I looked at him. He was still watching his fly.
"Mae," he said, by way of explanation.
"She mentioned you too," I said. "You made an impression."
"I just order a black coffee."
"That's all it takes with Mae." I pointed upstream at a dark slot behind a mid-channel boulder. "There's a brown trout in that seam. She's been there every morning for the past month. Educated fish—she's seen enough bad presentations to know what she doesn't want—but she'll eat a size sixteen Parachute Adams if you come at her right."
He looked at the seam. "Why are you telling me that?"
"Because I've already caught her twice, and I'm happy for someone else to have a turn."
"You catch the same fish twice?"
"She's very catchable if you know what she wants." I paused. "Most things are."
He looked at me then. Long enough that I felt it, but not so long that I had to do anything about it.
"Hale Nichols," he said.
"I know."
He looked back at the seam without answering, worked out a cast, and adjusted his angle of approach without being told. The mend came late and patient. The fly settled into the slot and rode the current without drag.
The brown took it on the third pass.
I didn't say anything while he played her. She ran twice—short and fast, the way educated fish did. He kept his rod tip up and gave her room, and she came to his net looking ancient and offended and beautiful in the flat gray light.
He held her there, facing upstream, waiting. She kicked free.
"She's not boring," he said, still watching the water where she'd gone.
"No," I agreed. "She isn't."
"You made her sound like she was. Caught her twice, ready to move on."
"I was happy for someone else to have a turn." I started for the bank. "That's different."
"Is it?"
"Yes." I climbed out and reached for my rod case. "The upper bend above the old mining road gets better after ten when the sun moves off it. There's a population of cutthroats up there that doesn't see much pressure. Worth the walk." I looked back at him. "And Mae makes a breakfast sandwich that will change your life, if you're not opposed to having your life changed."
He was still watching me. "You always this helpful to strangers?"
"Only the ones who are doing something worth helping with." I shouldered my bag. "She'll be in that seam tomorrow morning too, if you want another shot at her."
"I'll keep that in mind," he said.
I made it to my truck, stowed my rod, and sat for a moment with my hands on the wheel while the engine warmed.
He'd said maybe twelve sentences in forty minutes on the water, and I knew more about him from those twelve sentences than I'd gathered in three weeks of watching him come and go from the café. The way he'd taken the correction without flinching. The way he'd said show me instead of defending himself. The way he'd watched the fish go and called her not boring—like it actually mattered to him to say the right thing about her.
I pulled out of the lot and drove toward Main Street, the mountains coming clear above the tree line as the light built, and told myself that was enough to know for now.
It wasn't. But it was a start.
2
