The Americans Are Coming (14 page)

Palidin had learned at a very early age how to stroke metal with metal for the purpose of creating magnets. “If salmon are attracted to magnets,” thought Palidin, “why wouldn’t a magnetic hook work better than just your everyday, ordinary hook?”

Palidin decided to pay a visit to George Hanley.

Palidin found George sitting in the shade of the barn, smoking a cigarette. George always went behind the barn to smoke.

“How’s she goin’, Pal?” greeted George. “What’s up?”

“Was thinkin’ I might go fishin’. Was wonderin’ if ya had any hooks.”

“Not me, no. There’s some in the store, I think.”

“Thought maybe you could steal me a couple.”

“Shouldn’ be any trouble. Where ya goin’ fishin’?”

“I dunno. Someplace where it’s good.”

“Trout or salmon?”

“Salmon.”

“Ya need flyhooks and a rod n’ reel to fish salmon.”

“Thought I might borrow Shad Nash’s outfit. You sure ya need flyhooks for fishing salmon?”

“Yep. That’s what everybody’s usin’.”

“Ya think you could steal me a flyhook?”

“It’s hard to say. Flyhooks are a lot more costly than bait-hooks. Why don’t you just go trout fishin’ back the brook?”

“Because I have an idea about catching salmon.”

“What idea?”

“Get me a flyhook and I’ll tell ya.”

“What makes you think the idea is worth it?”

“I don’t. I have to experiment.”

“Well, I might be able to get you one flyhook. What kind do you want?”

“It don’t matter. I don’t know one from the other.”

“Okay. I’ll see what I can do. Wait here.”

In less than five minutes, George returned with a fly called
Blue Charm and handed it to Palidin. George was always giving Palidin things. George Hanley and Palidin Ramsey were good friends.

“Want to play in the hay?” asked George, gesturing to the inside of the barn.

“I was thinking about you last night,” said Palidin.

*

Dryfly found himself pacing restlessly. He couldn’t quite figure out what was happening to him, but he knew that something strange was in the making. For the tenth time he found himself pondering the facts. “She spent a lotta the night talkin’ to me and hardly spoke at all to Shad. True, they walked all the way here for me guiddar, but they didn’ take long in doin’ it. They couldn’ do nothin’ in that short o’ time. Shad didn’ seem to know what he was doin’. He got drunk, too, and puked off the veranda. Almost didn’t make it. Shad drank a lot more than I did. No wonder he got drunk. Lillian was prob’ly makin’ fun o’ us, but . . . she seemed to like me.”

On the way to the Cabbage Island Salmon Club, Dryfly picked a daisy. “Mom says all women like flowers,” he thought. “Mom says she carried daisies when she married Buck.”

As Dryfly neared the cabin where Lillian Wallace was staying, he found himself thinking that maybe he had arrived too early. “It’s still mornin’, she might not even be out of bed.” He didn’t knock on the door but sat on the veranda to wait and watch the river. He heard robins and chickadees and crows. He could see the river and the forest. He could smell the morning, fresh, radiant in the sun, cleansed to sweetness by the recent rain.

“Good morning, Dryfly,” greeted Lillian from behind the screen door. “Am I a sleepy head, or are you early?”

“The train goes at eleven o’clock. You said you had a letter to mail and I thought . . .”

“Oh, yes. I haven’t finished it yet. Would you like some orange juice?”

“Sure.”

“I’ll bring it out to you.” In a moment Lillian reappeared
with two glasses of orange juice, handed one to Dryfly and sat at the table. She was wearing a blue and white checked blouse, blue shorts and sandals.

“I picked you a daisy,” said Dryfly, handing her the flower.

“Oh, how nice! Thank you! How thoughtful of you!”

Dryfly was feeling a little bit embarrassed about giving her the flower, but he was glad that he had given it to her. Lillian put the daisy in her hair. She had just taken her morning shower; fresh, clean and radiant, she complemented the morning itself. Dryfly could not take his eyes off her.

“Did you have a good time last night?” she asked, waving at the mosquitoes and blackflies that were already commencing to seek out her sweetness.

“Yeah,” said Dryfly.

“My father really enjoyed your singing. It would be nice if you could come down and play at the Red Lion.”

“You never know, I might.”

“Have you seen Shadrack this morning?”

“Not yet.”

“Ouch!” Lillian slapped a mosquito that was feasting on her thigh. “The bugs are terrible! Don’t they bother you?”

“Sometimes.”

“Only sometimes? I think they’re out to devour me. How do you put up with the things?”

Dryfly wanted to tell her what Palidin had told him: that insects were very tiny; that insects had tiny eyes that restricted their vision to but a couple of feet; that insects were attracted to smell and body heat and that, by waving and slapping and getting excited, one was only attracting more of them.

“They don’t bother me that much,” he said.

There was a can of repellent sitting on the table. Picking it up, Lillian said, “They sure bother me!”

Lillian sprayed her legs and arms. She sprayed some into the palm of her hand, then rubbed the back of her neck and face; she closed her eyes and sprayed her hair, and then she sprayed the air about her.

“Your father gone fishin’?” asked Dryfly.

“He and Mr. Tucker went to Newcastle to see a lawyer. My father’s buying some property.”

“From Lindon?”

“It’s right on the river. Dad tells me it’s beautiful.”

“Good salmon pool there,” commented Dryfly. “Only one left around here.”

“What happened to the others?” asked Lillian.

“Oh, they’re still there, but us lads can’t fish in them.”

“But why?”

“Lads from Fredericton and the States and stuff own them. They don’t want us lads fishin’ in their pools . . . ketch all the fish.”

“But there’s got to be plenty for everyone, isn’t there?”

“Yeah . . . I don’t know. I don’t fish much anyway. Most of the people around here fish with a net.”

“But that’s against the law, isn’t it?”

Dryfly shrugged. “If you want salmon, that’s how ya gotta get ’em if ya don’t have a pool to fish in.”

“Don’t people get caught by the wardens?”

“Sometimes. Hardly ever.”

“Well, my father will let you fish in his pool, Dryfly. Don’t you worry about that.”

“Not worried. I hardly ever fish anyway.”

“Dad wants to build a cottage next year.”

“That’s good. You’ll be able to come up more often.”

“I guess so. I’d really like to see the property sometime.”

“I know where it is.”

“Is it far from here?”

“The other side o’ the river. Just cross the bridge and down the other side a little bit. See that house down there on the hill?”

Dryfly pointed at the paintless house, barn, woodshed, outdoor toilet, pigpen, toolshed, binder shed, henhouse and well-house that sat on the hill, across and downstream a half a mile or so.

“Could we get over there to see it?”

“No trouble. Cross the bridge and down the path. Wanna go?”

“Sure. I’d love to.”

Dryfly and Lillian left the Cabbage Island Salmon Club and went over the hill to the river. They followed a riverside path upstream for several hundred yards until they came to the footbridge.

The footbridge consisted of four steel cables that spanned the river, two on top and two on the bottom. The sides and the bottom were held together by fencing wire. The two bottom cables were crossed with four-foot lengths of two-by-four lumber. Three strips of six-inch board were nailed to the two-by-fours, giving the bridge an eighteen-inch walking space. The cables were connected to pillars of stone and concrete on either side of the river and were stabilized in the middle of the river by a similar abutment. The bridge had to be high to escape the spring torrents and ice flows, so there were stairs of about thirty steps leading to the top of each riverside abutment. The bridge was sturdy enough to hold the weight of, perhaps, a thousand men, but it looked shaky and tended to bounce and sway when walked upon. For Lillian, walking the bridge was a new experience and scary business. She doubted its durability. When she got to the middle abutment she stopped to gather herself.

The morning breeze, cooled by the rains of the previous night, played in her hair and brought gooseflesh out on her arms and legs. Lillian eyed the river, the forested hills in the distance, the little farms, a swooping osprey in the cloudless sky. Dryfly eyed Lillian, her golden hair, her smooth tanned skin, her big blue eyes.

“You scared walkin’ the bridge?” he asked.

“Well, it’s a new experience,” she said. “It’s kind of shaky.”

“Hold the devil himself.”

“Yes, but will it hold two devils?” laughed Lillian.

“In a thunderstorm one night, a lad got beat to death on one of these things,” said Dryfly. “Up the river. Above Gordon. The wind came up, started the cables flappin’ and beat him to death. You can bang these top cables together hard enough to cut you in two with a little help. It’ll bounce, too, and damn near throw you off of it.”

“Must be scary.”

“Scary enough. See right down there on the bend? There’s a hole down there. You can drop an anchor from a twenty-foot rope and it’ll hang straight down. Corpse’s Hole it’s called, ’cause that’s where they always find the bodies of anyone that’s drowned. There’s a whirlpool there and the bodies just go round and round. Mom says it’s prob’ly haunted. Old Bill Tuney said he heard a ghost there one time.”

“A ghost? What did the ghost sound like? What did he say?”

“Don’t know. He never said, I don’t think. He’s dead now. Whoopin’ prob’ly.”

Dryfly looked at Lillian and felt a little bit ashamed; felt he was perhaps sounding like a superstitious old woman, that his choice of topic was perhaps too morbid a thing to have been discussing with a young lady.

Lillian was eyeing Corpse’s Hole thoughtfully. “This whole river seems haunted,” she said. “Did you and Shadrack really see the whooper?”

“I . . . I . . . no.”

“I didn’t think so. Shadrack lies a lot, doesn’t he?”

“He doesn’t mean to lie. He just always does it. And we did hear the thing . . . right in the woods beside us. We were just little kids and ran home.”

Lillian turned to face Dryfly. Dryfly turned away to watch the river.

“He’s funny looking,” thought Lillian, eyeing the worn shirt and jeans, the dirty sneakers, the hair parted in the middle and the long nose.

“Would you hold my hand the rest of the way?” she asked. “Ah . . . sure.” Dryfly looked self-consciously back and forth along the bridge, a little embarrassed that someone might see him holding her hand.

When their hands touched, their hearts quickened. Dryfly’s hand was warm and perspiring – so was Lillian’s. They walked on, slowly, Lillian being careful to walk the center boards, to minimize the sway. Dryfly, close behind her, reached awkwardly ahead to hold her hand.

When they got to the far side, Dryfly wondered if she would let go of his hand. He left it up to her to make the decision. As they went down the steps and crossed Billy MacDonald’s field, Bob Nash’s field and Todder Brook, they were still holding hands.

“Do you plan to go back to school?” asked Lillian.

“I dunno,” said Dryfly. “Maybe.”

“What’s your plan for the future?”

“I dunno. Not much to do around here.”

“Will you move away?”

“Prob’ly. Everyone else does. Around here, you’re either too young or too old to leave, or you’re gone. Me brother Digger’s livin’ in Ontario. I might go and live with ’im in a year or so. Lots to do in Ontario.”

“What does . . . ah . . . Digger work at?”

“Don’t work hard at all. Packin’ tomatoes in a place called Leamington . . . makin’ two dollars an hour.”

“You could play music for a living.”

“Naw.”

On the south side of Lindon Tucker’s house grew an apple tree loaded with juicy green crab apples.

“Would you like an apple?” asked Dryfly.

Lillian and Dryfly, still holding hands, walked up the hill to the apple tree. Dryfly picked a few and offered one to Lillian.

“They’re awfully green, aren’t they?”

“Won’t hurt ya. Hardly ever give ya the shits.”

Lillian giggled a giggle that Dryfly found very pleasing. “Why ya laughin’?”

“‘The shits,’” she said.

Dryfly laughed too.

They stopped laughing when they bit into the apples. They squinted their eyes, the muscles in their cheeks contracted, they wrinkled their noses – the apples were very sour.

They walked around Lindon Tucker’s house and sat on the swing.

“It’s very pleasant here,” said Lillian, “and very quiet.”

“Pretty place, yeah,” said Dryfly. “Look! There’s a butterfly!” A big yellow butterfly played on an air current that eventually led to the arm of Dryfly’s swing.

“Hmm,” said Dryfly, “what’s this?”

“It likes you,” said Lillian.

Dryfly said nothing, thought, “Everything’s very pretty.”

“How old are you?” asked Lillian.

“Fifteen.”

“Do you have a girlfriend?”

“Naw. Ain’t many girls around here.”

“Shadrack said he had several girlfriends.”

“Naw. He didn’t mean it.”

“Shad lied about girlfriends,” thought Dryfly. “Shad lied about everything.”

“Do you have a boyfriend?” asked Dryfly.

“No. I’m only fifteen, too.”

They were eyeing each other and feeling very warm inside.

“Thank you for the daisy,” said Lillian. “You’re the first boy to ever give me a flower.”

Lillian reached out and gently placed her hand on Dryfly’s knee. Dryfly stared into her eyes and saw Heaven.

Something very emotional was sweeping over Lillian – a combination of happiness, sadness and bewilderment. It excited her to the point of tears.

“The butterfly and I both like you,” she said.

Dryfly, swept by similar emotions, swallowed, said, “I . . . like you, too.”

“The appropriate thing to do,” thought Lillian, “would be to kiss him. The appropriate thing to do is for him to kiss me.”