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The Rod
- University of Wisconsin Press
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149 The Rod Just below the slop ing lawn, down on the lake, a small boat is trol ling for wall eyes. The pair of shirt-sleeved fish er men are seated. When the boat turns, re traces its course, their lines glint briefly in the sun. The woman sit ting alone on her deck con tin ues to gaze at them, at the shim mer ing water. Sev eral years ear lier, pressed by her hus band, she had gone out on a fish ing boat for the only time in her life. They too were trol ling. She hadn’t got ten sea sick, as she feared she would, and he had ac com plished what he’d hoped to— caught and re leased a large, leap ing sail fish. But the ex pe ri ence had left him nearly as un im pressed as she had been—so in dif fer ent he’d for feited the pre paid fee and can celed the trip he’d booked for the fol low ing morn ing. “That’s it for me,” he said to her, step ping back onto the dock. “I’d for got ten how trapped I feel. Bored. Al ways have, even in my child hood. I have to be walk ing, mov ing—fish ing a stream.” Was it in fact the last time in his life he had been in a boat, that Feb ru ary in 2002 when they’d fled the frigid Min ne sota win ter for a week in Mex ico? What she re mem bers most of Zi hua ta nejo is not the things she liked the most—the lovely, palm-fringed beach below their rented condo; the gen tle ness of the local peo ple, even the young fathers with their chil dren; the walk along the curv ing bahia into town. What comes back to her vis cer ally now is the thun der storm the day after he’d caught the sail fish, when the rain began to fall be fore dawn and then kept on fall ing until it sluiced above their an kles down the slop ing streets as they sloshed along, in search of an open res tau rant, wear ing the black plas tic bags he’d pierced with arm and neck holes. His child ish 150 The Rod glee, the grav elly sound of his laugh ter. The look on his face when they splashed back into the condo, soaked to the skin, and he stared out at the churn ing surf lap ping the dark sand of La Mad era fifty yards below. The rod was out of his suit case be fore she had stripped and changed into dry clothes. The rod that was al ways with him, wherever they traveled, in its lit tle sil ver tube beside the green cloth reel sack and the plas tic box of as sorted flies. Lit er ally al ways. Tucked away in his car trunk or the suit case, and even once, when they’d hiked down into the Grand Can yon, strapped to his back. At pen siones in the Dol o mites. Plank-floored zim mers in Ger many. Too many French logis and Brit ish B&B’s to count. How often had he wak ened be fore dawn, in their thirty-two years of mar riage— climbed out of their bed and crept off to fish some ob scure moun tain stream or clear-flowing Scot tish burn they’d hap pened on in their ren tal car? How often braked to a stop on a bridge or pulled abruptly off on the shoul der so he could peer down at the cur rent, search ing for the ephem eral, flit ting shadow of a trout. If there had been a trout stream on cam pus, she’d once said to him with an edge of bit ter ness, he’d have kept the rod in his of fice. She had thought she was jok ing, how ever icily. But the fro zen ex pres sion on his face said at once that he’d con sid ered it, pos sibly even had in fact stored one there. And al ways too with out a li cense. It was yet an other of the count less contra dic tory things about him, quirks no one who knew him could fathom at all. A man scru pu lous...