Peter Heller - The Painter

“Dell is family,” he said.

I didn’t move.

“Well, we don’t choose ’em, do we?” he said. “Too bad.” Spat. “Whoever fucks with them. The law might not take care of it, but one of us always does.”

He looked down at the creek.

“Second thought, I think I will fish,” he said. “Could use a stretch. You? An hour?”

It was a bald challenge.

“Sure,” I said. It was the only answer. I said, “Hold on.”

I took the canvas off the easel with both hands, then thought better and put it back on the stand. Picked out a smaller brush and dabbed it in black on the palette. Scrawled in the lower right corner: Just Before Fishing with Jason —Jim Stegner.

“Here,” I said.

“You want me to hold it? On the edges?”

“It’s for you.”

“Me?”

“It’s for you.”

He stepped forward and his hands closed around the sides. Strong and scarred. He stood there with the painting held straight out and too gingerly the way a man who is unused to it holds an infant. His eyes went from me to the picture and back. A flicker of confusion. He wasn’t exactly back on his heels, but it was where I wanted him.

“Do you have a place you can lay it flat for a few days? While it sets up?”

“Oh yeah sure. I can lay it in the sleeper.”

“Might wanna crack your windows. You know for the fumes.”

“Well shit. No one ever gave me anything like this.” He just stood there. Finally he turned his wrist so he could read his watch.

“I got an hour, better get after it.”

He grinned and suddenly he looked like a kid. He held the painting out in front of him with both hands and trotted back along his load of hay.

We fished. He snugged together the four pieces of his rod and strung it and hopped down the steep trail of the bank with a natural’s grace, his eyes sweeping the braids and picking his spot as he fell into the brush.

I put on hip waders and took the gun out of the easel and shoved it into my belt on the inside of my pants, just back of the hip the way I used to wear it, took up my rod and pushed through the scratchy trees. A redwing flew up from the willows and whistled and buzzed and made a commotion. Landed in a Russian olive that overhung the beaver pond. I knew he would supervise the rest of my session with a restless disapproval. The sandbar was yellow in the murky tea water and welcoming, maybe a foot deep where it extended into the pool and through the short watergrass I saw minnows darting. I could smell the perfume of the olive tree and feel the cold of the water through my waders. Sometimes you just fish a spot because it makes you welcome. Under different circumstances I would have felt happy. I can say that. Even the territorial blackbird clicking and hopping: as agitated as he was, he would have seemed auspicious. But there was zero traffic on the road and now as I fished I was aware of the weight on my hip and I kept one eye on the trucker who was casting into a braid maybe sixty yards downstream. Fished his own braid and thought his own thoughts.

We fished for over an hour. Don’t know how long. Long enough that a tamarisk on the far bank was throwing its shadow across the pool. Long enough that I had released a mess of little brookies not a whole lot bigger than the streamer fly itself, which always made me laugh—the bravery!—and landed a two pound cutthroat that surprised the shit out of me and which I also let go. I’d usually cook that one, and sometimes carried a camp stove and a pan in the truck with me, but this time I didn’t, and didn’t care to build a fire. I was happy to watch him fin with what looked to me like great dignity back into the tea colored murk. At first it wasn’t fun. I was watching Jason. There was a cold grip in my gut and I was aware of how vulnerable I’d made myself. We were in the middle of nowhere and now we were off the road. It came down to proximity and angles and the knowledge that I had a gun and that he might or might not. Well. After a while I relaxed a little and just fished, fishing has a way of taking care of things, and I kept one eye downstream and found I could pretty well do the two things at once. Jason was more than forty yards downstream, he’d been working up. I was sight casting after a rise and I’d let myself get lost in thought when I looked up and he was gone. Nowhere. Panic sounds like tearing paper. I remember thinking that as I backed further out into the water and scanned the willows. He might have circled upstream. I would have. If I wanted to surprise me I’d get to the bank and circle fast. I turned, stepped in up to my knees and searched the bend above the little pond. Fuck. Scrape. Whisk of branches, the knick of stone, and I spun around.

He was right there. Out of the brush, on the shallow edge of the pool. He was less than fifteen feet from me and he had something in his hand.

I stepped back careful of my footing and shifted the rod fast into my left hand and let my right drop to the gun in my belt. “Whoa!” I said.

He stopped, took it in, measured the distance.

“Whoa, Pops.” His eyes were dancing. “I just caught three in a row on this thing, ugly little fucker, I tie ’em myself. Thought you might wanna try it.”

He held out something that looked like a big ant, but wasn’t, with a half dozen rubber legs. Ugly.

The proffered fly, the hand out, down here off the road in the brush. I cleared my throat.

“Think I’m done,” I said.

Was that a smile? Not sure. He could be amused, I wasn’t. If the ugly fly had looked less like an ant and a little bit more like, say, a Glock, I might have plugged him. I backed up two more steps and retrieved the line and swung the fly back in and hooked it to the keeper. I kept my eyes on him the whole time. I wanted him to wait because I wanted him to go ahead of me up the steep trail, but not too far ahead to where he could ambush me. He had sussed it, too, and he got it. He waited for me, very civil, and then he turned and led me back up to the road.

Before he got back in his rig he said, “You did pretty good.” It wasn’t a question. Then: “Thanks for the painting. I’m sure I’ll see you down the road. Can pretty much guarantee it.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Wait a sec,” he said. He trotted back to the cab, threw in the pieces of the rod, swung up, and a minute later jumped down in his jeans, and stuck something in his mouth as he came.

“Here,” he said. “One of my ranchers gave it to me a week ago. He and his wife went on a cruise last winter.”

It was a cigar, a Montecristo Number Two, a classic, a great Cuban. Steve had given me a box once after I sold the entire Dung Beetle Series.

“It’s pretty good I guess,” he said. “Never had anything to compare it to, so what do I know.” He pulled out a lighter and lit my smoke. As he did his blue eyes met mine. I shuddered. They were warm with more than mischief. You aren’t the only one who can play at this, they seemed to say.

“We might as well enjoy ourselves,” he said. “One of us for sure is going down.”

He turned in a wreathing of gray smoke, walked back to his cab and climbed up. I put my rod in the bed of my truck. I glanced up once, and in his big driver side mirror I saw him talking on his cell, looking back at me and talking. Then the grind of a low gear, the loud rev and he pulled out.

Threats are threats, violence is violence. In my experience the two don’t go together more than half the time.