In the guide’s quarters this morning he’d looked in the mirror as he shaved his neck. He’d smoked for a lifetime and yet only now, in the last few days, had the effects of cigarettes begun to manifest: worn, papery-skin and a discolored hue to his flesh. It seemed to Bean that he’d aged a decade over the last ten days—deep rings of sunburnt wrinkles appeared around his eyes, a slight stoop settled into his shoulders. I’m only fifty, he reminded himself, you can’t think of yourself as old–that’s when it’s all over.

When Bean first guided Arthur, his client arrived off the helicopter clean-shaven, wearing a crisp linen shirt, pressed jeans and Sperry’s—the picture of California casual chic. But as Arthur’s first trip to the lodge wore on, he let his clean-shaven face fall victim to the five o’clock shadow. What began as a light dusting grew daily until Arthur sported a thick, white beard. Bean decided he liked the weathered, spontaneous look on his client’s face. One morning he, too neglected to shave. And the next day his neck breathed a sigh of relief. The red bumps that consistently plagued him, ruddy and irritated under the constant pressure of a blade, faded. After three days of not shaving, Bean arrived at the lodge early one morning rubbing his chin and cheeks—loving the sandpapery roughness of his skin. He was proud of his facial hair—like a school  boy resisting his clean-shaven rules. Bean sat down at the long oak table across from Arthur—coffee in hand and ready for a day on the river.

Arthur glanced up from his newspaper for a moment and then, upon returning to the paper, said, “Real men shave their necks.”

After breakfast, Bean walked back to his quarters and carefully trimmed the outliers. He looked at his face and liked what it was he saw—neat, tidy and yet still rugged. Arthur was right, only a hopeless slob would let a beard overrun his face. Allowing the prickly wildness of chest hair to climb directly into the mass at the base of his chin was uncouth. Life is better with distinctions, with demarcation lines. There are some things a man could do to change the way he’s seen, Bean realized, very few as it turned out, but shaving, at least, was something he could do.

Today, nearly ten years later, Arthur returned to the lodge for his annual fishing trip, and, just like the 9 years that came before, Bean was his guide. Out in the heat of the January sun, Bean found himself in the doldrums. It was his affectionate, reverent term for a phenomenon that every guide feared. As if by naming it something mystical, reminiscent of albatrosses and ancient myth, he could avoid the truth of the matter: He hadn’t landed more than a fish a day for two weeks. Each afternoon he returned to the lodge with his client, making his face a cage, attempting to hide the day spent on a river, supposedly teeming with fish, but not a single ensnared.

Anglers came from all over the world to mine these waters for their legendary river beasts. Guests traveled from the roiling rapids of British Columbia, Colorado and Wyoming. They were accustomed to hundreds, thousands of trout pummeling downriver, ripe for the picking. But here, in New Zealand waters, they were lucky to find even thirty fish in one kilometer of water. These were things Bean tried to tell himself when a day on the river went poorly and his client rode back to the lodge in the helicopter tight-lipped and closed.

Bean stood on the rocky overhang above the turquoise water. The recent rains left the river distinctly colored—a murky, piercing blue with a just a slight undertone of yellow. Instead of the crystalline hue it normally bore, this river glowed sapphire. In his memory, there had been a big fish in the depths of the pool. A double-digit brownie at least 29 inches long. Not more than a year ago they’d caught her: this same river, this same client and Bean. It was remarkable how everything could remain the same and, despite all appearances, be transformed. History never repeats itself, Bean thought. Perhaps the philosophers were right. Humankind was trapped on a cyclical wheel of war and greed, power rising and then inevitably crashing downward towards demolition. They were smarter than him, most people were, and he was not a man to challenge the great thinkers of the world. But the history of a single man? Bean knew better. You never relived a day twice—that was something he understood in his very neurons. How many days had he attempted to replicate? How many years before he finally understood the one lesson life seemed determined he never forget, that there’s no going back?

Still, Bean stared at the pool hungrily. That brownie could still be there, lying in wait, calmly flicking her body between crevices of hidden boulders. They could dredge, Bean thought—but Arthur would know dredging was an act of desperation. Despite the cool, windswept day, sweat dripped down his greasy, sunscreen slathered face. A sandfly landed on his nose and bit, drawing blood. In the distance—he could hear the chorus of bell birds—a lilting, melodic high song. Their call was smooth, sound melding from one bird’s tongue to the next in a seamless movement—sonic water. Bean closed his eyes and brought their music inside him. He felt his chest swell with every inward breath as he took in the bell birds, the smell of the river.

A New Zealand river smells like the memory of old, dried fish. Bean constantly tried to name it. Is it salty? Is it sulfuric? Slightly. Yet stronger than its mineral musk, a river is redolent of clean rain. It is fresh with a crisp sweetness like wind on a warm day. Bean was not a creative man, but after years of excavating these waters, he’d given this scent a name in his heart. Thistrine. It reminded him of a thirst so powerful it became pure. Thirst for the river became a sort of religious devotion for Bean. These river creatures, this river sound, this water smell. That’s what brought him back year after year. He took a deep breath and opened his eyes.

Then, there it was— a grey, silky flash just below the bubble line. A trick of the light?

“I got one, Arthur.”

“Where?”

“Not ten feet to the left of that white boulder. It’s feeding.”

Bean hopped to where Arthur stood on the bank, quickly grabbed his client’s pole and attached a new fly. They would not dredge. It would be dry fly or nothing. Without pausing to think, Bean’s fingers mechanically attached the Ugly Rudimus, not his favorite fly, but one of Arthur’s. The client started to shift anxiously towards the river as Bean tied the fly.

“Don’t spook it Arthur. It’s a beauty.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

A decade of guiding Arthur and the man still bristled when Bean could spot a fish he could not. In the beginning, Arthur didn’t believe the creatures were really there. He was convinced that Bean was making him cast Hail Marys into the river, blind luck guiding him to where fish lay in wait. Over time, he’d begun to begrudgingly trust Bean’s eye, but he still stiffened when his guide sent him towards a shadow that only Bean could see—his jaw set and his fingers curled around his wading-stick. In those moments, Bean could see what it was like for Arthur out in his real life. Like a prophetic beacon, an image of Arthur in his office, Arthur when he was young, thunderous and bursting with commands, would enter Bean’s mind.

At moments like that—when Arthur hardened at his orders or curled his lips when Bean suggested a fly he disapproved of—Bean was fifteen again—breaking into his neighbor’s house and smashing eggs on the sofa, his silk duvets. It was strange. As he grew older, Bean became more and more convinced that there really was no such thing as growing older. We were stuck in limbo, reliving teenage impulses of rebellion, stubbornness and desire as all around us our bodies crumbled, turned ashen and our flesh released its determined grip of our bones. Life sagged, but didn’t alter. What made him angry as a child—caused a feeling of claustrophobia to squeeze his chest and forced him to say things he didn’t mean—made him angry still, forty years later.

For Bean, the beginning of the end was the day he found Mr. Martin’s dog ten blocks away and returned the white fluff to its owner. Bean, skateboard in one hand, dog in the other, knocked on his neighbor’s door. Mr. Martin answered and with a fat, purple-lipped smile, gave Bean a hundred dollars. Still smirking, the old man said, “Well now boy, it is your lucky day.”

Bean saw in Mr. Martin’s eyes that the money was not out of gratitude or love for his dog, but because he believed money was what Bean expected. His neighbor supposed the only reason he returned his dog was because he would get something in return. Well, if there was one thing he’d always hated it was this: men assuming he was exactly like them. Or more than that, he couldn’t bear the idea that any man could look him in the eye and believe he might be bought.

At fifteen, Bean still trusted that he could do what he wanted, not because he was paid, but because he was free. So he broke into Mr. Martin’s house that night and soiled medieval Kazak pillowcases with orange yolks simply because his neighbor had medieval Kazak pillowcases to ruin in the first place. Bean did it just because he could. It was his declaration: I am not now, and never will be, the man you think I am.

So, on the river, when Arthur exuded silent anger and contempt for a shadow that Bean could see and Arthur could not, Bean reminded himself that here, he was the one in charge. This was his place. Even if he was paid, even if freedom didn’t come exactly as he’d expected, here he still held power.

River-World. That’s what the guides called it. A unique microcosm of life where slender, glittering pieces of iron masqueraded as living creatures. A place where fish hungered for a mirage. A place where guides, rough and sun-wizened, were lords because only they could spot clandestine creatures in the depths. Only they knew the language of the river and the fish—how to navigate the tension, the run and call of the net. All of them, mastered by a willowy creature, a whisper of metallic brightness below the water. Beholden to the ultimate question—flash of light or beast?

Men paid thousands of dollars to come to this river and listen to people like Bean determine which fly and which fish. But the problem with River-World was that it was a mirror—power and chance were reversed within it. On this side, guides were blessed with both. It was a void you could lose yourself in. Bean knew this, and yet somehow he was compelled every season to return to the lodge, to the guests, to the bush. River-World lured you and if you weren’t careful, a guide could be found staring at his own reflection in the river, unwilling to go back, fascinated by the version of himself he sees.

“Steady now. I’m telling you Arthur, this is a big one.”

Bean handed Arthur the rod and crept backwards. No bright colors, no quick movements—these creatures were smart.

“Cast on the drift line?”

“Just a little to the right. Yes, you’re right on her now, Arthur. She can look up and see it.”

They watched the fly pass through the current, slightly bobbing—up and down. Each man held his breath. No bite.

“Give it more line this time. Let it drift. She’s smart. She’s gonna need time to take. Give her something to think about.”

“She’s still there?”

“Hasn’t moved.” Bean wasn’t sure though. He hadn’t seen her flicker, the undulating refraction of light that let him know she was there below the surface. If she’d gone down she’d never see the fly. Bean squinted at the river. Damn the rain—it was hard to see below the turquoise sheen. A photographer’s delight is an angler’s bane. In that, at least, the River-World was the same—beauty was a distraction that kept you from the heart of the matter.

Arthur’s fly drifted past the spot Bean last spotted the fish. I should have used my fly, Bean though, not that bullshit American one.

“Are you sure you’re not seeing things again, Bean?” Arthur’s words were meant to be a joke, but his thin lips and tight grip on the rod betrayed him.

Arthur was the sort of man who asked you to do something and expected it to be done. How many men had Bean seen like him? Tough traders who dealt with millions, lost lifetimes of savings in a matter of minutes and then raised it back up—the Lazarus of capital. Inventors and makers, dot-com billionaires who knew how to build computers long before people relied on calculators to add or subtract. Before computers could fit into your palm. Before you could google the best fly for the wind, the water and the light. Men who were treated like masters. Masters of wealth with legions of corporate cubicles at their disposal.

But take them to the River-World. Let the sun gloss over their skin, their cheeks, their scalp, stripping oils, singeing all without remorse. The sun burns unanimously, regardless of bank accounts or personal secretaries. Take them here, Bean thought, and all you get is a man caught by obsession, struggling to stay upright on glossy rocks, hip deep in water, thighs burning with every step. In the River-World they are newborns that haven’t found their legs to stand. Bean smiled. He tried to keep pedantic fishing instruction to a minimum. He offered these moguls his pack strap for river crossings as if offering a spare cigarette—no pride involved. When a big fish was landed—a fish for which he spotted, chose the fly, directed the cast and the reel, managed the delicate balance of capture, and shouted “strike!” with urgency and yet patience—when these fish were caught, Bean congratulated his client on their conquest.

But today that brownie in the pool didn’t bite. She didn’t even look up.

The two men decided to take a lunch break—settling between boulders on the river. Bean smoothed a piece of plastic on the wet sand for Arthur to sit on and pulled out a container filled with more food than eight men should eat, let alone two, and he distributed sandwiches, pies and biscuits.

“I can’t believe we’ve been at this for ten years,” Arthur said between bites. “I wasn’t even retired when I first started coming down.” He gave Bean a once over as if looking at him for the first time all week. “Aren’t you getting a bit old for this?”

“Who, me? I’m a spring chicken.” Bean said with a grin—lettuce caught between his two front teeth. “You come down here once a year for a week. I’m the one who’s down in the trenches. Day in, day out. Years move a lot slower on the river.”

“Way to rub it in,” Arthur turned towards the Rangitikei. The river lay so still before them that you’d never know it pumped thousands of cubic feet of per second invisibly through the narrow, green cavern between the trees. Dark beeches reached out and cradled the tender river in slender, twisted fingers making their spot on the sandy bank feel like a hideout all to themselves. It was so quiet that the world grew loud again. Without the sound of engines or human voicesBean could hear the tremor of bee wings as they flickered between manunka blossoms, the sound of their flight as omnipresent as the hum of traffic.

“Seriously, though, Bean,” Arthur said, eyes still on the river. “Aren’t you afraid you’ll lose your edge?”

“Ha! This, coming from an old man.” Bean jokingly jabbed Arthur in the ribs “You’re a little soft these days—my finger goes farther than it used to. What are you? Pushing 70?”

Arthur laughed. “I never thought I’d get this old, Bean. You know what I realized the other day? I’m the age my grandfather was when my dad took me fishing for first time. It’s funny when you realize you’re older than the men of your memories.”

“Now don’t let the river talk go too far down that path, Arthur. Not yet. We still have half a day yet! Best not get too serious too soon.”

“All right, all right. Too bad you don’t follow American football. Now there is something we could talk about.”

Bean laughed. “You Americans and your football. It’s all about pads and pounds.”

They appraised the river together. Arthur was a handsome man, but he looked his best when he was looking off into the distance. He might as well have been Robert Redford—an aloof gaze, but something subterranean that made you wonder, if still waters do run deep.

“Don’t you get tired of it, Bean? You’re not as young as you used to be.”  Bean opened his mouth to say something but Arthur put up his hand. “No, don’t. Don’t joke. I’m trying to ask you a question.”

“You should know how it works by now. I spot fish and you catch them. No philosophical quandaries for me—I’m just an ordinary man, Arthur. That’s all I need.” Bean took a large bite of his sandwich.

“Always a joke with you.  All right. I was just trying to get to know you. That’s all. What, after ten years, you’d think I’d know a little bit more about you.” Arthur looked at Bean, waiting for a response, for a break in the dam, a deluge of information—a release of privacy. None came and Arthur shrugged and moved from his sandwich to his pie.

Get to know you. How many times have I heard that? Bean thought. He relived the same conversations on repeat. Where are you from? How did you end up in America from New Zealand? How many children? I’m sorry to hear that. That’s the hardest thing a parent can go through. I had a friend…

When you’re being paid you tend to minimize social niceties. A man with pennies serving a man with pennies-per-second changes things. Truth is cheapened by the threat of a tip, keep yourself to yourself and, above all else, find the fish—those were Bean’s mantras.

The truth was that: he wasn’t with his daughter when she died. She was in America with her mom. Haley was twelve-years-old. She was a dancer. A freak accident they called it. There are a myriad of ways to die and all of them freakish, Bean thought. It’s only natural to die, to find an end to this life. And yet all the ways you could exit boggled his mind. He and his wife were not on speaking terms at the time, so Haley, by default, didn’t speak to him either. That’s what he told himself—it was her choice. She didn’t want to hear from him.

He really tried to make it work. He taught himself to code, long before computers knew more than one language. Before communication with machines was an art form and not a brutish set of caveman gestures forcing concepts on the mute. He’d moved countries for his ex-wife. He’d given up almost everything—the hard stuff at least. Sure, sometimes he strayed. Sometimes he stayed out later than he should have, gone the old way from time to time. Yet there was no forgiveness to be found. No flexibility. How quickly she forgot who she was when they first met and the woman she was when she fell in love with him. It is a marvel how quickly you forget the shells you’ve shed, Bean thought. Past lives calcify on your flesh; they’re of your very being. You can’t forget who you were before, even if you’d like to pretend the person who secreted such a shell never existed. Moving forward was all about navigating the ghostly casings you accumulated; it was about learning to rearrange the weight so you never upset your center of gravity.

“To answer your question, Arthur, no I never get tired of it.”

“You have to be mad to put up with men like me every day. Right, buddy?” Arthur slapped Bean on the back.

“We’re all mad,” Bean mumbled. “I think you’re mad to spend your life in front of a computer.”

“Ahh, but that’s just it, Bean. You work hard. You do the best you can and if you’re lucky, if you play your cards right you get to do this,” Arthur stretched that out his arms towards the wilderness. “You get to travel, see a little bit of the world.” That look again, that far and away gaze came over Arthur’s face. It was that look that made Bean respect Arthur more than any of his other clients—he was a man who knew about the art of things unsaid.

“And, sooner or later, you forget everything else.”

“I think you did more than play your cards right,” Bean said.

Arthur gave a half smile—a dealing smile. “What can I say, I had a hell of a hand.”

What Bean wanted to say but didn’t was that he could fill a book with everything he kept below his tongue. You and me, Arthur, we’re the same, he wanted to say. But I don’t want to admit it any more than you. Bean couldn’t stand a cage. Sure, every man’s life is a ritual, but he didn’t want his life to be dependent on ceremonies comprised of office supplies and checks traded in for baby formula. The fact that Bean resented the hours-of-sitting-in-a-chair-to-diapers-ratio didn’t make him love Haley any less. But he deeply loathed the fact that there was a time to leave, a time to return. That his stomach was programmed to growl at his lunch break, not when his body burned all its energy and his organs screamed to be refueled. He felt betrayed that the woman who ravaged him became ravaged by want for other things. Things that were no longer his flesh, the salty-sweet-river flavor of his tongue. When did his body become not enough?

So he left. He fled to the River-World, where he was good. Where he was free. Where his passion and his job were synonymous with each other. “Do what you love,” they say. But they don’t tell you that dreams grow brittle under high exposure. What you love on repeat becomes what you do. And what you do becomes rote.

Bean no longer had to be home for his wife’s dinner. He didn’t need to leave before rush hour or attend product management meetings. But that didn’t mean he was free. There was a time when he allowed himself to believe that. He tried lying to himself for a while, tried to suggest that it was not power he craved, like all men. That he was different. He wanted purity, not influence. But why else would he have made the River-World his dominion? Why had he fled the purgatory of middle management America where there would never be glory? Why had he left Haley behind?

“Come on, we still have one more pool left to go,” Bean said, as he shouldered his pack and stowed the refuse from lunch away.

Together they crossed the river. Below the rushing water, Bean saw bursts of red stone—little reminders of the volcanic history of this place, the turbulent fire that still churned beneath it all. Arthur held onto the strap of Bean’s pack as they parted through water that was hip deep.

“I never want to get too old for this,” Arthur whispered in Bean’s ear. For a moment, Bean thought he’d imagined it. But the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end.

“Neither do I.” He murmured, hoping his words were lost to the rush of the Rangitikei .

They came to the final bend of the beat and stopped at a riverbank filled with pumice stones and brightened by lavender patches of thistle. In ten minutes the helicopter would land here to fetch them. It would be another fishless day. Another loss.

“Wanna give it one last go?” Arthur asked. He gave Bean one of his winning, deal-closing smiles.

Save it, Bean thought. That smile won’t work on me. But he prepared Arthur’s rod with a dry fly anyway. He slipped on one of his own flies without mentioning it to Arthur. Named Plastic Jesus—he’d thought of it one day while watching Cool Hand Luke. The design just came to him—the way to warp metal and feather just so—a vision that showed him how to transform something inanimate into the small, fluttering life of a nymph.

“Here, Arthur,” Bean handed over the rod and scanned the river. Somewhere, anywhere, there had to be trout. Trout that mystically evaded the pair with a transcendent premonition of their casts. All Bean needed to do was see.

Sometimes, alone in his room in the guide’s quarters, Bean lay on his twin bed and wondered what his life would have been like if he’d stayed in America. Perhaps, the old icy thrill of success, of aspiration and desire, would resurface at his daughter’s dance recitals. He’d be young again when saw the look on her face of pure, competitive joy. Perhaps, when someone said “she is beautiful” he would say “yes, yes, I made that. I made something beautiful and full of grace.” But that was just it. In the end, it was all about ownership and possession. And he’d never possess what Arthur had. He’d never grow to expect compliance. Those were never his cards. So why even play the game when you knew that you were going to fold in the end,?

“Wait a second, Arthur—I see something.” There, to the left of a large, submerged boulder, squirmed a murky silhouette. An eel drifted below the current beside the grey-green specter. But that spot of darkness, that undulating curve of body? It was no eel.

“I see it, I see it!” Harmonious with Bean’s very words, Arthur released the cast Bean knew he was capable of: precise and confidently natural. His line flew up with a zing and hit the water directly in the fish’s path. This was one of those moments when guide and client became a single chorus. Bean spotted and by opening his eyes to the possibilities of the river, Arthur did, too. They were together now—filled with a tremulous, human dialogue that only exists within an unspoken ritual of joy. They watched the fly drift slowly closer and closer to the boulder, nearer to the brownie lying in wait. Each man grew breathless and tense.

Don’t move too soon, but don’t move too late, Bean wanted to say. Wait for the fish to bite, but not so long that his mouth misses the hook. And yet, he kept silent. Trust, he told himself. Trust.

Then, like a leaping, fanged beast, the trout elevated and seized the fly. The thrill—her massive, slick body—a true beauty of the River-World. Air around the two men pulsed with expectation and pleasure, but also the knowledge that without anything more than a minor misstep all could be lost.

“All right now, give her a little. She’s gonna run. I can feel it. Just enough line now, let her fight it,” Bean said calmly, fumbling with the net. He’d wait until she was closer before climbing into the water. Easy does it, no need to spook her.

“She’s making me work for it,” Arthur said, crying out over the sound of the river. “She’s making me beg.”

The fish dove behind a fallen log. She was dangerously close to knotting up the line around the branches and tugging herself free.

“Take it in a little Arthur, don’t let her bury. She can’t hide.”

In the distance, Bean heard the sound of the chopper. They needed to be packed up and ready to go when it landed. He wasn’t supposed to be fishing this close to pick-up time.

“Just a little closer,” he murmured. “Come on, baby, just a little closer.” She was completely visible, wide and fighting with all her coiled, curvilinear power. Bean turned to look at Arthur. The old man’s teeth clenched and his marbled muscles strained with effort to win the battle. And his face? Contorted by lust and adrenaline. Such a private man and yet—look at him now, every feeling on full display. Helpless to conceal his unsullied desire.

Be mad to stave off madness, Bean thought. It took too long for him to realize that growing up meant accepting all the lies you were told in order to survive. He still marveled that it’s the lies that become the truth.

Bean stepped slowly into the river, the water a cold blanket against his waders. She was right on them now. The reel let out anxious, desirous squeals.

“Let me see how beautiful you are,” Bean cooed, dipping the net below the surface. “Slowly now.”

 

The poet Ed Roberson told Sammie Downing, “You only have one life and you only have one work.” Advice she’s taken to heart–she’s filed taxes in 7 U.S. States, and worked on a cattle and deer station in the depths of New Zealand. Her poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has been featured at Rogue Agent, Yes Poetry and 3amMagazine. You can find her blog at: www.herearelions.org.