The Sky Fisherman (11 page)

"Watch your goddamn footing," fake said. "I don't need another casualty." He waded over to the body and grabbed the jacket between the left shoulder and the arm.

"Take a hold," he said. "You got to free that one foot, the way it's caught in the brush."

I broke a brittle limb off the tree and tried prying the wedged foot clear. Somehow he had lost one shoe, although the sock was still on. The tennis shoe on the other foot had a crimson lace, matching the jacket sleeve.

"Grab hold, for Christ's sakes. You've had a tetanus shot."

I grabbed the calf. The flesh beneath the wet denim felt soft and slippery from being in the water so long. I'll bet you never get used to this, I thought. When I jerked, the leg came free and the current swung both legs against my waders.

"Let's reel him in." Jake began wading toward the shore, towing the sodden body along. I just followed, keeping a light grip on the calf, halfway steering.

As he neared the cutbank, he slowed. "In the shallows, he'll get real heavy. No buoyancy. We'll need to rest a minute before we heave him up the bank."

"All right, then." I wiped my forehead, a little surprised at how hard I was sweating. Glancing across the river, I saw two red-headed canvasbacks flash low over the water.

Jake took a couple deep breaths. "Lift the legs high. Grab just below the knees and lift. No pussying around."

When I lifted the legs, the jacket hiked up a little so I could see the beaded belt that spelled out
KALIM
—red letters against dark blue.

Jake grunted as he lifted the heavy chest and shoulders; I realized he had given me the lighter end. "We'll swing twice, then heave him up," he said. "Here goes. One!"

The body was heavy as hell, and for the first time, I smelled the stench.

"Two!"

I tried swinging harder but couldn't get the rhythm.

"
Heave.
"

We got the body part way up the cutbank, but not to the flat grassy part. As it started slipping back down, Jake ducked, catching the weight with his shoulder. "Give a hand here, Culver. God damn it!"

With my left hand, I grabbed Kalim's belt and lifted his butt with my right, and we rolled him up on the flat spot somehow, but the head flopped around, revealing where the face should have been.

Even though I tried averting my eyes, I had seen too much, something straight out of nightmares. "Jesus." I choked. "What happened to his face?"

Jake took a large blue bandanna from his pocket and covered the head. "Crayfish chewed on him. It's better if you don't look."

I stumbled over to a flat rock and sat for a few minutes, fighting off the urge to puke. With the bloat and no face, the body could be anyone. It's not my father, I thought. This is a young Indian man. Running my fingers through the thick warm grass, I kept repeating, His people want him back, his people want him back.

"Come take a squint at this, Culver."

After a couple of minutes, I stood and stepped closer to my uncle. The grass around Kalim was all wet, and I didn't notice the smell so much anymore, but the flies were starting to gather and Jake kept brushing them away with his hand. "Take a close look." He squatted beside the body, pointing at the letterman's jacket.

I saw the small hole high up on the back, just to the right of the spine. "What's it about?"

"You tell me."

"Caught a snag maybe. Barbed wire."

"Barbed wire makes a tear, not a hole. Help me turn him. Don't look at the face now."

As I got my hands under the small of his back and rolled him, I felt something hard and heavy, bulging his jacket pockets.

Kalim was on his back, and Jake pulled the bandanna over the face.

"He's still wearing his medicine pouch." Jake touched the leather bag that hung from a thong around his neck. "But it didn't help him much."

I saw the pouch all right, but I was staring to the side of it, at the jagged hole in his shirt.

Jake lifted the shirt and let out his breath. "Somebody shot him all right. He was stone dead when he hit the water."

"What the hell happened, I wonder!"

Jake shook his head. "Just be glad we found him. Otherwise, somebody gets by with murder."

He stood, slapping me on the back. "You're going to be a hero—name in the paper, all that sort of thing."

I felt a rush of elation. It was a good thing we had done, I decided. Even though I hadn't known him, I felt as if maybe I could have, because he was only a few years older than I was, and if things were a little different we might have played ball together, something like that. Kalim's relatives were going to be pleased that he wasn't still lost, and whoever was responsible for shooting him would have to pay.

We put Kalim in the body bag and Jake zipped it closed. Then we slid the bag down to the boat and lifted him in. "I guess we'd better get this down to South Junction," Jake said. "We're losing the light, and I don't want to find any new rocks in the Bronco."

***

Just before we went into the rapids, Jake shifted the oars and cinched his life vest tight. "Make sure," he said, nodding at me, and I gave my cinches another pull, too. "All set," I said.

The Bronco was treacherous. I could see jagged rocks teething out of the whitewater. Jake kept to the middle to avoid the rocks at the head of the run and the smooth boulders lining the main chute. Each rapid slammed the boat with a loud
chunk,
throwing the nose high and tugging at the bow, trying to spin us onto the rocks. The seat jarred my spine, but I kept grinning at Jake, like I was having fun.

He fought the rapids' pull with long, deep oar strokes, keeping the boat away from the rocks until it was sucked into the long curling chute of slick water.

The chute hurled the boat downstream like a toboggan, skimming past the large boulders. In spite of Jake's efforts to keep the nose downstream, we were gripped by a momentary eddy and flung sideways against one of the large rocks.

Water poured over the side of the boat, soaking my right forearm. When Jake tried to push off the boulder with an oar, the blade snapped. "God damn it," he shouted, his eyes widening with fury as he flung the broken oar with such force it sailed onto the riverbank. "Bail!" he yelled, and I quit clutching the gunwale long enough to grab one of the floating coffee cans.

Plunging his hand through the ankle-deep water, he grabbed the spare oar from the boat bottom and stood, using his full strength to push the water-laden boat off the boulder and into the chute once again.

I bailed furiously, pushing the body bag aside and flinging half cans of water over the side.

As I glanced at Jake, his face was red. "Goddamn but ^e's heavy," he said.

I bailed harder, until the body bag quit floating and rested on the bottom planks.

When we made it through the rooster tail at the lower end of the rapids, Jake pulled the boat into shore. Both of us got out for a minute and stood in the sand.

"Sonofabitching oar," he said. "Damn near cost me my boat."

"I thought we'd bought the farm," I said.

"You never go through that fucking rapids the same way twice, no matter where you start. Those currents shift with the water levels. Sometimes you can slide through slick as a whistle. Others you hang on every rock." He looked me over a minute. "You look like hell," he said. "You really do. A kid is supposed to look good." He sat on a rock and laughed, and we both felt better. After a couple of minutes he got up and pulled out a pint of Yukon Jack from under the seat. Taking off the lid, he handed me the bottle. "Your first time through the Bronco. And you're here to tell the tale."

When the bottle was almost gone and the shadows on the water were angling toward the far shore, I asked, "How was it when my father drowned?"

Jake stood, brushing off his pants. For a moment, I thought he was going to get back in the boat without speaking. But he cleared his throat and started telling the story, measuring each word to get it right.

"We could have walked up from South Junction. That's how the other fishermen were doing it, because the water was too high that spring. But we were in our twenties and had a new boat and thought nothing could stop us. So we decided to fish the Barn Hole, then run the Bronco—save ourselves lots of walking.

"The water was so high you could barely see the rocks, but we slipped
by them fine and slid into the chute. Just before the rooster tail, the boat hit something, part of a big tree trunk washed down in the spring floods. We both tried pushing off, but a wall of water flipped the boat. I was swept around, but Dave went underneath. The current banged me against rocks and kept sucking me under. Each time I came up looking for Dave. He finally surfaced but without a jacket. Maybe it wasn't on tight and the water tore it off, but probably it caught on a branch, holding him under, so he had to shed it to get clear."

I shuddered a little, thinking of the tough choice to wriggle out of a life jacket in the Bronco.

"Fighting for every inch, I closed the distance, until I grabbed his shirt and we spun a moment, locked together. His arm seemed broken, I remember that, and when the current tumbled us against a big rock in the rooster tail, things went black. I came to, choking on water, and I had a hunk of flannel clutched in my fist."

Jake stared at his hands, thick with calluses and rough from years on the river. "I tried, but I just couldn't hold him. Below the rapids, I crawled ashore and searched the riverbank until way past dark. I kept shouting and cursing but there was no Dave.

"I hiked to South Junction and called the sheriff. The worst part was calling your mother later that night. When I heard her voice go dead on the other end of the line, I felt cold all over, like it was me lying on the river bottom, drowned."

He started untying the boat line. "It hurt me most we never found him. When I do find them, like Kalim here, it eases the hurt just a bit."

I understood a little of what he meant. Although the discovery of Kalim's murder was terrible, at least his relatives would know the outcome. With my father, things never seemed to settle. "Thanks, Uncle Jake. Thanks for telling me. I never believed it was your fault."

He nodded. "Your mother does, though, even if she stays quiet. I remember that time she came on the train. We had it out." He threw the tie line into the boat. "I lived, so I get the blame. That's how she is."

A
T SOUTH JUNCTION
, we unloaded the body bag and made camp. Jake hiked up the dirt-track fisherman's road to the nearest farmhouse while I "stood watch," as he called it—not that Kalim was going anywhere. Before leaving, Jake suggested that I catch some trout for dinner, and he pointed out some good water with grassy hummocks extending into the river.

Fishing with an Adams fly as he had recommended, I caught six nice fish in an hour. By that time it was getting so dark I could hardly see the small fly against the gray water. Bats darted out from the basalt cliffs, and a couple made quick passes at my fly on the back cast, flicking aside at the last second.

Returning to camp, I quickly cleaned the fish near the boat. I was getting hungry but didn't want to cook until Jake returned, so I ate a couple handfuls of Fig Newtons, washing them down with sodas from the ice chest. Still hungry, I ate half a box of crackers, then built a fire to take off the chill.

After sitting that close to Kalim awhile, I got to thinking about the contents of his jacket pockets, how when we rolled him over I felt something heavy and hard. Curiosity got the better of me, and I took a flashlight over by the body bag. No one was within miles of camp, but I looked around good, just to be sure, then unzipped the bag. Holding my breath, I checked the pockets. They were filled with quarters, silver dollars, and soggy paper. Putting the contents on the ground, I examined them with a flashlight. Among the papers were wadded bills, mostly twenties and fifties. Counting quickly, I guessed he had over three hundred dollars on him.

I know I didn't plan to take the money—I was just curious—but right then I saw headlights flicker as a vehicle wound down the steep canyon road. It was still a long way off, too far for anyone to see me, even in the campfire's glow, but I could see it fine. I stuffed the paper money from Kalim's pockets into my creel and covered it with fishing tackle, then checked to make certain the pockets of his jacket weren't turned out. I closed the body bag and returned to the campfire.

As the pickup got closer, I was surprised to see it was a white tribal vehicle rather than one of the dark blue rigs the sheriff drove. Then I remembered how much Jake hated Grady. After Billyum shut off the engine, both men got out of the truck. "How you two been keeping?" Jake asked me. "Kalim didn't give you any trouble, did he? Sonofabitching farmer had the gate locked up there so no fishermen could drive down. I couldn't catch a ride and had to hike a long way for a phone."

"I caught some fish," I said. "You hungry?"

"In a minute," Jake said. "Better fry up a couple for Billyum, too."

Billyum shook his head. "I had me a big steak at the Phoenix."

"Sweet deal," Jake said. "Some of us were working hard while others were hardly working."

"That's why I picked you," Billyum said. "Delegate authority. Anyway, I knew you were a firecracker."

As Billyum went over to the body bag, he raised his right arm in the air. Holding his palm up, open to the sky, he turned slowly in a circle.

Jake winked at me and shook his head slowly. "Mumbo-jumbo," he mouthed.

Squatting by the body bag, Billyum took a flashlight from his belt. He unzipped the bag and studied Kalim for a while. "Not pretty anymore. The girls wouldn't smile to see him now." I thought I saw his hands slide into Kalim's pockets but my view was partially blocked by Billyum's size. "Still wearing his basketball jacket. You remember that outside shot he had. Sweet."

"I remember the state tournament," Jake said. "It was sour, that championship game."

"Anybody can have an off night," Billyum said.

"I lost five hundred dollars on that game," Jake said. "Some people claimed Kalim threw it."