New Fiction: Blue River
Title: Blue River Author: R. Brandon Horner
When Hoyt Wilson approached me in baggage claim, he fit the description of most clients I’ve guided: mid-fifties, wealthy and arrogant, hanging onto the threads of an attractive youth. He pointed at the sign in my hand to signal he was ready for me, and gestured back to his wife, who struggled with the weight of her luggage. They had too much gear for one weekend of fishing.
Hoyt had called me to say he was going to be in Denver and wanted to fish the Blue. He emphasized he was hiring me as a guide for his wife. He was, in his words, a man who could take apart a river on his own. Most of the men who hire me express the same exaggerated self-confidence, and I understand why. At three hundred dollars a day, they don’t want to be reminded that the stream is stocked, or how expensive their equipment can be, or that I’ve shown them where the fish hide and which flies to use. Their wives are their excuse.
The Blue runs along Highway 9, sixty miles west of Denver. Most of my clients fish the morning and afternoon before heading back to their conferences and travelers’ hotels. But Hoyt hired me for two days, and insisted that we stay on the river overnight. It was our plan to fish then camp on the bank, to work our way north from Dillon toward Green Mountain Reservoir.
During the drive Hoyt asked questions about water levels and hatches and how successful a season I’d had. Apart from our brief introduction, his wife hadn’t said a word, but I could feel her eyes on me when I spoke to her husband. When I glanced back at her in the rearview mirror, she turned toward the window. She looked tired, and her husband continued to try to impress me with his knowledge of gear and water.
He said, “I’m a Winston man. Nothing like the classic action on a Winston – smooth. I even got Janet one, last Christmas, a five weight with this special small grip they make for a woman’s hands.”
I looked back at her in the mirror, and she rolled her eyes. He kept going.
“Now you’re going to find, Dave, she’s quite the little caster. I’m sure a lot of men come here and brag about what they’ve taught their girls, but she’s the real thing. She’s got the right rhythm for it, doesn’t rush it. She can’t read water, though. I can point out a dozen fish in a hole, but she never sees them. Janet, did you bring those polarized glasses? Make sure she wears those glasses.”
I said I would.
We reached the access point outside Silverthorne. We would have six or seven hours of fishing before we had to make camp. I unpacked their bags – goddamn Orvis bags embroidered with his initials – and began to rig their rods. Hoyt walked down to the bank of the river as I put their rods together and picked out flies. I hadn’t said a word to Janet, but after the ride out, I was glad I would be fishing with her. She stood beside me as I doubled the line and ran it through the guides, and she watched her husband pace the bank and study the water.
“This is the first time he’s taken me on one of his trips,” she said.
Hoyt walked ahead on the path to find an upstream hole, but Janet and I stayed in the pocket water downstream. It was quiet and gentle water, and there were dozens of seams she could use as targets. She was a beautiful caster. Both ends of her stroke accelerated to a sharp stop, and I saw in her motions that she understood that casting a fly rod has nothing to do with strength. It’s about making the rod bend, about pressure and control.
I stood behind to her left as she worked her casts across the water, always picking the line up as soon as the fly settled on the water. I wanted to tell her to leave it there, but she wasn’t interested in catching. Every time I would point out a new section of water for her to work, she would grip my arm below the elbow for support and lean into me as we waded upstream. She stumbled and I braced myself against my wading staff, and she smiled and her eyes widened. Her face came so close to my own that I imagined she was hugging me. She seemed younger that close, and with the brightness of her teeth and her ponytail coming out the back of her hat, and with the sun on her wet wrists, I imagined she was a friend of my older sister or a babysitter I had loved too early.
A tree had fallen across the far edge of the river. I pointed out the slot because it was a long cast, maybe fifty or sixty feet. She had to carry the exposed section of the tree, and mend downstream so the line wouldn’t snag. She turned back toward me in surprise when the cast landed perfectly, and her fly drifted down through the seam. Neither of us saw the trout rise and take the fly, but I heard the reel buzz, and I knew it was a good fish. She tried to hand me the rod, but I refused. I took her arm and we bent the rod horizontal against the fish and her hip pressed into me as we leaned against it.
We let the trout run and tire and pumped it back in as it slackened. She steered it away from the tree and the low bushes on the near side, and walked it up toward the end of a riffle where we could land it safely. I netted and unhooked the fish, held it upside down, and it calmed. I handed it to her and she posed for a picture and then we held it upstream together, my hands over hers. We held it and the life flowed back into it and it slipped from our hands fat and slick and back downstream.
I wanted to congratulate her but we were already too close and she hugged me. I felt her mouth next to my ear and she thanked me and kissed me on the cheek.
Hoyt cleared his throat in the brush.
I turned in guilt. He stood behind us on the bank, holding a tangled nest of tippet at the end of his line. They’re called wind knots, but they’re the result of sloppy casting, of accelerating the forward stroke too quickly. Hoyt had himself a real mess. Janet tried to explain the fish she had just caught, and Hoyt kept one eye on me. I untangled his line, and he fished within sight for the rest of the day.
That night, I heard him talking in their tent. He described the few fish he had caught, and she didn’t try to mention hers. I thought she might hear me, holding my breath in my tent, listening for her, willing her to speak. Later he was snoring, and despite his labored breathing, I could hear the even spaces between her breaths. I imagined her laying on her back, sickened by the guttural sounds of her husband. I imagined her waiting until he was deep asleep to come to me.
But before that image could comfort me, I heard the muffled movement of their bodies. He wasn’t asleep. Her even spaces disappeared, replaced by a new rhythm, quiet and heavy. I closed my eyes to block it and tried to see her casting tomorrow’s waters, reservoir waters, her line unrolling and dropping into currents impossible to read.
R. Brandon Horner teaches middle school English at a private school in New Jersey, where he also coaches soccer and baseball. He is a graduate of Davidson College and Drew University, and his work has appeared in Ducts. He is currently at work on a novel.
