Now, as I approach the autumn of my life and some, though not all, of my dreams have come true, how do I describe myself? As a wife and a mother who loves her family, as an attorney who admires the law, and as a fly fisher who proudly says she learned from the greatest fly fisher she ever knew: her grandmother.

And whether by accident or not, my grandmother, with the help of some unexpected and dark events, taught me something even more important than fishing, something that, even after such a long, long parade of days, I still cherish, like an antique fly rod, and wish to pass on.

The lesson happened in the middle of trout season, on the first day of summer, when several incidents came together, perhaps randomly, and formed the big event of June twenty-first. I was fourteen years old and very, very hurt and angry.

Why, you ask?

A year had passed since my grandfather died of a heart attack while fishing a nameless but very beautiful, pool on the Junction River. My grandmother and father came to believe if someone had been with him he might have lived.

But in spite of their belief, my grandmother often told me, “Amanda, be thankful he at least died doing what he loved. Besides, I know he’s waiting for me. Maybe by the time we meet again he’ll stop burping at the table.”

I tried to see it my grandmother’s way but couldn’t. Deep down inside the truth was I desperately wanted him back so he could hug me and tell me fishing stories I knew weren’t all true. Besides, he lived close by, so he was the one I often ran to when the fighting between my mother and father got real bad. 

Whom did I blame for the fighting? I guess both, even though I knew my father was only trying to stop my mother from getting high. And I wanted her to stop. I hated the smell of marijuana. The smell meant my mother watched television with a stupid grin on her face, a grin saying silently, but loudly: don’t even try to get me to help you with your homework.

To make things worse, I couldn’t look forward to my father coming home, because his coming home usually led to another fight, and to me running to my room, slamming the door and putting a pillow over my head. The pillow filtered out most of the words, but the anger always found a way through, and made me pray for my mother to stop getting high.

She didn’t. So every day when I walked home from school and passed our town’s beautiful, old white church, I told myself that, there couldn’t be a God.

On one of those days the sky was so clear and the sun so bright that winter felt like spring. Suddenly, I forgot about all the bad things in my life and dreamed of fly-fishing and catching a monster-sized trout.

I walked up the wooden steps to my house and into the dim kitchen. My father sat at the table, staring out the window as if he were lost in space. 

“Dad, why are you home so early?”

He looked up at me. His eyes were red, as if he had just cried. “Your mother ran off with, with another man.”

Surprisingly, I didn’t feel much of anything, maybe because I felt both good and bad at the same time: good the fighting was over, bad my mother wasn’t going to change into the loving mother I wanted her to be.

During the next few months my feelings froze into opposite halves.

As for my father, he tried hard to hide his feelings, but he didn’t do a very good job. Hour after hour he sat in the kitchen all by himself; so even though he threw out all my mother’s pictures and never mentioned her name, I knew her image never left his brain. For reasons I couldn’t understand, he still loved her; and so to dull his pain he worked long, long hours in his tire store; and I usually came home to an empty house, put on the TV and ate dinner by myself.

Maybe that’s why my pain and the angry voices inside me swelled and soon drowned out the TV. Night after night, I put down my knife and fork and cried. Is it any wonder, therefore, I was thankful when my grandmother moved in with us and tried to take my mother’s place?

My grandmother cooked, helped me with my homework and tried to make me feel loved. There was something, however, she couldn’t do: erase my deepening shame, a shame I tried to hide by telling my teacher and classmates, “My mother is in New York taking care of her sick aunt.”

But in a small, close-knit town, I soon learned, some things, like the moon and the stars, are impossible to hide. My classmates made fun of me behind my back and then to my face.

What did I do? I punched one, but soon I forced myself to just turn away from my joking classmates and to instead fish more and more. You see, being in a beautiful river—to me, one of nature's great poems—helped me feel I too was a part of the good side of the world, but good side or not, my grandmother and father became scared of my being alone on a river; so one day when I was at school, they went to the pound, adopted a German Shepherd and put her in my room. When I came home I heard her bark. I ran to my room. The dog looked at me and tilted her head sideways. Her eyes seemed to ask, “Who are you?” Her face was almost all gold, her body almost all black. She struck me as being funny looking.

I got down on my knees. “Hello, big doggy.”

She walked to me slowly, as if a part of her was scared of me. I petted her and looked into her eyes. She jumped up, licked my face and suddenly looked beautiful, in my eyes at least. I hugged her. Right then and there I named her Shana. And from that day on she looked at me with so much love in her eyes, I wondered if she were really a person in a dog’s body. Often I asked, “Shana, do you miss whoever raised you? Well, I promise to love you so much that pretty soon you’ll forget all about them.”

She answered by licking my face; and I wished I could forget bad things as easily as a dog could.

I took Shana fishing with me, and I tried to train her to wait on the bank, but she always insisted on following me into the river, except where it was fast and rocky. Then she stayed on the bank and barked. Angry, I often called her a bad girl and told her to be quiet, but she wouldn’t listen. I wished there were wading sticks for dogs, but there weren’t; so soon I stopped wading into fast water and lost opportunities to catch a lot of big fish. At first I resented Shana for it, but having Shana and her love close to me, I learned, was a good trade-off.

One day, as I retrieved my fly, I looked at Shana and said, “Unlike my mother, you’ll never leave me. Maybe having you is better than having a real mother.”

My mother never visited or called.

Day after day I still cried, but never in front of my father, even though my grandmother told me crying was all right. One day she said, “I’m sure that your mother still loves you.”

I insisted, “Then why did she leave and stay away? People don't leave what they love.”

“Don’t be so sure. She’s probably just confused. That happens to grownups sometimes. She’ll again be a mother to you, probably real soon. You’ll see.”

“I won’t, because I’ll never even talk to her again. I hate her!”

“You mustn’t hate, Amanda.”

“People hate all the time.”

“That doesn’t make it right.”

 

A month or so later another really bad thing happened: my grandmother got sick and underwent all sorts of medical tests. We anxiously waited and waited for the results, and soon I felt I was lost in eternity.

 But I was wrong, because finally, as my father and I stood in the long, narrow hospital hallway, the doctor walked up to us. His eyes spoke sadness. I took my father’s hand. The doctor told us my grandmother had cancer. Immediately, I ran into her room. She smiled. I hugged her and said I was scared of losing her and of not having any sort of a mother.

She kissed my forehead. “I’m not ready to die. I’m going to beat this cancer, you’ll see. I guess what's worse than losing my hair is missing the opening of trout season for the first time since I met your grandfather.”

“I’m going to miss it too, because I don’t care anymore about fishing. I want to stay with you.”

Opening day and then the cold-as-ice winds of April came and went. Finally, my grandmother left the hospital, but three times a week she went back for chemotherapy. I always visited her, even though I hated seeing so many old and sick people. One afternoon I held my grandmother’s hand and said, “Grandma, when I get old I’m never going to get sick.”

She smiled. “Amanda, we don’t always have the choices that we want, but right now you have the choice to go home, take my Heddon Rod and catch some trout for the both of us.”

“I’m not going to leave you.”

“Your father will be here soon. The pain and sickness of one old woman doesn’t stop the world. The leaves have already bloomed. Fishing time doesn't stand still for any of us. One day, when, ah, when you’re looking back, seeing time lost—” My grandmother looked over my shoulder, as if she saw a ghost behind me. I knew, however, there was only a green wall.

I waited for her to continue. She didn’t.

“Grandma, what’s wrong?”

She looked back at me. “There’s always enough to regret. Please listen to me. Go home and get my fly rod.”

I muttered, “All right.”

I trudged home, put on my waders and boots and went into my grandmother’s room. Standing in the corner was her bamboo rod. Its polished finish beckoned like gold. I looked at Shana. “Girl, do you want to go fishing?”

Shana barked.

“Then, let’s go.”

 

Shana and I waded into the shallow, gentle riffles of School House Pool on the Junction River. Suddenly, in my mind I saw my grandmother throwing up from chemotherapy. I wondered, shouldn’t I be there with her, in spite of what she said? But she would never lie. She knows what’s good.

I looked at the tall trees lining the bank. The branches looked too long for their narrow trunks. Maybe that’s why the trees reminded me of a giant, chain-link fence. Feeling protected, I stared at the clear water and waited for insects to hatch.

They didn’t, so I tied on my grandfather’s favorite searching fly, an Adams, and pulled line off my grandmother’s black Meek reel. I cast to the far bank and watched my fly float downstream. The slow, shimmering water and the merging melodies of unseen birds washed the bad thoughts from my mind; and like a river flowing backwards, swept me back to the past, to the heart-pounding moments when I caught and landed my first trout and heard my grandfather state in his deep voice, "Amanda, I'm so, so proud of you, my little, beautiful girl."

My Adams dragged in the slower water near the bank. I retrieved line and again cast.

A few hours and two-landed-trout later, when the long, wide shadow turned the color of the water to dark gray, I left the river knowing I’d be back the next day.

And I was. I fished the pool that got its name from its shape: Banana. In middle of the pool, was a long, thin, burning triangle beamed down by the fire-spewing sun. The triangle, if it really was a triangle, was lopsided. Its three sides were different lengths and not quite straight. Two of the sides didn't even meet. I wondered if perfect triangles ever shined down from the sky.

The burning triangle hurt my eyes so I turned away from it and fished the mouth of the pool. I had no luck; then I made a bad cast and landed my Royal Wulff in a long, low branch. Gently, I pulled my fly free. It landed in the water, behind a big boulder. A trout gulped it. I pressed my finger against the fly line and the rod handle. Calmly, the way my grandmother taught me, I swung the rod tip up and set the hook. The trout bolted downstream, jolting the line and the fly rod. The rod throbbed like a lovesick heart and sent invisible but real surges rushing down my arms and through my body. Then the throbs stopped. As fast as I could, I reeled in line. The trout bolted again. Holding the rod still, I let the trout run. The Meek reel spun like a top and shrieked. To Shana it must’ve sounded like a cat. She barked wildly. The trout closed in on the pool's fast, foamy tail. Knowing I had to keep him away from it, I palmed the reel and slowed it. The trout, a big rainbow, jumped out of the water and shook its head. For some reason I saw the strange image of a quarter-moon trying to escape the earth’s orbit. I pointed the rod tip down about three feet—the way my grandmother taught me to fight jumping fish. The rainbow dived back into the water. The fly line went dead.

 I lost him. Damn!

I reeled in line. Suddenly the line jumped up from the water like a grasshopper and snapped tight. The rainbow was still on. He broke toward the far bank, nearly yanking the rod out of my hand. I pointed the rod up, squeezed the handle as tightly as I could and pulled my elbows close to my body. I breathed hard and fast.

How could a trout seem to weigh three or four times its own weight? Hold the rod still! Keep my elbows in. The trout is taking more and more line and pulling me and deeper into my obsession, my killer instinct to defeat and land him. Why? I’m not hungry. I’m not going to eat him.

The trout pulled my rod tip down. Is he going to win? In my mind I heard my grandmother say, “Amanda, stay calm. Wait until the trout lets up a bit, then to get leverage on him, lift his head out of the water and reel in line.”

With my reel hand, I grabbed the rod above the handle and slowly, slowly pulled the rod tip back up, and the trout’s head out of the water. The once-throbbing rod now pulsed as if it clung to life. Steadily, I reeled the trout closer and closer, not expecting him to make another run.

He darted right towards me. As fast as I could, I reeled in, but not fast enough. He lowered his head. Now he had the advantage. He swam past me. I let him take line, twenty, then thirty feet of it. He slowed, finally. Again I lifted his head and turned him toward the bank. I reeled him closer and closer. Yes, he was tired too!

I stated, “Mr. Trout, I'm not bad. I promise to let you live.”

He believed me, and so I easily landed him. I won! Shana barked wildly. The rainbow was about two—maybe three—pounds. My dream of landing a beautiful monster trout had come true. I held the trout up as if it were a trophy. The trophy, I noticed, was scarred near his tail, as if he had been in another fight.

“Shana, I promised to let him live.” I took the fly out of the rainbow’s mouth and let him go. The funny thing was that he didn’t leave. Like me, maybe he wanted friends. Shana lunged at him. I grabbed her and yelled, “Bad girl!”

Mr. Trout bolted away. Shana licked my face.

I petted her. “Girl, I still love you and, like a good mother, I always will.”

An hour later, I went straight from the river to the hospital and told my grandmother about my victory and then asked, “Should I have taken him, grandma, to show people?”

“You proved to yourself you can land a big trout. That’s the reality that should matter.”

 

I fished the next day and caught three small trout. The sun slid behind the tall trees. The water darkened into gray, and the breeze quickened into wind. I left the river, walked home and told my grandmother what flies and tactics I had used and which ones caught fish.

“Rivers are like poems,” my grandmother said. “No matter how beautiful they are, you first have to study them and read between the lines before you plan your attack. The answers to catching trout are half in the rivers and half in us.”

I wasn’t exactly sure what she meant by that, but knowing how tired she was, I didn’t want to ask.

“Now tell me, Amanda, what was the water you fished like?”

“It was slow and clear and littered with big rocks.”

“You might want to try a longer, thinner leader the next time. And where was the sun? Fish run from moving shadows the way people run from the deep shadows inside them.”

And so day after day, my grandmother made more and more suggestions. Each one I tried; and as the days got longer and the trout season went on, I caught more and more fish, so many in fact that pretty soon desperate men anglers ate their pride and asked me for advice. Something, maybe the good inside me, told me to give it.

Unexpectedly, I was rewarded. Soon I felt real special, even though I still had no friends, but feeling special, I quickly learned, was far more important than getting so many beautiful flies from men.

So that’s where I was, emotionally I mean, on the morning of June 21 when I cooked my family’s breakfast. My father left for work. My grandmother went to her room to rest—or so I thought, because after I washed all the dishes and cleaned up, I went upstairs to get my books. The door to my grandmother’s room was open. She wore her fly-fishing vest and hat, but not her gray wig. Her Heddon rod and my grandfather’s antique fly box were on the bed.

“Grandma, what are you doing?”

“I’m not going to miss the whole trout season. I want at least one day on the river.”

“But you’re sick.”

“These doctors don’t know everything. There’s more to life than new science. I think fishing will do more for me than chemo. Now you go to school and don’t worry about me.”

“Take Shana with you.”

She smiled. “I’ll be all right.”

“If you don’t promise to take her, I’ll call my father and tell him what you’re doing.”

“I promise,” she swore.

I hugged her. Something hard and round—my grandfather’s revolver, I knew—pressed against my chest.

“Why are you taking a gun?”

“A woman needs to protect herself.”

“From what?”

“Bears.”

“No one has seen bears around here for years.”

“You never know, and I can’t walk as fast as I used to. Don’t you want to know that I’m safe?”