Free Holding Lies by John Larison Page A

river, because you can’t text while oaring. It wasn’t his fault. He was the product, not the producer.
    But there was one memory that Hank couldn’t soften, no matter how rigorously he tried to reinterpret it. There it was as fresh as it had been in the moment: Walter at Millican Ramp, two clients waiting on land, Walter working as fast as he could given the limp and the pain of the cancer to move the tackle and gear from the bed of his Chevy to the boat. Like all the old guides, who never made enough money to secure even a simple form of retirement, Walter was still working, despite his doctor telling him not to and his friends chipping in to buy him some recovery time. Under his baseball cap, he was bald from the chemo. Under his waders, he was emaciated from the vomiting. He’d had to mortgage his house to afford the treatment. And yet, there he was at 4:19 in the morning, loading his boat and standing straight. Morell, though, couldn’t wait. He was next in line on the ramp, his client asking about fish size, fish strength, fish numbers. Hank had his own clients, a pair of quiet teachers from Portland, and he told them to wader up while he went and helped a friend. He was walking toward Walter and the ramp when Morell leapt from his truck, grabbed the remaining gear from Walter’s cab, and heaved it into the old man’s boat. Walter looked up, a bit struck by the suddenness of the whole thing, and Morell said, “Next time, maybe, you could do this in the parking lot.” Then to Walter’s clients, who’d surely heard the exchange, “Come on, guys, time to climb aboard.” It was Walter’s silence immediately after, his refusal or inability to defend himself, that prompted Hank to grab Morell by the collar as he came back up the ramp. There were clients watching, so he didn’t knock the little fuck’s teeth out or throw him headlong into theriver, but he did jam an elbow to his neck and press him against the side of the truck. Morell gasped for air. In that moment, Hank had so much to say, so much he didn’t know where or how to start. All that came out was, “Mind your manners.”
    In Hank’s day, such disrespect for the river’s elders would have been met with a broken casting arm, an injury feared second only to total paralysis. A broken casting arm would effectively end your season, and your clients would find a new gillie. Depending on the details of your sin and the sobriety level of the vigilantes, there might also have been some truck sabotage, a ruptured boat, maybe minor arson to home or dwelling. And the assault would have continued until the offending prick had packed his shit and found a new watershed. In the ethical code of the Ipsyniho, respect for the river and its fish came first, then respect for the river’s old guard, then respect for the etiquette the old guard had established. Justin Morell seemed hell-bent on insulting all three.
    Yet Hank found himself surprised now, not that the kid had gone missing, but that he felt so obligated to forgive him, just because he was dead. And what was this “kid” nonsense? Morell had been a grown man.
    Morell had wasted a chance. That was it. He’d misused his time. He’d neglected this most spectacular gift the world had offered him.
    There came a time for people like that to face what they deserved.
    *
    H E DROVE TO town for supplies: paint and spackle and whatever über-potent carpet cleaner he could find. He still had plenty to do before Annie arrived.
    But once in town, he drove first to Morell’s place, one of those sixties-era ranch homes that proliferate in the West, the ones seemingly built to emphasize their garages. He parked out front and waited to shut down the truck, humming along to Cornell ’77 . “Row, Jimmy, row.” He was here to muster up some compassion, to find a reason to forgive this kid. “How to get there, I don’t