“This was in Phoenix.”
Jack thought for a moment, and then asked, “Do you think he knows what he’s doing?”
“No.”
“Are we going to catch fish?”
“It seems unlikely.”
They were interrupted by a cry from Hewlitt, whose rod had bent into a deep bow.
“Jesus. I didn’t even see him cast,” Jack said.
The two men hurried over. Hewlitt glanced at them and said, “First cast! He just mauled it.”
The fish exploded into the air and tail-danced across the river.
“Looks like a real beauty,” said Tony grimly, his hands plunged deep in his pockets.
After several more jumps and runs, Hewlitt had the fish at the beach and, laying down his rod, knelt beside it, holding it under its tail and belly. It was big, thick, and flashed silver with every movement as Hewlitt removed the hook. Tony and Jack craned over him to better see the creature, and Hewlitt bent to kiss it. “Oh, baby,” he murmured. Then he let it go.
“What’d you do that for?” Tony wailed. The fish was swimming off, deeper and deeper, until its glimmer was lost in the dark. “We could have had fresh fish for lunch!”
Their guide, in response, got right in Tony’s face. “Don’t go there, mister,” he said with an odd intensity. “You don’t want that on your karma.” Then he walked back to the boat and dragged the anchor farther up the shore.
“My God,” Tony said. “What have we got ourselves into?” But Jack was simply pleased with everything.
A few minutes later, he even made a possibly insincere fuss over the bologna sandwiches. “Is there any lettuce or anything?”
“Doesn’t keep without refrigeration. Where do you think you are?”
“The Aleguketuk. You already told me.”
“Nice river, isn’t it?”
“I wish it had more fish,” said Tony. “Although it’s obviously not a problem for you.”
“Nyewp, not a problem.”
As Hewlitt went to the boat to look for something, Tony said, “Ex — pill salesman.”
“But fun to be with.”
Jack had gone through times like this with Tony in the past: just be patient, he knew, and his friend would soon be chasing his own tail. It had already started. Tony had come unglued once when both couples had gone to a beginners’ tennis camp in Boca Raton — thrown his racket, the whole nine yards. Jack had just let it sink in with Jan, what she had done with this nut. He knew he shouldn’t feel this way: Jan had made it clear she regretted the whole thing, but he felt doomed to rub it in for the rest of their lives, or at least until she quit marveling over how fit Tony and Gerri were. He always suspected she included Gerri only as camouflage when she mentioned it. He’d seen this fitness language before: buns of steel, washboard abs, power pecs — all just code for Tony hovering over Jan like a vulture. And now, because Tony and Gerri were divorcing, Jack feared that further indiscretions might be on tap.
Tony threw his bologna sandwich into the river. “I can’t eat it.”
Hewlitt had his mouth full. “Plan on foraging?”
Tony sat down on the ground, elbows on his knees, and held his head in despair.
No other fish were caught that day, and neither man slept well that night. The next day a hard rain confined them to their tent; Tony read Harvey Penick’s Little Red Book: Lessons and Teachings from a Lifetime in Golf, and Jack did sudoku until he was sick of it. The weather finally lifted in time for the third night’s evening fire, and Hewlitt emerged wearing only his long underwear to prepare the meal, which was a huge shish kebab with only meat the entire length of the stick. When it was cooked, Hewlitt flicked the flesh onto their tin plates, which were so thin you could feel the heat through their bottoms. Afterward Hewlitt recited a Robert Service poem—“There are strange things done in the midnight sun”—so slowly that Tony and Jack were frantic at its conclusion.
“Where exactly was that drugstore you worked in?” Tony asked.
Hewlitt stared at him for a long time before speaking. “A pox on you, sir.”
Back in the tent, Jack asked, “Aren’t you concerned that he’ll confiscate the impregnated craft-shop dolls’ eyes?”
“What difference does it make? They haven’t worked so far.”
“Tony, it was a joke. Jesus, for a fancy doctor with a five-thousand-square-foot home on the golf course, you sure haven’t lost your sense of humor.”
“Fifty-two hundred. Get some sleep, Jack. You’re getting crabby.”
Jack had worked for the county all those years since the National Guard. In ’96 he had denied Tony a well permit for his lawn-sprinkling system, and Tony had never gotten over it. It was payback for the little nothing with Jan, he was convinced, even though in reality it was no more than a conventional ruling on the law, which Tony, as was often the case, thought should be bent ever so slightly. Jack had explained the legal basis for his decision without denying that it was pleasant seeing Tony choke on this one. Tony had put his hand in Jack’s face and said, “This is for surgery, not for holding a garden hose.”
“You might want to tone down the square footage, if your time is limited,” Jack had replied. “That’s an awful lot of lawn.”
“What the fuck are you talking about!” Tony had shouted back. “You don’t even have a lawn, you have fucking pea rock!”
Hewlitt must have been throwing more wood on the fire. You could see the flare of the flames through the walls of the tent. From time to time, he laughed aloud.
“Do you suppose he’s laughing at us?” Tony asked.
“Things can still turn out. We have time.”
“At least we got away together,” Tony said. “We used to do more of this. It’s important. It makes everything come back. We’re kids again. We’re who we used to be.”
“Not really,” said Jack. “You used to be nicer to me.”
“You’re joking, aren’t you?”
Jack didn’t answer. He wished he hadn’t said such a thing, and his throat ached.
“What about Cancún in 2003? It didn’t cost you a nickel.”
Jack didn’t know how to reply. He was in such pain. The tent fell silent once more. When Tony finally spoke, his voice had changed.
“Jack. I don’t have another friend.”
Jack wanted to make Tony feel better then, but it wasn’t coming to him yet. Tony was right about one thing: they were who they used to be. Jack was still doing okay in his little house, and Tony was still just as lonely by the golf course as he’d been by the meatpacking plant. He had to take it out on somebody.
In the morning, there was frost on everything. Jack and Tony, arms stiff at their sides, watched as Hewlitt made breakfast and merrily reminisced about previous trips.
“Had an English astronaut here for a week, just a regular bloke. Loved his pub, loved his shepherd’s pie, loved his wee cottage in Blighty.”
Tony and Jack glanced at each other.
“Took a large framed picture of the Queen Mother into space. Ate nothing but fish-and-chips his whole month in orbit, quoting Churchill the entire time.”
Tony whispered to Jack, “There were no English astronauts.”
“I heard that,” Hewlitt said, standing up and waving his spatula slowly in Tony’s face.
“Did you? Good.”
Hewlitt resumed cooking in silence. The silence was worse. He served their meal without a word, then went to his boat with his new bare face, and in his hand he grasped a handful of willow switches he had cut from the bank. With these, he scourged himself. It was hard not to see this as a tableau, with the boat and the river behind him and Hewlitt, in effect, centered in the frame. His audience, Jack and Tony, turned away to gear up for a day of fishing and standing with their rods at their sides like a sarcastic knockoff of American Gothic.