Apparition & Late Fictions: A Novella and Stories Read Online Free Page A

years later that the river, the Pere Marquette, was his church and chapel and Bible and choir, that he felt closer to God there and closer to himself there and closer to his mother there and closer to life, his father had nodded, if not approval, then at least acceptance. “The Lord,” the churchman told his son, “has a fondness for fishermen.” This was near enough to forgiveness.
    And there’d been issues over education. Danny had been a lackluster student. After high school he’d managed to get accepted to Central Michigan University. It was the nearest school to Baldwin and the Pere Marquette. He enrolled in a course of General Studies, but between the draw of the Indian casino on the edge of town and the Pere Marquette less than two hours away, nothing in the curriculum could keep his interest long. Whenever he could he’d drive to the river and float a stretch researching the pocket water, the structure and the habits of resident and migrant fish. Home for Easter that first year, Danny’s father told him he could not succeed by doing things halfway.
    “Do something you’re really passionate about. What’s the worst that can happen? You’re young. You can afford to fail but you can’t afford not to try .”
    This was permission enough for Danny. He quit school. Worked on a landscape crew for three months, and with the cash bought a tent, three new Orvis rods and Billy Pate reels, and moved to Baldwin in early August, with his drift boat outfitted, pitching his tent on the river, where he slept and tied flies when he wasn’t fishing. He’d begun hanging out at the PM Lodge and the local bars and tackle shops, picking up guide trips where he could. It wasn’t long before word gotaround about his talents for putting clients on fish, for finding the right drift through difficult holes, for working the river in difficult conditions. Some fishing guides were taxi drivers. Rowing to some famous meat hole and sitting tight all day, then rowing out. Danny fished the slots and shoeboxes, the lesser-known pools where fish held on deep gravel or between difficult snags and stumps. He’d taught himself what shade did and rain did and the moon did to the habits of fish and the conduct of water.
    When he climbed back in the boat, Chinook bolted downstream, then into the forest. Danny pulled the anchor up and felt the current’s slow embrace circle the boat and take it in. He dipped his oars. The thermos, now nearly empty, rolled slightly on the front seat.
    As he approached Gus’s Hole Danny whistled for his dog. He anchored in the current and listened close. Sometimes his heart filled with the beauty and the silence of the place. Deep in the swamp, beyond the energies of other guides and walk-ins, the sense of isolation and privacy was comforting. And Gus’s Hole itself held few fish anymore. The current had changed enough over the years to widen and flatten out the confluence of water. Still the area was fishy and the air was full of the smell of rotting salmon and the sickly-sweet smell of some larger putrefaction in the woods. Danny reckoned it was a deer shot out of season by a bow hunter who couldn’t trail it through the swamp. In the distance he could hear Chinook howling. He whistled again and waited. After five minutes he could hear the dog approaching.
    Danny wondered if the dog knew how close it had come to being killed in this place. It was to Gus’s Hole Danny had brought the dog two years before, after all the experts hadweighed in with their advice. They’d fished all day and Danny climbed the high banks to the oak ridge from which he and his father had first looked down on the curling braids of river that formed the swamp that winter years ago when he was eight. He had a field shovel and a pistol he had borrowed from a fellow guide. At the top, he began digging the dog’s grave, the work quickening with anger and slowing with sadness, the variable speeds of the labor like the division of his