DuRoss slid into the water quietly, sitting on the river’s bank and putting both feet in at the same time, trying to make as little ripple as possible. The cold water lapped around his ankles and began to work its way upward, through the feet of the hip waders.
Next time I’ll wear heavier socks, he thought, but then, a little cold had never stopped him before.
He had seen the ring left by the fish’s rise as he was driving down the dirt road beside the river, a ring with a hole in the center, as big as a tractor tire. If he caught the fish who made it, he’d tell that to his friends down at the Seed and Feed store where men gathered to drink free coffee before going about their day.
Some of the men there, the younger ones, called him Old Man Potter. DuRoss had become Old Man Potter to them after his wife, Alice, died twenty years before.
The cold reached his knees now, and was starting to hurt, but not badly. Most of the pain was lost because of his concentration was on the water, watching the pool, hoping for another rise or perhaps the hump a trout makes just below the surface when his back is pushing air from below.
The water looked different this morning in a way he could not define. He’d fished this river all his life, fished this pool, and remembered the rotting tree alongside it, the large rock near the bottom of the pool, but somehow it looked different
He shouldn’t be there, he knew. He wasn’t supposed to be fishing alone, or driving his truck at all. But he did.
Thinking about this, it came to him that he couldn’t remember exactly how he got to the river. He remembered his truck, remembered seeing the fish rise. His next memory was he sliding into the river, as stealthy as a mink. Probably he’d walked down the path from the pull-over where he always left his truck.
Yes, that had to be it. The truck was at the pull-over on the river road. It had to be, but still…
It bothered him, not remembering the details of how he got here. He had been proud of his memory all his life, but lately it was slipping, he had to admit it. Dr. Copeland’s longtime nurse Emily. who had known DuRoss well enough to remember his phone number, had to remind him of his appointment for his checkup twice.
The third time she called him on the morning of the appointment and he showed up. Doc Copeland ran his tests, compared them to some tests he’d done from a visit a few weeks earlier, which DuRoss didn’t remember at all. He sat, let the nurse checked his blood pressure and pulse, make a note on a chart, then left. He heard her say through the door, “Doctor, DuRoss is here,” and then heard a male voice, talking on the telephone, apparently to another doctor. DuRoss thought he heard his name mentioned, but couldn’t be for sure.
When the doctor came into the room where DuRoss sat waiting, he knew the news wasn’t good.
“What is it, Doc?” he asked. Doctor Copeland hated to be called “Doc,” even by his friends. “You ain’t never been no poker player.”
“sh**, DuRoss,” Harold said. He read something on the chart he held in his hand, sat down in one of the chairs. He was a tall man, the same age as DuRoss, with watery blue eyes showing their age. “How you feel about getting some rest?”
“Rest? Hell, all I do is rest. Got rid of my cow, got rid of my tractor, didn’t put any corn in this summer, ain’t nothing but one hog to feed any more. I get plenty of rest.”
“It’s because you’re getting goddamn old,” Copeland told him, either ignoring or not hearing what DuRoss said. “Your mind isn’t working right. You’re probably a step away from an old-folks home. I might commit you myself.” He looked at DuRoss as if seeing him for the first time that day.
DuRoss didn’t know how much of this was true, how much was the verbal game of insults the two played. He believed all doctors exaggerated, like the warnings on guns, or those on tobacco. They tried try to scare folks. But they didn’t scare DuRoss.
“You ain’t committing nobody, Doc.”
“DuRoss, I’m serious. It’s called dementia. And it’s far enough along so as you need to watch yourself.”
“Hell, you’re as old as I am,” DuRoss said.
“It’s like a disease, DuRoss. Some people have it, some don’t. When they get to be our age, sometime younger.”
“And I don’t,” DuRoss said, believing it for a moment. “I can look after myself, don’t want an old folks home. What would I do? Who’d feed my animals?”
“I’ve seen young people, lots younger than us, get it.” Copeland said.
“My animals,” DuRoss said. “Who’s gonna feed my animals, dammit?”
“You said yourself you’ve only got one hog,” Copeland said.
“Animal, then.”
“I’m just saying,” Copeland said. “Something you need to think about.”
“Doc, I ain’t going to no nursing home. They smell like piss and old people, and it ain’t no place to die.”
“I’m just saying,” Copeland said again.
DuRoss moved through the water quietly, any sound muffled by the fog that was rising off the early morning water, softening the edges of objects around him.
The pool was directly across from him and upstream. He’d caught a lot of fish from it, fished it with Doc Copeland, but he hadn’t fished it for a long time, and was surprised at how well he remembered every stone, every riffle. Even the snags seemed to be the same.
It was here, twenty years ago, on the brightest day DuRoss had ever known, that Copeland had told him the first bad news.
“She’s got a cancer, DuRoss.”
And the words had split DuRoss’s day into pieces, like a broken mirror. His vision had blurred, and he knelt down in the cold water.
“She wanted me to tell you, and tell you here. She didn’t think she could and she didn’t want to do it at home.” Copeland stood helplessly, looking like he wanted to do something, say something to mitigate his words.
“How long?” DuRoss said.
“Not long,” he’d said. And then, “I think it’s time you went to the house.”
He looked behind him to make sure he had room to cast and lay down a decent 25 foot presentation. The fish took the fly so quickly he didn’t have a conscious memory of it. One moment it was floating, the next he was on to the biggest fish he’d ever hooked.
It ran upstream, taking line, and when DuRoss put on pressure, the strength of the fish made his rod arm hurt. He took up some line as the fish turned toward him and jumped.
“You’re losing him,” he heard a voice say, a voice so loud that, for a moment, he tried to turn toward it, but then the trout ran again, and in that moment he felt it in his arm and felt the cold in his feet.
Losing him.
“We’re losing him,” the nurse said. Her name was Penny, and she hated the name. Everyone called her Moneypenny.
The young doctor, whose name was Sailor, said “I can see that,” in an annoyed and somewhat sarcastic tone. He’d been a doctor less than a year but he damn well could read a cardiac monitor.
“Doctor Copeland is on his way,” she said.
“Why? Wonder what that old fart wants,” the young doctor said.
“They’re friends or something. I don’t know, ” she said.
“He’d better get here quick,” Sailor said.
“He’s coming in the door now,” she said.
The minutes passed, and DuRoss worried about his tippet, worried about the snag sticking up in what seemed like a direct line with the fish, worried about sharp rocks lying beneath the water, any thing that would cut his leader. The sky was getting bright so that it shone like new pewter.
The fish showed its face to DuRoss. “Damn,” DurRoss thought. He didn’t usually keep fish because he didn’t like to clean them, but he would this one. He thought for a moment what it must feel like to be a fish, to be hooked, and the thought was so strong he felt pain in his jaw.
“I’ve got you now,” he said to the fish. “You’re mine.”
“He’s trying to say something,” Nurse Moneypenny said.
“Yeah, they do that sometimes.” Doctor Sailor checked the IV running to DuRoss’s arm. “Better get the adrenaline ready.” He liked pushing the large needle through the breast bone and into the heart muscle. Once he’d even felt the heart start to beat through the syringe.
Regardless of what he’d said, he fish wasn’t DuRoss’s. He could not bring the trout to hand. Whenever it was almost there, it was as if he’d hung a rock, out of reach of his straining hand.
“Why don’t you let it go?” he heard. “Just let it go.” The voice, so clear and precise, reminded him of every woman’s voice saying every kindness he’d ever heard; his mother, his wife.
And even though he wanted the fish, he wanted more to do what the voice said, because it seemed to make perfect sense. So he reached over and broke the leader.
“Flatline!” Nurse Penny said, being unnecessarily dramatic for the young doctor’s sake, but looking at Doctor Copeland.
“OK, let’s start the drill,” Doctor Sailor said. If he knew Copeland was in the room, he didn’t acknowledge him. Copeland held the defibrillator paddles like weapons and placed them against DuRoss’s bare chest.
To DuRoss, it felt as if all the cold in his limbs had left there and traveled to two spots on his chest and settled there. He wanted the cold to go away, to settle down in the warmth he was now feeling.
“Get your goddam hands off him,” Copeland said, pushing Sailor away. “He’s mine, now.”
“Hey, I….” Sailor said, immediately angry at this challenge to his patient. He could complain, but he knew Copeland outranked him in the small hospital hierarchy and would ignore him here in the ER trauma room.
He nodded to Nurse Penny, turned to leave the room, and said, “You know you’re letting him die? Do you realize that, Doctor?”
And Copeland turned toward him, his face furious and his eyes wild.
“What else did you expect me to do?” he said.
Copyright 2008 Gene Langston