It was minutes before the jet was far enough away that they could hear themselves speak.
Bad Bob yawned. “Too damned early for this kind of stuff.”
Several men agreed. They had all dismounted and held their horses by the reins.
“Any of you ever see Fort Apache?” Nate asked.
“You mean Fort Apache, the Bronx?” one of them asked. “With Paul Newman and Ed Asner?”
“Pam Grier was in that, too,” Bob said.
“No,” Nate said. “The original. With John Wayne.”
No one had.
“Here,” Nate said to Bob. “Our deal.”
He gave Bob half of the brick of Al-Nura’s cash. Bob started to count it as the others gathered around him. Bob lost count, looked up at Nate, said, “I trust you. Besides, I know where to find you at my sister’s place.”
A couple of the men laughed.
“Not a bad gig,” one of them said, nodding at the 737, which was a dot against the belly of a cumulus cloud.
“You can still make the shoot,” Nate said, looking up. “The light is still good.”
“Fuck the Cherokee thing,” Bob said. “This is much better. Call on us anytime you need Indians.”
“I hope I don’t need you again,” Nate said.
“You don’t think he’ll come back?”
“No. We screwed up his worldview.”
Bob said, “Whatever that means.”
As Nate climbed into his jeep, Bob broke off from his friends and approached him. Bob had a threatening expression on his face, the one he had no doubt used on the film location to get more money from the director.
“What?”
“I’ve got a question,” Bob said in a gravel voice.
“Ask away.”
“Does this cover the seven chickens you took from my coop?” Then Bad Bob broke into a grin.
Nate smiled back and peeled off two more bills. “This should cover the chickens,” he said, “with change left over to buy some coffee and your own television set.”
Every Day Is a Good Day on the River
The guide, Randall “Call Me Duke” Conner, pushed them off from the sandy launch below the bridge into the river and within seconds the muscular dark flow of the current gripped the flat-bottomed McKenzie boat and spun it like a cigarette butt in a flushed toilet. The morning was cool but sunny and there was enough of a breeze to rattle the dry fall leaves in the cottonwoods that reached out over the water like skeletal hands. There were three men in the boat. Jack, who’d never been in a drift boat before, cried out: “Is this safe, Duke?”
“Ha!” Duke snorted. “Of course. Just let me get at the oars and get us turned around. Everything will be just fine. It’s a good day on the river. Every day is a good day on the river.”
Duke stepped around Jack, who had the front fishing seat in the bow. The boat bucked with his weight. Jack reached out and grasped the casting leg brace in front of his seat and held on and slightly closed his eyes until Duke got settled in the middle of the boat and it stopped rocking. The guide grasped the oars and with two quick and powerful strokes — forward on the left oar, backward on the right — stopped the boat from spinning and righted it within the flow.
Duke said, “See, we’re perfectly fine now. You can relax. It’s Jack, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it’s Jack.”
Duke nodded, then spoke in a pleasant, soft voice. What he said was well rehearsed. “This is a McKenzie-style drift boat, Jack, the finest of its kind. It was designed for western rivers like this. Flat-bottomed, flared sides, a narrow pointed stern, and extreme rocker in the bow and stern to allow the boat to spin around on its center like a pivot. It’s not sluggish like a raft or a damned tank like a jon boat. We point the bow toward one of the banks downriver and keep the stern upriver and we use the power of the river to move us along. That’s why it’s called a drift boat! I use the oars to keep us in the right place for fishing. Hell, I can shoot this boat from side to side across the river like a skeeter bug to get you fishermen in the best possible position for catching fish, Jack. That’s why we float at a forty-five-degree angle to the current, so both of you will have clear fishing lanes and you won’t have to cast over each other. It’s stable as hell, so don’t be afraid to stand up in that brace and cast. Just make sure you keep balanced, Jack. And try not to hook me in the ear on your back cast!”
Duke had a deep laugh that Jack would describe as infectious if he were in the right mood.
Jack found out his fishing seat would turn on its pedestal. He released the leg brace and cautiously spun the seat around so he could watch Duke work the oars. The guide was a magician, an expert, and he could move the boat with a flick of either oar. Duke was tall, with powerful shoulders from rowing, no doubt. He had a big sweeping mustache and a dark tan. He wore a fishing shirt, shorts, and river sandals. His eyes were hidden by dark sunglasses fitted with a strap so he could hang them from his neck. Forceps were clipped to a breast pocket as were clippers strung from a retractable zinger. He had a big wolfish smile full of perfect white teeth. Jack thought, He’s a man’s man. One of those men, like skiing instructors or firemen, who just seem to have everything they ever wanted in life.
Jack watched as Duke turned around and looked over his shoulder at the other fisherman, Jack’s host, in the seat in the bow of the boat.
Duke looked over his shoulder. “And you’re Tim, right?”
“Yes,” Tim said wearily.
Jack turned in his chair. Tim looked small and slight and scrunched up in comparison with Duke. Jack thought Tim looked like a wet mouse, even though he was dry. Maybe it was the way Tim sat, all pulled into himself, hunched over in his seat, his chin down against his chest. He wore an oversized rain jacket, waders, and a ridiculous hat with hidden earflaps tucked up under the band. Jack shot a look toward the northern horizon to see if there were thunderheads rolling. Nope.
Duke said, “So it’s Jack and Tim. You guys seem like a couple of hale fellows well met. Did you say you’ve fished this river before?”
Jack said he was new to drift boat fishing, but he was willing to learn the ropes. Jack confessed, “I’ve never fished with a guide before. This is all a new experience. But when Tim asked me to come along, I jumped all over the opportunity. So just tell me what to do, I don’t mind.”
“That’s a good way to be, Jack. We’ll have a good time. What about you, Tim?”
Tim didn’t answer. He stared at the water on the side of the boat as if the foam and bubbles were the most fascinating thing he’d ever seen. The only sounds were the metal-on-metal squeak of the oars in the oarlocks and the rapid lap-lap-lap of the water on the side of the fiberglass hull.
Again, Duke said, “Tim, what about you?”
Finally, Tim looked up. There was something mean in his eyes and his lips were pulled against his teeth so hard they looked translucent.
“Duke, why do you say our names every time you ask a question, Duke? Is that so you’ll remember our names, Duke? Is that one of your guide tricks, Duke?”
Then he added, in an icy tone Jack had never heard Tim use before: “Your name is Randall, but you go by Duke. I think I’ll call you Randall, Randall.”
Duke flashed an uncomfortable smile and looked up at Jack instead of over his shoulder at Tim. As if trying to get Jack to acknowledge Tim was out of line. The silence between them grew uncomfortable until Duke finally shrugged it off and filled it.
“Someone wake up on the wrong side of the bunk this morning? Well, never mind that, Tim. Everything will change, Tim. Every day is a good day on the river. We just haven’t caught any fish yet because we haven’t been fishing. So let’s just get you fellows rigged up. I’ll pull over here into this little back eddy and drop the anchor and get you rigged up. Everything will be fine once you hook up with one of these monsters.”