The sound of the Willys in four-wheel came from the woods below the house; the old blue pickup emerged into the sunlight and stumps of the slash and ground up the last pitch to the woodshed. Alex got out hoisting a case of Olympia beer onto his shoulder.

"Something for you--" He scaled a letter onto the roof andwent inside.

I laid the hammer down beside the bundle of shingles.

“Dear Bert,” Trudy's clear, open hand began, “I'm learning a lot about running an art gallery. Mainly I write grant proposals. There’s a good chance of a couple of them coming through. Asylum Art Ways is the only place in Hartford showing avant garde work. Mario has been letting me design posters for the shows, doing the art work and graphics. So, I've been pretty busy with hardly a breather to write. I haven't written because I don’t know what to say. I'm involved with Mario.  He put my first show up at Asylum last winter, as you remember. We hit it off that's why he hired me. It seemed like a good working relationship, a friendship. Neitherof us planned for this to happen. I hope you are well. It soundsgreat out there, all the fishing and back packing. I don't knowwhere this will go, Bert, I can't think about it. Mario is marriedand it is very difficult. I haven't felt so alive in a long time. I feel a little out of control, sometimes crazy. I don't careabout anything - forgive me. I love you, Trudy.”

Alex came through the open skylight with a six pack."Ran into Jeremiah in town. He said rainbows are hitting flies at sundown up by him."

I popped a can and took a pull. 

"Jeremiah got me started on the chimney," Alex said. "Only outside help I used. He's a stone mason. But I finished up myself."  He was looking at the chimney, a massive, curved wing of fieldstone that soared up from the end of the house. 

"I don't feel much like fishing," I said. "You go ahead." 

     Alex's red `Feed and Read' cap pinched his thick shoulder length hair like a head band. With his overalls, untrimmed beard and wire rim glasses, he looked like an aging hippie. Alex had dressed that way back in New Haven. He was medium height andstrongly built, walked lightly, sort of slump shouldered, andtalked in a soft joking way I thought of as `western'. I noticedhis face had started to crease like an old cowboy's. 

     "Too fine an afternoon to waste shingling." Alex had taken out a piece of dental floss and was working his teeth. "There are some bragging fish up—“ 

     "I don't feel like doing a goddamn thing, if you don't mind,” I said.

      He looked at me. 

     "She's fucking this guy in Hartford." I held up the letter. "How can she get any perspective about us if she's fucking this guy?" 

Alex shrugged. "Maybe that's what she wants to do."

     "All I know is I'm out here two months, and I can see we'vegot a future. She goes and does this. It’s all over. It's really finished.”

Brilliant fireweed bloomed among among the stumps. Alex's house looked out on Missoula Valley, and far across to thegray teeth of the Idaho Bitterroots. He balled the floss andtucked it into his pocket. "I sometimes wonder about Fay and me," he said.  "If it mightn't have worked out. . ."

I almost laughed. If ever there had been oil and water.

After a moment, Alex said, "Trudy would have liked it outhere. Too bad she didn’t come, she could have done some painting."

"Yeah, well, she's into interiors. Light in empty rooms."

"I can see it," said Alex. "Trudy would make that interesting."

It felt like she and I were the surviving pair of a sub-species. Find your way back together or become extinct. I lovedher, but that had sunk so far into the grain I hadn't been able tosee it or feel it until I came out here.

"Let's go fishing."

"For Chrissake, Alex--"

“Jeremiah invited us to stay to supper. You can seetheir tipi."

Downstairs, he dug an elk roast out of the freezer as ourcontribution to the meal.

 

The macadam off the Interstate followed a small river intohills thickly wooded with fir. The road turned to dirt and we overtook a gaunt man on a bicycle pulling a home made cart full ofgroceries. Alex stopped on the shoulder and Jeremiah pulled up onthe driver's side.

"Thought we'd take you up on your offer," said Alex.

Jeremiah was over six feet and sat on the bicycle seat withhis boots flat on the ground. He had a reddish beard streaked withgrey, thin lips and mournful eyes;  a face for El Greco. And bodyodor that climbed right into the cab.

"They'll be hittin' about the time you get up there," he said.

Alex introduced me and I reached across to shake Jeremiah'shand through the window.

"Ever see a chimley like that?" he asked.

It took me a moment to realize he was talking about Alex'schimney.

"Ain't built for drawin', curved like that. You're gonnaregret that fancy idea come winter."

"We'll see," said Alex. The truck almost stalled and hegunned it. "Bert's from New York City."

“Soon to be," I said. "Don't rush it."

Alex offered Jeremiah a lift.

"Na.  I got this far, it ain't but three miles more."

 

Alex parked beside an old concrete abutment. The bridge wasgone; a single rusty cable bellied thirty feet over fast water.  Alex loaded our gear onto a wooden platform slung beneath the cable on pulleys. Kneeling on this cable car he let go the strap that held it; it fell toward the river, swooping up the far side.

 

I stuck the three six packs of Olys in the river. Alex wasfishing already and had gotten rises. He tossed me his fly box andsaid tie on the grey and brown one with a yellow tail, and douseit with dope. We were fishing dry flies which had to float on thewater like winged insects.

I waded out. The bottle-green water, icy and fast, leanedheavily into my legs; it felt like the bottom was cobbled withgreasy baseballs. I rooted as best I could and began whipping thelong rod overhead, back and forth. The line snaked out in the airover the river and dropped the fly onto quiet water behind aboulder. No sooner had it dimpled the surface than it was gone! I hauled back and the rod bent jerking like a bull terrier hadgrabbed on. Then the fish jumped - a foot and a half out of the river – and fell back with a splash. I whooped.

I was playing the fish, backing toward shore when I noticedJeremiah squatting on the opposite bank, watching.

Without a net I would have to lead the fish in and beach him. He hovered in a foot of water, nearly invisible in the shiftingbrowns and golds of the river bottom. I could see the fly hooked through the white cartilage of his lower lip.  Alex hadfiled the barb so the only thing holding the hook was the tensionof the line. I drew the fish in until his nose almost touchedsand - then scooped with both hands. I pounced on the flipping fish and held him up victoriously.

"Fair brown. . ." came dryly across the water.