Holding Lies (20 page)

She didn't say another word, and only because of that silence did he realize he had called her by the wrong name.

She took a step away and looked up the trail and wiped at her eye as if coming awake. Finally she said, “But what about other people? Sure, listen to yourself, but sometimes that means compromising some else's future. Right? Have you never thought of it that way?”

He didn't know what she was getting at, but he had the distinct feeling that he'd done wrong. “Sorry, it's an old habit.” He'd meant using the name Riffle.

But she turned from him. She cleared her throat. She pointed the way they'd come. “I wonder what Caroline is up to.”

A
NNIE WAS NEEDED
at work. “Telecommuting,” she called it. A lawsuit had been filed and she needed to prepare for a series of conference calls. Hank made her a pot of coffee, a sandwich, and left to drive upriver and chat with Walter. As he left, she thanked him while holding the phone to her ear.

He'd decided long ago that he wouldn't tell her everything, he just couldn't. But he'd told her parts that he'd never told anyone else—even Caroline didn't know that he'd once proposed to Rosemary—and in that telling, he'd found a surprising release, like a tree leaning in him had finally fallen to rest.

The ring wouldn't be a problem. He would just order another one for Caroline, and when he admitted what had happened that morning, Caroline would laugh, and that would help relax any awkwardness. He didn't have much cash left, he'd spent most of his reserve on updating the house for Annie's arrival, so he would pay on credit. But no big deal, this expense was worth a little debt.

He started the truck and pulled left on River Road.

The missing pictograph had gotten under his skin. The skull was one thing; it was spooky for sure, but it was still just a material object, something long on its way to decomposition. The pictograph on the other hand was alive; it contained the fragment of a living story,
and without that image, the tale told on those cliffs was incomplete. Caroline would see it just like Hank did, and so he hadn't told her about it, worrying that she might hold it against Walter.

But there was more to talk about than just that pictograph. Cherry Creek Timber was again lobbying to cut, or “salvage” as they called it, the forest burned during last summer's Williams Creek fire. The drainage was home to a small but lingering population of winter steelhead, and cutting the fragile hillsides would require some long-closed roads be reopened and regraveled. Even if every precaution was taken, the cutting operation would further destabilize the hillsides and dump sediment over the spawning grounds. The only benefit to the logging, as far as Hank could deduce, was to Cherry Creek's bottom line, and the handful of men paid a dirt-low wage to do the actual work.

Business had long been doing all it could to fuck up the watershed. Long-term damage for short-term profit. And Hank was, unfortunately, used to the stomachache the steady barrage of logging and mining caused. But this plan was different. It was more sweeping, more potentially harmful, and something about its premise, something about that word
salvage
. Such bullshit. After learning of the proposal, he'd lost his cool and thrown a glass across the house. It shattered, and Annie had called from the other room, “Everything all right?”

Salvage
. All lies and misdirections. On one level, the word assumed that trees left dead and standing in the forest were wasted. They needed to be rescued, otherwise they would be worthless. Which, of course, was simply crap. Dead and standing trees were an essential component of a healthy forest, home to all manner of bird and insect life. And once they fell, many would find their way into the creek bottom, providing refuge for all species of fish. But more generally, the dead trees acted as reservoirs of nutrients for future generations of flora and fauna, nutrients that would be stolen if the trees were to be cut and trucked to a mill.

The word
salvaged
. It encapsulated all that was wrong with how people had come to think of the natural world. As if the trees, the minerals, the animals were there for our benefit, for our immediate
gain. But weren't we just another player in this system? Might we be here for their benefit too?

Walter had long argued that the old division between nature as resource and humans as resource extractors was hogwash. But so was the new division between nature as beauty and humans as corruptor. The answer, Walter figured, was in the destruction of silly divisions in general, starting with the most flawed and dangerous of them all, the lie of “natural” versus “artificial.” People were too quick to term human actions and human products as “artificial” and any action or product of an ecosystem, planet, or galaxy as “natural.” But “ain't a human a natural critter too? Just as natural as an ape or deer or steelhead anyway. Anything that natural critter does is ‘natural,' am I right? So stop thinking of us as outside of the ‘natural' and start thinking of us as part of the ‘natural,' and well that'd just about change everything, now wouldn't it? Good luck finding a fool dim enough to ‘salvage' his own toes.”

But how would Walter justify “salvaging” that pictograph?

*

W
ALTER WASN'T HOME,
but his door wasn't locked either, and so Hank let himself in, as Walter would surely do if waiting at Hank's house. He poured himself a cup of orange juice—Walter always kept several jugs of the stuff in the refrigerator, believing vitamin C could cure or prevent any ailment if taken in sufficient quantities—and took a seat at the kitchen table. He started flipping through a fishing magazine there, but quickly grew bored of the grip-and-grins and the empty promises and was about to toss the rag aside when he saw an article called “Ipsyniho Chrome.” He didn't even have to read the byline to see who'd written it. Someone—Walter surely—had taken a black Sharpie to a page-sized photo of Morell cradling a fish half in the water, half out. He had Satan horns and a tail, and a dialogue bubble read, “Notice the impressive girth of my wanker.”

Hank left the magazine and began checking the obvious places first, the cabinets and the shelves, then found himself on hands and
knees looking under and behind the furniture. Soon he was checking the bedroom, the gear room, the bathrooms. He looked especially closely at the bedroom closet that contained the other artifacts. He knew the skull was in the shoe box on the bottom, though he couldn't bring himself to open it.

He poured himself a second glass of juice and considered leaving, but then decided to walk around back and check the boat port.

The driftboat was gone. Walter was probably running a trip. He moved some spare oars out of the way and found a green tarp. When he tried to lift it, he discovered the tarp contained something small, heavy, flat. A minute later, he was looking at the stick figures and salmon. Fucking Walter. Some things were inexcusable.

Walter arrived an hour later, his boat rattling against its trailer as the truck climbed the gravel driveway. “One for two,” he called as he gently let himself down from the cab. “Farmed the first one gloriously, you should have seen it. A real blowhard, couldn't cast thirty feet if God himself had given him three weeks of lessons.”

“Where'd you get the rises?”

“Guess.”

“Faux-Colman.”

“Close. Tinsel Town.” Walter pointed his wading staff at the orange juice. “Pour me one, kid.”

They sat on the tailgate eating filberts Walter had roasted in his solar oven, and discussing how they'd handle the new Cherry Creek offensive. “What pisses me off,” Walter said, “is if we win, they just try again. If they win, it's over, we're done.”

Hank bit a filbert in half. “We got to win every fucking time. They just got to win once.”

Walter tossed a nut in the air and caught it in his mouth. Sometimes he was agile for an old bastard.

“With the Morell death and all,” Hank said, “we probably shouldn't use spikes or strips or boom-booms on this one. Better to stay small, go through legitimate routes.”

“Agreed. Wouldn't want any office cop up in Salem thinking they've got a problem down here in Ipsyniho. God forbid they replace Carter with somebody worth a shit.”

They agreed they'd work this the regular route, the phone tree, the e-mail alerts, the blog postings, see if they couldn't drum up enough anglers to flood the state office with complaints. “And I'll get on the horn with the old faithful,” Hank said.

“Make sure you get Cynthia at the Sierra Club, and remind her she still owes us one. A long shot, but if you appeal puppy dog–style, you might get her. The yuppie guilt runs strong in that one.”

The nuts were gone, and Walter clapped his hands like a coach announcing the huddle was over. “Let's get a session in. Still got time to get upriver.”

Hank checked the sky. “There's something else, Walt.”

“Stop your pussyfootin'.”

Hank cleared his throat. “I was up at Pine Basin Springs, and saw one of the pictographs was missing.”

Walter smiled. “Knew you'd give me shit about that.” He spat on the ground between them. “This valley ain't some museum, you realize. There ain't some curator that comes around and keeps things safe in their climate-controlled boxes.”

“No offense, Walt, you know I have nothing but the utmost respect and all, but really. You can't just take these things. They're part of the valley.”

“And they're still part of the valley. Don't go getting your waders in a bunch. That pictio-graph was already loose. One more freeze and the sheet would have fallen free. Likely would have busted. I did it a favor, that's all.”

“But still.”

“Still what?” Walter pointed his wading staff at the sky. “If we're going make it to Red Gate, we best get on.”

Hank didn't move. He had dinner plans with Annie, and there was no way he was giving in that easy. “You're a selfish old prick, you know that? Let me take it back up to the spring.”

Walter climbed into his truck. “Fuck you and your high horse.” As the Chevy rumbled to a start, he called, “Rather fish alone anyhow.”

*

B
UT WHEN HANK
arrived back home, he found a note on the table that read, “Danny stopped by and offered to take me out for dinner. Couldn't remember what your plans were for tonight. Hope I didn't leave you in the lurch. See you before too long.”

So he extracted some prepackaged burritos from the freezer and set the toaster oven to three-seventy-five and started making the calls. First the Sierra Club, then Trout Unlimited, then the Native Fish Society, then the ten leads on the angler phone tree. By the time the burritos were done, he was already drafting up the action alert.

The phone rang a little after eight, and it was in his hand before the end of the first ring. Steve Burke, his client the day Morell went missing. “Sorry to call so late, but I knew you'd want to hear.” Carter had just called him and asked for a full description of the events of that day. “He asked three times if you had left me alone at any point during the trip. Three times, Hank. Like he thinks you might be the one who killed that guide. But haven't they already arrested someone?”

It was probably Carter just tying up some loose ends. Hank told Steve as much, thanked him for the call, and put on a movie.

*

C
OME MIDNIGHT, ANNIE
still wasn't home. His movie had ended and he couldn't keep himself awake any longer. He crawled into bed, but left the door open so he could hear her return.

H
ANK FIRED UP
the Bronco at dawn, loaded the rods, and headed upstream.

It was Annie who woke him, though only from a thin veil of sleep. She'd come creeping by his door a half hour before fishing light, like a teenager returned from some illicit rendezvous. He'd risen in hopes of catching her, but her door shut just as he reached the hallway. In the kitchen a few moments later, he'd found himself tossing a coffee cup into the sink and letting a drawer slam shut.

He parked on the Wright Creek Bridge, the blue green water swirling below, and lit a cigarette. It was Danny he was thinking about now. Danny with his arm around Annie. He pulled hard on the smoke— too hard—and gagged on it.

Below, off Lee's Lip, he could see a fish holding. Fish were always holding at Lee's Lip.

He'd named the spot after Lee Spencer, this generation's greatest mind. An archeologist by training, Lee now lived most of the year in a trailer at the refuge pool upstream, a pool as long as a semitruck but never as deep. At times, three hundred fish would hold there, awaiting higher water and better spawning conditions. In the days before Lee, the fish were often shot by drunk assholes, and at least twice, they'd been dynamited. Since Lee, they were hardly harassed even by bears.

Lee's days were spent recording what he saw. He kept a journal beside him and made notes whenever he saw a fish stir. If a fish rose to the surface, he recorded the time, the air temperature, the water temperature, and the item for which the fish rose. If the pod of steel-head became nervous, Lee examined the sky for eagles, the shores for coyotes, the water for otters. Anything and everything those fish did, he recorded. And from more than a decade of such notes, Lee had amassed an exhaustive understanding of steelhead behavior. For instance, he understood the fish possessed an acute sense of smell. If a deer crossed the riffle upstream, they would smell it in the water and begin jumping to get a better look. If a person touched the water upstream, they would begin a nervous daisy chain around the pool, their collective shape forming the mathematical notation for infinity.

But more than recording simple observations, Lee had been recording the ecology of a place, how the land affected its creatures. His was true nature writing. Lee wasn't a tourist in a place, he wasn't inspired by some fleeting moment of natural majesty, he was a character in the story of an ecosystem. His notes didn't turn the place into a portrait to be admired; they documented the thin tendrils of connection between him and the fish, the fish and the water, the water and the sky.