The Americans Are Coming (8 page)

In order to have breakfast ready for the early-rising anglers, Helen had to leave home at five o’clock in the morning. Rex, her old brown dog, always followed her to work. Rex was fed very well on the scraps left over from the Cabbage Island Salmon Club dinners.

One hot July day in 1962, Helen MacDonald found herself in a bad mood. She had baked a blueberry pie and had left it in front of an open window to cool. An hour later she looked to see how the pie was doing, and to her amazement and great displeasure, the pie had vanished. She had paid little Joey Brennen fifty cents of her own hard-earned money for those berries, hoping to impress a tip from the Americans with a pie.

It wasn’t the first time she had lost food from that window but it hadn’t happened since the previous year. Helen thought that maybe the thief had grown up and had developed some conscience. “It’s plain to see that Dryfly Ramsey ain’t ever growing up.”

Dryfly Ramsey naturally got the blame. Dryfly Ramsey was a Catholic and, therefore, bad enough to do it. Besides, earlier, Helen had seen Dryfly snooping about the place. She should have known enough then to remove the pie from the window sill.

That night, Helen related her frustration to Bert Todder.

“I don’t know what I’m ever going to do! That tramp! If a poor woman can’t make a livin’ without the likes o’ that tramp botherin’ her, what’s the world comin’ to!”

“Are you sure it was him?” asked Bert.

Bert Todder was making his rounds. Whenever Bert made his rounds, he always made sure to visit Helen MacDonald. Helen MacDonald was an old maid, Bert was a bachelor. Although Helen liked Bert, sexually she wouldn’t touch him with a ten-foot pole. However, Bert thought there was always a chance. After all, he was male and she was female.

“Course, I’m sure! Who else would do it?”

“Did you ask anybody about it?”

“I saw ’im snoopin’ around!”

“Ya can’t leave stuff layin’ around where he is.”

“If ya can’t leave a pie on a window sill without some no good tramp takin’ it right out from underneath your eyes, it’s gettin’ pretty damn bad, I’d say! If I get my hands on that . . . that tramp, I’m gonna strangle ’im! I’ll put him in his place, I tell ya!”

“You need a good man, Helen dear.”

“There ain’t no such thing as a good man, you old coot!” Bert squinted up his eyes and laughed. Helen eyed Bert’s lone tooth. “He sounds like he’s cryin’,” she thought.

“Ya know what I’d do, Helen darlin’?”

“What?”

“Well, I gotta go, but I’ll tell ya. Must be gettin’ late, ain’t it? Anyway, what I’d do is, I’d make another pie and put Ex-Lax in it. Put it on the window sill just like ya did before. Let ’im eat that and see how he likes it. That’ll fix ’im!”

“Ex-Lax,” thought Helen. “It’ll cost me fifty cents, but it would be worth it.”

Helen was glad she had thought of it. She liked the idea very much. It would teach Dryfly Ramsey a lesson.

*

William Wallace tied on a Black Bear Hair with yellow hackle and green butt and picked up his eight-foot Orvis. The
bamboo Orvis was the ultimate in fishing rods as far as William (Bill) Wallace was concerned. The Orvis had been a parting gift from the vice-president (Jimmy), the bastard who was after the presidency. Bill Wallace was the president of the company and had no intentions of stepping down.

“Here’s a fishing rod for you,” Jimmy had said. “Why don’t you go fishing, get away for a while. I’ll look after things.”

Bill Wallace didn’t know what Jimmy was up to, but Bill figured something was being schemed. Bill Wallace didn’t trust the vice-president as far as he could throw him.

Bill accepted the rod and went fishing. He knew that something negative could happen, but he was not overly concerned. Bill Wallace had a fifty-million-dollar concept for Phase One of the new regional hospital that would leave Jimmy, the vice-president, gaping in awe. Bill Wallace was the president of a construction company, with a contract with the government of Massachusetts to build a hundred-and-fifty-million-dollar hospital in Pittsfield.

Bill Wallace waded ankle-deep into the Dungarvon River and stopped to look around.

“You have a beautiful rivah here, Lindon, ghosts or no ghosts. You say it was never heard after?”

Lindon Tucker, the guide, was lying amidst the shore hay, fighting flies.

“’Pon me soul, yeah,” said Lindon. “No one around here’s heard a peep since.”

Bill looked at the river flowing peacefully by. He looked downstream to where the river bent and vanished behind a forested wall. He could see the hills, the fields, even the reflection of some houses on the mirror-like expanse before him. A swallow dipped and dashed, a salmon parr jumped, an unfamiliar bird could be heard scolding something, perhaps its mate, in a nearby spruce.

“Are we going to catch a salmon today, Linny? Is there anything in heah’?”

“Ya might, ya might, ya might. There ain’t no amount o’ fish, though.”

“Well, I’ll give it a try. Christ, there’s got to be somethin’ in heah’.”

Bill Wallace waded in to his knees, released ten feet of his pink air cel line and made a cast. He pulled another four feet from his Saint John Hardy and cast again. He could feel the pressure of the current against his legs, dry in the canvas-topped Hodgemen waders. He lengthened out a few more feet and made another cast. The Black Bear Hair with yellow hackle and green butt drifted past what Bill thought was a potential hotspot. Nothing. He moved downstream a few more steps and cast again.

“I hope Lillian likes it up here,” he thought. “She’s been wanting to come with me ever since she wrote that essay on the Dungarvon Whooper.” Bill chuckled to himself, “The Dungarvon Whopper!”

Bill kept stepping and casting, stepping and casting until he had covered the whole rocky area the locals referred to as a pool, reeled in his line and waded back to where Lindon lay. Lindon was nearly asleep in the morning sun.

“Did the boys actually see the . . . the whooper?”

“Oh, yeah. Yep. Yeah, oh yeah, they seen it all right. Looked like a cow, yeah. Big as a moose, so it was, yeah. Took a shot at it, so they did. Heard the shot meself, so I did, yeah. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, heard it meself. .303. Never even slowed ’im down. Stopped him from screaming, though. Yes sir, never saw ’im after. Never peeped since!”

“Where’s this young . . . what did you say his name was?”

“Shad? Peelin’ pulp, I think. Back with John. Workin’ with John Kaston, yeah.”

“And the other one?”

“You’d prob’ly find Dryfly home. Home, yeah. Playin’ guiddar. All he does is play guiddar. Good at it, too, yeah. Another Hank Snow, that lad, yeah. Gonna give it another try?”

“I think I’ll give it one more try, then head back to the club. What do you think, Linny?”

Lindon yawned. He wanted a break from sleeping on the shore. The sun was too hot and the flies were bothering him. Lindon knew that there were very few, if any, salmon in the river and that Bill Wallace’s chances of catching one were close to nil.

“Can’t ketch ’im wit a dry line,” said Lindon.

Bill Wallace started the procedure again in much the same fashion. Bill knew that his chances were very poor, too. The weather was too hot for good, productive fishing. But Bill Wallace was standing in the cool water away from the flies. Bill Wallace liked being on the river and liked the scenery and the fresh air. He changed flies, went to the Squirrel Tail with yellow hackle he’d purchased from Bert Todder.

“Bert Todder ties the best damn salmon fly in the world,” thought Bill. “So delicate, yet so strong and durable.”

Bill took his eyes off the colourful little flyhook and scanned the scenery again. “So scenic and peaceful,” he thought.

Across the river stood a massive log cabin, with two stone fireplaces, a breezeway between the kitchen and the living quarters, a full length veranda, shaded in a grove of pines.

“Nice little place,” thought Bill. “Belongs to Sam Little. Sam’s a Yale man, I think. Out of Hartford. Made his money in the hotel business. He’s got the best salmon pool on the Dungarvon and I’m casting directly into it from Lindon Tucker’s shore. I wonder why he never bought Lindon Tucker out?”

“Does Sam Little spend much time at his lodge?” asked Bill. “Too much, too much, too much. Like the, like the, like the feller says, too much.”

“Did you ever guide for him?”

“Yeah. Oh yeah. I guided the old sonuvawhore, so I did. Yeah, I guided him, all right. Guided him too much.”

Bill Wallace waded deeper in the river, smiling to himself. “Lindon Tucker wouldn’t sell Sam Little anything,” thought Bill.

*

A freshly peeled stick of pulpwood is as slippery as a greased eel, or, in the words of Bert Todder, “slipperier than Shirley Ramsey’s slop pail dump.” Shirley Ramsey dumped her slop pail on the grass, ten feet east of the house, and on more than just a few occasions, while waiting for the mail, a man would go around the house to “see a man about a horse” and slip and
fall on the accumulated grease. The only way to identify a slop pail dump is the longer grass that grows from its constantly enriched situation.

The pulpwood stick slipped from Shadrack’s hands, taking a fair amount of the skin with it. Shadrack didn’t swear. He was too hot and sweaty and fly-bitten to swear. He was beyond swearing. He was speechless. He was fourteen and his mind was on more interesting things. If he’d been in a state to speak his mind, he’d have yelled, “That American girl at the Cabbage Island Salmon Club is the prettiest thing on Earth! I hate this jeezless job,” and “There’s gotta be a better way to make a livin’ than this.”

“Hurt yer hand?” asked John Kaston. John Kaston was but a few feet away, trimming the limbs from a fir he’d just felled.

Shad analyzed the scratch amidst the dirt and pitch on his palm. “Just a scratch,” he thought.

“I cut it damn near off!” he said. “I’d better go home! See ya later!”

That was how Shadrack Nash quit his first job.

John Kaston shook his head in dismay.

“The lazy bugger only lasted three days,” muttered John to his axe.

*

Dryfly Ramsey sat in the shade behind the house, playing his guitar and singing Hank Snow’s “Sentimental.” It was a pretty song. It had nice chords in it. Dryfly liked it.

Dryfly felt somewhat embarrassed when Shadrack rounded the corner. Although Dryfly had played and sung a thousand times to the accompaniment of Shad and his banjo, he still didn’t want Shad to think he played alone. Dryfly was shy. He stopped immediately.

“How’s she goin’ today?” asked Dryfly.

“The very best,” greeted Shad.

“Not workin’ today?”

“Naw. Quit. Got ugly.”

“Yeah?”

“Told old John Kaston to shove his spud up his arse!”

“Ya didn’t, did ya? Wha’?”

“Got any makin’s? I’m dyin’ for a smoke. Never had a cigarette all day.”

“Yeah. Awful dry though,” said Dryfly, handing Shadrack the package of Vogue tobacco and papers they referred to as “makin’s.”

“See that little lady at the club?” asked Shad.

“Hasn’t everybody?”

“Let’s go down.”

“Now?”

“Why not?”

“Liable to get shot.”

“What for? We never did nothin’.”

“You didn’t, maybe, but I did.”

“What ya do?”

“Stole a blueberry pie.”

“Where from, the kitchen?”

“Off the window sill.”

“Was it good?”

“The very best.”

“Ya git caught?”

“No, but ya never know who might’ve seen a lad. They’ll blame me anyway. They always do.”

“That’s because it’s you that always does it.”

“You do it, too.”

Shad shrugged and grinned. “There might be another one today,” he said. “Let’s go down.”

“You ain’t scared of gittin’ caught?”

“Naw. What’re they gonna do, put us in jail for stealin’ a blueberry pie?”

Dryfly sighed. “Guess it won’t hurt to go down,” he said, leaning his guitar against the house. He rose from the grass, leaving a bum print where he had been sitting.

The two boys crossed the tracks and Stan Tuney’s field. They came to Tuney’s brook and took the shaded path that followed the brook to the river. The large spruce and elms that grew beside the brook sighed in the dry summer wind.

Just before they got to the river, they crossed the brook on a footbridge Stan built and went up the hill to where the six log cabins that made up the Cabbage Island Salmon Club sat. Like Sam Little’s lodge, the Cabbage Island Salmon Club camps sat in a grove of gigantic pines. From the front of each camp, one had a view of a mile of river in either direction.

In the shade, outside the dining camp, sat Bert Todder, Dan Brennen and Stan Tuney. They were waiting for the Club owners to finish lunch. The guides might have as much as three hours before they would be obliged to go back into the glaring sun of the river. The guides all were thankful that the Americans took a long time to eat their lunch. Lindon Tucker still hadn’t returned with Bill Wallace. Bert Todder, Dan Brennen and Stan Tuney all were thankful that they weren’t guiding the “fish hog,” the name they called Bill Wallace.

Lillian Wallace sat in a snug bathing suit on the lounge veranda, reading
Gone with the Wind
. High up in a pine tree, a red squirrel chattered. The good-time voices of the Americans came in bursts of shouts and laughter from the dining camp. A Jeep, a Ford station wagon and a Cadillac sat in the driveway.

When they neared the kitchen, Dryfly was delighted to see another blueberry pie on the window sill.

The boys, hidden behind a nearby tree, eyed the pie.

“Looks kinda suspicious to me,” said Shad.

“Why’s that?”

“Well, if you had a pie stolen from you yesterday, would you put another one out in the very same place today?”

“No, I wouldn’t, but there’s a pie there. Same kinda pie, too, by the looks of it. Blueberry.”

“It’s blueberry, all right, and maybe a little poison mixed in with it.”

“They wouldn’t poison a man, would they?”

“Damn right they would.”

“So we just leave it there?”

“Damn right. I ain’t eatin’ no poisoned pie. I’m gonna go up and striker up a say with that little darlin’. You wait here.”