The River Why Read online

  A quasi-statistical attribute that should be mentioned is my memory. My entire memory is not photographic, but my fishing memory is. I recall the number of trout caught during a week-long trip with H2O to the Rockies when I was five, and the name of every hole in the three famous rivers plied. I know how to tie esoteric wet-flies designed for Argentine brown trout, not because I’ve been to Argentina, or tied them, but because I happened to read about them. If it has to do with fishing, it sticks. But like my ability to understand fish-thought, this fishing-memory is no great blessing; it’s not so much an ability to remember as an inability to forget.

  If there is any statistic from childhood in which I take pride, it is not an angling but a diplomatic one: I managed, up to the day I left home, to avoid serious conflict with either Ma or H2O over my own use of bait and fly. Carrying both kinds of gear everywhere I went, I fished simply to catch fish, outfished them both, and stayed out of the fray.

  Due, then, to prodigyhood, my general knowledge of the world is inordinately full of gaps and lapses. In school I often amazed cohorts and teachers by displaying a degree of ignorance seldom attained by students whose minds were unscathed by amnesia or retardation. Certainly I’d heard of Mickey Mouse, Vietnam, Richard Nixon, and the New York Yankees. But the differences between slightly subtler names, things and places such as Hoss Cartwright and Wilbur Wright, the political right and the New Left, Park Place and Peyton Place, or Wall Street, the Waldorf, and the Great Wall of China were all Sanskrit to me. Having nothing to do with my obsession, they flowed off my brain like water off a merganser. Were it not for my brother’s sporadic attempts to fill me in on these objects of popular knowledge, my ignorance might have gotten me into all sorts of unsavory psycho- or sociological research experiments. As it was, I was voted Mr. Most-Out-Of-It by my senior class in high school.

  Certainly every man’s ignorance is a darkness of infinite dimensions. But suburban and urban Americans who read the same papers, see the same ads and billboards, and suck in the same radio and TV waves have a right to expect a certain commonality of knowings among themselves. Growing up in such a suburb, I should have shared these knowings; thanks to fanatical fishermanliness I did not. And my parents never questioned this lopsidedness—not even when I failed fifth grade: I passed the one intelligence test recognized in our house; I fished as skillfully as they.

  4

  Statistical Improbabilities

  The Compleat Angler is, taken by and large… a jolly book, a book with which… we can feel at home.

  —Henry Williamson

  Despite their divergent fishing techniques and cultural backgrounds, my parents have many similar traits. Both are hot-tempered, hyperactive, ambitious, loquacious, and extremely loyal. Their loyalty, particularly to each other, can be violent—an odd paradox considering that not a day goes by without them vilifying each other. Though Ma might guffaw over H2O’s Britannic ways when the Carper uncles are around, the instant she imagines genuine scorn (unless it’s hers) she lets them have it—and not just with words, and not always above the belt. Likewise, when a High Church friend gets too snide about Ma’s cowgirl crudity, H2O explodes. He hasn’t punched anybody yet, but he did once utter an icy Anglo-Saxon challenge to a duel, and was only dissuaded when his second pointed out that flyrods and beer openers were the only available weapons. Even then H2O had to give it some thought: he finally reasoned that to kill his adversary by whipping him to death with his beloved flywand was too like Launcelot using Guinevere as a lance in a joust, and to perforate him to death with a beer opener was just too laborious and absurd.

  My brother and I, in contrast, are slow-moving, dispassionate, pacifistic, close-lipped, and not at all defensive of the family honor. My “calm” was never a genuine tranquility; I endeavored at an early age to master the “poker face,” and had some success—but often as not I’d be wearing it while my innards were churning like a creek at June run-off. As for my brother, I believe his tranquility is genuine; I doubt if his peace passeth understanding, but sometimes it comes close.

  When I was christened, Ma wanted my name to be “Gus” pure and simple, but Henning Hale-Orviston insisted that, whatever Ma might call me, legal documents at least would sport a “proud, manly name.” Hence Augustine.… But by the time my brother was born the family balance of power had tipped so far to the matriarchal side that H2O was helpless when Ma pointed out that it was her turn: now they would have a son with a no-frills Eastern Oregon name. Now, by the powers she had vested in herself, Ma decreed that their second son would be known both officially and familially not as William Robert, nor Willis Robin, nor Wilberforce Robersly, but just as plain old Bill Bob. Bill Bob Orviston by God and that’s it. When H2O’s eyes welled and he begged for some infinitesimally less cornpone alternative, Ma’s demeanor grew surprisingly soft. “OK Hen,” she said. “Let’s call the little rugbug Buck Gilly-Bob.”

  Henning Hale-Orviston blanched.

  “Jim-Ed Donny-Bob?”

  H2O shuddered, approved the original Bill Bob plan, and departed on a long, solitary angling excursion, lugging his long name like a sullen kid who takes his ball and goes home. “How many poets,” he asked himself as he Winnebagoed down the lonesome highway, “how many statesmen, heroes, senators, and sea captains strolling down the dim corridors of Time have been named Bill Bob?” The answer needed no statistician. Yet, as Bill Bob points out, Ma could have done worse. She swears that had he been a girl she’d have named him after her grandma, Celestial Darling Carper! Next to that brain-boogering malapropism “Bill Bob” exudes a certain charm.

  My brother Bill Bob is a living refutation of those behavioral and genetic theories claiming that men are largely determined by their blood kin and home environment, for not only is Bill Bob tranquil, he neither likes nor dislikes that most Orvistonian of passions, Fishing. From his genesis not a day has passed wherein H2O, Ma, or I was not preparing for, returning from or engaged in a fishing trip, yet Bill Bob isn’t merely disinterested in fishing: he knows nothing about it. He is not mentally debilitated, idiotic, or otherwise damaged; he is no troglodyte, troll, hodag, dwarf, dingbat, ditzel, or bideep. He was simply born with a prodigious ability to ignore things aquatic, which to a massive extent implies an ability to ignore his entire family. He has no water in his astrological chart; he bathes as seldom as possible; he employs galoshes, full-length slicker, wide-brimmed rain-hat, and umbrella when it even threatens to precipitate; he’ll drink any liquid but water. And he is as clean, healthy, and happy a person as I’ve ever had the good fortune to meet. I remember a winter’s night from boyhood: I sat at a desk with H2O at my side instructing me in the art of fly-tying. Ma sat on the couch with tiny Bill Bob in her lap, reading a book called Angling With Bait. From the TV blared a special documentary on “The Freshwater Fishes.” But when I looked over at Bill Bob from my #14 Blue Upright I was startled by his intensity and fixedness of gaze: his little bald head was wobbling the way babies’ heads do—like an earth gone off its axis—but his look was ageless, rapt in its one-pointed stare. Following his eyes to find what transfixed him, I discovered—on a shelf beneath a lamp made of a landing net, wedged between fly-manuals, dismantled reels, spools of line, casting trophies, and stuffed fish—a single, empty 7-Up bottle. That 7-Up bottle is a good example of what I mean by Bill Bob’s air of profundity: of course there’s nothing mystical about an empty 7-Up bottle unless you’re familiar with the symbology of 7’s, have a Buddhist conception of emptiness, or a Taoist conception of Up, which Bill Bob didn’t. But that bottle may have been the sole object in that room not directly related to angling, and he located it, zeroed in on it, and contemplated it till he entered that infantine samadhi known as sleep. Even if it was just a pop bottle, there is profundity in such behavior.

  Despite ten years’ physical proximity to Bill Bob, an intangible barrier separated us: I was a water creature, he a land creature, and though we silently wished each other well, we scarcely knew each other. But
then he always was an inscrutable little fart. Perhaps not to know him is to know him well. He has a height and weight, face, voice, hair, the usual number of limbs—all the accoutrements of a brother. Yet there is an impregnability about him that thwarts easy intimacy. Perhaps to know a person’s attributes is to know the person. I have perceived in my brother these attributes: he likes baseball, likes to eat, likes to talk himself to sleep and to sleep ten hours nightly, likes TV, rockets, radios, fire trucks, and basketball when baseball season is over; he likes movies, erector sets, bow ties, M&M’s, Bibles, True cigarettes, citrus fruit, and reading the want ads when he doesn’t want anything—which is every day. He’s never excited, surprised, or ebullient, nor is he ever bored, disappointed, or depressed. I once heard him say in perfect seriousness that McDonald’s is his kind of place.

  There. Now everyone knows Bill Bob as well as I do.

  Since my general knowledge has begun to improve I have learned that no book ever published has generated so much tension, division, and strife in the American Family as that conglomeration of myths, laws, genealogies, songs, visions, poems, histories, letters, and tall tales known as the Holy Bible. Not only is the Bible the most explosive book in existence, it is also the most common. Houseflies and tires are two species of black-colored objects numerous beyond count, but those black-backed tomes the Holy Bibles need kowtow to no fly or tire on that account, for they too constitute a quasi-infinite army—the most widespread and imperialistic that any black horde can claim. So, it should be apparent that it’s going to be damned tough to explain how all but one of the countless book-caused arguments had by Ma and H2O were not over the Bible, but over that docile classic The Compleat Angler. To warm up, I’ll recount first that solitary ruckus stemming from the volume so ironically dubbed “The Good Book.”

  From somewhere—no one knew where—when Bill Bob was three he got hold of this pocket-sized Holy Bible. He carried it around all the time and he called it his “Good Book,” but he couldn’t talk too straight yet so it came out “Bood Gooky.” Perhaps I should point out that the main difference between Bill Bob at three and Bill Bob at seventeen is he’s three feet taller and can talk. Otherwise he’s the same—baseball, want ads, McDonald’s, and all.

  So here’s little three-year-old Bill Bob chugging around the neighborhood—baggy little trousers, crewcut, white shirt, and bowtie. Between the outfit and the Bible he had Ma worried he was getting religious on us. I wasn’t worried; I saw the healthy way he carried the Bood Gooky about: in his back trouser pocket. Like a wallet. Anyhow, he couldn’t read a lick.

  One day H2O gave Bill Bob a multiple-color ball-point pen. When he clipped it in his shirt pocket it really added something. Made him look like Eisenhower or Khrushchev or somebody. The following day I happened to come home from the grocery with a pack of candy cigarettes. Ol’ Bill Bob Nikita Eisenhower spotted me and wanted some, but I told him to forget it unless he forked out some money. So what did he do? Like a dwarf executive he hauled out the wallet-Bible, snatched the multicolor pen from his shirt, switched it on red, straightened his bowtie, opened the Bible sideways, scribbled across a page of Deuteronomy, tore out the page, and handed it to me. I understood exactly what had transpired: he’d just written me a check! I was so impressed I gave him two candy cigarettes, and only one was broken.

  He put the broken butt in his pocket along with the pen. He stuck the whole one in his face, letting it dangle from his lip, Bogart-style. Then he pulled a rubber eraser from one of the fathomless trouser pockets, gave it a flick with his thumb, held it carefully to the end of his fag.

  “Hey,” I said. “Where’d you get the solid-gold lighter?”

  “Eh’s duss goad pwated,” said he. “Eh’s a Zippo.” He squinted to keep the smoke out of his eyes.

  “Looks like the genuine article,” I said.

  He nodded, gave me a thumbs-up sign, and trudged off toward the sand-box, a dapper little man of few words.

  I looked over my check. Under Bill Bob’s scribbles it said,

  The Lord will smite thee with the botch of Egypt,

  and with the emerods, and with the scab,

  and with the itch…

  The Lord shall smite thee with madness,

  and blindness, and astonishment of heart…

  The Lord shall smite thee in the knees,

  and in the legs,

  with a sore botch that cannot be healed.…

  Well, that gave me something to think about! I decided to beat cheeks in to H2O, get him to cash the scribbled part for me, and he could hoard the Biblical part all to himself if he wanted.

  He was in his study, but he was working on an article; interrupting articles is taboo, so I went looking for Ma.

  She was in the kitchen, starting dinner. I handed her the page. She looked at it blankly, scratched under her nose, said, “What’s thissy here?”

  I said, “I sold Bill Bob some of my candy. He wrote me out this check. What’s it worth?” (She’d got biscuit makings on her nose by accident. It looked pretty stupid, but I figured I’d wait and see what became of my check before I said anything.)

  “Well well well well,” she said. “A check. Yes. Well… yes.” She started to smile. “So much for Reverend Bill Bob’s e-van-jelly-sizin’.” (This was a non sequitur to me, but a kid at thirteen has an enormous tolerance of adult non sequiturs and lets most run him through like prune juice—which is what I did with this one.)

  “What’s it worth?” I repeated.

  “Oh!” She jumped, as if I’d woke her. “Yes, worth, well, uh… let me figger the writin’ here—um… Five cents. Yup. Five cents. Let me gitcha a nickel.”

  I kept my poker face, but inside I was leaping like a trout in a mayfly hatch: FIVE CENTS! Why the whole pack of cigarettes only cost me five cents! This checkbook thing could turn out to be a goldmine! I felt a little worried about the words under the scribbling, but nobody came down with any exotic diseases, which only made sense in the end since a check is just paper till you cash it and you cash it at a bank where what you cash it for is stashed, and where would anybody find an Egyptian Botch, Itch, and Emerod Bank?

  Ma got me a nickel from the cookie jar. I said, “You got a mushtash on your nose,” ran off and stashed the loot in my tacklebox—the safest place for valuables since Bill Bob was the only thief in the family, and he’d never open anything that had to do with fishing.

  Two days later I took my nickel to the grocery and bought a pack of M&M’s, knowing they were Bill Bob’s favorite candy. When I got home I found him by the garage, sitting in a cardboard box with an old dead radio in it. This was his “SkaySkopSkool,” which translated “space capsule.” I knew better than to interrupt while he was traversing the vacancies of space; I’d tried it before and he ignored me completely, refusing to return to earth till I left him alone. So this time I just strolled by like I didn’t even see him, whistling and tossing around the M&M’s.… In seconds I heard the sounds a kid might make when traveling at the speed of light, followed by a “Sploorsh!,” which signified a splashdown (this contact with imaginary ocean being about as close as Bill Bob was willing to come to water). Then an instantaneous transformation occurred—astronaut to businessman—and here came Dwight D. Khrushchev armed with pen, Bood Gooky, and determination.

  Faking annoyance, I said, “I s’pose ya wanna buy my M&M’s.”

  “Yeth,” said Bill Bob, and before I could even begin to dicker he ripped out a good twenty-five pages of II Chronicles and started scribbling across them in multifarious colors like a madman! He had them made out in seconds. I was so happy I gave him the whole pack of candy without even tasting a single M. The way I figured it, he’d just made me a rich man. I sprinted for the Cookie Jar Bank, careful this time not to read between Bill Bob’s lines.

  Ma was in the bathtub. I had a premonition that I should wait for her but was too excited for caution. I went to find H2O. He was in the study tying flies. There is a rigid code of conduct with r
egard to the interruption of fly-tiers in the Orviston family: streamers, nymphs, and bucktails, being relatively easy to execute, may be interrupted in lowered tones at any time; but any hackled fly—particularly any dry fly smaller than a 16—requires the interrupter’s patience until the fly is completed, dressed, and removed from the vise. Spying the burly body and bright throat of a Montana nymph I strode forward and threw my wad of II Chronicles loot triumphantly on the table. Expecting H2O to reach deep in his pocket and shell out a few bucks like any reputable banker, I was surprised to see his face grow dark.

  “Who,” he rumbled in his King Henryest voice, “has done this thing to the Holy Bible?”

  Without hesitation or qualm I blurted, “Bill Bob.”

  He turned his Spanish Inquisition Gaze upon me in an attempt to discern whether I was lying. Well accustomed to this torment, I made myself look ignorant and trivial and small, like a little dog that turns belly-up to keep a big dog from chewing on it. Appeased by this display, H2O snatched up the checks and stalked out in search of Bill Bob. I was so immersed in doghood I half expected him to pause in the doorway and lift his leg on the wall. I followed at a safe distance.

  Outside Bill Bob had resumed his explorations in the SkaySkopSkool, and, contrary to the M&M’s slogan, there was chocolate mess everywhere. Usually a cleanly fellow, Bill Bob had obviously been chewing up the candies, spitting them into his hands, and wiping them all over his face and arms. The situation did not look good.

  Applying his limited powers of ratiocination to the conundrum of why the chocolate lay upon the exterior, rather than the traditional interior, of his son’s person, H2O concluded that Bill Bob was in the grip of one of those inexplicable fits of infantile madness endemic in habitually naughty children (which he believed both his sons to be). Applying my own more astute powers of speculation, I quickly and correctly conjectured that the chewed-up M&M’s were stage makeup applied for the purpose of simulating some horrid intergalactic skin disease—and with this advantage over conventional makeup: it could be licked off once the infection had run its course. But I said nothing.