Bitch Creek

B
OOKS BY
W
ILLIAM
G. T
APPLY

B
RADY
C
OYNE NOVELS
:

Death at Charity's Point

The Dutch Blue Error

Follow the Sharks

The Marine Corpse

Dead Meat

The Vulgar Boatman

A Void in Hearts

Dead Winter

Client Privilege

The Spotted Cats

Tight Lines

The Snake Eater

The Seventh Enemy

Close to the Bone

Cutter's Run

Muscle Memory

Scar Tissue

Past Tense

A Fine Line

Shadow of Death

B
OOKS ON THE OUTDOORS
:

Those Hours Spent Outdoors

Opening Day and Other Neuroses

Home Water Near and Far

Sportsman's Legacy

A Fly-Fishing Life

Bass Bug Fishing

Upland Days

Pocket Water

The Orvis Guide to Fly Fishing for Bass

Gone Fishin'

O
THER
N
ONFICTION
:

The Elements of Mystery Fiction: Writing the Modern Whodunit

O
THER NOVELS
:

Thicker than Water
(with Linda Barlow)

First Light
(with Philip R. Craig)

A NOVEL

By William G. Tapply

The Lyons Press

Guilford, Connecticut

An imprint of The Globe Pequot Press

Copyright © 2004 by William G. Tapply

First Lyons Press paperback edition, 2005

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, except as may be expressly permitted in writing from the publisher. Requests for permission should be addressed to The Lyons Press, Attn: Rights and Permissions Department, P.O. Box 480, Guilford, CT 06437.

The Lyons Press is an imprint of The Globe Pequot Press.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN 1-59228-765-4

The Library of Congress has previously cataloged an earlier (hardcover) edition as follows:

Tapply, William G.

Bitch Creek : a novel / by William G. Tapply.

p. cm.

ISBN 1-59228-435-3 (trade cloth)

I. Title.

PS3570.A568B57 2004

813'.54—dc22

2004048954

This book is for Keith Wegener and Blaine Moores and Jason Terry and Uncle George and Uncle Woober (rest their souls) and all the other men of Maine who have taken me out on their boats and into their woods and told me their stories.

“. . . they could hear the fire coming. It sounded like a freight train. . . . they just had time to jump into the car and drive away before the fire burst out of the woods, setting the backyard field aflame. The house exploded. ‘It just blew,' Ruth remembers. ‘It just blew apart.' ”

Joyce Butler,

Wildfire Loose: The Week Maine Burned

I am grateful to Rick Boyer and Vicki Stiefel, who read early drafts of the story and steered me right, and to Lilly Golden, whose tough love made it a better book.

A
FEW MINUTES AFTER EIGHT
in the morning, Stoney Calhoun heard the bell ding over the door, alerting him that someone had come into the shop. He glanced up from his fly-tying vise. A white-haired man stood inside the doorway studying the rack of Sage and Orvis fly rods against the wall. Calhoun returned his attention to the nearly completed fly in his vise.

A minute later, the man was standing in front of him. “What in hell is
that?”

Calhoun did not raise his eyes. “Bunker fly,” he mumbled, pronouncing it
bunk-ah.
He always thickened his Maine accent for out-of-state customers, on the theory that they found it quaint and charming. Actually, it was Kate's theory, but Calhoun guessed she was right. Out-of-staters, flatlanders, folks “from away”—and this old gentleman, with his pressed chino pants, shiny loafers, green polo shirt buttoned to the throat, and his distinctly Dixie drawl, certainly was from away—expected Downeasters like Stoney Calhoun to talk like the caricatures they'd heard in television commercials, and Kate Balaban believed they'd be more inclined to spend money in her shop if the shopkeepers satisfied their expectations.

“Say ‘ayuh' more, Stoney,” Kate kept telling him. “You've got to practice. Go for taciturn. If you have the chance, tell 'em they can't get there from here.”

Kate was the boss, so Calhoun tried to do it her way.

Without lifting his head, he noted that the man's hands, which rested on the front of the fly-tying bench, were deeply tanned and speckled with liver spots. He wore a Rolex on his left wrist. No wedding band. Professionally manicured nails, cut short and square.

Calhoun licked his fingers, smoothed back the saddle hackles and Marabou and bucktail and Flashabou of his bunker fly work-inprogress, then made a few careful winds of thread in front to lay it all back, taking his time with it.

Taciturn. Laconic. A local character. That was Calhoun.

Finally he looked up. “Georgia? Florida?”

The man's thinning white hair was brushed straight back from a high, deeply tanned forehead. He had big ears that stuck out almost at right angles from his head and penetrating ice-blue eyes behind steel-rimmed glasses, with deep crow's feet webbing from the corners. Calhoun judged he was pushing seventy. “Key Largo, actually,” the man said. “How'd you know?”

Calhoun shrugged. “Wild guess.” He returned his attention to his bunker fly. He pivoted the vise around so he could look at both sides of it, and then he whip-finished the head, clipped off the thread, and took it from the vise. It was nearly eight inches long, and about half that deep from belly to back. He handed it to the man. “Stick on a pair of big prismatic eyes,” he said, “and she'll be done. Whaddya think?”

The man squinted at it. “It looks scary. What eats something like this?”

“Stripers.”
Strip-ahs.
“You don't have striped bass in Key Largo.”

The man smiled, showing either expensively capped teeth or a spiffy set of dentures. “No, we don't. But we have tarpon that weigh two hundred pounds, and they'd flee if they saw something like this thing coming at 'em.”

“Menhaden,” said Calhoun. “Pogies. Bunker. Same critter. important baitfish hereabouts. They start showin' up inshore in late June—about now. By the middle of the summer they've growed up to a foot long or more. Stripers and bluefish love 'em. You ought to see the bunker flies we tie for August.”

The man gave the fly back to Calhoun, then held out his hand. “My name's Green. Fred Green. And actually I was hoping to do some trout fishing. Brook trout. Natives, not stockers. I'm looking for someone who really knows the back roads and woods around here. A native. A real Mainer. Folks at the hotel recommended you.”

Calhoun looked up. “Me?”

Green shrugged. “I don't know your name.”

“Calhoun,” he said. He shook the old man's hand. It was soft and uncallused, although his handshake was manly enough. “When were you lookin' to go?”

“Today's my only chance. I'm up on business. Figured I'd play hooky from the convention for a day. Always wanted to catch a Maine brook trout.”

Calhoun leaned back in his chair and looked at Fred Green over the tops of the half-glasses he wore for fly-tying. “You want a wild brookie, you're gonna have to do some trekkin'. Anything close to the road's been fished out or ruined by hatchery stockers.”

“Good,” said Green. “That's what I want. I've done a lot of trekking in my life. Ever been to Argentina?”

“Nope,” said Calhoun.

“I have,” said Green. “Sea-run brown trout as big as your leg. What about Russia? Siberia's the new Atlantic salmon frontier. Accommodations are mighty crude in Siberia.”

“Ain't been to Russia, neither,” said Calhoun.

“I camped for a week beside a river in Alaska,” said Green. “King salmon. Monster rainbows that ate mice and ducklings, mosquitoes in clouds that blocked the sun. Grizzly bears prowling through camp every night. You've been to Alaska, of course.”

“Nope. Been all over Maine, though. Jackman, Mattawamkeag, Chesuncook, Rangeley, Seboomook.” Laying on the Maine accent. “Yessuh. Done a bit of trekkin' in Maine.” Calhoun shrugged. “Sounds like you're one helluva fisherman, Mr. Green. A six-inch brook trout gonna make you happy?”

Green grinned. “I don't care how big they are. I've fished all over. Keep track of all the native fish I've nailed. Brown trout in Bavaria. Salmon in Iceland. Dolly Varden in Alaska. I've caught every subspecies of cutthroat out West. Hiked clear to the top of a mountain in Nevada to get my golden. But I've never caught a truly native brook trout before. I figure, here I am in Maine, and at my age I may never get another chance.”

Calhoun sighed, got up from behind his fly-tying bench, and went over to the counter. He flipped open the shop's logbook and pretended to study it. “You should've called yesterday,” he said. “Kinda short notice.”

“Today's my only chance,” said Green. “There's a big tip in it for you.”