The Fish's Eye by Ian Frazier Read Free Book Online Page B

true. Despite the fact that I have talked to him for many hours, and despite that fact that when I first introduced myself to him he said, “That’s a good name for you,” I doubt very much if Deren has any idea what my name is. But when I call him on the phone he always recognizes my voice right away.)
    â€œSheep Mountain is downstream from the bridge on the road that leads to White Sulphur Springs,” I said. “The river breaks up into lots of channels there. There are a bunch of islands.”
    â€œYeah, I know the place you’re talking about. I’ve fished there. Not last time we were out. Last time we camped on the river upstream from there.”
    â€œJust this fall?”
    â€œYeah. We got to the Yellowstone on October 10.”
    October 10 was my last full day in Montana. I fished all day, very hard, because I had not caught the fish I had dreamed I would catch out there. The river had filled up with mud and little pieces of moss right after I arrived, in mid-August—a man in a fishing-tackle store told me that a whole
cliff had washed away in a rainstorm, up in Yellowstone Park, near the river’s source—and it stayed muddy for several weeks. Then, after it cleared, the weather became hot and the water level dropped, and my luck stayed bad. I threw nymphs, among them Deren’s big stone flies, and grasshopper imitations and bee imitations and ants and dragonflies all over the river every day. I caught whitefish and unimpressive trout. (Just before I left, I told that same man in the tackle store the size of the largest trout I’d caught during my stay, and he winced and went “Oooh!”—as if I had shown him a nasty bruise on my forehead.) On my last day, I took a lunch, drove to the fishing access, fished my way several miles upstream, crossed a bridge, and worked my way more than several miles back downstream. When I noticed that it was getting dark, I was on the opposite side of the river from my car, and miles from the bridge. I started through the brush back to the bridge. The beavers who live along the river cut saplings with their teeth at a forty-five-degree angle. These chisel-pointed saplings are unpleasant to fall on. The fishing net dangling from my belt wanted to stop and make friends with every tree branch in Montana. Occasionally I would stop and swear for three or four minutes straight. At one of these swearing stops I happened to look across the river, and I saw my car where I had parked it, lit up in the headlights of a passing car. I calculated: there was my car, just across the big, dark, cold Yellowstone it was many more miles of underbrush to the bridge, and miles from the bridge back to the car; the river was down from its usual level, and I had forded it not far from this spot a few days before; but then that was during the day, and now I couldn’t even see the other bank unless a car drove by. I waded in. I wasn’t wearing waders. It took a second for the water to come through my shoes. It was cold. My pants ballooned
around my shins. The water came past my knees, past my thighs. Then it got really cold. I was trying to keep my shoulders parallel to the flow of the river. The water came to my armpits, and my feet were tiptoeing along the pebbles on the river bottom. I still couldn’t see the bank before me, and when I glanced behind me I couldn’t see that bank, either. I was going downstream fast. Then I realized that, gathered up tight and holding my arms out of the water, I had not been breathing. I took a deep breath, then another, and another. When I did, I saw all around me, under my chin in the dark water, the reflections of many stars. The water was not getting any deeper. I was talking to myself in reassuring tones. Finally, the water began to get shallower. Then it got even shallower. Then I was strolling in ankle-deep water on a little shoal about a quarter mile downstream from my car. I walked up onto