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Last Cast
- University of Wisconsin Press
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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...