Big Two-Hearted River Read online

  He could remember an argument about it with Hopkins, but not which side he

  had taken. He dedded to bring it to a boil. He remembered now that was

  Hopkins's way. He had once argued about everything with Hopkins. While he

  waited for the coffee to boil, he opened a small can of apricots. He liked

  to open cans. He emptied the can of apricots out into a tin cup. While he

  watched the coffee on the fire, he drank the juice syrup of the apricots,

  carefully at first to keep from spilling, then meditatively, sucking the

  apricots down. They were better than fresh apricots.

  The coffee boiled as he watched. The lid came up and coffee and grounds

  ran down the side of the pot. Nick took it off the grill. It was a triumph

  for Hopkins. He put sugar in the empty apricot cup and poured some of the

  coffee out to cool. It was too hot to pour and he used his hat to hold the

  handle of the coffee pot. He would not let it steep in the pot at all. Not

  the first cup. It should be straight Hopkins all the way. Hop deserved that.

  He was a very serious coffee drinker. He was the most serious man Nick

  had ever known. Not heavy, serious. That was a long time ago. Hopkins spoke

  without moving his lips. He had played polo. He made millions of dollars in

  Texas. He had borrowed carfare to go to Chicago, when the wire came that his

  first big well had come in. He could have wired for money. That would have

  been too slow. They called Hop's girl the Blonde Venus. Hop did not mind

  because she was not his real girl. Hopkins said very confidently that none

  of them would make fun of his real girl. He was right. Hopkins went away

  when the telegram came. That was on the Black River. It took eight days for

  the telegram to reach him. Hopkins gave away his. 22 caliber Colt automatic

  pistol to Nick. He gave his camera to Bill. It was to remember him always

  by. They were all going fishing again next summer. The Hop Head was rich. He

  would get a yacht and they would all cruise along the north shore of Lake

  Superior. He was excited but serious. They said good-bye and all felt bad.

  It broke up the trip. They never saw Hopkins again. That was a long time ago

  on the Black River.

  Nick drank the coffee, the coffee according to Hopkins. The coffee was

  bitter. Nick laughed. It made a good ending to the story. His mind was

  starting to work. He knew he could choke it because he was tired enough. He

  spilled the coffee out of the pot and shook the grounds loose into the fire.

  He lit a cigarette and went inside the tent. He took off his shoes and

  trousers, sitting on the blankets, rolled the shoes up inside the trousers

  for a pillow and got in between the blankets.

  Out through the front of the tent he watched the glow of the fire, when

  the night wind blew on it. It was a quiet night. The swamp was perfectly

  quiet. Nick stretched under the blanket comfortably. A mosquito hummed close

  to his ear. Nick sat up and lit a match. The mosquito was on the canvas,

  over his head. Nick moved the match quickly up to it. The mosquito made a

  satisfactory hiss in the flame. The match went out. Nick lay down again

  under the blanket. He turned on his side and shut his eyes. He was sleepy.

  He felt sleep coming. He curled up under the blanket and went to sleep.

  Part II

  In the morning the sun was up and the tent was starting to get hot.

  Nick crawled out under the mosquito netting stretched across the mouth of

  the tent, to look at the morning. The grass was wet on his hands as he came

  out. He held his trousers and his shoes in his hands. The sun was just up

  over the hill. There was the meadow, the river and the swamp. There were

  birch trees in the green of the swamp on the other side of the river.

  The river was clear and smoothly fast in the early morning. Down about

  two hundred yards were three logs all the way across the stream. They made

  the water smooth and deep above them. As Nick watched, a mink crossed the

  river on the logs and went into the swamp. Nick was excited. He was excited

  by the early morning and the river. He was really too hurried to eat

  breakfast, but he knew he must. He built a little fire and put on the coffee

  pot.

  While the water was heating in the pot he took an empty bottle and went

  down over the edge of the high ground to the meadow. The meadow was wet with

  dew and Nick wanted to catch grasshoppers for bait before the sun dried the

  grass. He found plenty of good grasshoppers. They were at the base of the

  grass stems. Sometimes they clung to a grass stem. They were cold and wet

  with the dew, and could not jump until the sun wanned them. Nick picked them

  up, taking only the medium-sized brown ones, and put them into the bottle.

  He turned over a log and just under the shelter of the edge were several

  hundred hoppers. It was a grasshopper lodging house. Nick put about fifty of

  the medium browns into the bottle. While he was picking up the hoppers the

  others warmed in the sun and commenced to hop away. They flew when they

  hopped. At first they made one flight and stayed stiff when they landed, as

  though they were dead.

  Nick knew that by the time he was through with breakfast they would be

  as lively as ever. Without dew in the grass it would take him all day to

  catch a bottle full of good grasshoppers and he would have to crush many of

  them, slamming at them with his hat. He washed his hands at the stream. He

  was excited to be near it. Then he walked up to the tent. The hoppers were

  already jumping stiffly in the grass. In the bottle, warmed by the sun, they

  were jumping in a mass. Nick put in a pine stick as a cork. It plugged the

  mouth of the bottle enough, so the hoppers could not get out and left plenty

  of air passage.

  He had rolled the log back and knew he could get grasshoppers there

  every morning.

  Nick laid the bottle full of jumping grasshoppers against a pine trunk.

  Rapidly he mixed some buckwheat flour with water and stirred it smooth, one

  cup of flour, one cup of water. He put a handful of coffee in the pot and

  dipped a lump of grease out of a can and slid it sputtering across the hot

  skillet. On the smoking skillet he poured smoothly the buckwheat batter. It

  spread like lava, the grease spitting sharply. Around the edges the

  buckwheat cake began to firm, then brown, then crisp. The surface was

  bubbling slowly to porousness. Nick pushed under the browned under surface

  with a fresh pine chip. He shook the skillet sideways and the cake was loose

  on the surface. I won't try and flop it, he thought. He slid the chip of

  clean wood all the way under the cake, and flopped it over onto its face. It

  sputtered in the pan.

  When it was cooked Nick regreased the skillet. He used all the batter.

  It made another big flapjack and one smaller one.

  Nick ate a big flapjack and a smaller one, covered with apple butter.

  He put apple butter on the third cake, folded it over twice, wrapped it in

  oiled paper and put it in his shirt pocket. He put the apple butter jar back

  in the pack and cut bread for two sandwiches.

  In the pack he found a big onion. He sliced it in two and peeled the

  sil
ky outer skin. Then he cut one half into slices and made onion

  sandwiches. He wrapped them in oiled paper and buttoned them in the other

  pocket of his khaki shirt. He turned the skillet upside down on the grill,

  drank the coffee, sweetened and yellow brown with the condensed milk in it,

  and tidied up the camp. It was a good camp.

  Nick took his fly rod out of the leather rod-case, jointed it, and

  shoved the rod-case back into the tent. He put on the reel and threaded the

  line through the guides. He had to hold it from hand to hand, as he threaded

  it, or it would slip back through its own weight. It was a heavy, double

  tapered fly line. Nick had paid eight dollars for it a long time ago. It was

  made heavy to lift back in the air and come forward flat and heavy and

  straight to make it possible to cast a fly which has no weight. Nick opened

  the aluminum leader box. The leaders were coiled between the damp flannel

  pads. Nick had wet the pads at the water cooler on the train up to St.

  Ignace. In the damp pads the gut leaders had softened and Nick unrolled one

  and tied it by a loop at the end to the heavy fly line. He fastened a hook

  on the end of the leader. It was a small hook; very thin and springy.

  Nick took it from his hook book, sitting with the rod across his lap.

  He tested the knot and the spring of the rod by pulling the line taut. It

  was a good feeling. He was careful not to let the hook bite into his finger.

  He started down to the stream, holding his rod, the bottle of

  grasshoppers hung from his neck by a thong tied in half hitches around the

  neck of the bottle. His landing net hung by a hook from his belt. Over his

  shoulder was a long flour sack tied at each comer into an ear. The cord went

  over his shoulder. The sack flapped against his legs.

  Nick felt awkward and professionally happy with all his equipment

  hanging from him. The grasshopper bottle swung against his chest. In his

  shin the breast pockets bulged against him with the lunch and his fly book.

  He stepped into the stream. It was a shock. His trousers clung tight to

  his legs. His shoes felt the gravel. The water was a rising cold shock.

  Rushing, the current sucked against his legs. Where he stepped in, the

  water was over his knees. He waded with the current. The gravel slid under

  his shoes. He looked down at the swirl of water below each leg and tipped up

  the bottle to get a grasshopper.

  The first grasshopper gave a jump in the neck of the bottle and went

  out into the water. He was sucked under in the whirl by Nick's right leg and

  came to the surface a little way down stream. He floated rapidly, kicking.

  In a quick circle, breaking the smooth surface of the water, he disappeared.

  A trout had taken him.

  Another hopper poked his face out of the bottle. His antennae wavered.

  He was getting his front legs out of the bottle to jump. Nick took him by

  the head and held him while he threaded the slim hook under his chin, down

  through his thorax and into the last segments of his abdomen. The

  grasshopper took hold of the hook with his front feet, spitting tobacco

  juice on it. Nick dropped him into the water.

  Holding the rod in his right hand he let out line against the pull of

  the grasshopper in the current. He stripped off line from the reel with his

  left hand and let it run free. He could see the hopper in the little waves

  of the current. It went out of sight.

  There was a tug on the line. Nick pulled against the taut line. It was

  his first strike. Holding the now living rod across the current, he brought

  in the line with his left hand. The rod bent in jerks, the trout pumping

  against the current. Nick knew it was a small one. He lifted the rod

  straight up in the air. It bowed with the pull.

  He saw the trout in the water jerking with his head and body against

  the shifting tangent of the line in the stream.

  Nick took the line in his left hand and pulled the trout, thumping

  tiredly against the current, to the surface. His back was mottled the clear,

  water-over-gravel color, his side flashing in the sun. The rod under his

  right arm, Nick stooped, dipping his right hand into the current. He held

  the trout, never still, with his moist right hand, while he unhooked the

  barb from his mouth, then dropped him back into the stream.

  He hung unsteadily in the current, then settled to the bottom beside a

  stone. Nick reached down his hand to touch him, his arm to the elbow under

  water. The trout was steady in the moving stream, resting on the gravel,

  beside a stone. As Nick's fingers touched him, touched his smooth, cool,

  underwater feeling he was gone, gone in a shadow across the bottom of the

  stream.

  He's all right. Nick thought. He was only tired.

  He had wet his hand before he touched the trout, so he would not

  disturb the delicate mucus that covered him. If a trout was touched with a

  dry hand, a white fungus attacked the unprotected spot. Years before when he

  had fished crowded streams, with fly fishermen ahead of him and behind him.

  Nick had again and again come on dead trout, furry with white fungus,

  drifted against a rock, or floating belly up in some pool. Nick did not like

  to fish with other men on the river. Unless they were of your party, they

  spoiled it.

  He wallowed down the stream, above his knees in the current, through

  the fifty yards of shallow water above the pile of logs that crossed the

  stream. He did not rebait his hook and held it in his hand as he waded. He

  was certain he could catch small trout in the shallows, but he did not want

  them. There would be no big trout in the shallows this time of day.

  Now the water deepened up his thighs sharply and coldly. Ahead was the

  smooth dammed-back flood of water above the logs. The water was smooth and

  dark; on the left, the lower edge of the meadow; on the right the swamp.

  Nick leaned back against the current and took a hopper from the bottle.

  He threaded the hopper on the hook and spat on him for good luck. Then he

  pulled several yards of line from the reel and tossed the hopper out ahead

  onto the fast, dark water. It floated down towards the logs, then the weight

  of the line pulled the bait under the surface. Nick held the rod in his

  right hand, letting the line run out through his fingers.

  There was a long tug. Nick struck and the rod came alive and dangerous,

  bent double, the line tightening, coming out of water, tightening, all in a

  heavy, dangerous, steady pull. Nick felt the moment when the leader would

  break if the strain increased and let the line go.

  The reel ratcheted into a mechanical shriek as the line went out in a

  rush. Too fast. Nick could not check it, the line rushing out. the reel note

  rising as the line ran out.

  With the core of the reel showing, his heart feeling stopped with the

  excitement, leaning back against the current that mounted icily his thighs,

  Nick thumbed the reel hard with his left hand. It was awkward getting his

  thumb inside the fly reel frame.

  As he put on pressure the line tightened into sudden hardness and

  beyond the logs a huge trout went high out of water. As he jump
ed. Nick

  lowered the tip of the rod. But he felt, as he dropped the tip to ease the

  strain, the moment when the strain was too great; the hardness too tight. Of

  course, the leader had broken. There was no mistaking the feeling when all

  spring left the line and it became dry and hard. Then it went slack.

  His mouth dry, his heart down. Nick reeled in. He had never seen so big

  a trout. There was a heaviness, a power not to be held, and then the bulk of

  him, as he jumped. He looked as broad as a salmon.

  Nick's hand was shaky. He reeled in slowly. The thrill had been too

  much. He felt, vaguely, a little sick, as though it would be better to sit

  down.

  The leader had broken where the hook was tied to it. Nick took it in

  his hand. He thought of the trout somewhere on the bottom, holding himself

  steady over the gravel, far down below the light, under the logs, with the

  hook in his jaw. Nick knew the trout's teeth would cut through the snell of

  the hook. The hook would imbed itself in his jaw. He'd bet the trout was

  angry. Anything that size would be angry. That was a trout. He had been

  solidly hooked. Solid as a rock. He felt like a rock, too, before he started

  off. By God, he was a big one. By God, he was the biggest one I ever heard

  of.

  Nick climbed out onto the meadow and stood, water running down his

  trousers and out of his shoes, his shoes squelchy. He went over and sat on

  the logs. He did not want to rush his sensations any.

  He wriggled his toes in the water, in his shoes, and got out a

  cigarette from his breast pocket. He lit it and tossed the match into the

  fast water below the logs. A tiny trout rose at the match, as it swung

  around in the fast current. Nick laughed. He would finish the cigarette.

  He sat on the logs, smoking, drying in the sun, the sun warm on his

  back, the river shallow ahead entering the woods, curving into the woods,

  shallows, light glittering, big water-smooth rocks, cedars along the bank

  and white birches, the logs warm in the sun, smooth to sit on, without bark,

  gray to the touch; slowly the feeling of disappointment left him. It went

  away slowly, the feeling of disappointment that came sharply after the

  thrill that made his shoulders ache. It was all right now. His rod lying out