Temperance Creek. Pamela Royes
I pictured my dad’s shockingly white legs sticking out of his cotton swim trunks. How relaxed my parents were at the lake. They slept in. No one wore shoes; we trailed sand into the cabin and nobody scolded. It was the first indication I had that my parents were people, but people mysterious and unknown.
I unhooked the spinner and, with him watching, made my first awkward cast into the swirling Imnaha. It came up short, landing three feet in front of the pole. I glanced at him, grimaced, and held the pole out, wishing he’d take it. But he declined, seeming content to look on. So I cast out again, this time winding reel and line through a set of riffles and a deep, devotion-blue hole. While I learned to “take play” out of the line with my left hand, I guided the pole with the right, trying to keep the spinner to the edge of the moving water as told, and not in the middle. When I felt the lure tapping the rocks on the bottom, I waited tensely for the line to tighten and the tip of my pole to dip.
“Pick it up a bit,” he said, pantomiming the motion with an imaginary pole. “You want to keep your spinner moving, but stay off the bottom, so they can see it.” He found a boulder and perched on top of it.
“How long have you been here, Skip? In the canyons?” I asked, jerking the pole up as instructed and reeling. After a couple more casts, and getting no strikes, I lifted it out of the water, leaned it against a rock, and sat down next to him.
“Three, four years.”
“Before that?”
“I was in the Willamette Valley, hanging with friends, unemployed, trying to be a hippie. It was great for a while, living in a van and fishing all those pretty rivers. God, the fishing was good. But I couldn’t seem to find any rhythm, and I knew it was time to move on. It was January, no, February. I started thinking about these canyons, knew I could get into Hells Canyon early in the spring, but couldn’t get into the high mountains till late June.” He was staring at the river, stroking his mustache between thumb and forefinger and lost in memory. Then he looked at me and smiled. “I remember literally clicking my heels when I finally left.”
“That is exactly the way I felt about quitting school,” I said.
He gave me a conspirator’s nod, mischievous and bright, and then continued. “That first summer, I backpacked. Wore out two pairs of moccasins. The next summer I traded work with a rancher for the buckskin. I knew a horse would allow me to stay out for longer periods of time, say four months, before I’d have to re-supply. That summer I explored Hells Canyon and the Eagle Caps. Last summer, Candy, Bonnie, and I rode clear to the Salmon River country.” Shaking his head in amazement, he added with a broad grin, “That was an adventure.”
I imagined him alone, walking, and leading the buckskin. Saw rugged mountains, long summer days. Saw his moccasins worn through. He is brave, I thought with a sudden clarity, watching his eyes. The simplicity. Coming here. Trusting the tall, silent hills and possessing a freedom I had only imagined. To stay out here, what kind of sacrifices would that demand?
He got up, grabbed his pole, and motioned for me to follow. Above the next hole he lobbed a perfect cast and reeled it in. Then another. Apart from the small sideways glances we stole—we pretended the focus was fishing—the current, the line, the bait, the hook. I thought how fishing a river was all current, about keeping things moving and nothing like lake fishing. How this guy was not like anyone I’d ever met, and how my heart was flopping around like it had been pierced. I wanted to tell him how much I admired his wild, free life, but at the end of an hour, I didn’t know whether to let him kiss me, or whether to run for my life.
We didn’t catch a fish that afternoon. I don’t even remember getting a bite, but as we rode back toward camp, I felt eager, excited, and slightly panicked with the awful knowledge that we were about to go our separate ways. It was spring, we were alive, and life was in, and around, and beating through us. I was a girl, watching a boy, and he was watching me.
Around the campfire that evening we went out of our way to bump into each other and then apologize. Another three-quarter moon rose. When Annie retired, he looked at me. Shyly I followed him to his tent, knelt, and went in.
Under the canvas wings, cleaving open to the night sky and a thousand winking stars, we made love. He was ardent and attentive, and I was aroused and beguiled and soft, he said, grinning impudently. Which I took to mean I was still packing my baby fat. “Romantic,” I replied.
During the night when I mentioned that he was my birthday present, I was startled to learn that his birthday was the very next day, and on that morning, as the sun was pinking the ridges, the first thing he said was, “Why don’t you come with me?” I hesitated, wondering if I’d been anticipating this offer. I’d been seeing him as a loner, and here he was offering something else. What a fine thing that could be. To go with Skip. To say yes. Thinking how I fell for the rogues, the loners, the hoods, and the scrappers.
I should’ve been finding a job, working, getting serious about my future . . . and yet, I stood in the sun, having been offered the thing I truly wanted most: to know someone, someplace, on my terms. Discover something that could stand on its own. Up to this point, the few pieces I’d put together seemed utterly random and far short of making a whole. I didn’t want to make this decision now, I needed time to think about it . . . but somehow I knew if I held back, hedged, let Skip’s offer slip through my fingers, I would regret it.
There is the river. The canyon. The bait—a fly, a bug, a spinner, a hook with a worm breaks the surface of the water, and sinks, tumbling and turning. Beneath a jutting rock lies a fish, fins wimpling. Hungry, it pulses toward the bait, leaps, and leaps again, flashing underbelly yellow in the blue light. The world in that pool. All that I might be, all that I couldn’t be. And time, the only thing that mattered.
I couldn’t have been more naive about men, or about love.
“Yes,” I said. “I want to go with you. How long will we be gone?”
“Well, until we get back.”
We made the necessary arrangements to meet and then joined Annie for breakfast.
Walking out, I offered her a fumbling apology for my impetuous behavior and was relieved to hear her say she understood. She said what happened between Skip and me was like standing in front of a wildfire. Dazed, I thought about what I’d committed myself to . . . I had a little money, but not much . . . had just arrived in a place I loved . . . now I was leaving to ride the canyons indefinitely via horseback . . .
“I can’t believe I agreed. I don’t really know anything about him.”
“Well, I can’t tell you much,” Annie said. “Other than he was in Vietnam and they call him the wild man of the Snake River.”
Vietnam? Which explained everything and nothing.
“Oh, Annie,” I said. “What am I going to tell my parents?”
“Forget them, Wendy. Forget them all. Come with me where you’ll never, never have to worry about grown-up things again. Never is an awfully long time.”
—J. M. BARRIE
Within a week I was packed and taking leave of Chuck and Annie and the Minam Schoolhouse to begin my adventures with Skip Royes. I couldn’t understand why everyone wasn’t as enthusiastic as me. Why my hosts, once so spontaneous, now seemed uncharacteristically sensible, provincial, and prudent.
“I feel kind of responsible,” Chuck explained, placing a cardboard box in the back seat. “Little Cindy, she went out there with him . . . but was back in a week. I didn’t hear why.”
“Certified loner.” Annie nodded. “Did Skip give you any idea of where you’re going?”
“If it doesn’t work out, we’ll be here,” Chuck said, patting my shoulder through the open window. “Good luck. Send letters when you can!”