Black Cherry Blues

The next morning was Friday. I was headed back to the other side of the Divide when my water pump went out at Bo

The air was cool and smelled of woodsmoke when I woke Monday morning, and the sun was bright on the lip of Hellgate Canyon and the valley was filled with blue shadows. I made cush-cush for Alafair and me, walked her to school in the spreading sunlight, then sat on the front porch in a long-sleeved fla

"I've got a day off. Take a drive with me up the Blackfoot," he said.

"I have to pick up my truck in the shop later."

"I'll take you there. Come on. You got a fishing rod?"

His seamed, coarse face smiled at me. He looked like he could bench three hundred pounds or break a baseball bat across his knee. I invited him in and gave him a cup of coffee in the kitchen while I got my Fenwick rod out of the closet and tied on my te

"What have you got in the way of flies?" he asked.

"Nothing really, popping bugs."

"I've got what you need, brother. A number-fourteen renegade. It drives them crazy."

"What's this about?"

His mouth twitched, and the muscles in the side of his face and throat jumped.

"I thought I'd pick up some tips from you on how to handle Sally Dee," he said.

"I think you've got a first there. I don't believe anybody's ever cleaned Sal's clock before."

"How'd you hear about it?"

"The sheriff's office reports to us whenever Sal comes to their attention. A deputy told me you tried to use Sal's face to repaint the side of his van. I always knew he had some worthwhile potential."

"He's got skag and coke in that house."

"How do you know?"

"A friend told me."

"Purcel?"

"No."

"Ah, the Indian girl."

"What do you know about her?"

"Nothing. She's just some gal Purcel picked up. They come and go at Sally Dee's. What's your point about the coke and the skag?"

"Get a warrant and bust the place."

"When I put Sal away, it's going to be for the rest of his worthless life, not on a chickenshit possessions charge. He'd have one of those lamebrain beach boys doing his time, anyway."

"I spent some time up at the Flathead courthouse. Why's he buying and leasing up property around the lake?"

Nygurski set his cup in the saucer and looked out the window at the backyard. The grass was wet and green in the shade, and the sunlight was bright on the tops of the trees across the alley.

"He thinks casino gambling's going through the legislature," he said.

"The time's right for it. People are out of work, they've used up all their compo, agriculture's in the toilet. Casino gambling could turn Flathead Lake into another Tahoe. Sal would be in on the ground floor."

"It's that simple?"

"Yeah, more or less. I don't think it's going to happen, though. People here don't like outsiders, anyway. Particularly greasers and Californians."

"What did you come over here to tell me?"

"Don't worry about it. Come on, I've got an appointment with an eighteen-inch rainbow."

We drove up through the Blackfoot River canyon, which was still dark and cool with shadows and smelled of woodsmoke blowing up from the mill at Bo

I tied a renegade fly on the tippet of my nylon leader and followed Nygurski into the shallows. The water was so cold inside my te

I raised my rod high and stripped off-line with my left hand and let him run. He headed out into the current, into deep water, and my Fenwick arched and vibrated in my palm, drops of water glistening and trembling on the line. Then he broke the surface, and the sun struck the red and pink and green band on his side. I had to go deeper into the current with him, up to my chest now, and strip off my line to keep from breaking the tippet. I kept walking with him downstream while he pumped against the rod and tried to wrap the line around a submerged boulder, until I was back in the deep shade of the canyon, with the wind cold on my neck and the air heavy with the smell of ferns and wet stone.

Then I was around a bend, up into shallow water again, the gravel firm under my te

While Nygurski fished farther upstream, I kicked together a pile of driftwood out in the sunlight, started a fire on the stones, and fixed a pot of cowboy coffee from his rucksack. It was warm in the sun. I sat on a dead cottonwood and drank the coffee black from one of his tin cups and watched him fish. There was a ranch farther upstream, and curious Angus wandered out of the unfenced pasture and nosed through the willows and clattered across the stones on the beach into the shallows. I saw Nygurski break his leader on a snag, then look back at me in frustration. I pointed to my watch.

He walked up the beach with his fly rod over his shoulder. His jeans were wet up to his thighs. He slipped his straw creel off his shoulder, slit open the stomachs of three rainbow, scooped out the guts and threw them back into the willows. Then he stooped by the edge of the stream and dug the blood and membrane out of the vertebrae with his thumbnail.

"I saw you turn that big one loose," he said.

"I don't keep them much anymore. I don't have a Montana license, anyway."