Much of my narrative of that morning, I left unchanged. As my pa used to say, If you have to concoct a lie, be sure to mix in as much of the truth as you can. I told the police about picking up Dan at his place in the pre-dawn hours, about stopping off at Herman’s Diner for breakfast, about the story Howard recounted to us after we informed him of our destination. Of course I didn’t believe Howard’s tale, I said, but it seemed to work to powerful effect on Dan, so that by the time we were at Dutchman’s Creek and fishing, he admitted that his reason for selecting this spot was what he took to be a hint from his grandfather’s fishing journal that he might meet his dead wife and children here. Didn’t I think this was, well, crazy? one of the cops asked. Yes, I said, but we were already at the creek. All I could do was try to reason with Dan, and when that failed and he set off to find his family upstream, follow him. The creek was in flood, the shore slippery; a couple of times, I almost fell in. Dan refused to wait for me. I lost my balance one time too many, and went into the stream. Right away, I struck my head on a rock, and that was about as far as my memories went. Frankly, I was surprised to be among the living. Did I have any guess as to what might’ve happened to Dan? the detectives asked. I did not. I had fallen into Dutchman’s Creek, but I had a few years on Dan. All I could say was, the last I’d seen of him, he was walking upstream.
Useful though it might be, neither detective appeared especially happy with my version of events; whether because they sensed me holding back, or because their occupation had made them suspicious of everyone, I couldn’t say. How did I explain the cuts on my arm? they wanted to know. I didn’t, I said. I was in the water with all kinds of debris. Who knew what I’d run into? They asked what had happened to my fishing rod. I said I wished I knew. That rod had done well by me; the detectives would not have believed some of the fish I’d hooked on it. I supposed it had been carried away by the creek, or maybe by a fellow fisherman with an eye for value and flexible morals. The two of them did their best to determine how I’d felt about Dan, which was to say, whether I’d had the urge to murder him, but I could answer without any dissembling that Dan had been about the best friend I’d had, and the prospect of not seeing him again filled me with grief.
And for a long time after that, I did mourn Dan. My bruises and cuts healed, the rib I’d cracked knit, and my immune system got the upper hand on the infection long enough for me to be discharged, finally, from the hospital. While I was recuperating at home, my manager stopped over to visit me; though his purpose had more to do with business than solicitude. Technically, I was already supposed to have decided if I wanted to take early retirement and the one-time payout being offered to incentivize it, or if I preferred to stay with the company and risk being laid off. Because of my accident, my boss had convinced his boss and those above him to grant me an extension. He never came out and said so, but there was no doubt in my mind that, were I not to choose to exit my job under my own steam, I would be shoved out the door. It’s funny: with all I’d been through, you would expect that this would have appeared, in comparison, of little consequence. Yet I was furious, so much so that I stood from the kitchen table, asked the young fellow to excuse me, and walked out into my front yard.
I’ll say this to my manager’s credit, he let me go. My head abuzz, I stalked around the bungalow Marie and I had intended for a starter home. I don’t suppose my sentiments were any different from those of the thousands of others who’d been in this spot before me. This isn’t right. I’ve given years — decades — of my life to this business. I’ve done my part to make if the success it has been for so long. I’ve been genuinely proud of it, to count myself among its employees. Hell, I wouldn’t have met my wife without it. This isn’t fair.
All of which was true, as far as it went, and none of which made the least bit of difference. I flirted with telling my boss I’d take my chances, only I knew there’d be no chance involved. Nor was there any point to remaining outside. Before I could second-guess myself, I returned inside, thanked my manager for his patience, and told him I’d decided to take the buyout. He seemed relieved.
Like that, I was without my job, without my closest friend, and without the activity that had organized the most recent part of my life, and that I had anticipated structuring my retirement around. Gone fishin’, right? I tried to return to it, the following year, after a winter spent watching too much TV and eyeing the liquor cabinet. I outfitted myself with good gear, not quite the top of the line, but not too far removed from it. The first day of trout season, I pulled out of my driveway with the moon tucking itself under the horizon, headed for a stream on the other side of Frenchman’s Mountain where my luck had held more often than not. I was the first one at what I thought of as my spot; although a group of other, younger guys in a jeep with Pennsylvania plates parked behind me five minutes later. We exchanged nods as they walked past me sitting in the cab, sipping coffee from my travel mug, and we acknowledged one another again in the mid-afternoon, as they made their way back to their vehicle. I was in the driver’s seat, still, from which I’d moved only to relieve my bladder. During the sixty seconds I’d spent outside my truck, I had listened to the water splashing on the other side of a line of maples, and had thought that it would be very easy for me to stroll down to it for a look. Then I’d climbed into the cab and locked the door. The light was draining from the sky before I admitted defeat and started the engine.
My next attempts were no more successful. The drive to and from whatever point on the map I’d selected presented no difficulty. To a certain extent, neither did sitting beside whatever stream or river I’d chosen. Any effort I made to approach the water for purposes of fishing sent me straight to the truck, do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars. There was no particular emotion associated with it, no upwelling of panic, or terror; my body simply refused to entertain, much less obey, my brain’s commands.
The panic and terror were reserved for my dreams, which would replay and remix the images and actions of that Saturday for years to come. My lost fishing rod in my hands, I reeled in the large fish Marie had called a nymph; only, when I hauled it out of the water this time, its front end encased not a skull, but Dan’s head, his eyes gone, his mouth open in a bloody scream. A traffic light hanging amidst the trees overhead, Marie’s feet rose from the forest floor, her skin peeling off in ribbons and streamers, her hair streaming around her head like water grass. His face rigid with anger, Dan lifted a rock that through some trick of perspective was also the boulder to which the Fisherman was tied and brought it crashing down on my head. The vast eye of the Fisherman’s catch opened, and black water spilled from the great crack of its pupil in a flood. If I slept during the day, in the sunlight, I found the dreams weren’t quite as bad, so I spent much of each night channel surfing and paging through whatever books I’d checked out of the library, trying to keep myself awake until the eastern sky began to forecast the sun’s arrival.
When I wasn’t trapped in terrifying dreams of him, I grieved for Dan; though my grief, as you might expect, was a somewhat complicated affair. I fancied I understood the desperation that had led Dan to Dutchman’s Creek, and the Fisherman, and whatever the exact deal he’d struck with that being. I knew first-hand the exhilaration of finding your dearly departed — or a nearly perfect approximation — waiting for you, and I could appreciate what a motivation Sophie and the boys must have been for Dan. As bad a state as I’d witnessed him in at work — and as he’d confessed himself to be, circling his maelstrom — he must have felt as if he’d been thrown a life-preserver, pulled back from ruin by the very figures whose deaths had spun him towards it.