Stone Junction

‘So I lose, right?’

‘Well … given my experience and all, I should fish – I’m a fish-catching fool – but don’t ever say Wild Bill ran you over by abusing his natural authority on almost anything that matters. Tell you what: I’ll fish for about an hour while you collect wood, and then you fish for an hour while I sit there and laugh. Whoever catches the most fish, he’s the Official Camp Fisherman for a month – the loser can practice when the rod ain’t required by the champ for survival protein production.’

‘You’re on,’ Daniel said.

Wild Bill winked. ‘That’s just what I tell them fish when I set the hook.’

Wild Bill caught two.

Daniel didn’t catch any. He couldn’t understand it – he was fishing off the same overhanging boulder where Wild Bill had caught his, and he could see the surface swirls of feeding fish. He was concentrating so deeply that he was startled to hear Wild Bill at his shoulder. ‘Count your catch, the hour’s up.’

‘Okay,’ Daniel sighed, ‘what’s the secret?’

‘Give me the pole and I’ll show you how it’s done.’

Daniel reluctantly surrendered the rod.

‘Now pay close attention,’ Wild Bill said.

When Daniel turned slightly to watch, Wild Bill put a hand on his chest and pushed him backward off the boulder into the lake. The shock of cold water brought him gasping to the surface.

Wild Bill was pointing down into the water. ‘See them rocks there in the shallows? Now see them black dots? Those are the stick-and-stone houses of caddis fly larvae, which is what the fish are feeding on today.’

Teeth chattering, Daniel waded to shore. He was furious, but he had to know. ‘Okay, what kind of fly were you using to imitate them?’

‘Well shit,’ Wild Bill said, putting his arm around Daniel’s wet shoulders, ‘I took my pocketknife and sliced that goony looking batch of feathers off the hook and put on some of those real caddis fly larvae. That’s what the fish are eating – not a bunch of feathers and tinsel and such.’

Daniel shivered. ‘That’s cheating.’

‘You got to fish ’em real slow,’ Wild Bill explained. ‘Sort of let ’em swirl up easy from the bottom. I tell ya, takes tons of patience and a pretty good sense of humor to get it right.’

The regimen was much like that at the ranch: meditation, daily work, nightly question. The only significant change was the addition of what Wild Bill called teaching, which amounted to Daniel listening to him tell stories around the campfire.

‘My dad saw something over on the Middle Fork that I doubt either of us ever will. He saw two full-grown male bears fighting over a she-bear. That ain’t so unusual, of course, but the thing of it was, one of the bears was a black bear and the other was a grizzly bear. Quite a tussle.’

‘Who won?’

‘Well, like daddy always said’ – Wild Bill paused to spit emphatically in the fire – ‘“Son, if you’re gonna be a bear, be a grizzly.”’

‘What kind of bear was the female?’ Daniel said.

‘You know what, Daniel? You could fuck up a steel ball.’

Daniel bristled. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean it ain’t easy to fuck up a steel ball.’

Although the regimen was basically the same, the quality of the days was different. They existed quite easily. Along with the food they’d packed in – heavy on rice and beans – there were fish, edible plants and fungi in season, and birds, small game, and an occasional deer that fell to the .222/.410 they’d brought. To preserve ammo, they only took one shell in each chamber while hunting, a practice, Daniel soon discovered, that greatly increased his accuracy. On average, they spent less than an hour a day on food.

Daniel used his free time to explore the basin, day-dream, or work on various projects, most of which failed. He could hardly hit the hillside with the bow and arrows he made. His hand-carved duck call hastened mallards on their way. His fish traps didn’t.

Wild Bill was no help and less solace. ‘You can usually trace failure back to one of two things: design or execution. Looks to me like both of ’em got you.’

At the end of each month they hiked back to the Balm of Gilead crossing and picked up their month’s supplies from the two hidden footlockers. Tilly or Owen always left a note with any important news. There had been one message from Volta to say there was nothing to report. It took them ten hours to walk down with empty packs, and a tough sixteen going back. Twice during the winter they had to use ropes to cross the rain-swollen Eel. At first Daniel despised the overnight treks, but by winter he was actually beginning to enjoy the grueling all-day push back to the lake; the sheer physical exertion seemed to cleanse him of a rancid congestion that he could feel but not locate.

January was a terrible month for Daniel. It rained or snowed nearly every day. He stayed in his tent as much as he could. He discovered, as many others had before him, that the mountains impose you on yourself. He came to some realizations he didn’t like. The first was that he hadn’t recovered from his mother’s death. The raging, wrenching grief, once so palpably present, had faded into a haunting emptiness.

Daniel’s second unpleasant realization was that he hadn’t dreamed since the bomb explosion. Worried that this might indicate brain damage, he became so aware of his dreamlessness he could hardly sleep. He woke exhausted and eye-sore, as if he were a pilot who’d spent the night fruitlessly searching the ocean for a raft or signs of wreckage. He didn’t mention his dreamlessness to Wild Bill. If it meant something was wrong, he didn’t want to go back to the hospital, and if it didn’t mean anything other than that he wasn’t dreaming or couldn’t remember them, then it didn’t matter.