Chapter 7
The next morning my father left the house early, before breakfast. That evening, during dinner, he picked up a newspaper and stared at it until my sister served dessert. Since he never read newspapers at the dining table, I suspected he was too ashamed to look at me, but he did finally.
“Ian, when’s your next baseball game?”
I lied, “I’m not sure.”
“What did you learn in school today?”
“Triangles.”
“What about triangles?”
I still looked down. “That all triangles are made up of lines forming angles adding up to one hundred eighty degrees.”
“You must’ve learned more than that.”
“There isn’t too much to learn about triangles. They’re just shapes.”
There was a silence, long and uncomfortable. I didn’t want to break it. I wanted to hurt my father as much as he had hurt me. So all during the week, I rarely spoke to or looked at him.
One afternoon I jogged in from the outfield and saw him standing behind first base. Surprised, I lowered my head. The next inning I stepped into the batter’s box.
“C’mon, Ian. Give it a good ride!” my father yelled.
I ripped a double into the left-center gap. Standing on second base, I still didn’t look at my father.
He came to some of my next games and propelled my rage to the surface. My batting average soared. One game I hit a long home run and went four-for-four.
As for my grades, they also soared. On the last day of my sophomore year I showed my father my final report card. He smiled. “Ian, Columbia Law School will put out a welcome mat for you.”
I wasn’t sure I wanted one. You see, my English teacher had made us read one of my mother’s favorite books, The Last of the Mohicans. Almost from the opening page, the beautiful descriptions of nature and the exciting adventures of Natty Bumpo and his Indian friend, Chingachgook, captivated me; so in my mind, as I walked in the wilderness of Cooper’s world, I walked with my mother. James Fenimore Cooper, I felt, had brought my mother back to me. Again I wanted to please her, this time by becoming what she had wanted to become: a great artist, a great writer who would create a make-believe world where good people didn’t die unfairly, and where poor immigrants lived in nice homes; a make-believe world that lived on in the minds of readers for as long as the sun rose and fell.
Yes, I wanted to become a writer, but did I have the courage to tell my father?
No. So I studied hard, earned very good grades and let my father believe that, down the road, I would enroll in Columbia Law School and follow in his way and become a great lawyer.
I hated living a lie.
I read in a newspaper a fly-casting tournament was going to be held during the Sportsmen’s Exposition at Madison Square Garden. Would Izzy compete? Hoping he would, I decided to go to the exposition and tell Izzy the truth about my father breaking his fly rod.
But Izzy didn’t compete or even watch. Disappointed, I watched the casters, one by one, step up to the casting platform. And in my mind I stepped up too and won the tournament with a cast of 110 feet. The spectators cheered wildly.
In reality, however, B. L. Richards cast 105 feet and won.
A week later I walked into my room. On my bed was a 3-foot-long, round metal case, a fly rod case. Eagerly, I screwed off the cap and slid out a brown sack. Inside the sack was a 3-piece rod, with an extra top piece. The rod was glass-smooth and orange-tinted. The varnish seemed to bring out the bamboo’s long grain lines. Dark-purple thread-wraps decorated the rod. The guides, joints and the short butt cap were polished silver. Carved on the cap were fancy, script letters that read: H. L. Leonard, Rod Maker.
I put the rod together. It was a little shorter than Izzy’s. I held the cigar-shaped cork handle. The rod was lighter than Izzy’s. Though I knew little about fishing rods, something told me what I held was very special.
“I have something else for you,” my father said. He stood in the doorway, holding a silver fly reel, a pair of rubber hip boots, and a straw creel. His smile fell, suddenly. His eyes turned red, as if he was about to cry. “Ian, I’m, I’m so sorry for what I did. Losing your mother, well I guess turned me into a, a monster. Please understand.”
I didn’t. Again I wondered if I was a bad son.
“Ian, let’s go to the park so you can show me how well you cast.”
“I haven’t practiced for so long.”
“We’ll go when you feel you’re ready. The man who sold me the rod told me you can take the railroad up to Hawthorne and fish the Saw Mill River.”
“I don’t know anything about fly fishing.”
“That’s why there are books.”
The next day I went to the big library on Fifth Avenue and took out two fly-fishing books. That night, as soon as I finished my homework, I eagerly opened one of the books and read about different kinds of flies—wets, nymphs, dries, caddises—and about how each kind was fished differently. Fly fishing seemed terribly complicated. I wondered if I really wanted to become an angler, especially because, even if I caught a trout, a crowd wouldn’t cheer for me.
Three hours later, long after my bedtime, I finally put the book down.
The next night I again opened the book. This time I read and took notes about the different parts of rivers and streams—lips, tongues, mouths, tails, runs, pools, banks, riffles—and about how to read them. Rivers and streams, I learned, hid trout almost the same way good poems hid meaning. The job of the angler, therefore, was to read and interpret the water and to unmask it.
So as winter stepped toward spring, I stepped toward becoming an angler, but then I wondered if real anglers could be born from just books. If not, would the real anglers on the Saw Mill River laugh at me?
Night after night, I studied my notes and counted the days to April 1.
Six more days to go. It was a beautiful spring Saturday. Downtown, someone working for the Triangle Waist Company tossed a cigarette into a bundle of cotton; and a spark turned into a flame, and a flame turned into a fire, and a fire turned into an inferno—and for some workers the only choice was to burn to death or to jump. Many chose to jump. From the ninth floor bodies fell like rain, crashed on the sidewalks, and lay like broken, twisted dolls.
Eighteen minutes after it started, the fire and a hundred and forty-six young lives were extinguished. And so would have another hundred or so lives if the elevator operator, Joseph Zito, had not risked his life and acted so heroically.
The next day my father walked into the office of the Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union and offered to file legal motions for free.
I was proud of him and knew my mother would be too.
And I wanted her to be proud of me; so when April 1st finally arrived, I showed respect for the garment workers who had died, and I left my fly-fishing equipment in my room and waited, day after day.
The trees and flowers bloomed. It was time for me to become an angler. I went to a fly shop and asked the clerk to pick out some flies.
“In America most everyone fishes wet flies,” he said.
A few days later, during Easter recess, I rode the railroad up to Hawthorne. Nervous, I walked to the stream. I didn’t see another angler. I was thankful.
The Saw Mill River was straight and about twenty-feet wide. It slowly flowed and softly gurgled, as if it whispered foreign words I couldn’t understand. The stream’s banks were about as tall as I. They were lined with short bushes and tall trees. The bushes seemed to float on the water. The trees seemed to form a dense, leafy roof and to shape the stream into a long, green tunnel, especially because the trees closest to the high banks tilted forward. The flowing water, I realized, was whittling away the banks.
The leaves on the top of the trees shined like pieces of stained glass in church windows. But unlike glass, the leaves blocked most of the light, so the leaves lower down on the trees looked like small, hanging shadows.
Yet somehow enough light filtered to the stream to turn the riffling water into a shattered mirror. The mirror distorted and twisted but didn’t completely break the images of the trees and the bushes.
I put on my hip boots, set up my rod, tied on a Hare’s Ear wet fly and told myself, read the water.
Parallel to the bank, slow and fast moving water met and formed a long seam. I decided to listen to the books and cast downstream and fish the seam.
Stepping sideways, grabbing branches, I climbed down the steep bank and stepped into the water. I looked straight down. Almost as if by magic, the reflected images disappeared. The shattered mirror seemed to turn into a glass cabinet top. At the bottom of the cabinet, instead of jewelry or trinkets, were worthless rocks.
The water was almost up to my knees. I waded toward the middle of the stream. The water pushed hard against my legs, as if it tried to knock me over. I didn’t let it. Looking down, making sure I had good footing, I slowly waded on. My foot seemed to go through the stream’s bottom. I was falling. My arm crashed into the water. The water was cold. It stung me. My foot landed, finally. I didn’t fall. Thankful, I stood up straight. The water was almost up to my waist. I looked down and realized the stream’s depth was hidden by water acting like a big magnifying glass.
I thought, The fly-fishing books hadn’t warned me about deep holes hiding in streams, hiding like trout. I could fall and break my leg and—but the river just taught me an important lesson about wading. I don’t want to be scared of wading.
Downstream, a big, fat tree lay across the stream. The tree still had leaves and therefore probably life. I noticed parts of dead trees littering the banks. Suddenly the stream looked spooky, like a haunted house where, instead of evil ghosts, the river chopped down and killed big trees. Was shapeless water more powerful than big, wooden trees?
It didn’t seem possible, and yet my eyes told me it was.
I waded to the middle of the stream, stepped on gravel and felt safe. I pulled off about 40 feet of line from my reel. The water grabbed the line and snaked it downstream. Suddenly the long tunnel brightened. Slanted columns of sunlight, looking like hanging sheets of glowing smoke, poured through the trees, crashed onto the water and broke into clumps of small, bobbing flames. But unlike the flames of the Triangle Waist Fire, these flames, I knew, were frozen in size and wouldn’t turn the Saw Mill into a long, horrible inferno.
I remembered my mother telling me nature, not Rembrandt or Michelangelo, was the world’s greatest painter. Was my mother’s spirit also pouring through the trees?
The gurgling water suddenly sounded like a gentle piano melody. Was my mother somehow playing the melody? Or did nature have its own music? If so, was Man’s music really an attempt to reflect Nature’s?
I closed my eyes and listened. For some reason, I saw the image of broken, garment-worker bodies strewn on the sidewalk like dead Civil War soldiers strewn on a battlefield. I tried to fit the image of the beautiful stream with the image of the bodies. But unlike pieces of a puzzle, the images didn’t fit.
Is it because, I wondered, streams are made by nature while sweat shops are made by man? But isn’t man part of nature?
Maybe. Maybe not.
Again I closed my eyes and listened to the gurgling water. I heard the same notes over and over. My mother wasn’t playing them. I was alone. I cried, only for a few seconds. I retrieved about 6 inches of line and paused. My line straightened and pulled against the rod tip. I cast the rod back. But the water, unlike a lawn, didn’t want to let go of the line. Feeling I was in a tug of war, I pulled the rod back harder, and harder. The rod bent into a half circle. Suddenly the water let go. The line and the fly flew off the water and streaked past me. The line unrolled quickly. Off guard, I didn’t cast forward.
Realizing I had too much line out, I reeled in about 5 feet and again cast. This time the water didn’t pull back so hard. I lifted the line off the water. A tight loop unrolled behind me. I cast forward, then let the line slide through my thumb and finger. The Hare’s Ear turned over and floated down like a falling leaf but landed 3 feet to the left of the long seam.
I cursed, “Damn!” Again I cast. A breeze carried the line and the fly close to the far bank. Frustrated, I realized landing a fly on a small target was a lot harder than throwing a strike. I reminded myself to relax and to listen to my father’s words and to let my arm and my body flow like the stream.
I again cast, this time a little faster. The tight loop cut through the breeze and unrolled. The fly landed in the slower water just outside the seam—a strike! But I wasn’t satisfied. Again and again I tried to cast three strikes in a row.
Finally I did! Proud, I told myself it was time to try to catch a fish.
I watched the fly drift in the slower current near the bank. The faster water in the middle of the stream pulled the line and shaped it into a wide loop. As the loop floated downstream it got longer and tighter and looked like a giant U. The U, I saw, pulled the fly faster than the slow current. Trout, the books said, won’t take a fly drifting faster than the current. I had to mend the line. Scared I wouldn’t do it right, I pointed my rod up and lifted much of the line off the water. Pretending to flip a pancake, I flicked the line, but not the fly, upstream. The fast water turned the wide U into an M. The fly drifted downstream at the same speed as the slower water.
I didn’t get a take. When the fly was directly below me, I lifted the rod tip and waited, as the books said I should.
Three more times I cast to the front of the seam.
Still no take. I remembered the books said an angler fishing a small stream should keep moving and keep casting to different targets. Slowly I waded downstream, looking for a new target.
I found one: the mouth of a long, smooth pool. The mouth funneled the water, then spit it out faster and foamier. The pool caught the water and slowed and smoothed it. I cast straight downstream. The fly and the line moved at the same speed. I didn’t have to mend. I shook the rod back and forth, pulling line off my reel and feeding the line to the hungry current. The fly drifted into the foamy mouth and into the tongue. I stopped feeding line and raised my rod.
Again no take. Disappointed, I lowered my rod, retrieved about 10 feet of line and again cast to the mouth. I watched the fly drift downstream and I wondered if not catching a fish would mean I still wasn’t a real angler.
Not sure, I waded close to the mouth and looked for a new target.
I cast to the bank, just below an overhanging branch. The fly landed on the branch. I tried to pull the fly free but broke if off. I cursed, tied on another Hare’s Ear and waded into the pool, making small waves. The water was up to my waist. I waited for the waves to weaken and to merge into the smooth surface. The reflections of trees and bushes were put back together. For some reason I thought of Humpty Dumpty and wished a stream could’ve put him back together again. But characters in fairy tales, I knew, existed only in imagination and couldn’t be fixed by real streams.
I cast to the middle of the pool and retrieved line, 6 inches at a time and wondered, When was the Saw Mill River born? A hundred years ago? A thousand? How was it and other streams born? And will streams, like stars, like me, one day die?
How? Will they dry up? Or will this beautiful river live and welcome anglers forever?
No. Not even this earth will last forever.
The leaves on the top of the trees now looked like hanging shadows. Nature’s long painting had turned darker and gloomier. It didn’t look so beautiful. I became lonely. Downstream of the long pool was a stretch of riffles, then a run, then, just past the fallen tree, another pool.
I wondered, Are all rivers and streams a series of riffles, runs and pools? If so, are all rivers and streams connected in some way?
A loud, shrieking chorus of birds pierced the sky and hurt my ears. I looked up but saw only one black bird. The rest of the flock, I knew, hid in the trees and seemed invisible.
I waded downstream and cast to the
tail of the pool. The line straightened, then slid towards the bank.
I thought, That’s strange—fish on! Set the hook!
I lifted the rod. It pulsed, as if it were alive, then seemed to get heavier. It throbbed. The throbs surged down the rod and jolted my arm. I almost dropped the rod. I squeezed the handle. The rainbow jumped out of the water, shook its head and dived. The rod went dead. The line hung limply.
The fish was off.
I yelled, “Damn!” Feeling as if I struck out with the bases loaded, I wondered what I did wrong.
Yes. When the trout jumped I should’ve lowered the rod and not given him slack line.
Though my rod no longer throbbed, something inside me did: a shapeless feeling that expanded and contracted like a lung. Was the feeling an instinctive obsession to erase my failure? Or was it something animalistic? Predatory?
Quickly, I pulled slack out of the line and again cast to the pool’s tail.
I retrieved the line, faster and faster.
No take.
I slowed my casting and retrieving, but still no takes.
Angry, I deeply breathed. The tunnel, I saw, was dark green. The sinking sun was leaving me in what would become a pitch-black tunnel—an almost real-life, haunted house. My throbbing obsession weakened. I caught my breath, looked downstream and wondered what the Saw Mill looked like past the fallen tree. I reeled in all the line, then waded downstream and ducked under the tree.
The stream curved sharply to the right. Unable to see beyond the bend, I wanted to wade farther; but supposing I couldn’t find a way out of the stream? Supposing it got too dark for me to wade back?
A sharp breeze chilled me. Was the breeze the river’s way of telling me it’s time to go?
I turned and waded upstream, against the pushing current. I climbed up the steep bank, knowing, feeling I had changed in some way, though I wasn’t quite sure how.
Was it by becoming a predator?
Was it by becoming close to nature?
I walked to the train station and waited. The train pulled in. The sun still hadn’t set. As I rode home I became angry at myself for not wading around the bend and into the unknown.
What would have happened, I wondered, if I had been the elevator operator at the Triangle Fire? Would more girls have died? Maybe. I swear I’ll go back to the Saw Mill and wade around the bend, the way a real predator would. But will that mean I’ll become more like the bosses who locked the doors of the Triangle Waist Company?
The train pulled into Grand Central Station. I stood up, grabbed my rod and my waders, and reached for my creel. I pulled my hand back and stood still.
I thought, I don’t want to become a predator!
Abruptly I turned and walked off the train.