Henry was edging along the bank, staying clear of the river. A hatch was just underway. Blue-wing olives, if Henry knew his flies. Small ones. The trout would soon be rising to the flies. His destination was a nice pool a couple of hundred yards upstream, far enough to dissuade most fair-weather anglers from making the effort. He kept a keen eye on the river, of course. If opportunity should knock, he’d be ready.
Then he saw the old man. Across his pool, he sat on a fallen log precariously attached to the steep bank. He held his rod aloft like a tightrope walker trying to find balance. That was clearly an effort; the log was quaking as he shimmied back and forth.
Still, the man had beaten him there. The hatch was underway, and the pool was blistering with rises. Henry had to smile. Good luck to you, he thought. Then he turned and headed upstream. There was enough river for the both of them.
Henry hadn’t gone a dozen yards when he heard a loud crack, followed by the sort of expletive you wouldn’t expect from an old man. Henry looked over to see that old fellow had fallen when the end of the log broke. He was lying face down in the muddy duff.
“Are you okay?” shouted Henry.
The man didn’t respond at first. He was on his elbows trying to get up, his legs slipping back and forth as he attempted to gain purchase in the slick mud. He was clearly agitated, moving his head left and right as if dazed. Henry thought he might have lost his glasses.
“I said, ‘are you okay’?”
“Might use a hand,” said the old man, wiping debris from his mouth.
Henry looked upstream. The hatch was still going on. Should last a while, he hoped. These hatches could last fifteen minutes and then go dormant until anybody’s guess. Might very well be the last of the day. Such was flyfishing on these streams.
He crossed the river. It wasn’t deep, just up to Henry’s thighs, and he was barely five-foot-seven in heels. But the current was fast after the storm, and the rocks were as smooth as melting ice cubes. He took out a collapsible wading stick and was relieved, always relieved, when it popped open.
The old man was on all fours. He looked up, squinting into the sun’s glare. He smiled and continued shaking his head. “I never fell in a river, not once,” he said. “But here I am trying to get a perch on that Goddamned log, and, bingo, off I go.”
Henry put his rod down and helped the man off the ground. He rattled, as he came up, laden with the trappings a fly fisherman accumulates over the years – fly boxes, a net, spools of this and that. Henry brushed dirt off his waders. The man was wobbling, his hands shaking.
“Are you sure you’re alright? That was quite a spill.”
“Yeah, yeah, just old. Won’t stop me fishing, though,” adding, “Hope I didn’t spook ‘em.”
“Well, you gave me a scare, but no, they don’t seem bothered.” Henry pointed to a dimple where a trout had risen. Nice one, too, he thought.
The old man started looking around, almost falling again with the effort. “Where’s she at? Can you see her?” he said. There was panic in his voice.
Henry turned about but saw no one. “Your wife? I’ll go look for her. She couldn’t have gone far.”
The old man seemed confused. “Wife? I’m talking about my rod.”
The old codger said he had thrown her to safety when he fell. He was more scared of falling on it than his getting hurt. “You’ve got to help me find her.” There were tears in the man’s eyes.
Her. A rod was an odd thing to call she, or he, or anything other than it. But Henry found “her” some 10 feet away. She was well hidden, blending in with the drying reeds, amidst their autumn colors.
Cane would do that–blend with nature. Not new rods. New rods were extruded from chemicals and came in colors fit for a fashion runway. But cane rods were delicately sliced from hollow bamboo imported from a remote province in China. The material was of nature itself.
The rod in Henry’s hand was a beauty; honey colored, its cork handle worn dark where someone’s hand had held it for decades. It had German nickel silver ferrules, silk wrapping around the guides, flaming along the nodes, and the signature of its famous maker. This wasn’t just some production rod.
There were only a handful of the old-school rod makers who could build one. Such rods would be in some collection, unfished. Henry could hear the owner at a cocktail party: “Bought it at Sotheby’s. The catalog said, ‘Own a piece of angling history,’ And weren’t they too right?”
Henry wondered who would take a rod like this and actually use it?
I would, he thought.
He cradled the rod as he rose, staring at the words written just in front of the grip. The craftsman was there, along with the details – 7’ 4-wt– and the rod’s name, The Mettowee. That was in delicate script along with the name of the man who commissioned the rod: William O. Hennesy.
“Where have you been?” whispered Henry.
“Is she okay? Is she hurt?”
The old man’s question stirred Henry from another place. “She’s fine. Just a bit jittery after the flight.”
The old man breathed a sigh. “I’d rather break my leg than see her hurt. My mistress she is, without the complications. We’ve fished together for years; she and I.”
“The rod-maker didn’t make many, you know.”
“No, he didn’t.” Henry was gently rubbing his fingers along the smooth splits, not feeling any seam where the rod-maker had glued the six hand-lathed bamboo triangles together. He followed its taper to the tip, hardly thicker than a wooden match.
Henry lifted the rod over his head. He was looking to admire how straight it was – no warp, no bend. If the old man seemed worried, Henry would hand it over, gingerly, and thank him for having had the chance to hold it.
“An aficionado, eh?” said the old man.
“More an obsessive fanatic,” chuckled Henry. “I hope you don’t mind.”
“You want to cast it, I bet. In the water.”
“I totally understand if you’d rather not. It’s just…”
“You need to cast in the river is all I mean to say. That’s what she’s meant for. Here. I tied up some size 22 Blue Wings. Sonsofbitches are smaller than ticks! I can make them on the vice but can’t bloody well tie ‘em on a tippet!”
Henry was hardly listening. He was teasing the rod overhead, mimicking the soft cast a cane rod deserved. It was as smooth as the storybooks said it would be, even with his shaking hands.
He thought back to an auction of rock memorabilia. Henry saw a guitar, a Gibson J-160E. He had to put on cotton gloves before touching it. The guitar sold for $2.8 million. Another one went for $15,000. They were identical in all manner but one. The $15,000 version wasn’t the one John Lennon had when he wrote I Want To Hold Your Hand.
The old man shimmied himself back onto the log that had so recently booted him. Now, though, he was bouncing excitedly and pointing.
“That’s a rise, by that grey rock. See it?”
Henry waved an unnecessary thanks. It wasn’t just “that” rise, nor “that” rock; there were dozens of grey rocks and rises all around them. Where the old man’s skill came in was on Henry’s first cast with his teeny Blue Wing Olive. It was so small, Henry could hardly make it out amid the real ones blanketing the river.
No matter: a fish did.
What tipped him off was the trout’s angry recognition that there was something other than a meal in its mouth. It jumped in the air as Henry pulled the bamboo gem sideways to ensure the fly took hold. The fish took it hard and dashed in the other direction. It tore line off the rod with a sound like a massive mosquito flying at you. The rod’s tip bent over, nearly touching the water. It moved to the left, to the right, bending to the antics of the fish, shaking its head to lose the fly. The fish, a big rainbow, leapt and spun in the air every time Henry tugged the line. He could almost hear it screaming.
The screaming was real enough, but it came from the old man who was bounding up and down on his quaking log. “You got it, you sonofabitch! Got it on my goddamned rod and my goddamned fly. Look at that sonofabitch run!”
He was right, too. That sonofabitch was running the line down to the backing, driving to a woven tangle of branches forming a trap against the bank. If that fish got in there, it would catch the tippet and break off. “Pull to your right!” yelled the old man. “Damn it, boy, the rod can take it. Swing it right. That fish is getting tired for sure.”
The old man was right again. Henry turned the rod to the right, keeping pressure on the fish. He reeled it in evenly, slowly, letting the fish fight the line, but less with each run. The fish was fighting the current as well, exhausting itself until it almost wanted to swim into the net; all 21 inches of a fat, arching, flapping, rainbow. Henry held it high for the man to see.
“Grand! Just grand,” he yelled. “That’s a pot of gold right there.”
Henry returned the rainbow to the river, easing it back and forth in the oxygen-infused water, restoring its strength, until it swam away. Henry headed back to the bank.
“The gold at the end of that rainbow is right here,” Henry said.
The old man mouthed the word gem.
“I have to ask; how’d you get it?”
The old man’s eyes narrowed in a smile. He’d been fishing for years, he said, bought and broke more rods than he could remember. Then met a guy who was down on his luck. “I was fishing, and there he stood, on the bank, just watching me. Odd thing was, he was all dressed up as if he’d come from church. It was a Sunday, as I recall, so maybe he had. He was holding a leather rod case under his arm.”
“I got out to see what he was up to. One thing led to another. We were the same age, which surprised me. He looked like he’d been run through the mill. Said he’d lost his job – it was the big recession, don’t you know – and he’d lost most of his small fortune when the bosses turned out to be crooks. Ever heard of…”
Henry spat the name of the company before the old man could say it.
“One and the same,” he said. “The fellow didn’t want to part with it, but pride and all. He had a mortgage, kid in college. You know, the whole catastrophe. I paid him more than it was worth but felt bad for the guy.”
“And the rod,” said Henry.
“Oh, yes, the rod. Three hundred dollars. Turned out the best investment I ever made.”
He said he’d had a love affair with that rod for over 30 years. He knew the price – he had offers to sell it along the road. The value, though, had no dollar signs attached. “She knows me. And I know her. I felt bad for the guy who had to sell it.”
“He wept, you know, when I handed him the cash. And I’ll tell you, I know how he felt.”
Henry turned the rod in his hands, touching his finger to the name, William O. Hennesy.
“Take a picture, it’ll last longer,” said the old man. His laugh morphed into a coughing fit.
“I have a picture,” said Henry. “Of Bill Hennesy casting it. A perfect loop. That man could cast.”
The old man cleared his throat. He waddled down to the river, head leaning to one side, bemused. “I’m all ears,” he said.
Henry looked at the sun for a moment, then wiped his eyes. “He’d hit hard times,” he said. “His wife, my Mom, was in hospice. I was in college. And Dad was downsized before downsizing was fashionable. His boss told him he was taking too much personal time. It sounds like a cliché, but he became a greeter at Walmart after Mom passed. He dressed for work, suit and tie, every day, though. Every day. He said it showed respect. Can you imagine?”
“But he never stopped fishing. Never. At the end, he was using some plastic Eagle Claw stick. He’d grimace with every cast.
“Say, I have something for you.”
The old man eyed Henry, not sure of what he meant. “Go on.”
“I’ve got the original paperwork and, get this, the plans for this rod. You should have it.”
The old man looked up at the sky, squinting. He was nodding his head as if having a conversation with himself. With a final, deep nod, he turned to Henry and said, “Yup, three hundred.”
Henry snorted, shaking his head. “I suppose that was a lot of money in those days. Sheesh. Three hundred dollars. I can’t imagine what it would be worth today.”
“I can,” said the old man. “I was offered ten grand for her. Said no, too. Ten grand was an insult. But that’s not your problem. Three hundred.”
“No, I won’t take your money. I’ll give you the paperwork and plans. They belong with the rod.”
The old man went into a laughing fit as he broke down the rod and returned it to its leather case, handing it to Henry. “And I won’t take yours, young man,” he said, even though Henry was topping 60, “You drive a hard bargain.”
Henry hugged the case, shaking it a tad, to hear the rod inside. He tried to call to the old man, to say something. He didn’t know what—I can’t, or you can’t. Maybe there was nothing to say.
The old man was back to his car, chuckling to himself, “Yep, best investment I ever made.”