A Children’s Fishing Story

by Rob Lyon

“The best thing is to follow your heart . . . .”—Albert Einstein

Chapter 1

It was hot outside the little California schoolhouse and summer vacation was just around the corner. Through the open windows the smell of fresh cut grass blew in on a gust of wind. Hidden behind Ted Gordon’s geography book was a magazine. It was dog-eared and the cover was off. It was stapled open to one page, a big picture of a broad, blue western river and the caption beneath it read: “The Madison.”
The Madison was a famous trout river. You could see in the photograph just how it would be: scattered lodge pole pine and brown buffalo grazing in green meadows in the background, a ragged ridge of snow-capped mountains beyond. In front of that, a drift boat pulled up on an island and three fishermen standing in the water, their rods bowed with jumping fish. In the back of Ted’s mind he hear the sound of the lawnmower purling through the grass outside, then he drifted off with his chin slumped against his chest.
Ted lay on the grass bank watching a huge black-spotted trout, nearly as long as his arm. It came up through the shining green water after the yellow mayflies that clouded the air, then it dove to river bottom like it was anchored there with a rubber band. The water humped and dimpled where the fish broke the surface. The flies were a paste in the morning air . . . and it was awhile before he remembered to fish.
He took his fly book from his vest and opened it, finding one to match the flies filling the air around him. He slid the hook out of the fleece and tied it on the end of his line, then stood back a bit from the water to cast. The fly landed on the water like a feather and floated downriver with the others.
Out of the corner of his eye Teddy saw something detach from the river bottom and rise up toward his fly. It grew bigger as it approached the surface and the excitement built inside him as he watched. He would strike, he told himself, the moment the fish closed his mouth on the fly . . . but it all happened too quickly.
No sooner had the fish’s nose broken the surface and taken the fly in its mouth . . . it spit it out!
Teddy struck. His fly shot into the air overhead and he went with it from the momentum, tumbling backward in the soft grass behind.

Teddy woke up dizzy, his head spinning. Mrs. Wadkins had him by the shoulders, shaking him. The kids were laughing.
“Ted Gordon,” the voice insisted, “wake up this instant. There is exactly one week of school left young man, then you can sleep till next September for all I care. Now I’ll just take that magazine.” And she took it.
On the way to her desk she stopped and peered back at Teddy over the top of her wire-rim glasses. “Dreams are dreams, Mister Gordon, and life is life,” she said sternly. “Only a fool gets the two mixed up.”
But Teddy was a case.
He was always dreaming about fishing. When he was awake and when he wasn’t. He was possessed with the idea of fishing the hard flowing rivers of Montana, the magical Catskill streams of New England, the mysterious green Roratonga of New Zealand, the quick cold streams of Alaska where the fish were so thick you could practically walk on their backs, the cobalt blue-water flats of the Marquesas Islands off the tip of Florida-all the famous fishing places he read about every night in the stack of fishing magazines piled beside his bed. Places that were like heaven to anyone who loved to fish . . . but places, it very much seemed to Teddy, that might just as well be in another galaxy for all the chance he had to visit them.

Teddy spent much of his spare-time that week tying flies, reading fishing magazines and books and casting in the back yard. He had gotten so good with practice he could toss a loop through a tire hanging from a tree at fifty feet.
His bright green line was an extension of himself, it seemed, the way it shot through the air like a bullet. And the better he got, the more magical it was. Like when you tagged a baseball just right and it went up in that sweet homerun-arc. Like the way his Dad could cast; his Dad made gravity look stupid. But casting was one thing, Teddy muttered sourly as he reeled in his fly line and put his rod away in its case, and standing in a river pushing cool against his legs was another.
Absolutely all he could think about anymore was fishing. The last days of the school year ticked off the calendar and the June sun turned the rolling California hills the color of gold. Teddy sat in study hall the last period of the day, his mind wandering like a chicken. If only he were old enough to drive, he thought, then he could go off on a real fishing expedition somewhere. Then he could put his Ms. Wadkins theory to the test. If you wanted to live your dreams, Teddy figured, you had to at least have something to chase after them with.

Teddy stopped on the storm-canal bridge on his way home after the last day of school. He carried a garbage bag filled with a year’s accumulated stuff from his desk and locker. The canal was the only natural water course in the subdivision and usually on the way home Teddy would stop for a minute on the bridge. In the winter it wasn’t so bad; it was a little like a river then, except for the concrete bottom. He stared absently into the canal that afternoon, the water green and sour looking in little pools left from winter run-off, at the empty pop cans laying half-buried in the mud. He pretty much ignored the other kids passing by, until Schornhaulls and Benny Martin came along.
“Lookin’ for fish? Benny said smartly.
“What’s up Teddy?” Shornhaulls said.
“Hey Schorny, hey Benny.”
They came over to the rail with their bikes.
“Stinks,” Benny Martin said and held his nose.
“What say we play a little ball tomorrow?” Schornhaulls said. “Haven’t seen much of you lately. There’s a hole in center field that’s got your name on it.”
“Nah.”
Schornhaulls put his hand on Teddy’s forehead and smiled. “Dude, you’ve got the fever,” he said.
“What? I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not. Fishing fever’s what you’ve got.”
“For sure.”
“Do something else; that’s the cure.”
“I can’t.”
“Sure you can.”
“I don’t want to then.”
“You guys gonna cry about it or what?” Benny Martin said. Benny was not a fisherman. “No more school man!” he said. “How cool is that?”
“Call me if you change your mind,” Schorny said:
“Will do.”
“Later man,” Benny Martin said.
“Later guys.”

The abandoned shopping cart tipped on its sides in the canal below spun one black wheel in the afternoon breeze. The sound of it reverberated in Teddy’s soul. He leaned against the rail, staring at it. Maybe Mrs. Watkins was right after all. Life was hard enough as it was dished out-school and college, family and career; living your dreams was next to impossible. There’d always be guys who did what they really wanted, like Chris Columbus and Michael Jordan and the guy he had seen on television with only one arm playing professional baseball. But they all seemed like somebody else, somebody special, somebody much different than he, himself, might ever be.
He shut his eyes and leaned his head against the rail. The cold iron was numbing. It would be one thing if he could shake it, he thought, but it was a fever like Shorny said, and a delicious one at that: the green rivers and blue lakes, the strike of a trout in a dark mountain stream; ” . . . tail lashing, lightening-like . . . ” had been how one writer put it.
And he knew he couldn’t.

Chapter 2

In the mailbox that afternoon was the latest issue of Fly Rod and Reel Magazine. Teddy flopped eagerly on his bed to check it out. There were the usual articles on fishing technique and one or two exotic fishing pieces he would save for later, but in the middle of the glossy pages was a foldout. Across the double page was another photograph of a Montana river, and in big bold type the words: Trout Fishing Shangri-La.
And beneath, in smaller italic print: Put yourself in this picture.
No problem . . . it was a dreamy blue river flowing beside a forest of pines, with snow capped peaks in the background.
It was a fishing contest of some kind. To enter, you had to submit a photograph and a description of your favorite, secret fishing hole. The best undiscovered ‘Fishing Shangri-La’ would win. Besides a guided week long trip down the Madison River the winner received a complete new fly fishing outfit-rod, reel, vest, flies, waders-a fisherman’s dream come true. A staff writer from the magazine would come out personally to fish the top entry from each state.
That’s a dream all right, he told himself. You have no place left to fish at all this summer, much less anything in the Shangri-La class.

That night at dinner Teddy was bum. It was one thing to dream about fishing places like you saw in the magazines when you were stuck in school, he thought, and another altogether when school was out. His parent’s could tell something was wrong. It was summer vacation, they told him, how could you possibly be feeling bad? He told them how all he wanted to do was fish, but there was no place for a kid who was too young to drive and lived in a California valley as dry as a prune to go.
“What about Sobey’s cattle pond or Fletcher’s irrigation pond?” his Dad said. “You’ve fished there before.”
“They’ve grown over already with pond weed. I did my pond ecology paper at Sobeys a couple of weeks ago.”
In the end, his parents had the same advice as Schorny. “Then do something else,” they told him. “Do what you can dear; don’t pine over what you can’t.”
That was the smart solution alright, and easy enough to say. Of course, he’d tried that already. He’d dragged out his enormous Leggo box from under the bed and tried to gave it a serious go. And he’d tossed the tennis ball against the garage door for half an hour straight (and three hundred consecutive catches); always a solution for the dog day blues. But nothing had worked. And he told his parent’s this.
“I thought there might be someplace just outside the valley,” he told them, “a pond or lake or stream or reservoir or something that I could get to by bike. But I did some research on the net and the nearest thing I could find was not even close.”
His parent’s seemed to sympathize with him and he saw them looking at each other the way they did when they knew something he didn’t. But they had nothing to offer and dinner was finished in silence.

After helping out with the dishes he’d gone to his room and lay in a deep funk staring at the ceiling. He woke up at one point to a knock on the door. Soft light filtered into the room through the curtains and one of his arms was asleep. He thought it was morning at first.
“Yeah . . ?” he croaked.
The door opened and his Father stepped in.
When his Father spoke, Teddy detected something different in the voice.
“There is one place,” his Dad said. “I was hoping to take you up this summer myself, but with my new work schedule now, it wouldn’t be until August. It’s a bit of an adventure and I hadn’t intended for you to go alone and you’re Mom and I had to talk it over, but . . .”
“What are you talking about Dad?”
“C’mon,” his Father said, “take a bike ride with me and I’ll show you.”

The back lawn of the Alexander Hamilton Middle School was located at end of the valley. Beyond the ball fields the foothills of the coast mountains rose up. In thinning light, Teddy could see the color change from the dry, yellow-grass hills surrounding the valley to a band of scattered gray oaks higher up. Further to the west along the horizon, the mountains took on a bluish tint in approaching twilight. They rode around the school to the ball field in back and parked their bikes.
His Dad pointed toward those mountains. “There’s a stream up there”, he said. “Fills the canal here,” his Father said. “You know the canal that runs through the subdivision . . .”
“Sure.”
“It runs year-round on the mountain. You have to hike up a good ways, but you’ll find it above ground sooner or later.”
Teddy’s eyes had slipped out of focus and he could hear his father now as if from a distance. This was too good to believe.
“Trailhead’s over there,” his Dad was saying, “behind the back stop”, and he pointed. “It peters out to a game trail when you get up a ways but it follows the gully all the way up to where the stream surfaces.”
“I’ve been up there before,” Teddy said. “Schorny and I hiked up the trail and explored around. We didn’t see any water, just a dry streambed.”
“You didn’t go far enough then.”
“You’re telling me there’s a stream,” and Teddy pointed at the hills, “up there?”
“With trout, when you get up high enough. Rainbow trout, big ones too, way up high, last time I was there. You know it as Mount Tam, of course . . . ”
“Sure.”
“Well, we call it Trout Mountain, your Grandfather and I.”
“How do you know all this, anyway?”
“Years ago I used to hike up there to fish, before this subdivision was put in. We lived in the city then and your Grandfather took me up the first time when I was about your age. There was only a dirt track coming into the valley then, and old Mister Fletcher’s ranch stood about here, where the school is now. My Dad knew old man Fletcher and he would let us hike through his fields into the mountains. We’d stay up there for three or four days at a time, and bring some fresh trout down for the Fletcher family in return. When I was old enough to drive I’d come up once or twice each summer and stay for a week. And you know, even with the housing tract put in here I don’t know that anyone’s been up there. I don’t know why exactly. Because it’s a pretty stiff hike, I suppose . . . and because of the snakes.
His Father smiled and said: “There’s snakes, to be sure, but most people think it’s infested with them . . .”
“Well, yeah, everyone knows that.”
“Truth is, son, there’s no more snakes up there than in the hills around here. Your grandfather started that rumor himself.”
Teddy remembered the way the kids were spooked about the snake infested mountain and laughed.
“I was planning to take you up myself, until this promotion business came up.”
“So . . . are you saying I can go by myself?”
“Well, its a difficult hike, and you’d be on your own over night up there. But if you want to go badly enough, your mother and I talked it over and decided that you’re old enough and mature enough to give it a go.”
“Can Schoenhaulls come with me?”
“That’s up to him, but I wouldn’t have a problem with that. I like John and he’s your best friend. This is not the kind of secret you have to worry about much because it takes a really dedicated individual to make the hike up there.
“It’s quite a hike back in,” his Father said. “About ten miles, straight up. You’ll find my old camp by a good pool and that’s about where I’d start fishing. Sleep there that night and fish upstream the next day.”
Teddy’s mind was traveling like a snowball. Suddenly everything was different. He could hardly believe this turn of fortune.
“You’re younger than I was Teddy, when I first went up.”
“Dad,” Teddy said with a passion, “you have no idea . . .”
“Ah . . . but maybe I do,” his Father said and put his arm over Teddy’s shoulder.

On the walk home Teddy could hardly suppress his excitement. He rang up Schornhaulls from his room. This was news of the first magnitude. But John Schornhaulls was skeptical.
“Are you kidding me, Gordy?” Schornhaulls said in typical fashion.
“No, no.” Teddy insisted. “This is for real.”
“And there are really trout in this alleged stream?”
“Yes. And if you get far enough back my Dad said they get pretty good size!”
“Settle down Gordooni,” Schornhaulls said. “You’ll just have to go and check it out yourself. I’ve got practice on Saturday anyway.”
“A game,” Teddy said loudly. “You’d miss a trip like this for baseball practice?”
“Look, we don’t even know for sure if the stream is still there or if these supposed trout have died and gone to heaven since your Dad was last up. That was a while back you know.”
Teddy sat dumbly, shaking his head. Shornhaulls was the smartest kid in their class, but he was an opportunist. If something was a sure thing Schorny would be the first in line, but exploration was not his thing. Schorny would leave the blisters and wasted time to someone else. Still, he could not understand how a real fisherman could pass this up.
“But listen, Gordy, if this turns out to be legit, I’d be real interested in hearing more.”

Chapter 3

Gravel crunched and popped under the tires in the parking lot of the ball field early next Monday as his Mom dropped him off. He got out of the car and got his pack from the trunk. It felt heavy as he herked it on. Glancing over at the classrooms across the outfield he could see some of the teachers still at work and he felt sorry for them. Summer vacation began yesterday with the final bell on Friday. You couldn’t pay him to go back there now.
“If anything at all goes wrong Theodore Gordon, you call me,” his Mom was intently telling him. “Promise . . .”
“No worries Mom; I promise.”
Teddy waved good-bye, then cinched up his waist belt and picked up the aluminum tube he kept his fly rod in and held it in his right hand like a staff. He found the trail beyond the snack bar but stopped a moment at the corner of the backstop. Then he walked over and stood on home plate and took a couple of swings with the tube. Maybe when I get back, he thought.

Before long he was high enough into the foothills to look back out over the valley. He stood on a knoll looking out and caught his breath. The subdivision, with it’s matching crushed white rock roofs looked like a single big roof from his perspective. A lot of same old stuff happened down there, he thought; different people doing the same stuff. Kids, mothers, fathers. It felt great to be heading off an adventure all by himself. He couldn’t thank his Father enough for divulging the secret. Rainbow trout in a little stream on the mountain up ahead! With that thought he walked back over to the trail and put some attitude into his step.
But it was hard going with his heavy pack and he decided to cache some things somewhere along the trail. He found a hollow oak trunk that was perfect. He rummaged through his pack and he picked out some extra clothes and a can of beans. He would liked to have left the camera too, but if things happened to turn out extremely well he would need a picture for the contest. It was a small camera at least, point-and-shoot and waterproof. He kept the half dozen PB &J’s, some other lunch things and the cereal and the cocoa, but he wrapped a bunch of stuff in his extra tee shirt and stuck it in the hollow tree to pick up on the way back.
Then he put his head down and one foot in front of the other. Better, he thought.
Ted was careful to watch out for snakes as he climbed and to tap a warning in front of him with the rod tube. When he stopped for lunch a good while later, the oaks had thickened on the slope and formed a canopy overhead. Blue jays, crows and squirrels made a racket in the trees. There was no sun on the path at all and the air was pleasant and thick with the woody smell of oak trees and dry grass. He took off his pack and sat down and leaned against a gnarled old oak. He took out two of his sandwiches and ate them with chips and a pickle. While he ate he watched a black-eyed squirrel sitting neatly on its haunches on a branch overhead. It was busily eating a lunch of its own, picking apart a pine cone and showering Teddy with the scales. He washed down his lunch with water from his canteen, left the crust of his sandwich for the squirrel (who did not come down for it until Teddy was gone), shouldered his pack and got back on the trail.

At one point late that morning he heard the faintest sound of trickling water in the gully below the trail. He found an animal trail cutting through the wall of blackberry vines and went down to investigate, tapping a warning with his tube when brush bordered the trail. Sure enough – there was a trickle of water and a shallow pool ringed with fresh watercress! Two green frogs hung suspended in the water with only their heads sticking out. It was hardly much of a stream, he thought, but it was a start.
The sun rose slowly that afternoon, pacing his climb, filtering down through the oak branches in hot, splintered shafts. Then the first of the pine trees appeared and the air took on a spicy scent. The trail, at least, was easy to follow. Probably a deer trail, he figured, although he’d seen no sign of scat, other than rabbit pellets. He chewed some of the watercress as he went along. It was peppery.
Later that afternoon, his shoulders began to ache from the weight of his pack. Foxtails poked through his socks and hot spots were forming on his heels. But still the stream was only a squirt and there was no telling how far he had left to go.
Exhausted and in pain, he refused to take the time to stop and rest. Instead, he pushed himself up the trail as if he were in a trance, not paying much attention around him and struggling to keep a steady pace. He had been absently tapping with his rod tube while his mind drifted like a cloud, when suddenly the hollow, blood-chilling rattle of a rattlesnake had his full attention!
Teddy looked up quickly and saw the snake, its thick body coiled on the trail directly in front of him. A red forked-tongue slipped in and out of its viper mouth and its eyes pointed at him like daggers. Teddy inched slowly down hill away from the snake, his heart pounding like a cannon in his chest. Then he stopped and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand and took a minute to study the animal from a distance.
He knew animals were not mean or evil, that usually they were more frightened than the human they encountered, but if there were ever an exception, Teddy decided, it would be the rattlesnake.
He gave the snake a wide berth, dropping down into the blackberry vines by the creek to get around and scraping himself on the thorns. The snake had shaken him pretty bad. It was a good thing he’d been tapping with the tube, otherwise he might have stepped on it. And that would have put an end to the adventure for sure.
Teddy was beat. He was hot, tired and in no little pain, and a little anxious still from the encounter, when he climbed back up again to the trail. Hiking another ten minutes to distance himself from the snake, he stopped a moment again to rest His hands and legs were scraped from the blackberry thorns and his shoulders throbbed painfully. Gingerly, he touched them with his fingertips; they came up pink with blood. The pack-strap had cut through the skin.
He lay down in the middle of the trail and leaned back like a turtle against his pack. For the first time since he had decided to make the trip, he began to doubt himself. He realized that he had never really even ‘decided’ to come; it had been a given all along.
Maybe the stream was too high, after all, he wondered. Maybe it had dried up altogether; it had been a long time since Dad was up. He had more respect suddenly for the Columbus’ of the world. He sighed deeply and didn’t bother brushing off the ants that climbed over his bare arms, or swatting at the gnats buzzing in his face. He was too tired and empty to care much about it, and before he knew it he drifted off.
Teddy woke up like a jack-in-the-box to a shrill, eerie sound. A bird of some kind, he was fairly sure, but he could see nothing through the trees. He got up and shinnied up a tree. Up mountain, a large bird hovered over the tree tops, then suddenly folded its wings and dropped from sight like a bullet through the trees.
Teddy clung to the tree a moment wondering what to do next, when he heard a muted whoosh, whoosh of approaching wings. It was a strange, wonderful sound, growing louder as it came. Then he spotted the big bird flying directly toward him. He could see it clean as day; it had a white head like a bald eagle but dirtier looking, with black patches on its cheeks, and a white under-belly.
It was an osprey – a ‘fish hawk’; he’d seen a picture once in his mother’s Audubon book. And it was carrying something. It was flying straight for him, then at the last moment it must have seen him in the tree because it flared suddenly. It was so close, though, that its shiny black eyes locked with his own. And he could see what it clutched in its talons – a trout!
The slope of the mountain softened ahead as Teddy hurried along. Soon it leveled into a lush green meadow and while he stood in awe catching his breath three tawny brown deer jumped up from the thick grass and bounded off like gazelle. He discovered the bed of broken grass where the deer had layed up, and he could faintly smell them even-a scent like a dog. And in the middle of the meadow, muscling smoothly in a fine clay channel through the grass, was a stream!
An explosion of fish from the quick currents to the shelter of the undercut banks startled him as he approached. He caught sight of one fish, a trout, holding behind a rock along the bottom. So this is where the bird had been. He tasted the water; it was cool and sweet and had the taste of the mountain in it. He sat on the bank listening to the good sound the water made, and watching the little fish when they returned. It was a fine place and a fine stream, he decided after a while, and a very good sign, then he got back on the trail and hitched up his pack.
The sun had gone on over the mountain ahead of him and there was a trace of coolness to the summer air. He had his second wind and breezed along. The stream climbed up out of the meadow and he climbed the little trail beside it. Pine trees grew at the higher elevation now; the oaks were left behind. It was darker and close-feeling in the forest, but soon his eyes adjusted.
He watched the stream not far off through the trees as he hiked. Unlike in the meadow where it ran like a ribbon, now it was more a series of pools with a string of riffles in-between. Pool, riffle, pool, like a ladder up the mountain. He would have liked a closer look but he was determined to get high onto the mountain and find Dad’s old camp if at all possible, before nightfall.
In deepening dusk at the end of a very long day, he came to a level spot beside the trail. Five moss-covered stones marked an old fire ring a few steps away. This was it, Dad’s old camp, he’d bet. One big rock stood at the edge of the trail and a low branch above it had an old railroad spike hammered in. When he took off his pack he nearly floated from the lightness. Then he heard a splashing noise from the stream and hurried over to investigate.

Mayflies clouded the air over the water – just like his dream. There were so many trout dimpling the surface that he looked up to make sure it wasn’t raining. But the pool was literally alive with trout, with enamel white, golf ball-sized mouths and silvered, slashing sides. It was as if a spell had been cast over the stream, and the pool was a den of writhing fish.
Entranced, he sat on the bank and watched.
When it was too dark to see he went on listening . . . until, suddenly, it was over. Like someone had thrown a switch, the surface of the water became as smooth as a sheet of black glass.
There was not the faintest sound of fish now, only of mosquitoes in his ears and the steady plume of water pouring into the pool. He remembered the camera then, but it was too late. What he had seen tonight would have made a great shot. Tomorrow though, he told himself; he would get his pictures tomorrow.
He knelt by the water and scooped some to drink. The stream seemed very much like a stream again, as if it were fooling with him saying: ‘Fish? What fish?’ And walking back to camp afterward he felt his dream draw close around him. The day’s struggle seemed like a distant memory; he had only the cuts on his shoulder, the blisters, the foxtails in his socks and his sore muscles as evidence.
Teddy cleaned the little fire ring in the clearing; carefully, he cleared the twigs and dry grass around it for sparks. He walked over to the stream with his water jug and filled it. He squatted on the bank and thought about his Dad and pictured him in his favorite chair in the den with the evening paper and thanked him silently. He looked up and could see only a puddle of stars between the tree tops.
In camp, Teddy put a sixth rock in the circle where it was missing and lay a pile of kindling in the center of that. He wanted to hook his first trout like that, he decided, like they had been that evening on the surface, and while the wood began to crackle he got out his sleeping bag and made his bed below the rock. When he was finished he returned to the fire and sat on the log and heated water for cocoa and wolfed a pair of sandwiches for dinner.
Then he thought to call Schorny. He would keep it short. Like a note from a messenger pigeon. From Columbus to the Queen of Spain.
Schorny picked up on the first ring: “Hello?” he said.
Teddy whispered only: “Yes . . .”

He put away the little phone and laughed. Let Schorny chew on that. John Schornhaulls was the smartest guy in school; he’d figure it out. He stuck out his hands and warmed them by the fire. As he sipped his cocoa he noticed how the log was a perfect seat. You could see the hatchet marks still where it had been worked on. In flickering light Teddy could see a cluster of grooves carved into the wood. He rolled the log toward the fire to see better. The grooves appeared to be initials. He wiped off the wood with the heel of his palm and he could make out the letters D.G.
His Father’s initials!
And there was another, older pair of initials, partly grown over with moss. Teddy cleaned them off and found a very neat and intricately carved R.G.
Why, those were his grandfather’s!
Teddy went over to his pack and got out his Swiss army knife. He studied the log for the right place, and set to work. He straddled the log, leaning toward the fire on his left leg for better light. It came out a bit like Dad’s, he decided when he was through, but he could see himself in it alright; the way he had splintered the bottom of his G, for instance, and how big the letters were. He took a leaf from a bush at the edge of camp and rubbed it deeply in the cuts, the juice sweet smelling on his fingers and he tossed the broken leaf in the fire and watched it hiss into steam.
His initials looked older now, like the others. That was something, alright; three generations of Gordon fishermen. The fire crackled and burned and he slouched down on the ground in front of it, leaning back against the log. He sat a long while staring into it, watching flames devolve to glowing coals, until finally darkness closed in around him and he drifted off.
He saw his grandfather coming to this place, up the long and difficult trail beside the stream, and then, his Father hiking the trail behind him. In file, one after the other came his Father, his grandfather . . . and then himself.
Then in the distance came another, younger boy, who looked familiar but whom Teddy could not quite recognize.
Teddy woke up cold and stiff in the middle of the night beside a dead fire. He had no idea what time it was. He had been asleep and remembered nothing except the dream. He did not get up or bother with a light, but crawled to his sleeping bag beside the rock and unzipped it and got in and zipped it back up with only his nose sticking out.

Chapter 4

The forest was alive next morning. The sun was clouded, the mountain air cool, and there was activity in the branches overhead. A blue-jay was complaining about something in a tree at the edge of the camp, and bits of pine cone dropped by a squirrel, sitting on a bare limb immediately overhead (as if he were waking Teddy purposely) littered his bag. Those squirrels have my number, he thought and laughed.
A fresh sea breeze whispered of mystery and excitement in the tip-tops of the pines. Teddy lay in his bag for some time listening to the wind and the birds and the branches rubbing together, watching the squirrel drop stuff on him and looking for the jay, then got up, stiff and sore at first, and rustled a quick fire and heated water for cocoa.
He walked over to the bank of the stream and hunkered down with his cup, sipping the hot chocolate slowly, making the cooling, sucking noise his mother disliked. The water was smooth and dark in the half light of morning. Finally, the sun burned off the clouds and flooded the mountain with warm, splintered light. No bugs were in sight but he could see several fish suspended just off the bottom. In camp he ate a sandwich and a couple of Clif bars and planned out his day.
He decided to fish his way upstream until afternoon, taking with him only what he needed, then return to camp on the way back down and pick up the rest. In the back of his fishing vest he stuck a couple of sandwiches, a sweatshirt and an apple. He put on his shorts and his lucky baseball cap and strung up his rod. He put on his old tennis shoes to wade in, then remembered his Speedo goggles and put them in his vest as well. He poured water on the little fire and stirred the smoldering coals into gray soup with a stick.
Teddy fished the camp pool first, but got no response and moved on upstream to the next. He hoped a new batch of flies were warming up somewhere, getting ready to swim to the surface and sprout wings like they had last night. Not far above camp he entered the edge of the redwood forest.
Enormous trees towered like Greek columns overhead. Ferns and green moss and small blue flowers carpeted the ground. Butterflies and motes of pollen and dust drifted in the golden shafts of light. The lowest branches of the tallest trees were so far off the ground he couldn’t hit them with a rock. It was like a church the way the light came in, he decided, like pictures of great cathedrals he’d seen.

Teddy fished the next pools reverently, becoming graceful and easy with the rod and the approach. He decided to stay in the stream as he fished, climbing the small cascade that linked one pool to another, instead of getting out and hiking up hill to the next.
Water splashed in his face and refreshed him. The mountain was at the perfect climbing angle now. The stream was shallow and mossy, but a fresh, clean, bright green, spongy moss and not at all slippery. He clung like a lizard to the rock and let the cold water spill into his mouth between the pools as he fished.
But an hour later there were still no bugs in the air and not a single fish had risen to his fly.
He watched for sign of bugs or fish then as he went along instead of casting blind. Then he remembered the goggles. He’d used them in his pond ecology project for school a few weeks ago. He dug them out and put them on and lay down on the mossy bank with his head underwater.
He could see several trout gathered at the head of the pool where the water dropped in. They lay just outside the plume of silver bubbles. Every now and then one of them would dart into the plume and dart right back out. Teddy went around to the top of the pool and stuck his cap in the waterfall. When he took it out he found an empty bug skin, as big as a grain of brown rice, but resembling a bug only as an empty suit of clothes resembled a man.
He dipped again and caught two more like the first. He dipped a third time and caught half a dozen, only this time there was something alive in one! He put the little bug on the back of his thumb-nail and studied it close.
In front of his eyes, the brown husk ripped open and a delicate blue mayfly emerged!
It was a handsome little bug with paper-thin glassine wings, a sleek striped body, and two fine long tails. Mechanically, it opened and closed its wings for a moment, then lifted smoothly into the air.
Good news, he thought. They must be hatching somewhere above and washing down.
He climbed cautiously upstream to the next pool. As he watched, he saw a mayfly fly off the water. One, then two bugs emerged, another and another, but the smattering of flies drying their wings or lifting slowly off the water were still ignored by the fish. A shoal of silver flashes glinted underwater where the bulk of the action was, but none of the trout were feeding on the surface . Teddy took out his fly book and found a tiny fly, a Parachute Adams that he had tied up before this trip, and hurried to tie it on. He tested the knot with a little pull and cast to the center of the pool.
He was pleased with his fly’s imitation of the real bug, and with the natural way it floated on the hair thin line, but it provoked no response from the trout flashing frantically beneath it. Flies were emerging at the surface now at quicker intervals. Finally, he figured out what was going on.
The trout were snacking on the bugs as they swam to the surface from the bottom of the stream. Aquatic insects were a big part of his report on Sobey’s pond. It was an amazing transformation; he couldn’t imagine going off after high school to begin a new life underwater . . . but that’s what aquatic insects did, only in reverse!
Fish had been ignoring the few flies on top and gorging themselves on the plentiful stream of bugs swimming up from the bottom. Even as he watched, more and more flies popped to the surface, where they sprouted wings and drifted like tiny sailboats.
Suddenly, the surface of the pool was joinked by a fish.
The air gradually filled with a profusion of tiny, slate-blue insects, and the surface of the stream looked like San Francisco Bay on a Sunday afternoon. And the trout were no dummies either; now that there were a lot of bugs floating on top of the pool, they came up to feed on them there.
Trout after trout broke water now chasing the little mayflies. His own fly floated smartly with the others; maybe a little too big, he thought, but close. It was the right color too, and drifting well. Several real flies around his own disappeared to fish, before, finally, his went under.
As the fish took his fly, it felt the steel hook and spit it back out-all, it seemed to Teddy, in a single motion. But he had whistled the fly back over his head anyway, unable to stop, and went with it too, flat on his back in the cold water!
He jumped up and shook himself off and laughed.
“Just like the dream,” he yelled. “Exactly!”
He ran his fingers back through his hair and squeezed his cuffs of excess water. The fish were quick alright; you had only a fraction of a second to strike. Like a snippy bluegill these rainbow trout were, but snippier. He blew on his fly to dry it and roughed up the hackle with his fingers. He squeezed a bead of floatant out and rubbed it between his fingers to warm it up. He applied it carefully to the body of the fly and looked out over the pool. He would have to snippen himself; that was all there was to it.
He whipped the fly back and forth in the air to dry it, then lay out another cast.
Floating serenely down the center of the pool, his fly mingled with the others, floating slowly back toward him, when it disappeared in a sudden splash.
Teddy struck. The fly sailed back over his head like before, but this time, at least, he braced himself and kept his balance and only slipped a little on the gravel bottom.
“Hmm,” he muttered. “Pretty quick fish.”
He cast again and again from the shallow end of the pool. Each time his fly would land lightly on the water and float down naturally with the others. His practice on the front lawn had sharpened his casting; it was only the quickness that was missing. When a fish took his fly he was always too late in setting the hook. It was unbelievable how quick they were!
He stopped for a moment and his eyes relaxed from the intense scrutiny of watching his fly.
Then he remembered what his grandfather had told him about having soft eyes and he cast out his fly and relaxed his vision. He found that he could still see with his eyes slightly out of focus, but that instead of staring a hole through his fly he could see not only his own fly but all the other flies and the entire pool as well. Moreover, with his eyes relaxed he felt more present and alert in his body. And when the next fish came along, sure enough, he was poised to meet it.
When he struck this time, he felt the good resistance on the end. Fish on, he shouted.
His rod bent and darted like it was alive. It was an indescribably electric quickening, as if every living ounce of the fish’s energy came into him through the line and the rod and through his arm into his inner-most being.
The trout was strong and hard-pulling, different fighting than a bluegill. It fought clean and straight away, and when he thought it was over and had the fish in the water beside him it swam off again like a shot!
The reel clicked smoothly as it gave the fish line and he very much liked the sound. He played the fish gently; that was the secret – leaning on the fish when it wasn’t leaning on you, getting it in as quickly as possible. His Dad had taught him that. That way they survived the shock. Sometimes he ate the fish he caught, but he had to be in a certain mood for that, and he was nowhere near such a mood this day.
Before very long, he had the glistening, smooth-skinned trout resting in his hands in the water.
He stood for a moment in the cold stream admiring the fish; the color of its vermiculated flanks and the brightness of its black, down-turned eye, thinking how beautiful God’s wild creatures were and how like another dimension a fish’s world was. This was the way his Father fished, Teddy thought proudly; clean and chess-like.
He released the fish and it bolted off. Teddy smelled his hands; they smelled of trout. Not as sweet as the smell of a bass, he thought . . . but close.
He took several fish from that first pool that day, then moved on to the next. The mayfly hatch continued as he went along. His legs became numb in the icy water. He got very hungry once but swallowed gulps of air instead of stopping. He caught many fine fish that day, steadily following the ribbon of stream up the mountainside from camp.
The afternoon wore on and Teddy noticed how each of the pools he came across were different, each with a different personality. Some were boily or chattery, others calm and green like miniature lakes. Each had a different twist to its currents, a unique arrangement of boulders, a different depth, shape and size . . . and, not in the least, Teddy thought, a different song from the water purling in at the head.
Teddy decided to stop a minute and rest. With the cessation of activity his thoughts and impressions drew close around him He looked around and could see how the slope of the mountain had steepened. Water was rushing faster than ever before. Pools were not quite the same liquid crystal they were that morning; instead they were a titch darker and mysterious looking and the head of each pool was a muffled roar.
He shook his head to clear it and pulled out a Cliff bar. He noticed one large boulder between the trail and the stream. A lonely shaft of late afternoon sunlight broke through the trees overhead, warming its round gray top. He knew the sun would not last long. He walked over and propped his rod against the side and stretched out on his back across it. He remembered the story of Prometheus who had been chained to such a rock. They’d studied Greek mythology toward the end of the year. The old Greeks had great imagination, Teddy thought. They knew about the magic of fish and animals and mountain streams, and maybe that’s why people fished at all, he mused; so the magic might rub off. Like today, he thought, smiling, magic covered him like a dog.
The rock was warm against his arched back, the sun pleasant against his face. Nearly upside down, the sound of the breeze and the stream were indistinguishable. It was too much like a dream, it seemed to Teddy, but all too real as well . . . and he drifted into sleep.

Chapter 5

Teddy awoke refreshed from a short dreamless sleep and dug out the last of his sandwiches. They were good still, only a little flatter and damp in spots from the dunk in the stream. He sat up on the rock and ate them in the sun.
He ate the sandwiches calmly, feeling a deep contentment. He even looked up once for the squirrel he half expected to find. Teddy sat on the rock and ate his sandwiches and when he finished eating he slid down off the rock and wedged his apple in the cool water between three rocks for later.
The stream galloped down the mountainside that afternoon, while the forest air hung heavy and still. Birds chattered randomly in the highest branches, so high he could barely hear them. He waded each pool from the shallow end to the head where the water deepened coming in, catching trout steadily as he went along, climbing the steepening rock wall between one pool and the next one up. Trout dimpled the water everywhere sipping emerging bugs, then dove and tightened along the bottom before rising again to nip another.
Teddy came on them from behind, tossing his fly up ahead and floating it quietly back to him. He watched for the mottled green head of the trout, then struck at the precise moment it closed its mouth on his fly. He was becoming a good fisherman; that pleased him. It was a fine stream and that pleased him. In fact, he thought, he could not imagine being in a finer place or doing a finer thing, and for a long while that afternoon his ordinary life seemed a very long, long way away.

Gradually the afternoon wore on, like afternoons had a habit of doing. Teddy noticed it rustling in the tree tops. The yellow sun had dropped from sight and a cool sea-breeze from over the mountain had taken its place. Meanwhile, the insect hatches had slowed to a stop, and with the bugs went the trout. He could see them fining gently along the bottom, sleeping off their meal. He should probably take a cue from the trout and hustle back down to camp. It was getting late and he’d had an awesome day; it would be the perfect time to call it quits.
But he was not quite ready to quit just yet. He figured he’d come a long, difficult way and wanted to milk every last moment, every last fish and every last pool. He decided to get back on the thinning deer trail and push a little further on up the mountain, scoping each new pool from the trail for sign of bugs or feeding trout, instead of hiking the stream and fishing every pool. If he found activity, he would stop and fish; under the circumstances that seemed like the smart thing to do.
He saw nothing for half an hour more, and when he finally stopped it was only because he tripped over a rock on the steep trail running high above the stream, and instead of jumping up he surrendered to the urge to rest.
He sat up slowly and spit pine needles off his upper lip. He found that his rod, which he had tossed aside as he fell, had survived the fall. After a moment he picked it up, stood up, and looked around. What he saw came as a shock.
The pleasant stream he had first seen in the meadow yesterday was nowhere to be found. In its place were a series of plummeting cataracts and boiling, black-water pools. The slope of the mountain had steepened tremendously over the course of the last mile and the stream had carved deeply into it. The smattering of trees that poked up from the lichen covered rocks at this altitude were few and weathered looking. The flowers of the cathedral, the squirrels, birds and butterflies that had kept him company below, were gone.
Perhaps the fall had knocked some sense into him.
He could feel the stream pounding against the bones of the mountain beneath his feet and he could feel it reverberate up into the bones of his tired body. A bank of fog had pushed over from the coast with the wind and slipped down the mountain around him now, like the ghost of an ancient enemy.
Teddy suppressed the urge to turn and run; instead he walked a little ways ahead to where the trail bordered a deeply cut bank and looked down.
At the bottom of the dark ravine was a long black pool with one big wet boulder in the center and a boil of white where it roared in at the head. It was thin as smoky glass at the tail where it crashed over the edge into another pool out of sight below. The dark, roaring violence of the water frightened him. He had never seen water in such a state and the effect was powerful. From the back of his mind, as he gathered himself and studied the pool, imagining where the fish would be holding and how he might possibly get into position to fish it, he felt the fear morph into excitement.
It was a subtle thing but Teddy had noticed it. Fear and excitement, he thought, two sides to the same coin. A cup half empty or a cup half full. He smiled at his own insight, then scrutinized the pool and the steep bank leading down to it.
It was further down the embankment than he would have liked, but he could see where if he was careful he might just make it. He would want to fish the head of the pool, he knew, where the water thundered in. All he had to do was wade out to the big rock in the middle.
This was it, though, he promised himself, the final climactic pool; then he would have to hustle back down the mountain to try and get home before dark.
Sliding on his butt down the bank, Teddy splashed ankle deep in the cold water in a clatter of rocks. The light was dusky and his feet felt numb and squishy inside his soggy tennis shoes. Overhead the fog covered the stream like a blanket and the air in the ravine was saturated with mist and spray from the waterfall at the head of the pool.
The stream sure looked different anymore.
It cut like an open wound into the mountain and would be very difficult to wade. He could feel the spray thicken into droplets against his face and trickle down his chest and he could hardly think for the roar. He noticed the water sucking around his ankles and how quickly the bottom dropped away as he stepped in. He took a couple steps toward the edge of the pool where the canyon pressed in and looked down, seeing nothing but a roaring black hole of falling water.
He stopped a moment to reconsider.
There were deep shadows in the crevasse at the head of the pool in front of him now, dark shadows against the crystal white of the plume and the bold excitement that had delivered him to the stream bottom evaporated like the mist around him. Overhead, black rock walls threatened to close off and swallow him. Goose bumps sprang up on his arms and legs and he thought maybe he should forget the whole idea and climb back up to the trail and head back down the mountain . . . then it occurred to him to calm his ragged breathing, like he’d learned to do in his martial arts class. His mind soothed to the steady rise and fall of his chest and the fear bellied again into excitement, and a few moments later he had settled into a ready state of mind.
This was the kind of place you’d expect to find a huge trout, he figured, a fish to match the awesomeness of the place itself, and that would be some fish indeed! Only then did he remember the fishing contest. He’d spent the entire day so absorbed with the trout that he’d thought of little else. He had packed the camera along but hadn’t even remembered to use it. He splashed cold water on his face and gathered his remaining strength. If he were lucky enough to catch another trout, he thought, especially the kind of fish he would hope to meet in a pool such as this, he would try and snap a shot.
Teddy waded further out and quickly sank up to his waist in the icy water. The current was powerful and it was difficult to make headway and he stood on his toes to get as much of his body out of the water as possible. He leaned forward against the force of the water, making some small progress, but it took balance and strength, little of which he had remaining.
Not the same stream at all, anymore, he muttered, and for just a moment he had a sinking feeling that he may have gone too far, that this might be the stuff of another dream, another adventure, which he was not yet ready for. But when he asked himself if he truly wanted to try for the rock and one last fish, he knew it wasn’t . . . near the edge, to be sure, but he could still feel the bite of passion that had brought him to this place this day.
Having reaffirmed his desire, he stood sideways against the current to rest. The water was icy cold and nearly up to his chest and threatened to lift him off his feet. When he figured he was feeling about as strong as he was going to get, he forced himself ahead on his toes several small steps closer to the great boulder and prepared to jump. If he could just get a handhold on it, he figured. It would be more of a flump than a jump, he thought, and barked a laugh, standing like he was in the deep water. Then he put his rod in his mouth and bit down onto the cork handle, decided where it might be best to land, and leapt.
He hit the rock heavily, knocking the breath out of him. But he clung by his fingertips to a tiny ledge and strained to hang on. Meanwhile, the current pulled against his legs, lifting them up to the surface and threatening to pull him back in the water. With a great effort he pulled himself onto the face of the rock, crawled onto the top and sat down.
Spray covered him like a sheet this close to the falls and he turned his back against it for shelter. He noticed that several of his fingernails were torn and the tip of one finger was bleeding; he sucked on it and caught his breath.
When he turned to look at the falls he had to squint to see it because of the spray. It looked especially fishy ahead though, where the water fell in. He figured the trout would be lurking there at the edge of the boil to pick off any stuff washed down. He turned back around and bit off his old fly, dug out his fly book and rummaged through it. So far he had caught all his fish on the surface. That was how he had liked it. But this was his last stop and there were still no bugs up top, so he decided he would try a wet fly instead.
He fingered a neat row of soft-hackled flies with a single turn of partridge feather around the head and a little tuft of fur underneath and tied on a small black hook. He had tied up a bunch that spring after finding the pattern in one of his father’s fly fishing books. Bluegill in Sobeys loved them. He tied the little fly on, stood up and put his first cast dead into the falls. He let the fly sink for a count of six, then stripped line in once, twice, and suddenly -Boom -his line snapped tight!
His rod bent deeply as the fish ran a short distance under the waterfall and stopped. Teddy’s heart was pounding with excitement, but lifting back on the rod felt as though he had hooked the mountain. Maybe the fish had hung him up, but no, there was a subtle pulse to the line. Maybe that was just from the pressure of the waterfall against his line . . . he could see nothing where his line cut in the stream, only the crash of water around it. After half a minute of this and convinced that he was snagged on something, he picked up a piece of rock and threw it in the direction of the fish.
Suddenly, his rod yanked down and something knifed past him toward the tail of the pool, pulling his line in a big bow behind! It put a tremendous pressure against the rod and a whirling rush of line flew from the reel . . . then suddenly it stopped and the line went limp.
Teddy felt sick. It had gotten off. But then he saw his line moving again, coming toward him, heading back toward the waterfall!
He reeled furiously to take up the slack.
“Please fish,” Teddy muttered in earnest, “stay on.”
The fish swam like a bullet and he worried that his rod might break; it bent deep into the cork grip, in more of a right angle than its usual smooth curve. He tightened the pressure on the rim of his reel but to no avail. It must be an enormous fish, he thought, but he could see nothing of it still, only his line slicing like a zipper through the dark water.
His hand was beginning to cramp from reeling so fast to keep up, and he was beginning to realize there was little, if any, chance of landing such a fish. If he were to have any chance at all he would have to jump in and try and play out the fish in the shallows. He could certainly never land it from where he stood, ten feet off the water! But to see it, though, if it would jump or if he could work it up near the surface, that might be enough. Maybe it was an otter, or a beaver; but no, he decided, it swam just like a fish.
Then it occurred to Teddy that a picture of such a fish in such a place would win the fishing contest for sure! He may not be able to land it, but maybe, just maybe, he could get a picture.
But the fish plunged deeper, and quickened its speed. It pulled the tip of his rod underwater and the shriek of his reel sliced through the roar of the falls; he noticed the metal was becoming hot to the touch! When the fish gained the head of the pool again though, it stopped to rest, like a fighter at the bell.
Teddy squeezed some of the water out of his sweatshirt sleeve onto his reel to try and cool the hot metal. He had little left to lean on this fish with. He could only hold on and hope that in some small add-up way he could wear it down, then to jump in and try and corral it in the shallows. But he knew the tip of his line was thin and that he could not put as much pressure on the fish as he would like.
For another five minutes the fish made token runs around the head of the pool and bull-dogged on the bottom. Like the great marlin in the Hemmingway story Teddy had read, he could discern no change in the strength of this great fish. If it was tiring, he thought, it was taking its own sweet time.
Holding the rod with one hand, Teddy managed to take off his pack and take out the camera just in case, then slipped the pack back on. Maybe if it jumped, he thought; he might snap a lucky shot.
And then, as if on cue, the big fish made its move.
Leaving Teddy with his mouth hanging open, the huge trout put on steam. It circled once around the rock, spinning Teddy in a tight circle with it, then burst like a small silver dragon into the air.
There was a tremendous draw on the rod as the fish emerged, then a sudden snap of line-the sharp sound softened in the shivering air-and Teddy and the fish flew apart!
The big rainbow flew high up out of the water from the impetus while Teddy stumbled backward toward the edge of the rock, his eyes glued to a trout as utterly awesome looking as any fish had a right to be. Thinking quickly, gripping his rod in one hand and the camera in the other, he pointed the camera in the direction of the fish and pressed the shutter, then stumbled into thin air off the back of the rock.
He let go of the rod as he fell but landed on it anyway, the snap muffled by his impact in the stream. In the other hand he gripped the camera. The shallowing water bowled him along toward the waterfall at the edge of the pool but he struggled to his feet and looked frantically around for the rod. He watched his baseball cap, half-submerged with a little pocket of air in the crown, sweep over the shallows into the pool far below, then he spotted his rod following behind. At the edge it caught on a rock and stuck up out of the water like a broken leg, then it was gone.

Teddy made tree-line by flashlight well after dark. Below the belt of oaks a star-lit heaven opened like a vault. Dry grass hills stretched all around him, rustling invitingly in the night breeze. Lights in the homes in the valley below lit up the darkness, the cluster of house-lights, street-lights and twinkling car-lights like a landing field awaiting some proud alien visitor . . . and feeling suddenly like he was returning from the Twilight Zone, rather than an earth-bound trip through space and time, Teddy stopped a moment and propped his empty rod tube behind him and leaned heavily against it. He unclipped his canteen from his belt and swigged from it.
His body felt the effects of his journey, there was no doubt about that. The cuts and aches and pains gnawed at him like a toothless dog and he felt exhausted. But they seemed little things, he thought, compared to how he really felt.
Teddy gazed out over the valley below and felt his life flood back into him, as if he had long been a stranger to it. Filled with the images, the faces of his friends, Schornhaulls, his Mom and Dad, of Stephanie’s pretty smile, he realized how he had kept them all at arm’s length this year, all because he had wanted something so badly that he couldn’t be bothered with anything else. He felt badly for putting off the people he loved and being so tunnel focused that he had acted like a toad. But he couldn’t say he was sorry for how things had turned out. Not only had he had a fly fishing adventure of a celestial order, but he had lived it, high up on Trout Mountain, at the level of his dream. He may be no mental giant, but he was bright enough to see what that meant. The next time he wanted something so badly he could hardly dress himself, he would know it wasn’t necessarily out of reach. He had one dream under his belt and he liked the way it felt.
He took a drink of cold stream water and it seemed like a sacrament to his experience on the mountain. He’d have to talk with Ms Wadkins, he figured, when he got back to school, or heck, maybe he’d just call her up. That ‘life is life’ and ‘dreams are dreams’ business was not carved in stone. Those teachers were pretty smart and knew a lot of stuff, all right, but a guy still had to think for himself.
Looking out in the darkness across the little Christmas-light valley he felt like a giant. Grinning hugely, head back, eyes shut, Teddy howled like a great baying wolf, and chills swept through his body.

“And that’s all you could say Gordooni, was ‘yes’!?” Schorny shouted over to him from center field later that week at practice.
“It wasn’t time to talk,” he said. “I didn’t even want to call.”
“But I wanted details.”
“I gave you details when I got back.”
“What about your Dad’s rods; maybe you could borrow one of his?”
“Nope. I’ve got my eye on a little three piece trout rod and a sweet little reel that’ll be ideal for backpacking and I’ve got a little money in the bank. I should be good to go by the middle of next week.
“You were in no rush before Shorny . . . remember?” Teddy shouted back from left with something in his voice.
Schorny recognized it and laughed. He was behind on the next fly ball, then called back over to Teddy. “Well I’m ready now I’ll tell ya,” he yelled. “I can hardly believe that picture you showed me of that enormous trout hanging in mid-air.”
Teddy smiled.
“And you’re really not going to enter that contest after all you’ve been through?” Schornhaulls shouted over the grass. “You’d win for sure.”
“Nope; remember?” he shouted back.
“You’re right. It would ruin it. That’s cool Gordy; really. Who needs Montana when they have something like this. I absolutely cannot wait to see this place.”
“You’re an opportunist, Schorny,” he said.
“This is different Teddy,” Schornhaulls insisted. “We didn’t know for sure before; now we do.”
“You’re the Queen of Spain,” Teddy called over, laughing.
“Yo Columbus,” his friend called back.

~finis~

©Rob Lyon

Posted in Fiction |