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“Yeah, that didn’t work,” Danny said, eyeing him warily. “At least, not for me.” He sighed, reminding Silas of Uncle Les when he was exasperated. “We can go fishing Sunday, if we get up early.”
“But we’re climbing to the fire lookout on Sunday,” Meg chimed in, to Silas’s surprise. They’d talked about making the trek to the top of Marble Peak, where an old tower overlooked the Marble Lake wilderness, before the snow flew, but he hadn’t realized Meg was so into it.
He rolled with it, though, because Meg’s vote made it two to one. “That’s right. And I have to work for Uncle Les tomorrow. So if we’re going to go fishing, it has to be now.”
Danny looked between the two of them, then sighed again like the old man he’d probably been since birth. For a minute there, Silas had hopedhe’d cured him of it. “Oh,fine,” he said, abandoning his backpack in favor of his tackle box. “But don’t expect anything too exciting,” he added as he began sorting the fluorescent rubbery lures and plastic bobbers.
Silas grinned. “I always expect something exciting.” He plucked three little lead weights out of a tray and juggled them until they scattered on Danny’s entry floor.
“Dude! Pick those up.”
“I am. Chill.” No one was ever home in the afternoons at Danny’s house anyway, his father, Frank, working four days on, three off as a safety engineer for Union Pacific—probably where Cairns got his crazy work ethic from.
They piled into Danny’s dad’s piece-of-shit truck, which was actually pretty awesome, in a retro sort of way, to his favorite fishing hole at the end of a rutted Forest Service road paralleling the river by the train tracks. They parked in the looming shadow of a trestle spanning overhead, beneath which the water eddied in deep, swirling pools.
“Sweet,” Silas declared, out of the car before Danny had come to a full stop. Meg trailed behind, a book in one hand, a blanket to sit on in the other. “Not a fisherwoman?” he asked.
She smirked. “You don’t know how long Danny can fish.”
She was right. After equipping Silas and pointing him in the direction of a good spot, Danny planted himself at the edge of one of the deepest pools, and just ... cast. Over and over. As the sun slanted across the sky, and the geese flew overhead, and the train whistle blew every fifteen minutes. Silas tried to emulate this semi-meditative state, but it was no use: fishing was as boring as watching a metronome wag back and forth.
Danny could keep his rainbow trout; it was the huge granite boulders framing the eddy, perfect for climbing, that had Silas’s attention. Abandoning his rod and reel, he scaled the rocks until he had a view of the river all the way to the next bend, Danny and Meg just two stationary ants below him. Scrambling back down, he leaped off the rock right above Meg to pounce upon her blanket.
“Shit!” She nearly dropped her book, bringing one hand to her chest. “Stop bouncing around like a pinball and come sit down.”
He obeyed, squinting into the sun, watching the light shining off the trestle, until, out of the corner of his eye, he spied Meg reaching the end of her chapter.
“Climb the trestle with me,” he said, taking her book from her hands and setting it down on the nearest rock. “We can reach the underside of the train track.”
“What? No way.”
“It’ll be easy,” he said.
“But what for?”
“What do you mean, ‘what for’?” He was baffled by the question. “Just because, of course.”
“It’s dangerous. The trains come regularly.”
Silas frowned. He hadn’t heard a whistle in a while. And no way was he just going to sit here waiting for Danny to tire of fishing. He said as much.
Meg sighed, a long, exasperated sound. “It wasyouridea to come,” she reminded him.
Yes, but now he’d found something more challenging to do. Aunt Mary blamed his penchant for adventure on his upbringing; too much time left to his own devices in the wilds of some corner of the country or another, she’d said. But it wasn’t just that. Where other people seemed to see limitations, stop signs, do-not-enters, Silas saw opportunities. And who knew where each could lead?
“We won’t climb up far enough to reach the tracks,” he promised.
Meg looked toward the distant form that was Danny, downriver now by a good fifty yards, and waved an arm at him, though whether to coax him to come along or just let him know their plan, Silas couldn’t say. It didn’t matter, because Danny didn’t notice. So Silas led the way, jumping from boulder to boulder to the trestle support beam by the water, gratified when Meg followed, albeit reluctantly.
Up close, the metal trestle beam reached higher than he’d thought. The rungs were too far apart for proper climbing, and paint peeled from the rungs of the ladder, hot to the touch in the sun. Still, an adventure was an adventure. Silas was already halfway up, legs wrapped around the pillar like he was retrieving a coconut from a palm tree, by the time Meg reached the base.
“I don’t know ...” she called up to him.
Even when Silas climbed back down to her, showing her where the best footholds were, she stayed rooted on firm ground. “You go without me. I don’t want to slow you down.”
“No way, it’s no fun by myself,” he said, and held out his hand, willing her to take it. Thrilling when she did.
He guided her up a few rungs, but within a few feet, she was paralyzed again, hanging on to the pillar while Silas’s feet flailed amid empty air above her.
