A Good High Place

Chapter 8

c H A P T e R e i G H T The day in the doctor’s office a few weeks back is on my mind as i watch Keane fish. The river splits around a couple small islands here. it’s wider immediately before the fork, and he’s standing at the wide spot backcasting. Gracefully. False casting part of the time, stripping out line, casting the exact spot i’d seen the trout rise. He flips his wrist to set the hook, but i can tell from Keane’s manner that it’s no more than a junior he has on his line. As he starts hauling him in to release him, the resistance becomes much greater. one of those monster browns has decided to have junior for lunch, it appears. Fly fishermen don’t fish with live bait, but if providence helps out once in a while, a fisherman is blameless. i hear the zing then and i know for sure this is no brookie. The fish has run upstream, stripped line out to the backing on the reel, and he’ll be hard to turn. it seems forever before Keane does turn him, and i know his wrists will be getting tired and that he’ll be tempted to switch hands. if he does, he’ll let off the rod tension and lose the fish. But Keane doesn’t switch hands, and the trout turns, takes a run directly at him. Right past him, in fact, heading downstream for high water, Keane stripping in line like a madman. But it isn’t fast enough, A GOOD HIGH PLACE 51 and when Keane’s rod shoots up and stays there, i know the gig’s over, even though i never hear the ping. Keane is shouting words i won’t repeat, and then the rod sails toward me into the bush where i’m still standing unobserved. Keane sits down on the creek bed and tosses stones into the river for what i hope is a discreet interval. He says nothing when i sit next to him. Anyluck?iaskhim.Wasn’tevenfishing,heanswers,justenjoying the scenery. Nice and quiet out here, or at least it was. He gazes downstream in the direction of the lost brown. His creel and fly vest are sitting beside him on a nearby log, and i wonder how he’ll manage to explain them, not to mention the waders he’s wearing. Then i see he has no intention of it. i guess you’d rather do without company, i say, getting to my feet, feeling surprisingly sad. You’re here already, he says. Might as well stay. i sit back down. My britches are rolled up and i play with a mosquito bite on my left knee, crossing it with my fingernail to get the itch off. i wonder if Keane is uncomfortable because he’s worried i’d seen him lose the brown or if he’s thinking about that day in doc’s office. Then i realize we both know what the other is thinking. Minutes pass without either of us saying a word, each of us staring at our feet. i like rivers, Keane says finally. Better than any of the lakes, he says. doesn’t matter what river. Any would do. Petobeco, Boardman, Jordan—he liked them all, he would tell me over the years. Maybe, he says, it’s because a river seems to have direction to it. They twist and turn, he says, even disappear here and there, unlike the big lake or an ocean. Keane stands and wades out a ways in the riverbed, stepping over logs and rocks as he moves downstream. The river is low for this time of year, and i know what he means about rivers. i can see he belongs not just in the river but out there. No safe corners for Keane, no hiding places, no middle ground. The river taught me something, he says. Taught me i can stand and fight the current, or i can lift my feet and float on downstream. His hand floats out over the stream like i pictured his body doing. He keeps talking. There are times when you have to do one thing and times when you need to do the other. Then he stops talking and sits on one of the logs facing me. i had this dream...