went taut ­ across the sur­ face of the water and the sud­ den throb of a heavy fish shot like­ electric cur­ rent up ­ through the tight­ ened mus­ cles of his arm. The grim irony of his sit­ u­ a­ tion ­ hadn’t es­ caped him. His was the kind of di­ ag­ no­ sis so dire that one’s clos­ est ­ friends and fam­ ily, if you had ei­ ther and lived al­ most any­ where else in the coun­ try, would have re­ flex­ ively re­ sponded with ur­ gent pleas...

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