a magazine for anglers
by Dave Motes
Barry Sevier picked his way along the rutted lane and up on the bridge over Left Fork. His knee was stiff but weak. His soft civilian shoes were new and very white.
The Best Knee Guy at Fort Bliss had said the knee might fold up but folding up wasn’t the same as being hurt again. Barry had joked: Will I still be able to play goalie for the Wild? Will I still be able to Dance the Loco Motion? The Best Knee Guy laughed, not because it was funny but because Barry had a good perspective on the injury. Not everybody had a good perspective.
The plank bridge over Left Fork was clotted with mud and tread lines, which made for careful stepping. Then he forgot his knee and Fort Bliss and stood, smiling.
The pool was two flyrods across, knee deep, mirror-clear, grading stone to sand to pebbles, no silt. Above the shade line against the right bank, a delicate little rise form popped and faded. “Ant,” he thought, which led to “Trico,” then “caddis at dusk.”
Upstream the creek curved left and trees closed in. Green ash, hackberry, silver maple–he knew them. He had spaded them up, hauled them down from the coulee in the bed of the pickup, five thousand sloppy wedges of soil. Now they were young canopy trees, competing, expanding, shouldering heavy afternoon sun.
The trees blended into broad buffers of ryes, grasses, and sedge laced with belts of purple monkeyflowers and August-blooming beggarticks. It all bent left and gently uphill, an undisciplined and impatient jumble of color and motion and texture, a riot within the thriving precise green-gold plane of Roundup-ready Pioneer 38A55, CRM 97 days, rated 8 for dry-grind ethanol. A river of root and leaf and stalk, a core of cold water pulsing in the Minnesota heat.
A vagary of breeze raised cool air thick with the rich brownish-iron flavor of water and rot. He tasted it, licked it in. He let his eyes slip downstream, across the sloping fields. On the right was hay, heavy and high, overdue. On the left another half-section of seven-foot corn bisected by the long mudrutted drive. Between, the streamcourse bent half a mile westward to join Right Fork and become Malvern Creek within a hundred wasted unfarmerlike yards of buffer, a belt of all the greens spiked with mature sycamores and maples, jostling and pressing in a big S-bend to the roadline. Across the road, on someone else’s property, Malvern Creek was a nude soil-black gully fading into alternate stripes of beans and barley.
Barry knew distances. He’d measured in mounds of silt, bladed, bucketed up, dumped in long straight hillocks across the swales in the cornfields, graded flat between harvest and freeze. In a thousand hours in the backhoe, training gravel and sand into meanders and bars that the current would keep. In miles of walking with the hoedad: hack, drop, kick it tight, repeat and repeat, more sloppy wedges of soil, load and load. The same again in cuttings, again in seed. Wild grape, Virginia creeper, Canada wildrye, flowering spurge, kinnikinnick. It was a distance, all that time and distance, and each day the creeks got closer.
Fruit of time, risk, sweat. Cold limestone water, 10 cubic feet each second. Guarded in green, through cress, over sand, around trout, to join its twin and make Malvern Creek, meandering naturally through designed bends and cultivated trees. A wasteful gift: safety. Safety from Death by Nitrogen and Round-Up and Cow Flop and Mud. 100% amateur hand-crafted wild-trout stream. Barry’s mouth was full of spit. Seven years the trout grew, the trees grew, the shade grew, the water ran, and the black dirt stayed under the corn, stayed right where it belonged. Barry spit joyfully and clumped off to see if Hube was home.
* * *
Tour 1 he was Baggy, thanks to a puke training session on ‘Moslem Culture’ and the puke contractor’s Rs looked like Gs on the puke name tags. The platoon found it hilarious for 11 stinking, dusty, boring months. Baggy saw exactly one certain bad guy, did plenty of shooting but no harm he knew of, and rotated back to Bliss lean and tan and somebody else.
* * *
Barry stumped around the line of shelterbelt poplars into Hube’s dooryard, cursing cow gates where there were no cows, half-mile driveways, army doctors, Swedish bachelor hermit farmers. He stopped short, eyes up. Two trucks and half a dozen men stood looking back at him.
Everything was gone. The big Harvester pickup, the old planter, the parade of deceased implements and discarded appliances. The main floor of the barn was cavernous, cleared. Hube’s side door stood open. Barry tried to swallow the little thump of heat in his throat. Standing in a rutted farmyard in Minnesota, he danced the four-square step-and-duck sniper dance. The Taliban didn’t shoot well, but only a fool stood still on patrol.
The men stood neutrally. Barry felt his jittering, forced it to stop. A fat blonde guy detached and came over, smiling heavily.
“Hey, there,” he said.
“Hey,” Barry said hoarsely. He felt himself blinking, licked his lips. “Hube here?”
The guy nodded, smiling. “Ahh, you mean Mr. Tveit, Hube, right. Well, he’s gone.”
Barry felt himself disconnect from the air and the creek and the fields. All the time, all the dust and choppers and Graves Registration. This is the one that punched him.
He scuffed his foot, felt the knee protest. “No wonder he didn’t answer. When…how did he die?” he asked.
The guy smiled bigger. “Oh. No, he’s not…he didn’t, uh, pass away. Sold, or leased. We just get out the furniture. I heard he’s over in Mantorville, in the Sunset place. Doin’ fine, far as I know.”
Barry breathed. The shade moved. Was that worse? Hube dead was logical; off the farm, though–that was weird. Barry counted: add 7 made 83, maybe 84. Hube pledged he’d die on the place, threatened it whenever corn fell or the Cat wouldn’t start or the goddam socialists in Washington tinkered with his ethanol money. He left the farm maybe five times a year. He claimed he hadn’t spent a night off the place since Korea. But there were photos, at the Foshay Tower, watching the Twins at the old Met, someplace that might have been California. Maybe since his father died; that was ‘85. Hube in a Sunset Place. Barry breathed, felt the shadows of the poplars move on his face.
His feet started the sniper dance again. The fat guy was saying something. Barry couldn’t talk so he did what soldiers do: about-face, harch: back up the lane, trying not to limp. He did not stop on the little bridge.
* * *
Michael saw the farmer first, because Michael wasn’t fishing. He was lounging in the early May sunshine, offering a stream of casual insults–of the mud-banked slot of a creek, of Barry’s casting, of Barry’s fairy-fied preoccupation with trout over football–all delivered with the blithe certainty of a 16-year-old holding half a can of Grain Belt at 11 AM on a school day.
Barry had tuned out Michael’s constant monologue. Barry could tune out anything when fishing, even fishing an unpromising silty creek on well-posted private property.
At the same moment Michael said “Whoa!” and a good-sized brown trout whacked the spinner, dashed across the pool, jumped, and vanished.
“Did you see that?” Barry yelled, just as Michael said, “Shit! I think he saw us!”
A three-wheeler turned left out of the farmyard gate and accelerated up the drive.
“Nah, he’s going the other way. He’s going away from us,” Barry said hopefully.
Michael said, “No…he’s coming. The little bridge. He has to go over to get here.” The man popped up on the bridge, hung a sharp right, and began bouncing along across the black furrows toward them. They ran down the edge of the field and ducked through the fence.
They were going to make it. The man cut across the field, dismounted to open a gate. The pickup was facing the wrong way but they had time. Michael yanked a “No Trespassing” sign off a fencepost and piled in, laughing. Barry leaned in to the U-turn. He saw the man get back on the ATV and turn toward them. A quarter mile.
Barry goosed the truck around. At the tightest part of the turn the front end made that noise it had been making, but louder. Then it made a different noise, then an accelerating series of much worse noises, then the wheel jerked and locked hard-over. The truck pitched and yanked downward and banged to a stop. Barry and Michael were hurled into the dashboard by physics, and by Grain Belt. The truck quit and sat at an unnatural angle, ticking.
They lay tangled in the footwell as the ATV buzzed up. Barry felt a wash of shock and humiliation. His mother would take one of those deep breaths of hers when he told her he had destroyed their vehicle in the process of scoring the Olmsted County Grand Slam: trespassing, damage, beer.
Three-wheelers were dangerous and obsolete, Barry thought dimly. Shotguns were dangerous too. This one did not look obsolete. The man held it casually across his lap. He sat there.
Barry stopped being afraid but remained embarrassed. He hitched back behind the wheel, turned the ignition off. They climbed out. The wheel was sideways on the road and the truck squatted over it. The old man turned off his motor and swung off. He propped the shotgun against the handlebars.
Michael crossed his arms and leaned back, offering his best bully-courage linebacker smirk. In a moment of weird clarity Barry felt himself split off. He cared about getting caught, he cared about this angry old man. He cared that Michael didn’t care.
The old man was fidgety. He said, “You boys are trespassing on my property.” Rusty voice, surprisingly deep. Michael smirked. Barry spoke carefully.
“Yeah, we were. We’re sorry.” Michael stiffened. “Uh, we were fishing,” Barry added.
The old man gave an odd grateful smile. “Yep, you were. I seen you.”
Michael gathered; Barry bumped him with a shoulder. For once, Michael took the cue, stayed silent. Barry’s eyes wandered across the fields. Michael’s Grain Belt can lay in plain sight on the creek bank, sparkling red in the sunlight.
The old man spoke, less rusty now. “All right. You boys can go. But don’t let me catch you up in here no more. Signs on the fence, they’re there for a reason.” He nodded off toward the fence but kept his eyes on Barry. Michael made a quiet little hiccup of laughter.
The old man walked up to the truck, laughed drily. He knelt and touched the tire. “That ain’t going nowhere,” he said. “I guess I’ll be driving you back into town, then.”
They had no way to take their warning and leave. Michael was thrumming with amusement. Hilarious.
“What a lame-ass,” Michael said as they watched the 3-wheeler buzz back up the road.
“Shut up, man. He’s letting us go.”
“I mean you. You totally caved. He can’t go pointing guns at us even if we are trespassing. My dad will sue him.”
The man turn left and up onto the little bridge “He never pointed it,” Barry said. “You stay here. The truck is half in the road. I’ll go, get Julie’s boyfriend to bring the tow truck.”
“Fine with me,” Michael said. “He’ll probably come back in a tractor.”
“Get rid of that sign. Don’t piss him off,” Barry said. A big yellow pickup left the farmyard, turned toward the little bridge. Barry wondered if the water was clearer up there.
* * *
Barry sat in front of Sunset Hills Elder Care for five minutes, then drove back to the house and sat in the car for five more minutes, then drove back to Sunset Hills and learned that Hube Tveit lived in the Independent Care Wing, third floor, second from the back facing east.
* * *
Tour 2. The kids nicknamed him Sergeant Severe. Holtzman and Polley drew comics–massive forearms, jutting jaws, terrible vengeance. They called him Sarnt though he was only E-4. Top offered an Army compromise: cut it out. Or walk guard until Sevier makes E-5, then call him Sergeant. Or, cut it out.
This time they saw plenty of bad guys and killed them, and maybe some other folks too. They got mortared and IEDed and AK’d right back, and some of them got killed right back, and the living learned. They learned to shoot a lot, and quickly, and well. They learned when to go slow and when to go fast. They learned the copper terror taste and the thup that means too late but duck anyhow.
One high blue afternoon the platoon covered in some roofless walls to wait while artillery chased snipers off a hill. But the Taliban dropped mortar rounds in each room bing bing bing, just like they’d practiced. On the other side of a wall, two Afghan soldiers lounged in the open, rekindling their black hash buzz like every adult male Afghan did twice a day. The round pulped them and sprayed Barry’s neck and face with gravel, bone, and steel. A big fragment blew out his binos but good old polarized Uvex saved his eye. A week in Germany, a month of light duty in Bagram and he felt fine.
When he returned to his unit nobody called him Sarnt Severe any more. He looked like he’d been attacked by a drunk with a soldering iron. He felt fine, though.
* * *
“Hube Tveit,” the old man said. “Where to?” Barry told him and they rode in silence. The passenger side of the pickup was full of spiderwebs.
“I’m sorry I went on your land,” Barry said. The old Harvester was juddering down the road. The heat was on.
The old man didn’t say anything, just squeezed the wheel and rammed the truck toward Orinoco.
“We didn’t catch anything, if that matters,” Barry said.
“Why the hell would that matter, you’re a sad-ass fisherman?” Hube said suddenly.
Barry was not a sad-ass fisherman. Barry was the best fishermen he knew. He blamed today’s failure on the muddy creek but didn’t mention that theory to Hube.
“No goddam fish in that creek anyhow,” said Hube.
“Oh, they’re in there. I hooked a good one. Brown trout,” Barry said.
“You saw a trout, in my creek?” Hube asked.
“Yep. Hit my spinner, jumped. I know they’re in there.”
“It’s a muddy mess. No trout can live in that.”
Barry answered eagerly. “Oh, they’re in there. The spring water’s really good. Even if it is muddy.” Hube grunted, drove on.
* * *
This new Hube was a flat counterfeit of himself, smiling and nodding, somehow younger-looking. He chattered as if it had been a week since Barry’s bus rolled off.
“Hube, what’s going to happen to your farm?” Barry asked him.
“Oh, my nephews, they’re going to farm it. Corn’s doing good, I told them, and beans. I told them about the brown trout. They’re real thick. Some’s froze out in oh-seven but we got up pools, they can make the winter. Also we got them cows out away from the water. That’s best for trout. Barry said so.”
Barry didn’t know Hube had nephews. Hube had not kept cows for twenty years.
Hube chattered on, talking to Barry and sometimes about him. Barry began to feel divided, sitting there in the scratchy cheap chair in the hard evening sun. He alternated being Barry and being someone else, someone experiencing the same creeping organic joy he’d felt on the little bridge over Left Fork. It was the same joy you felt when the shooting was over and you were alive: a guilty vitality, a comfortable grief.
It wasn’t about fishing, either. He did want to fish Malvern Creek; that was easy, when it came down to fishing only. He wasn’t some punctured soldier, walking the creek in his mind, staying alive by reliving every bend and bar.
Maybe it didn’t have to be that creek; maybe that creek’s work was done. He imagined himself chasing teenagers on a three-wheeler. He thought about going back to the Dust. Corporate would take him despite the knee. You didn’t need a knee to drive a big black Expedition. He had the Star, the tours, some Pashto. His mom would kill him, of course, but he could choose that. He felt nothing either way. He listened to more disjointed cheerful chatter and said goodbye.
* * *
The big GI’s blood was pulsing into Barry’s eyes, which meant they were both still alive. No sniper-dance now. He ran a neat straight line. Running, trying to keep the kid on his shoulder, trying to keep pressure on the kid’s hip, trying to keep running, trying to not get shot. 50 meters to the corner. thop in his ear. He ran. A Stryker rolled up the street, M240 flaring orange with the gigantic sound of tearing cloth. Running.
Gasping and hot blood and a wet-cold patch on his back where the bullet would go. Staggering now, a million pounds. The Taliban did not shoot well. The blood is no longer pulsing. To the corner, around, and his foot skidded on something and his knee folded inside-out with a plinking musical crunch and he dropped the wounded soldier and himself and lay there, his cheek in the dirt, watching the dust twitch as he breathed.
* * *
“So what now?” Michael asked. He was heavier, redder. The bully smirk was gone, but he was happy. He had a life—a seat in his dad’s agency, a wife, two kids. Barry saw him peeking at the shredded ear, the pocked cheek.
“I don’t know. Got a friend, in D.C. He’s got this business with microfilm for military stuff. He said vets can get clearances.”
Michael spun his beer bottle on the bar. “I used to go out to Hube’s a lot. Got to hanging out there. I helped him build dams after the freeze. He kept saying how pissed you’d be if all the fish were dead.”
“I followed that,” Barry said. “Hube wrote me like twenty times. I told him I didn’t know what to do. I never knew. I always asked him. All those trees, moving dirt—Hube showed me how, or we decided together. I’m sure we fucked up other stuff, but the fish didn’t seem to care. We just worked it out as well as we could.”
“Worked, that’s right. You worked your ass off over there.”
Barry smiled at his beer. “It was good, all that work. You did some too.”
“It was a trip, working with him,” Michael said. “But he was getting real old.”
“This spring he stopped writing. Last one I got was March, I was already back at Bliss.”
Michael nodded. “He was still pretty focused last summer. I took the kids out a bunch of times. They loved it, in the creek, picnic, all that. But by fall it started getting weird.”
Barry smiled. “Comes with the territory, I guess. Our turn will come. Now, he doesn’t really know where he is.”
“Dude was pretty old. It’s too bad. He was real nice.”
“Remember that day he busted us?” Barry asked. “Kind of a turning point.”
“For you.” Michael looked down, then up in Barry’s face. “Hube gave me some papers for you. Legal stuff, he said. But it’s all, like, handwritten.”
Barry stopped everything a moment, then breathed, then laughed. Hube.
* * *
Crunk of doors, then a knock. Two heavy blond men and a lean young guy with wet-slick hair. Slick Hair wore his suit easily. An easy guess: Hube Tveit’s nephews with lawyer.
The lawyer had a thin briefcase with dull metallic sides. “Mr. Sevier?” he asked. Solid. Formal. “That’s Sergeant Severe to you, son,” Barry said gruffly. They all paused, resisted the visible temptation to look at each other.
“Barry Sevier?” the lawyer asked.
“Sure, yeah. Hey,” Barry turned to the blond men. “I didn’t even know Hube had nephews.”
The older one blushed instantly in the morning sunlight, neck on up to visible scalp. The lawyer blinked, started to speak, was overcome by caution. The younger tougher nephew said, toughly, “Not nephews. Our brother Mickey, he was married to Hube’s niece.”
Barry turned to Slick Hair. “You’re a lawyer, right?” The lawyer considered the risk, nodded. “You got a legal term for the brothers of the dead husband of the niece of a guy? It’s not ‘nephew,’ right?” Barry was looking at Tough Blond as he finished. The lawyer blinked, considered the risk, did not nod.
Barry clapped his hands. “Where’s my hospitality? Come on in. I’ve got coffee, but I gotta warn you–I kind of went Muslim in the service. I got to liking it strong. No more Minnesota brown-crayon coffee. Exotic.” They paused and Barry waited. “Not terrorist, now. Just for coffee. You’re safe.”
They followed him carefully to the kitchen. The nephews held back but the lawyer plunked his briefcase on the counter. “Mr. Sevier, we heard you might make some claim to Hube Tveit’s farm,” he said briskly, and snapped the clasps on the case. Barry was lining up cups on the counter, but he didn’t pour. He held the pot up to the light, looked at the three of them lined up.
“Nah, I don’t make any claim to the farm,” Barry said. They all looked relieved. Barry grinned. “My claim is to the creek.” The Blonds blinked in synch. Slick Hair looked grim.
Barry put the pot back. “It’s OK, though. I already gave it away.”
* * *
Barry broke off the first ant in one of his pet willows. He snapped the second ant off somewhere behind him. Bloodknots and clinch knots took a couple tries, a couple minutes each. He had been able to see 5X just fine before.
His last ant rode the bank current-seam three times before it vanished in a tiny rise. The zealous hookset launched a three-inch brownie toward his face. He sat on the beach in the moving shade and stared: amber and gold, red spots in mocha circles, tiny white-fringed fins.
In the bend above the pool he hooked a grown-up, 13 inches or so. The fish slashed up-current, yanking his rod down, popping the tippet again. This time he turned away from the water, out into sunlight. His hands were shaking.
A man Barry had never seen before was walking up the path.
“Doin’ any good?” the guy asked. He was about sixty, tall and lean and competent-looking. Cane rod, no vest or net. They stood as anglers do, looking not at each other but outward, at the creek, the trees.
“Yeah, a couple. One nice one. Ants, on the shady bank,” Barry said. His eyes wandered down Left Fork, around the familiar curves to the road. A pickup sat beside his mother’s car in the fresh blue gravel of the parking area.
The guy gave him a polite half smile. “Beautiful little creek.”
“Yeah. Yeah, it is,” Barry said.
“Kind of amazing, it’s so undisturbed,” the guy said. He nodded and walked on upstream.
“Yep. Amazing,” Barry said to his back.
