THE SOUND OF WATER

An excerpt from "Letters to Trout Fishing in America"

Wind River Cuttie. Photo by Mike Rice.

December 16, 2024

Dear Trout —

Addiction wears many faces, and the powerful aren’t even feigning sobriety as they bully this century’s manifest destiny into oblivion. Soon, water and wilderness won’t have any milk money to steal, so the powerful will take sneakers and hats, glasses and books, then tundras and bluewater, public land and WOTUS, Greenland and Canada, then pride and confidence, speech and identity, will and freedom.

I wish I could say I don’t understand, but I do. I can empathize. My face was worn almost to death. But there’s no lesson in almost. There’s no enough when there’s more.

As close as we’ve been, I never told you this story.

I managed to open my eyes just enough for my brain to register daylight. I felt unusually heavy. Swollen, maybe. Or numb. I couldn’t decide which.

Sunrise was pouring onto my face in shafts that seemed to come from an unnatural angle. I moved my tongue in my mouth and smacked my dry lips.

The missing front teeth and taste of blood puzzled me. The sudden pain from making a puzzled face brought stars to my eyes, and when they faded, I focused on what was in front of me.

The shape of my face, a perfect relief highlighted in sun-yellow, was pressed into the completely spidered windshield. Another puzzled look brought more stars and a half moan.

“Shith.”

I tried to bring my hands to my face. One arm wouldn’t respond. The other came to me from above my head. Hanging upside down, held by a marginally tight lap belt, I realized why I felt so heavy. My legs disappeared about mid-thigh under the dashboard. They weren’t responding either.

“Shith.”

A crow belted in the silence of the woods from high up in a nearby pine. Another answered from farther off.

I had no clue where I was or how long I’d been there. The driver’s side door was folded back against the front quarter panel, mirrors were missing, the top of the steering wheel was bent in half and most everything else was crumpled and compressed. The smell of burned rubber, oil, fresh dirt, and pine filled the cab.

A uniform layer of dust still covered the dashboard except where shattered glass, my limbs or other debris had left distinct impact impressions. I focused on the massive knot of deadfall and thornbrush that looked to be swallowing the hood of my truck and the ponderosa pines beyond and tried to fill the disconcerting black gap in my memory.

Central Oregon floated to mind.

Bend? Or Sisters?

I pushed my memory further. The odometer of the old Ford was about 1/10^th of a mile from 133,368. The speedometer needle hung from its center pin, pegged at the 110-mph hash mark. Slowly, the edges of my memory started to congeal.

Metolius.

I was going to fish above Bridge 99 on my way north. I’d fished there before. More than once, I sensed. The piece fit.

But why the hell am I heading north?

The more I thought, the more everything hurt.

My memory was not a complete void, though. Thoughts of fishing or hunting with my dad when I was a kid came easily. Camping in the Adirondacks. Wrestling in high school. Losing my virginity in a dark hallway at the junior prom to a senior flute player. My time overseas in the Army and the fact that I knew my motivations ran one, or all, of three roads – beer, women, and fishing.

They were all there. All the normal life things – just as they had always been. I was missing the eight or ten days that led to my current predicament.

I was pretty damn sure I was upside-down because of beer. Then, my mind rolled smoky snapshots of a woman with dark hair. Tall. Sweet breath. Tight sweater. My eyes widened, and I ignored the excruciating pain as I swung my head to see if I had company on the other side of the vinyl bench seat.

I was alone. I let out another half-moan exhale.

“Shith.”

I took a few shallow, labored breaths to dilute the adrenaline and fought to concentrate on my only other motivation.

I knew that I had to be somewhere close to water. I’d woken up riverside and ready to fish many, many mornings after benders in the past, with no recollection of the drive there. Never upside-down though.

Suddenly, panic snatched me by the chest and snapped my head around again. Fly boxes, empty cans, pocket change, a sweatshirt, sunglasses, four toothpicks, and a crumpled Taco Bell bag littered the roof near my head, but my fly rod and reel were gone.

I reached for the seat belt release out of sheer habit and landed in a broken, screaming heap before slumping out onto the ground next to the truck.

The crows cawed again from a nearby branch. The seatbelt buckle knocked against the door frame once, swung gently for a few moments, and then hung still.

I was hurt badly, but the pain drew my mind into a tight focus and my memory returned in a sudden flood of prickling heat and rushing in my ears.

The realization of just how bad I had fucked up hit me and I puked up what was left of the previous night’s beer and wings.

Somehow, the fall popped my dislocated shoulder back in place. The wrist on my other arm was banged up and two fingers were broken. I lifted my good hand to my face, felt gashes on my cheek and forehead, and my nose was completely sideways. Blood had started flowing again.

Ignoring the thorns, I grabbed a handful of brush and pulled myself up to a sitting position. Looking down, I could see blood soaking through my pant legs at mid-shin. Both were at odd angles. I remembered a friend in high school who busted his legs just above his ski boots one winter break.

Compound.

The thought came and went. I could still only take very shallow breaths.

Ribs.

I had no way of knowing that one of those ribs punctured a lung while another was one more dry heave away from impaling my diaphragm. Nor could I know the rest of my internal organs were just as ready to betray me.

From the bottom of the deep draw looking back up the slope, I could trace the path of sheared, smaller pines and gouged earth to where my fall had started. I knew I wouldn’t make it back up to the road. My only hope was pinned on someone driving down the road and noticing the truck’s exit path from the blacktop.

If it’s even noticeable.

Then I heard it. Rushing water.

My mind immediately took a left turn.

My rod. Where’s my fly rod?

I clawed and dragged my way around the back of the truck to the other side. My fly rod and reel leaned against the stump of a broken pine — in two pieces and rigged like I always kept it — almost as if it was placed there. The pain was distant to me now. Life was distant. They no longer belonged to me.

I made my way to the stump, grabbed the rod, and turned to look for blue sky — the gap in the trees that would demarcate exactly where the woods parted for the river. Where I knew I’d find a perfect run with carelessly rising fish. Where I’d lay out a cast just long enough to drop my trusty hopper imitation on the surface for a fat, hungry rainbow.

With the rod in my usable hand, I inched toward the blue sky and the sound of water.

Yours in unfaked sobriety —

An old friend