Solomon Gursky Was Here (36 page)

Either Barney didn't remember Moses, or he wasn't allowing that he did. “Do they call you Moe for short?”

“No. They don't.”

“Well, glad to meet you anyway, buddy boy.”

Barney was the Gursky cockatrice. A week after Anita's first wedding, he had acquired a Lamborghini, shifted into overdrive, and lit out for California and then Florida, rumoured to have invested in turn in a roller-derby team, film production, oil exploration, the
international arms market, a wet T-shirt girls' basketball league in which he held the rights to the Miami Jigglers, et cetera.

Wanted, at one time or another, on various charges including fraud and alimony payment arrears, by the authorities in Florida, California, New York, and British Columbia, he hadn't even attended his sister's funeral in 1963. Charna had been discovered drowned in a swimming hole at the Friends of the Earth commune in northeastern Vermont four o'clock one morning, wearing nothing but a pair of snakeskin boots.

The Logans were waiting in the living room which, to Moses's astonishment, was festooned with red roses and actually had a bartender in attendance, something he had never seen before. The middle-aged Logans seemed an ill-matched pair. Mary Lou looked happily plump, wearing harlequin glasses with the sort of lenses that both magnified and blurred her eyes. But Larry was a scrawny bird, his bald head shiny, his dentures gleaming. Had he been a customs inspector he would have searched the bags of anybody that he considered saucy or younger or more privileged than he was. Their enormous son, who wore a Rolling Stones T-shirt over an immense belly and outsize faded jeans, sat apart. His button-nose cherry red, Rob held a box of Kleenex and two large Lowney's Nut Milk chocolate bars on his lap. The Logans were casually dressed, but Barney Gursky was even more fashionably turned out than his dishy girlfriend— Ralph Lauren polo shirt and dungarees and Tony Lama boots. Summoning the bartender with a flick of his manicured fingers, he asked Moses, “What can I offer you to drink?”

“A soda water, please.”

“Shucks, I think we got us a teetotaller, Larry. Bring this admirable fella a soda and the former Miss Sunset Beach here,” Barney said, indicating Darlene, “will have a vodka on the rocks, but just one before dinner. She's watching her calorie intake.” The Logans were from Chapel Hill, Barney said, furniture manufacturers, very big, and Barney's investment group was backing them in a venture that was willing to bet some twenty million plus on a Canadian plant. “And, hey, the fishing's going to be just great, because Jimbo here won't be holding us to the legal limit of two measly salmon a day, will you, boy?”

“We can't do anything illegal, sir.”

“Now isn't that nice,” Mary Lou said, “really nice. Jim here must have been told that we're very important VIPs, but he won't bend the law none for us. I respect that. Where do you hail from, Moe?”

“He doesn't like being called Moe for short,” Darlene said, wandering in narrowing circles, closer and closer to the bar.

“Forget it, baby.”

“Holy Toledo, I was just going to put my glass down.”

“Montreal.”

“We stayed at the Le Château Champlain there,” Mary Lou said.

No sooner did Moses begin to unwrap a Monte Cristo than Rob leaped up and pointed a fat trembling finger at him.

“If you intend lighting that thing,” Mary Lou said, “you'll have to step outside pronto.”

Jim Boyd, tying a fly at the corner table, pricked his finger on a hook.

“And what,” Barney asked, “would be your chosen field of endeavour, Moe?”

“He likes to be called Moses
. He must think we're simply
dreadful.”

“These days you could say I don't do much of anything.”

“Well, something tells me the former runner-up to Miss Flowering Dogwood has taken a shine to you, Berger.”

“Oh boy,” Darlene said, “here we go round the blueberry bush again.”

“Mulberry.”

Dinner at Vince's Gulch was usually something to be endured. Steak fried grey to the core served with potatoes boiled past the crumbling point, followed by “homemade” apple pie from Delaney's General Store, usually still frozen solid in the middle. But tonight a chef had been brought in from the Tudor Room of the Queen Victoria Hotel in Chatham. There was sweet corn and boiled lobster. Barney reached over to relieve Darlene of her corn—“More cellulite would be a real turn-off, baby”—and then called for another Scotch. Larry leaned forward so that Mary Lou could knot the napkin behind his neck. “Mercy bowcoop, Mummy.” And Rob lunged for the bread basket, stacking four hunks at his place, then swooping on the butter
dish, appropriating it. He gathered his plate in, leaving his plump arm curled on the table, sheltering what was his by right. Lowering his head as if to charge, he decimated his first corn cob and started in to strip the next one.

Jim explained that at Vince's Gulch the guides went out in the morning and again in the evening. There was no fishing in the afternoon. Everybody, he said, gets one turn at all the different pools during their three-day stay. He threw little twisted pieces of paper with the guides' names on them into a hat and asked everybody to draw one. Barney, who went first, drew young Armand. Larry got Len, or Motor-Mouth, as he was known on the river, and Rob drew Gilles.

“Well then,” Jim said, “I guess that leaves me and Mr. Berger.”

“He'll have the edge going out with the head guide, won't he, boy?”

“We don't call Jim or anybody else around here ‘boy'. Furthermore, it is not a competition.”

Barney accepted a large cognac and swished it around in his snifter. “I know you don't drink, Berger, but are you a gambling man?”

“What did you have in mind?”

“You, me, and Larry here each write out a cheque for a thou and tack it to the bar. Come Thursday top rod takes the pot.”

“I'm an old hand, Barney. It's more difficult than you think.”

“He's been fly-fishing for years,” Darlene said.

“Okay. We've got a bet.”

Thick unyielding clouds lay overhead as the Logans waddled down the dirt track to the river laden with bug sprays and cameras and expensive-looking movie equipment. Rob lugged a portable radio and his Kleenex and a big bag of candy. Barney carried a bottle of cognac. As Darlene raised a long slender leg to sidestep off the little floating dock into their long canoe—Armand reaching out to help, his eyes on her panting bosom—Barney immediately knocked her off balance with a proprietorial whack on her bottom. “Oh, man, do I ever go for those buns!”

Allowing everybody else a head start, Moses lighted a Monte Cristo and settled into his canoe with Jim.

“What can I say, Moses?”

“Don't come this week is what you could have said.”

Over the hum of the outboards, The Rolling Stones began to ricochet off the river walls, scattering the crows. Fortunately Rob was heading a good mile downriver to the Bar Pool.

Once Jim had anchored at their first drop, out of sight of the others, Moses started out with a Silver Doctor, went to a Green Highlander and then a Muddler without getting anything to rise. Things were no better on the second drop. On the third drop they saw a big salmon roll and another leap, maybe thirty feet out. Moses laid every fly he could think of over their heads, but they weren't taking. Then there came a hollering and a squealing from the Fence Pool. “It's probably only a grilse they got,” Jim said.

A half hour passed and then the deer flies came out and it began to drizzle. Covering the far fast water, stripping his line quickly, Moses got his strike. A big fish, maybe thirty pounds, taking so hard Moses didn't even have to set the hook, his rod already bent double. Immediately the line screeched and the fish shot downriver, taking most of Moses's backing before it paused and he started to reel in the slack. Jim lifted anchor and began to paddle gently toward shore, his net within reach. The fish came close enough to look at the canoe and raced downriver again, breaking water about fifty feet out. Flipping in the air. Dancing on its tail.

“Hey there, Moses. Hey there.”

The fish struck for the bottom and Moses imagined it down there, outraged, rubbing its throbbing jaw against the gravel, trying to dislodge the hook. It couldn't, obviously, so it gave in to bad temper, flying out of the boiling water once more, shaking its angry head, diving, then resting deep, maybe pondering tactics. After Moses had played the fish for another twenty minutes, he heard and then saw the others in their canoes returning from their pools. Approaching Vince's Hole, Gilles and Len both cut their outboards back sharply, as courtesy required, but not Armand, whom Barney had instructed to actually accelerate into the opposite bank before killing his engine. Frank Zappa bounced over the water at God knows how many decibels. Cursing, Moses reeled the fish in close. It was lying on its side on the surface now, panting desperately, but good for one more run. Moses vacillated only briefly before leading the exhausted fish toward
the net. And that's when Mary Lou stood up to take pictures, her flash attachment exploding again and again. Distracted, Moses didn't notice his line tangling round the butt of his rod. The fish bolted, running his line taut and jerking free of the hook. Moses's rod sprung upright, his line going slack.

“Well now,” Barney said, “like the old hands say: it's more difficult than you think.”

Back in camp, Moses was told soon enough that Barney had killed two salmon, a total of twenty-four pounds, Larry had landed a five pound grilse, and Rob had lost a fish.

As the bartender had gone home it was an exuberant Barney who served the drinks, allowing Darlene another vodka and asking Moses whether he would like his soda straight up or on the rocks. Har, har, har. Moses, pleading fatigue, allowed that he would have just one and then retire to his room to read in bed.

“Didn't I tell ya, Mary Lou? Moses is a
real
highbrow.”

“Well, I've read a whole stack of novels myself this year, both fiction and non-fiction. I never bother with TV.”

“In my humble opinion,” Darlene said, “TV is just one big waste of time. I only watch PBS.”

“Yeah,” Barney said. “‘Sesame Street.'”

Rob shook with laughter, retrieving a trail of snot from his upper lip with a lizard-like dart of his tongue.

“I'm going to turn in now,” a tearful Darlene said. “Will you be long, Barney?”

“I won't be long here, but I sure will when I get there. So there'll be no call for you to unpack your vibrator tonight, baby.”

The telephone rang, Barney scooping it up before Jim could reach it. “It's for you, Moe.”

Jim rubbed his hands against his trousers. “You can take it in the kitchen,” he said.

It was London on the line.

“Lucy, is that you?”

“Yes,” a thick voice came crackling back.

It was, Moses reckoned, three o'clock in the morning in London. “What's all that racket in the background?”

“I'm moving.”

“At this hour?”

“You're such a nag, Moses.”

“Why are you slurring your words?”

“It's my jaw. It's still swollen. The dentist yesterday. Oh, you and Henry are both going to be sent some photographs. I don't want either of you to open the envelopes. You are to put them right in the fire. Do you understand?”

“Are you in trouble again, Lucy?”

“Will you please do as I ask for once and not bother me with any stupid questions.”

“I will throw the envelope in the fire without opening it. Have you spoken to Henry yet?”

“Obviously you are more worried about him than you are about me.”

“There's a delicate sensibility at play there.”

“But not here?”

“No.”

“You think I'm disgusting?”

“Yes,” Moses said, hanging up. Then he dug a couple of pills out of his pocket and swallowed them without water.

Approaching the bedroom lodge some fifteen minutes later, Moses saw moths dancing in the cone of light coming from Darlene's bedroom. Darlene was waiting on her side of the screen door, wearing a Four Seasons Hotel towel robe belted loosely over a wispy black negligee with a red lace trim. “You're not a teetotaller,” she said. “You had to give it up, but you continue to nurse some secret sorrow. My daddy was a boozer too.”

Moses laughed, delighted with her. Darlene was sucking on a joint. Opening the screen door, she handed it to him. Moses inhaled deeply before passing it back, not letting go of her hand, but drawing her close and whispering a suggestion to her.

“Why, Moses Berger, you are a simply
dreadful
man,” she said, all twinkly. “But if he sees your car gone as well he'll figure it out and go absolutely apeshit.”

The banging screen door of the dining-room lodge warned them
of Barney's unsteady approach. Darlene thrust the joint at Moses, hastily adjusting her towel robe, and then began to spray her bedroom with deodorant. Retreating to his own room, Moses collapsed on his bed, gratified that he was still capable of mindless lust. Then the bickering flared in the next room, Darlene declaring with some vehemence, “I'm not getting up to brush my teeth and rinse out again. If that's what you want go find yourself a whore.”

Moses quit his room and headed for the dirt road to walk off his rage. He made it as far as the turnoff for Kedgewick before he started back. Once in camp again, he didn't return directly to his room. Instead he slipped into the dining room and dialled Clarkson's number in Montreal. Clarkson, he knew, was in Toronto. Beatrice answered on the seventh ring.

“I'm at Vince's Gulch.”

“Moses, it's one
A.M.
” She sighed. “Did Jim ask after me?”

“Possibly he hasn't inquired because he has yet to catch me alone.”