Have you ever thought about having kids?
Angie’s line developed slack. She pulled some of it in as she’d been instructed. The water was shallow here. She could see the slime-covered stones along the river bottom. Above the stones a school of salmon carcasses held steady in the soft current. The weight of their skulls pinned the dead fish in place and kept them facing upstream as the current swung their bodies gently to and fro, making it appear as though they were still swimming. Zombie fish, Angie thought, doomed to perpetually fight their ghostly way upriver as shreds of rotting flesh peeled off their bodies. Or until they were plucked from the water by scavenging bald eagles. Or taken by bears, or the wolves that ventured down to the river’s edge at night.
It was a ritual that played out each year as millions of chum, pinks, chinook, and coho in the Pacific Ocean were triggered by some biological cue to suddenly scent out the fresh water of the one river they were born in and to then swim into that river mouth and fight their way back to their birth home, bashing and beating themselves into shreds upon rocks and in white water. Just to spawn. To fertilize the eggs. And then die. So that the cycle could begin again.
Angie and Maddocks weren’t angling for the aged salmon, though. They were hunting the muscled and silvery trout that swam among them. But Angie was having trouble moving mentally beyond the bloated carcasses hovering beneath their boat, the stench of dead fish washed up on the shores. This whole birth-death cycle made her ponder the futility of it all, the merits of bashing one’s way against the currents of life just to propagate and die. It darkly underscored Maddocks’s question at every turn, and she didn’t have an answer.
Have you ever thought about having kids?
With quick, jerky movements, Angie started reeling her line back in.
“You okay?” Maddocks said.
“Fine,” she said as she came to her feet, wobbling the boat. She cast out her line one more time. “But if there is a next time, it better be someplace warmer.”
“Come on, you love it. Admit it.”
“Yeah, right.” She avoided his gaze by turning her attention to the second boat in their drift party. Hugh Carmanagh was the guide at the helm, his clients a long-married couple from Dallas. Seniors with the zest of teenagers. Over the past four days, Angie had witnessed the septuagenarians attacking this trip as though they were trying to bleed every last drop out of the few years they had left on this earth. Again, she wondered about the merits of it all—this gathering into your chest all these life experiences right before you kicked the bucket and went to the grave, where memories meant zip to the dead. She’d seen Maddocks watching the couple, too. She could tell from the look on his face that he was envious of them, that he perhaps wanted himself and Angie to be like that couple one day, aging together. Laughing together. Having sex in tents and fun and adventure to the very end. Making up for lost time—him for a failed first marriage, her for a traumatic past.
But to Angie those septuagenarians just seemed desperate, like they were panicking now that they’d glimpsed the finish line. She wasn’t 100 percent certain about the future of her relationship with James, either. Right now all she wanted was to get back to the city where she could continue clocking up hours toward her full private investigator’s license. Once she had the legislated hours under her belt, she could think about opening her own agency. She was done working for assholes. She couldn’t wait to call her own shots, pick her own cases. Everything until then felt like a waste of time.
Light faded and shadows lengthened across the water. It made the dead fish beneath the boat appear more real. Rain started to softly fall. Angie’s thoughts turned to the scalding shower and hot dinner waiting at the lodge. Plus a real bed after three nights in a tent—she couldn’t wait. Tomorrow morning, early, she and Maddocks would start the return drive to Victoria.
“Time to pack it in,” Claire said, drawing her rain hood over her head. “Start bringing in the lines.” She reached for her radio and keyed it. “Claire for Rex, Claire for Rex.” She released the key.
The radio crackled. “Rex here. Come in, Claire.”
“We’re bringing in the boats. What’s your ETA with the trailer at the pullout?”
“Almost there now.”
“Good timing,” she said cheerily. “Light’s fading fast. See at you the pullout.”
“Copy that. Over.”
Claire waved to the other boat. “Yo, Hugh!” Her voice carried over the water as she made a winding motion with her hand high in the air. “Wrapping it up here. Rig’s almost at the pullout.”
He gave a thumbs-up. His clients started bringing in their lines.
Claire fired the motor. It coughed to life with a puff of blue smoke. But as Claire steered the boat around, Angie caught movement on the opposite bank. She squinted toward the thick line of trees, unsure of what she was seeing in the fading light and fog. It looked like a man gesticulating wildly along the bank. He had a dog at his side. Both wore blaze-orange hunting vests.
“Whoa!” Angie yelled over the engine, shooting her hand up to stop Claire. She pointed. “What’s that over there?”
Claire killed her motor. Silence descended once more over the river. And they heard him.
“Help! Over here! Need help! No phone reception!”
Quickly, Claire keyed her radio. “Hugh, do you copy? Hugh?”
“Hugh here. Whassup, Claire?”
“Guy on south shore. He’s calling for help. We’re heading over.”
“Copy that. I’ll take clients to pullout. Yell if you need me.”
She fired the engine back to life. “Sit steady!” She gave it full throttle. The boat nose lifted from the water, and they sped for the far shore, a smooth wake surging out behind them.
As they neared, she slowed their craft. An old man hobbled hurriedly down the pebbly beach toward the water’s edge, his dog in tow. He carried a bag slung across his torso. As Claire nuzzled the prow gently against the gravelly shore, the man waded into the water and grabbed hold of the gunwale. He was breathing hard. Angie judged him to be in his late sixties. He had a big paunch, gray whiskers, and a weather-beaten face that was ruddy with cold—or from years of drinking. Or both.
