Free The Painter: A Novel by Peter Heller Page B

and stepped over the smooth stones and into the dark water with a relief and sigh. Stepped in up to my knees. The cold. Smelled woodsmoke trailing down from upstream with the current. Began to cast.
    Time past and time present. Whatever kind of time ruled the earth receded into the night shadows. I cast and cast and walked carefully upstream, sometimes the slow current of the pools up to my waist, sometimes taking to the bank to get a better angle on a piece of slackwater, throwing into the fast funnels between rocks, the boulders bleached by the moon and marking the course of the creek upstream the way a scattered herd of humped and silent beasts might mark a twisting trail.
    I followed them. Lost myself and followed them. Sometimes I saw the bushy little fly hit and drift, sometimes I lost it in a silvering of current. When I got a strike—sometimes I heard it first. In the calm places. A gulp. A blip, the double note, nose and tail. And the rod tip bent hard, the shiver. And then the old euphoria. I know I talked to myself, to the fish—
that’s it, you’re alright you’re alright, come up come up, off of those rocks, careful careful, that’s it—
to him and me the same. I loved this, and in the lost time I worked in a trout I forgot the preoccupation of the predator, with stealth, with melding into the night, forgot myself, which is maybe how a true predator disappears, I don’t know.
    Released them all easily, no deep swallowed hooks, no snags, fishing as well probably as I have ever fished in my life. I reached into a side pocket of the vest and pulled out the foil pouch, unrolled it and dug out a soft cheroot, the vanilla scent heady, and stuck it between my teeth, just sucked it. Content with that.
    It must have been close to a mile. Around the third bend as I worked upstream I saw the firelight. It was thrown across the creek onto a backstop of shaggy trees, a high shifting flicker cut with shadows. And heard the laughter. Fuck. Of course. It was what? Friday night. Tomorrow the first morning of archery season, deer and elk. Everybody would be amped, nobody exhausted yet, cutting the edge of their excitement with booze and loud talk. I fished up. I fished. That’s what I was here for. Fished up until I could see the campfire through a scrim of willow and alder. Could see the three pale wall tents, the trucks, shapes of horses on a taut line. Could smell smoke, manure, burnt meat. A shout, raucous laughs,
    That was not a cunt it was mud wallow!
    Aw crap, Les wouldn’t know the difference if he was up to his neck in either one!
    The fire popping, crack of a limb on rock, a stirring of sparks as someone threw it on.
    If you fuckers are on good behavior we just might see what Les knows about cunts. Maybe Sunday
.
    It was him, the voice. The shiver inside like hooking a trout but icy.
    A couple of those gals from the Mill might come up and party with us. You seen ’em. Spirited. Do about anything after the fourth round. This is the pussy you dream about tonight while you got your dicks in your hands. Damn
.
    Dell. It was him talking, a booming voice, coming up out of a gravel pit. Ugly, a little slurred. The image hit the group, onetwothreefourfive … counted seven, hit them like a gust of wind: the prospect of young women in tight skirts, tight jeans. Maybe that’s how he got so many return clients. For about a second, the quiet, and then the uproar, the overlapping claims and yells calling bullshit, calling out the shit they would do with a girl that would do anything, more loud laughter. I scanned and found him at the edge of the group, a hulking shadow on the creek side of the fire, bigger than I remembered. He was shaking his head. I saw him tip it back and drink, pass the bottle, holding a beer in the other hand.
    Dell!
one called from the other side of the fire. A sallow face, unshaven, hollow in the cheeks leaning into the uneven light.
Kip thinks you should call one now. One or two. Call that one