The Legend's Daughter

WHERE I AM…WHERE I’VE BEEN

When Clifford asked Woods his plans for the last week in September, Woods asked what he meant. Clifford said he was hoping to fly west to Idaho and fish the Salmon above Stanley—would Woods join him? Clifford and Woods drafted for the same firm in Bethesda. They’d played racquetball.

Woods confessed an ignorance; he didn’t fish. Clifford minimized it: he’d handle the arrangements, he said. Idaho, in late September, was beautiful; fly fishing was holding a stick in your hand in water and waving it. Woods hesitated, said yes. His children both were at boarding schools, his wife, Beth Ann, worked full-time for the Department of Energy. Their marriage seemed more like a kept toy than a quickened breath—a thing saved, out of sight, for its remembered pleasures. Woods told none of this to Clifford.

I’ve got the equipment, Clifford said. Waders, vests, flies, rods. Just bring yourself.

Woods asked where they’d stay.

Clifford said camp. We’ll camp. He had a Springbar, foam pads, Quallofil bags, cookware, backpacks. It’s near the road, he said. It’s not that far. From the highway. Just downstream and across from where we’ll pull in and park. Pines! It’s beautiful! But civilization’s… He grinned. It’s ‘in the wings,’ so to speak. But don’t worry. We can drive to Stanley, at night, for… whatever. You enjoy whatever? ‘R & R,’ is that what you call it?

Woods told Beth Ann.

Outdoors? she said.

Yes, Woods said. Apparently.

She laughed, then stopped herself, pressed her lips tight.

What? Woods said.

Nothing, she said. I don’t know. It’s just, I suppose, interesting. She suppressed something. Mirth.

What’s interesting? Woods said.

They say Idaho’s lovely, Beth Ann said. September. Probably always.

Did other people, Woods wondered, talk like this? Seventeen years into marriage?

It might be the start of something, Beth Ann said. So… and that would be good.

What? Woods said. "Start of what? What… good."

I can’t— she laughed, then stopped herself again. Whatever, she said. Whatever. What would you like?

Possibly, Woods said. He didn’t know what he could add. He didn’t know, really, what he had said. He thought how much he liked the gold earrings she’d begun to wear. He thought how nice she looked in quieter prints. He wondered: might she begin wearing her hair just a little longer?

Clifford assured Woods. Just bring dry clothes, he said. And money. He laughed. They flew from Dulles on September 12, Dulles to Stapleton, Denver to Sun Valley, where they rented a lipstick-colored Fieri.

It was late afternoon. At Silver Creek Outfitters, they bought flies, leader, something called tippet in different numbers, something called gink. The gink was a silicone gel, which, Clifford said, kept the flies dry; it came in a tiny, plastic dispenser. Clifford had gotten them a unit at a place called The Cobble-wood. They went there and unloaded, then drove to where a local road crossed the Wood River and the water smoothed and slowed. There, Clifford gave Woods his first lesson: rod, three basic flies—Adams, caddis and grasshopper—knot-tying, gink-applying, and casting.

An hour later, in the long, balloon-shaped shadows, Woods had a trout. His line bent. He felt the pull, the fight, the strain. Clifford talked gently and eased him through the play, the retrieval—all ritual—the netting and the release. It was exciting; Woods’ heart raced. He’d never stood in the middle of water before. The casting was like a fine line-drawing. Like a rendering he might make. A draft. A sketch. Another fish took his caddis! And a third! The day’s diminishing light spilled off and into the pasture grass and shrubbery. In the near-dark, yet another trout—Woods could feel its weight—took his fly with a jolt he’d not known. Woods drew in too hard; the line snapped, its filament taut and then weightless somewhere in the dark air. He wished Beth Ann could see. If she saw, she might find him different. Glimpse a quiet heat. A fire. She wouldn’t believe she was seeing who she was seeing.

Smelling like the cold, in part like metal, in part like water, Clifford and Woods drove from the river and had Mexican food. The place was called Angelita’s and the tables were unsteady; Woods kept spilling his margarita, losing the salsa off his blue corn chips. He felt energized, sexual, very hungry. Aware of his body. He’d grown up in Philadelphia, then lived eight years in New York before moving to Bethesda. It was almost frightening, the kind of pulse he was feeling at his wrist and at the back of his neck—the spill, the delicious snaking of… what? Something animal—loose aggression.

They ate what the menu called carnitas, and Clifford, nonstop, talked books. Woods had seen him alone in various cafés at lunchtime, jaw tight, reading, leafing pages. He’d seen Clifford head off into the men’s room with hardbacks. Some of the names Clifford spoke Woods recognized—Hemingway; Pound; Stegner; the Russian, Turgenev. But there were others which just made sounds: Bud Guthrie, John Muir, Frank Waters, Van Tilberg Clark, someone named Parkinson, another… Turner; Boorstein, Kitteridge, Berry, Huizinga. An Indian, Black Elk. It was wonderful to watch Clifford’s face while he rambled.

Clifford’s notion, as much as Woods could follow, was submission. We lose submission, he said. Where we are in our work. Back. Bethesda. East. Drafting. We stop giving over. Giving in. We stop obeying.

It sounded wonderful—whatever Clifford said, the way he said it. He talked with his mouth full and with animation. There were smears of avocado on both his cheeks, dab of salsa on his forehead. He looked like a warrior. Could I be a warrior? Woods wondered. He thought maybe. He thought not.

Then Clifford’s words turned to women: phenomenal, he kept saying. Phenomenal: how phenomenal women were. He was grandly drunk. I don’t mean vernacular phenomenal, Clifford said. No. No-no-no! He wrinkled his nose. I mean, did you ever see a stone, say, in a streambed? Looks like something alive? Like a living thing? Actual living thing? All smooth? Veined? Embedded, kind of? With other minerals? That’s what I’m talking about. Women. That’s the thing I’m… like a miniature…what? Kidney, say, or aorta or something.

Woods ordered another margarita and nodded. Clifford kept spitting his food as he talked, but Woods didn’t mind. He considered spitting his, too. It looked like fun.

Clifford had been married twice. I can’t get it right, he said. "I can’t get it close, as a matter of fact. It pisses me. I want, but I can’t. I’m too anxious. Or too…not anxious enough, possibly. Not alert. I read one thing when I should be reading another. I fall in love with a woman’s neck, it should be her fingers. You know? I buy her Nanci Griffith, should be Reba McEntire. It’s bad. Doomed. I talk when I should be quiet, I’m quiet when I should talk. I don’t read the wind picking up. I’m talking figuratively, of course, but I don’t watch the surfaces. Still, you’ve got to keep, I don’t know, coming back, don’t you think? I do. ‘Come back, Clifford!’ I say to myself. You’ve got to keep coming back. Know what I’m saying? I’m just saying, I would like to meet a woman—listen, hear this, Woods—pay attention—I would like to meet a woman, and I would like to feel that I was this old man who had known her—Jesus, I suppose forever—okay? All right?"

That would be great, Woods said. He laughed. He couldn’t stop himself. In the light and angle where he sat, Clifford looked like Beth Ann. The laughing seemed something that had been too long in coming. A source, a spring, that he’d not acknowledged in himself. An opening. A beginning.

Clifford slept like a corpse. Woods kept waking to the fresh air in their condominium and being stunned: ready to eat again, ready for some activity. He’d wake and leave his bed and walk into the living area and stand by the screen where the night air came in and listen to the sounds and wonder why he’d never come to such a place. Once he lay out, naked, on the Navajo rug and stared up at the unit’s exposed beaming, where he swore he saw, through what he took to be chinks, the stars, the constellations. Comets, even.

In the morning, Clifford was reading when Woods finally woke. He seemed absorbed, immensely sober, almost shy. Woods made coffee, found packages of quick oatmeal with apple slices, made them. He felt a stranger to Clifford, where, the night before, he’d felt deep exhilaration to be such a friend. Woods set the table, conscious, with each silverware’s contact, he was making sound. Clifford read through most of breakfast: a book on John Wesley Powell. Suddenly, Clifford stopped—slapped the book shut and barked: New day! New day!

Before they left, Woods called Beth Ann, at work, at the Energy Department, to say he’d arrived safely and had a great first afternoon. I felt so happy, he said.

Good, she said. That was destined to start.

Her words confused him. Destined what? Start where? When he asked for news, she said she and her friend Daria had bought a house on the Chesapeake. Three acres. Ten rooms.

Woods, again, was unclear. What do you mean? he asked.

I mean as an investment, Beth Ann said. We both had money. It was underpriced—Daria knew the owner. It’s a good area.

My wife bought a house with another woman, Woods said as the two drove up and over Galena Summit. Another woman, he repeated.

Yeah, right. Women and other women, Clifford said. "They’ll give up the short stuff all afternoon and then it’s like whoom, Mystic Pizza or something!"

Woods furrowed his brow. He nodded. I suppose, he said. He considered. Daria was thirty-five, married to a lobbyist. What, exactly, was his calculation? A house on the Chesapeake. Three acres. Ten rooms. Why?

To the west, the Sawtooths peaked and took Woods’ breath away. They made the unmarred blue of the sky savage, inverted, ferocious. I’ve never seen anything like this, Woods told Clifford.

It’s just the start, Clifford said.

They stopped for coffee at a log café in Stanley. Clifford pulled out his book, made no conversation. He turned a page—Woods clocked—every fourteen seconds. Had Beth Ann meant she and Daria were going to live in their house? They were going to move there?

Woods conjured an image: a room with bay windows, oriental rugs, wide floorboards, antique furniture, Telemann or something playing, late afternoon light, lawns sloping, riverfront, Beth Ann and Daria drinking jewel-red apéritifs out of two long stem glasses, heads thrown back, necks exposed, laughing. The teasing sense he’d had—just the night before—of giddiness, latent combustion, began to fade. He stood, walked to the postcards, chose one. It showed the Sawtooths behind an azure blot and was captioned Hell Roaring Lake. Woods addressed the card to Beth Ann, then wrote, Where I am in the message box. He bought a stamp. The café had a mail slot. He dropped the card in.

As they drove north from Stanley, the Salmon was beautiful: blue and turquoise, white with light and water. It snaked. It dropped into pools. Mid-range and miniature figures wearing waders and vests appeared and disappeared, hunched and poised, playing fish. There were great black and white scissor-tailed birds, jays with pitch crests, once what Clifford called a blue heron, beating its wings lazily, low, following the river. This is extraordinary, Woods said.

The River of No Return! Clifford announced.

They drove eighteen miles before Clifford slowed, maneuvered, and backed down into a dirt turnoff. Ready for this? he asked.

I don’t know, Woods said.

Clifford had everything, all their equipment. It was either in or strapped artfully to backpacks. Boots, waders, and vests first, Clifford said. Woods prepared himself, watching Clifford, mimicking what went where, which socks over what; what the lacing, where the wader belt, when the vest. Then, when they were ready, Clifford helped Woods with his pack, grey canvas on a metal frame. Woods held Clifford’s, which was larger. Clifford gave Woods a set of car keys, saying he had two: one zipped into the back pocket of his vest, another in his pants pocket. Just trying to make sure we get out, he said.

The task was to cross the river, just downstream of where they’d parked. Clifford had given them both telescoping sticks, and before they set in, he reviewed what to do if Woods should lose footing: get onto his back, feet downstream, wait for the slower water. We’ve got all day, Clifford said. Don’t tighten up. On the other hand, it’s just a walk. Like any walk. It’s just water. Try to take each step. I’ll go first.

Clifford did. He moved out from the shore where the water was slow. He had explained that he’d chosen this particular spot to cross because the river was wider. "It just looks faster, he said, because you get more churn, but it’s actually slower."

Clifford moved easily. It’s fine, he called back. It’s wonderful! Woods entered. He moved in. Water slid by, and there was the sense both of motion and none. Still, it felt comfortable; there was a rippling at his calves, the way the Wood River had rippled the previous day. He followed Clifford at a slight distance. He liked the way the water jostled. Why would a woman buy a house with another woman? he called ahead to Clifford.

Why are there cannibals? Clifford called back. He laughed, then immediately answered his own question. To get to the other side! he said.

The other side?

Mid-river, the water rose to Woods’ knees, and the weight of his pack seemed, suddenly, to pull him backwards. He lost his footing, then righted himself.

You okay? Clifford called. I heard splashing.

I think so, Woods said.

Keep a base! Clifford called. Try to always keep a base under you. Triangulate. Don’t walk frightened.

What did Clifford mean, Triangulate? What did he mean, "Don’t walk frightened?"

They made the crossing. It seemed tricky, briefly, in the deeper flow; then, immediately, graceful, a glissade, fine. On the far side, there was a path trampled downriver until it opened into a pine clearing. Ta-da! Clifford sang. The pines were high. The clearing was small and vaulted, like a protected room—the river just beyond: not visible, but alive always, and musical. Birds called from high branches, and the pines, both above and underfoot, their mulch of fallen needles, made the place like an analgesic.

Camp was simple. Woods followed Clifford’s lead, and, within half an hour, they had their tent up, food cached, fire arranged, a small table structure contrived. Home! Clifford said.

Home, Woods tried to repeat, but the word snaked him, his upper spine, like a bare wire, a small power surge. Home almost, Woods said, qualifying. Instead of their camp, he imagined a ten-room house. Words with Ws came in: wolverine, women, water. He tried to smile, and they headed for the river.

Clifford was incredibly mindful. "Drop your fly just in back of that rock where the water Vs. Woods did. On his third cast, a huge rainbow hit just as the fly was drifting past the rock. Jesus! Woods said. He got too excited; he reacted too fast and lost the trout. You want it too much," Clifford