Free The Signal by Ron Carlson

goddamnit. I don’t need provocation.”
    “What?”
    “I can’t use provocation.”
    “Is that what your doctor said?”
    He turned back to where she lay in the sleeping bag, her face on him. He could see her pants rolled for a pillow. “My doctor’s remarks are none of your beeswax, to use the technical term. At this fucked-up point in my life I don’t need to see a naked woman in the woods.”
    “You’ve already seen it,” she said. “Now turn away. It’s not all that provocative.”
    “Vonnie, goddamn, run off and pee and get dressed and stop provoking me.” He could hear her rustling and stepping away, and he looked fixedly at the steam as it emerged from the coffeepot and the bubbles rising at the edges of the pancakes, and he reached around in his galley sack for the powdered cream and the jar of honey so he could warm it a little on one of the square stones in the old fire ring. There was a small plastic bottle of maple syrup. Vonnie came back in a blue plaid Pendleton and Levi’s, buckling her belt. She was barefoot and sat on one of the red sandstones at the perimeter and brushed off the bottom of her feet and pulled each sock on carefully and tied her boots double.
    “It’s warming up,” she said. “Do you like your doctor?”
    “Here’s some coffee, dear,” he said, handing her one of the old mugs. She bent and dropped a spoon of honey into the steaming coffee, stirring it. “I like everybody now,” Mack said. “It’s the new me.” He turned the cakes one by one in the pan, showing them browned perfectly. “Let’s eat all this and decide where we’re fishing.” The sun clipped their campsite and continued revealing the valley, rising over the now-blue lake. The lake would change all day. “Those Pendleton wools are ninety dollars,” he said. She looked at him as a challenge. “Nothing,” he said. “It looks good on you and they make a good shirt. I hear.”
    “How far is Clark?” she said. “Not five miles, right?”
    “Come on, Vonnie. We’ll get there. This is a trip; this is the last trip. Let’s fish. Let’s not rush this.”
    “Three miles?” she said.
    He pointed northwest. “Three miles.” He slid the flapjacks from the pan onto paper plates and handed her a fork.
    “Smells good.”
    “Use that syrup.”
    “Got any cheese?” He reached and carved out a slice of the cheddar onto her breakfast, and he watched her sandwich it up and stripe an X of syrup over it all. Her mouth was full and she said to him: “It’s good. Let’s go up to the meadow and fish the Wind by the old bridge. It will be warm there and it will make a good day, right?”
    He watched her eat and then he ate as well. They walked out from Valentine and joined the trail again, climbing up and down through the trees until they reached the main mountain valley. From there half a mile in an easy ascent, they stepped into a place simply called Deer Park on the maps, a long twenty-acre meadow through which ran the stream. Meadow willows lined the river and made it difficult to get down to fish, but there were spots. It was hard not to fish the first place; it was always hard not to fish the first place. The oldest story. The water was clear, the brown rocky bottom vivid and mesmerizing, amber and a magnified gold. Vonnie led them on the trail through the grass and wildflowers to where their trail met the township trail which ascended from near Dubois. There was a log bridge here and on the far side three big logs had been drawn together as benches. They crossed and sat on the warm worn wood. They were going to prepare their tackle. Mack’s heart was up, working the way it did when he felt he was fully in the woods. They had the whole world now, east west north south, and the river was singing. There was always stuff at this crossroads, an ammo box of broken fishing gear, swivels, rod tips, sometimes a pocketknife, but today there was a new spill of gum wrappers and six or seven beer cans that