A River Trilogy Read online

  I may have dozed for a while. When I woke up, it was to the voices of two young boys engaged in a furious argument. Shading my eyes in the glare, I made them out a hundred yards upstream, bumping down the river in inner tubes.

  I say bumping, because that’s exactly what they were doing. There wasn’t enough water to float the tubes. They would get a little headway in the rapids above the pools, then come to an ignominious stop on the rocks below. Stranded, they stood up in the center of the tubes and waddled over to the bank, yelling at each other all the while.

  One of them was bleeding from a cut on his knee; the other’s bathing suit was ripped along the side. They acted glad to see an adult.

  “We’re floating the river in inner tubes,” the redheaded one said.

  “So I see.”

  “There’s not enough water,” his friend added.

  “We should have gone last week like I said!” the redhead yelled.

  “Come off of it!”

  “You come off of it!”

  It seemed like a good time to intervene.

  “Those are pretty unusual tubes,” I said. “What’s this for over here?”

  They had customized them, adding extra strips of rubber to act as bumpers, lashing orange bike pennants to the sides so they could find each other if they became separated. An extra tube had been attached to the redhead’s for supplies, but it had hit a sharp rock and sunk. They had started up by the North Branch at 8:30 in the morning, and at this rate, they figured they’d make it to the Connecticut in October.

  I helped them relaunch their tubes.

  “Watch out for the dam,” I said, pushing them out.

  They looked at each other. “Uh, what dam?” the redhead said.

  I told them. They didn’t seem impressed.

  “No sweat!”

  They were bouncing down through the Aquarium now, spinning around as if on snow saucers, and in between their continued arguing, I heard their whoops of joy.

  They took a lot of life with them when they left. It was midafternoon, and the hazy sun was pressing down with all its weight. The farmer had left off haying—even the insects seemed muzzled. I tried a few casts, but it was too hot to fish. My rod hidden in the grass, I was getting ready to dive in for a swim when my second visitor of the afternoon arrived: a solitary duck the like of which I had never seen.

  He came floating down the river as awkwardly as the boys. I think he was a mallard, though I’m not sure; he had a mallard’s neck, but his feathers were as multicolored and scruffy as a Manhattan pigeon’s, and he swam with the grace of a turkey.

  We immediately became friends. I’m a sucker for open personalities, and this was a duck that held nothing back. He swam right up to me looking for a handout, and when he saw I had nothing for him, decided to stick with me anyhow. I was wading downstream toward a deeper swimming hole, and he tagged along at my heels.

  All was fine for the first ten yards, then he fell behind. The low water confused him. He managed all right in depths over eight inches, but when it got shallower than that, he would bump into partly submerged rocks and be unsure whether to swim over them or climb them—at every rock his webbed feet slithered back and forth in indecision. He was embarrassed—he kept rearing back in his best threat posture, his wings beating furiously as he tried to bluff each boulder from his path.

  He kept me company while I swam. Occasionally, he would wander off a bit, duck his head underwater and come up with weeds. He worked these furiously through his beak, then spit them out with distaste, like a kid eating spinach. Was he fishing? I was trying to remember if ducks ate fish, when with a quickness I wouldn’t have credited him with, he ducked his head again and came up with a minnow.

  I never saw anyone take a fish with such commotion and pride. Fish was wiggling around in its beak, duck was going through contortions to keep him there; fish was limp, duck was struggling to climb up onto the bank with him; fish was swallowed, duck was stretching his wings in the threat posture again, quacking in triumph.

  “Way to go, duck,” I said, saluting him.

  Praise is what that duck was after all along. Getting it, he headed downstream in the same direction as the rose and the boys and the day, bumping from rock to rock like a pinball, battered but proud.

  12

  Really Good Stuff

  The good stuff—the really good stuff—is in the back beneath the grinning fox. The rest of the store has at least five incarnations. Go in the door on the right and it’s a typical Vermont gift shop, with maple fudge, wooden tomahawks, and postcards. Go in the middle door, the one that sets the bell jangling, and it’s a typical Vermont drugstore, with liniments for aching muscles, syrups for scratchy throats, and balms for softening the udders of cows.

  It’s at the edges of Sanborn’s where things start to get interesting. You’re out of the new part of the store now (new as in 1870 something), into the older wing where the floorboards sag beneath your feet and you have to duck to get out of the way of the antique clothing—the flapper dresses, capes, and evening gowns—that hang suspended from the ceiling, their sleeves wafting gently as if swayed by invisible arms.

  The wine is there to the right on three long shelves. It’s a democratic assemblage, amusing in its lack of pretension, but with a . . . how shall we say it? . . . mongrel breeding: a few Moselles for class, a token Liebfraumilch, a cloudy looking White Mountain white, maple wine bottled in Vermont, a few of the pop Italian brands and whatever other curiosities Mr. Sanborn happens to enjoy. You can either spring for a bottle now and take a chance you’ll have enough for flies, or wait until you buy the flies and get the cheaper vintage with what’s left.

  A ramp leads to the back. The battered thirty-five-cent paperbacks are on either side; browsing through them is like leafing through the best-seller lists of the last thirty years. A Generation of Vipers, Travels with Charley, Advise and Consent, Anatomy of a Murder, Growing Up Absurd, Peyton Place, The Godfather, Jaws. Past them, the real bookshelves begin, with over a thousand old volumes. The section on Vermont is beneath the moosehead, the one that drools papier-mache; included are 27th Vermont Agricultural Report 1907, University of Vermont Service Records 1917–18, History of Athens, VT, Ancient Craft Masonry in Vermont, The Autobiography of Calvin Coolidge, and—even better—Grace Coolidge and Her Era.

  If you follow the town histories down into Massachusetts, then cross over to the shelf on war books, then follow the fiction past the cookbooks, you’re into good stuff, but not the really good stuff: spinning rods hanging from their tips, bait buckets stacked haphazardly in the corner, lures taped by cellophane to the walls. These are bass lures; is there anything more typically American in proud illiteracy and cartoon rhythm than their names? River Runt, Bugeye, Cop-e-cat, Flutter chuck, Hawg Frawg, Krocodile, Lusox, Sputterbug, Kweet Special, Augertail, Bopper Popper . . . they’re all here, with a flash and energy that are as aural as sound.

  Between the bass lures and the really good stuff is a wood stove, a big Defiant. It’s seldom on. Propped against its cold side are some old paintings, the kind that itinerant artists would toss off in the 1850s, workmanlike imitations of the Hudson River school, landscapes featuring valleys, castles and clouds. Never mind their holes. For ten dollars, they’re atmospheric bargains to hang on old walls.

  You’re in the remotest corner of the store now, into the really good stuff at last—the flies, nets, fly rods, and reels. The stuffed fox hangs from the ceiling over the fly-tying supplies; he’s mounted with one paw lifted in a pose that manages to be bloodthirsty and delicate at the same time, and as you browse through the fly trays, you wonder whether he’s snarling at you or smiling.

  Ah, the fly trays. They’re a glorious mess. The Bivisibles are mixed in with the streamers, the terrestrials are combined with the nymphs, and the midges are God knows where. It takes a good half hour to find what you’re looking for. At the bottom of one tray is a snelled bass fly with a huge yellow wing, the kind Doctor Henshal
l might have used; at the bottom of another is a Parmacheene Belle, or some other antique.

  About the time you make your selection, Mr. Sanborn will appear. He looks like a moody Santa Claus, with a belly that spills over his belt, a snow-white beard, and an introspective frown. He’s wearing wool pants and a checkered shirt—it makes him look like Santa all right, but a Santa who runs a trap line on the side.

  “Help you there?”

  Unless you’re a local, Mr. Sanborn won’t recognize you, no matter how many times you’ve been in his store. He’ll recommend some flies, then fill you in on his fishing. This won’t be on the river (he last fished it in the 1940s, and according to him it’s been going downhill ever since), but on the nearby lakes. Downriggers with Golden Demons in ten feet of water, he says. Ten trout last night, twelve the night before.

  “You fish them like I tell you, see what happens. Jigger it right back to you soon as they bite. Ayuh, that’s fishing.”

  His voice is deep, comforting. You can dig away at the flies while he talks. You can wonder whether the fox is happy or sad, puzzle out what kind of wine you should buy, and make a mental note to find out, someday, exactly what Grace Coolidge and Her Era is all about.

  I’m lucky to have Sanborn’s so close. A good tackle shop can complement a good river, act as prelude to its delights. Ordering tackle through the mail is a sterile pleasure in comparison; what the flyfisherman needs are fly trays to paw through, reels to click experimentally, rods to wiggle appraisingly in his hand. Just as the rivers I’ve fished seem to link themselves in my memory into one long river, the tackle shops I’ve known seem to merge into one gigantic store, a cornucopia of impressions departmentalized by the years.

  Bob’s Bait comes first, fragrant with the smell of coffee-ground-bedded worms. It wasn’t far from the lake where I learned to fish, and we would stop there for shiners on our way to the boat. As tackle shops go, it was small—maybe ten by five at the most. Roughly two-thirds of that space was taken up by galvanized tanks for the bait; into the rest was crammed an incredible assortment of rods, reels, and lures. An acquisitive twelve, I couldn’t go into the store without drooling—I never wanted anything as much as I did those cleverly displayed lures.

  Bob himself was an impassive man with a martyred expression; whenever I tried to tell him about the fish I had caught on his bait, he grunted and turned away, leaving me close to tears. I couldn’t imagine anyone selling such marvelous stuff being less than marvelous himself, and it was a great disappointment to learn that Bob was totally pedestrian, with very little interest in fishing, and even less interest in humoring enthusiastic boys. Looking back, I suppose his feet hurt or something—that’s the only expression I ever saw on his face.

  I had been buying lures at Bob’s with increasing reluctance when a competitor opened up closer to town. The Angler’s Pool was everything Bob’s Bait was not, with immaculate display cases trimmed with cherry, fly tackle arranged in spacious rows and a friendly and knowledgeable owner. Franz had come originally from Germany, and his accent added just the right amount of exoticism to his gear. He loved to talk fishing. I would show up in the morning when no customers were around (I found out later that no customers were ever around), and he would take me out back to his stockroom to show me the latest order that had come in.

  Poor Franz! He was a collector, not a shopkeeper, and his love for fine tackle soon did him in. Flyfishermen with the money for good equipment were scarce in that town; by the end of the summer, he was out of business—the shop was turned into a beautician’s. As a parting gift, Franz gave me a dozen of his best Light Cahills.

  Bob, of course, continued to prosper, scowl and all. It was an early lesson in economics: when it came to tackle shops, good guys, or at least good flyfishermen, did not finish first.

  The Angler’s Pool had initiated me into the pleasures of classy tackle shops. Casting about for a replacement, I went right to the source: Abercrombie and Fitch.

  Poor A & F! Like Franz’s, its New York store was having trouble staying in business, faced as it was with competition from the cut-rate sporting goods stores like Herman’s, and the mail-order houses like Bean’s. The outdoors was being democratized in the ‘60s, and Abercrombie and Fitch’s eliteness seemed too fuddy-duddy to endure. I suppose the market for $200 croquet sets and elephant-hide footrests was never a very big one to begin with, even at the best of times.

  Though its glories were fading when I knew it, there was still enough glitter left to impress a fourteen-year-old boy. I would take the train into the city, walk crosstown from Penn Station to Madison Avenue. There were bookstores along the way, record stores, too, but I sailed past them like Ulysses past the Sirens, saving my three or four dollars of spending money until I got to Abercrombie and Fitch itself.

  It always seemed to be raining when I got there; the store was in its autumnal phase, and everything in it had a patina of venerability and age. Walking through the door into the ground-level floor was like walking into the British Museum—the accessories displayed there seemed the spoils of Empire—and it was hard to remember that everything was for sale. You never noticed the cash registers. Were they even there?

  I took the elevator right to the fishing tackle on the eighth floor. They were great elevators. They’d be filled with stuffy-looking businessmen on their lunch hours; I loved their baldness, their quaint tweed, the authoritative way they reached out and pushed the button on the floor of their choice.

  I stepped out onto the eighth floor with the excitement with which other kids must have entered Disneyland. There was some really good stuff there! Over in the left-hand corner by the elevator bank was a gold-plated fighting chair, the kind Hemingway must have used for marlin, and jutting out from it was a tuna rod with two tips—two tips, branching apart from the butt to form a Y. To the right of it, the fly tackle began—I remember how beautifully brown the bamboo rods were, how afraid I was to touch them. The flies were in long flat wooden trays, displayed as delicately as butterflies. Beyond them were the bass lures, at double the price of Bob’s. Along the wall were glass display cases with the reels—I remember a miniature bait-casting reel that shone in the fluorescent light like an emerald. Scattered about the counter’s top were Wheatley fly boxes and streamer wallets lined with wool. Further to the right was a bookcase, with books by people like Edward R. Hewitt and George M. L. LaBranche, authors whose ghosts probably still shopped there once the regular customers were gone.

  All of the sales clerks looked like Herbert Hoover. I don’t think any of them ever deigned to wait on me. They acted like they worked there merely as a genteel means of killing time between fishing trips—asking one of them for help was like breaking the silence in the reading room of Mycroft Holmes’s private club.

  I never dared do that. I would walk around for a while trying to find something my three dollars would buy, then—since the A & F elevators seemed only to ascend and never descend—sadly take the stairs down to the street. Three dollars went a long way in those days, but only at Nedick’s.

  I shouldn’t have laughed at the sales clerks. Before long, I was working as one myself—at Macy’s, the biggest store in the world. It was 1969. I was dropping out of college with a certain degree of regularity, trying to find the time to write. Macy’s seemed like a reasonable stopgap. In those days, the shoe clerks all wanted to be tap dancers, the lingerie women dreamed of being Carol Channing, and the luggage department had more poets than Columbia.

  They put me in sporting goods; as far as I know, I was the first would-be novelist they’d had. The rest of the group was varied enough. Gus the Greek was thirty-four and aggressively single; he was a storehouse of information on singles bars, ‘50s rock singers, and bluefishing. Tom O’Brien was a former All-Ireland drum major who had brought his strut with him to America; it was hard to know where the blarney left off and the truth began—he was too small to have played international rugby for Ireland, but you had to listen to his stories or h
e’d get mad. Jim was a recently returned Vietnam veteran—none of us probed his silences too hard. Bob Stern, our boss, was smooth-talking and ambitious, but took a boyish delight in breaking store rules, and was something of a hero to us for that reason.

  In those days, sporting goods was in what was called the “Outdoor Shop.” It was a separate wing from the main store, and the floorwalkers pretty much left us alone. The rest of the clerks got twenty minutes for their breaks—we all took forty. Our lunch hours were apt to start around eleven and end shortly before three. Times when business was slow, we’d go down to the stock room and start up games of wiffle ball or hockey; Gus once broke a window with a slap shot and set off all the alarms.

  I was the resident intellectual. Bob Stern would keep me busy forging letters from customers to Macy’s president raving about how courteous and helpful the clerks in sporting goods were; Tom O’Brien had me draft letters to Queen Elizabeth denouncing British policy in Ulster. I was paid for these in fishing tackle.

  It worked this way. Management was always putting pressure on Stern to get rid of his unsold inventory by putting it on sale. These were unadvertised sales; he’d mark things down and put them out on a table. It soon occurred to us that no one at Macy’s cared how little these items sold for—the important thing was to get rid of them. We all had our favorite sport. What we started to do was deliberately order things we wanted, hold them for a while in the stock room, then without telling anyone, put them up for sale at outrageous prices and buy them ourselves.

  There were some great bargains. Gus got a brand-new AMF bowling ball for eighty-five cents; Jim got a Shakespeare hunting bow for a quarter. Our consciences didn’t bother us very much; after all, these sales were available to the public, too—available, that is, if they could get into the store before the ten o’clock opening.