One of my many theories is that people who engage in hunting, fishing and other outdoor activities eventually become pure stories. After they physically expire, they live on in the stories they accumulated over their lifetime. I never knew my grandfather Pete, for example, but he survives in the form of stories.
My grandmother used to tell me, "I don't know why you have so much trouble catching fish. Your grandfather used to go down to the crick for an hour and come back with a whole milk can full of the nicest trout you ever laid eyes on." (Well, Gram, maybe he's the reason I have so much trouble catching fish.) Pete, a minor timber baron, ran a logging operation in Idaho during the early part of the last century. One story about him is how he hired a woman from Spokane named Sal to be his camp cook. She arrived at his camp one day and asked to borrow a horse to go get her luggage from the stage station. Apparently, the stage company was holding onto the luggage because she had failed to pay her fare. She rode back to the station, pulled a gun and collected her luggage. Then she strapped it to the horse and rode hell-bent for the logging camp, with a sheriff's posse in hot pursuit. When she got to the camp, Pete said, "Hit for the timber, Sal," which she did. When the sheriff arrived, my grandfather was standing next to the foam-flecked horse.
"Pete, did a woman on a foam-flecked horse come this way a few minutes ago?" the sheriff asked.
"Didn't see one," Pete said.
The sheriff and his posse rode back to town.
Pete was a formidable individual and lives on in numerous stories told about him, many not so pleasant. Oh, one other thing about Sal. She turned out to be a terrible cook, but Pete was afraid to fire her. She stayed on as his cook for many months.
I was reminded of the power of stories when my artist friend Roy "Boots" Reynolds e-mailed me an invitation last week to go fishing with him on the Snake River. One of his publishers, Leaning Tree, had given him four all-expense-paid trips on the Snake in recognition of his 25 years of doing paintings for the company. More important, Leaning Tree said he could take two friends with him. "Call Dave," Boots wrote, "and invite him along, too." He was referring to our mutual friend, Dave Lisaius.
I said to myself, "Has Boots lost his mind?" It was getting well into fall, and the weather had turned cold and rainy and windy. Did he actually think I would abandon my comfy old rocker, my books and television to go fishing with him on the Snake? To go pounding up through rapids that a century ago had sucked down a steamship? I had a notion to call Boots' lovely wife, Becky, and tell her to get out of the house fast, because her hubby had gone mad!
But then I remembered the stories. I know some great storytellers, but none better than Boots and Dave. Maybe I wouldn't budge from my rocker for a cold fish, but I was unable to resist the stories. "Okay," I wrote back, "Dave and I will go." I didn't even need to check with Dave. If anyone mentions a fishing or hunting trip, he's halfway out the door. One of my favorite Boots stories stars his dad, a cowboy who worked ranches in Oklahoma and Texas. Boots was constantly changing schools as his dad got tired of one ranch and moved on to the next. According to Boots, this disruptive life resulted in his bringing home terrible report cards, with the exception of one school. At this one Boots got nothing but straight A's. His dad was both pleased and amazed. Then one day he stared at the report card more carefully. "Third grade?" he yelled. "You're supposed to be in fourth grade!"
Scarcely had the three of us started the drive down to the Snake than the stories started to flow. It was wonderful! Even though we had frequently driven to the Snake, we got lost three times on the way, which isn't exceptional but is worth mentioning as an indication of the high caliber of the stories.
That evening we had dinner with our guide, Tim Johnson, of FishHawk Guides in Clarkston, Washington, and Tim's wife, Judy, a highly intelligent woman who makes sure the library she works for stocks all my books. What more could a person ask of a librarian! The next morning we set off up the Snake in Tim's boat, which I estimated to have cost scarcely more than my house, with my assorted boats and vehicles thrown in. It's a pure fishing machine. I should have been a fishing guide. Too late for that now, though.
The stories instantly began to spew forth.
Dave opened with one of my own stories. He had improved on it with a couple of small embellishments, and I now prefer his version, which I will use here.
Three friends and I were having supper at a fishing camp in a remote back corner of a South American rain forest. One of the group was a professional athlete, whom I will call Izzy. The second was my friend Retch Sweeney, and the third, an old Amazon hand by the name of Bigsby. There was no door on the entrance to the little café, but a curtain had been hung up to slow the attack of venomous insects. The four of us were enjoying a dish made of rice and piranha heads, prepared by the rotund chef and possible owner of the bistro, one Jorge. The piranha heads had been caught by Retch and me, using a six-inch length of wire between the line and the fly, to prevent the hook's being snipped off by the sharp teeth of the fish. This may have been the first time in history that anyone had flyfished for piranhas. The reason we caught only heads is that as soon as a piranha took the fly and started to thrash around, the other piranhas attacked it. The fly, by the way, imitated a severed human finger and was quite effective.
Suddenly the curtain at the entrance to the cantina was thrust back and in came a group of people, 10 in all, 5 men and 5 women. All had olive complexions, shiny black hair, blazing-white teeth and blazing-white clothes. The men were slender and hard and looked very tough and mean. The women were all young and gorgeous and dressed in wispy pieces of gauze. The group trooped to a large table in the back of the bistro, casting suspicious glances in our direction.
If ever I have seen a drug lord accompanied by his bodyguards and harem of girlfriends, this was it. Actually, I had never before seen a drug lord accompanied by his bodyguards and harem of girlfriends, but this was certainly what I imagined such a group to resemble. The drug lord himself kept shooting suspicious glances in our direction, no doubt thinking we were undercover drug agents. Sure, he doubtless thought, a couple of them are pudgy and old, but that's probably just to throw me off. I'll shoot them last.
Bigsby, the old Amazon hand, who dealt in opals and rubies and other riches of the rain forest, knew his way around such rough types and immediately ordered Jorge to make them a gift of two of the finest bottles of whiskey on the premises. Upon receiving this peace offering, the drug lord gave us a big smile and held up the bottles in recognition of the gift. We relaxed and went back to our piranha-head dinner.
Izzy, however, kept glancing over at the drug lord's beautiful harem. Then he said, "I'm going to ask the prettiest one to dance!"
"Noooo!" I hissed, a word not that easy to hiss. "They'll kill us all!"
"I don't care," he said. "That woman is worth dying for!" He got out of his chair and started walking toward the drug lord's table. Just as he got there…
"Fish on!" yelled Tim.
As bad luck would have it, the steelhead was on my rod! Worse yet, it was big and putting up a terrific fight. When I finally got the fish to the boat and Tim had netted it, Dave and Boots insisted on taking 40 pictures apiece, because, they said, nobody would believe I had ever caught a steelhead that big. By then, I had forgotten which story I was telling.
That's the way it went all the rest of the day. As soon as one of us got to the most suspenseful part of a story, Tim would yell, "Fish on!"
"So there I was, ten yards from the fence, with the bull breathing down the back of my neck, when…"
"Fish on!"
"I figured if I jumped hard enough, I could just make it from the edge of the cliff to the tree and the bear wouldn't…"
"Fish on!"
I should point out here that people fish for years for steelhead without catching a single one. We hooked 11 and kept 4. We also caught and released about a dozen smallmouth bass. I told Tim, "This is the worst fishing trip I've ever been on. We didn't get to finish a single story!"
"That's okay," he said. "I've heard each of them nine times already."
Well, sure, but he hadn't heard them with the latest embellishments.
TO GET ROY 'BOOTS' REYNOLDS' TAKE ON THE TRIP, CLICK HERE
We require
all participants in interactive areas to accept the terms of the Bonnier Corporation subscriber agreement. Please
read the agreement
before making comments. When you click on the button above to submit your comments, you are indicating your acceptance of and
are agreeing to adhere to the terms of the subscriber agreement.
