General
1.
When I was ten my father left and so my mother gave me a fishing rod. Not a new rod or even a fly rod, but a green and brown second-hand spincasting rod, the kind with the closed-face reel and thumb-button trigger. Said she got it at a garage sale. I frowned at it and asked for a fly rod instead—a new one. But my mother rolled her tongue around the inside of her clenched lips and said I sounded just like my father. She said he liked new things too, and if I wanted to play with new things I could just walk right out that same fucking door he did. I wanted a new fly rod, but I sure didn’t want to walk out that same fucking door my father did. I didn’t even know which fucking door he’d walked out, the front or back.
Robert Redford never made a movie about spincasting. And if he did, you can bet your tackle box Brad Pitt wouldn’t star in it. Spincasting’s got none of the grace or romance of the fly-fishing cast. Fly-fishermen sneer and say that spincasting’s like drinking port from a coffee mug. Even still, it can be a difficult skill to master—especially at ten. In those first few weeks of learning, I snagged my shirt, my hair, my ear. Occasionally I’d hook people fishing next to me. Once I even tangled my line around my shoes and floundered into the river. Eventually I harmonized the snap of my wrist and the thumb-button release with the forward acceleration of the rod—at least enough to hit water. I figured out that spincasting is all about timing.
Since then I spend most days fishing. Fishing is the only thing worth spending time on, living along the Crowsnest River in a tiny old mining town with no mines where the streets have no sidewalks except for the few old slabs lining Main Street with weeds busting out of the cracks. For four years I clubbed out a lure with that stiff green and brown second-hand spincasting rod, snapping my wrist, casting out, reeling back in. And though I never caught a single fish, I eventually stopped snagging shrubbery, overcasting the river, and balling up my line inside the closed-face reel. Instead I started sailing lures across the river where they’d plop into the water just under the opposite bank, often within a couple feet of my aim. I was ripening into a master caster. At least until I turned fourteen.
Excerpt from Chapter 1
Monday, August 1
The five of them met for dinner. The table overlooked the lake and the surrounding mountains tipped with white.
Matt had lost weight, was shaving every day and wore his black hair cut short. He said, “It would be nice to stay for a few more days.”
Christine said, “You know, this is the first time I’ve been to Jasper. And the first time I’ve seen a grizzly.”
Daniel, her brown-haired boyfriend, was taller than Christine, slender and introverted. He was finally beginning to feel relaxed enough around Lane to open up. “The grizzly was incredible.”
Lane nodded. “It was a thing of beauty. A hunter.” It’s good to be talking about bears instead of cancer, surgery, scarring, fatigue and what the last doctor had to say.
“Okay, tell us what you’re thinking.” Arthur looked out over the water. His new exercise program was beginning to pay off. His belt had two old cinch lines in the leather to prove it. It hadn’t, however, helped him grow back the hair atop his tanned head.
“I was thinking how it’s good for all of us to be here. I was thinking I’m glad you don’t have to have chemo. And I was thinking we should go to California next. Maybe San Diego.” Lane looked around the table, gauging the reactions of four people.
“Can Daniel come?” Christine asked.
“Can we stay close to the beach?” Matt asked.
Lane’s phone began to vibrate in his shirt pocket.
Arthur smiled. “That’s not what I asked you. That’s not what you were thinking. You just changed the subject again.”
“You really want to know what I think of grizzlies?” Lane asked.
He felt their curiosity pique and the resultant attention shift in his direction.
Lane ignored his phone. “The bear was afraid of us, yet we fear it. It’s a hunter. It’s very good at what it does. And it makes us feel like prey. Still, we’re not the endangered species.”
“Like you,” Matt said. “You’re a hunter.”
“And people fear you,” Daniel said.
Lane picked the phone out of his pocket and flipped it open.
Christine grabbed it from him and put it to her ear. “Hello?” She slapped Lane’s hand away as he reached to take the phone back. “Hi, Keely. How are you? Yes, we’ll be back tomorrow. Probably in the afternoon.” She listened for a minute, then said, “I’ll pass the message along. He’s right here, but we were in the middle of a good conversation, and he was using your call as an excuse to avoid answering a tough question. You know how he avoids answering the questions he doesn’t want to answer? I’ll get him to call you right back.”
“What’s up?” Lane asked.
“I’ll tell you when we finish this conversation.” Christine curled her fingers around the phone.
“Could I have my phone back, please?” Lane motioned with his open right hand.
“No.” She put the phone on the table, covered it with a napkin and put her hands over top.
Lane looked at Arthur, who was getting his spark back after a double mastectomy. It had been a long haul. There was the shock of the diagnosis, the operation and recovery from surgery, then the chemo and all of those lovely side effects.
Arthur said, “She wants some answers. You expect the same from us. Remember your big speech about us being honest with one another?”
“Okay. What do you want to know?” Lane refilled his coffee from the carafe at the centre of the table.
“Do you admire the grizzly because it’s a hunter like you?” Matt asked.
“Or because it’s feared and misunderstood?” Arthur asked.
“What about the fact that it’s nearly extinct?” Christine asked.
Lane joined in on the laughter.
Daniel said, “Of course it’s not because male grizzlies sometimes kill male cubs.”
Christine glared at Daniel. “How did you know that was what the call was about?”
Christine will forever be leaping to conclusions after the way she was mistreated in Paradise, Lane thought, then asked, “About what?”
“Keely said they found the body of a missing boy. She thinks it may be related to one of your unsolved cases.” Christine lifted the napkin and handed him the phone.
