It was one of those astonishingly hot summers, rare for the Pacific Northwest, which catches the natives by surprise and requires that each does his fair share of suffering. Weekdays found us camped on our favorite section of the Kalama River in Southwest Washington State, a hot, dry place in the summer of any year but a blistering one now. Save for a few tall cedars and hemlocks spared by the greedy loggers, the river’s canyons would have been intolerable, just like the desert.
My father was enjoying his third period of remission, and looked as lean and as fit as a young bird dog, at least to all who did not know him well or comprehend what he had gone through recently. I had come home to spend the summer with him and to fish with him and Uncle Matt and Charlie Schultz, our dentist, and longtime friend.

By fishing just weekdays, we were able to avoid the crowds that formed on Saturdays and Sundays, by which time we were back in Seattle, 150 miles away, where it was cooler. We erected a tent (just in case) next to where our cars were parked in a crude circle, then slept beside it, for it was cooler outside, under a thick cluster of stars that never dimmed till dawn, and only then paled slightly.
It was routine for us on arrival Monday morning to check a couple of signal pools from the road, their bottoms boulder-lined and thick with seasonal algae. We pulled the caravan off on the narrow shoulder and peered deep into the pellucid tailouts. Steelhead were building up in the river and we were able to see an impressive number, ghostly shapes lying surprisingly high up in the water column. We were elated at our prospects.

My dad whistled softly at what he saw in the bright brown water, and Matt solemnly added, “If I see one, I see forty steelhead. Maybe fifty.”

Having found some fish, it was a simple matter of getting them to take our flies. Matt announced this, and we all laughed. Though seemingly motionless in the strengthened current, the fish had seen us as well, and every once in a while one of them would peel out of formation and shoot down the pool, inscribing the letter J, only in reverse, and coming to rest facing upstream which, as we all know, is the only way a fish can breathe.

Frequently a second fish and sometimes a third would follow the first. Then all would settle down and remain calm. How effortlessly they held their positions in the current, finning like the weave of water weeds.

Some of the heat was beginning to dissipate, enough at any rate so that by late afternoon the prospect of climbing into waders seemed not the death sentence it had earlier. Dad, gaunt and tan as an East Indian, was eager to get at the fish. Time mattered much to him, the heat did not bother him at all, and catching a fish meant everything. Well, it did to each of us. I had not killed a fish this year, though I had caught many, and neither had Matt or Charlie. Dad hadn’t killed one in three years, which happened to be the length of time he knew he had advanced cancer.

That night we ate communal hash heated from out of a can. Fried eggs. Whole kernel corn. Afterwards, we sat around sipping tepid beer, while Doc did the dishes. Crouched around the fire, for it had turned cool, our faces streaked with dried sweat and dirt. We exchanged gags and memories of old good times and laughed often, though nothing expressly funny had happened.

Matt was tying flies by firelight. Steelhead aren't fussy when it comes to patterns; usually they will come to any old thing. I brought out a battery-pack lantern that helped him some. It enabled me to look closer, too. I admire his skill. He was fashioning this year's version of his monster killer. How a scruffy little thing like that - gray and brown, about the size of my thumbnail - could interest so large a fish as an adult steelhead baffled me. The body was the underfur combed from a neighbor's angora cat. He spun it on the shank of his hook with a dubbing loop. Perhaps that was the mystery ingredient for his frequent success.

Each morning he would ration out to each of us two flies. When they were gone, there would be no more till the following day, so best not leave them up a tree or in a fish. Other flies worked, too, of course - Irresistibles, Wulffs, Humpies, Muddlers, Soldier Palmers, each in its time and place. But Matt's flies were best. It was because we believed in them.

Dad and I partook of a joint together, while Charlie and Doc looked the other way. Yes, I had introduced him to the evil weed, which I had been knowledgeable about for years. My generational thing. I had started him on it unwillingly during the first heavy days of chemo, when he couldn't keep anything down for a week. Suddenly he had a good appetite. He smiled at me, a little stoned, and all was tranquil. Here I was, burning my lips and parching my throat, just like back in high school (where I taught now). Well, it was for a good cause, and getting mildly high brought back memories.

The day had sapped me and I was ready for my sleeping bag by 9:30. The day had hit a hundred, I was sure of it. An owl hooted far off. There was a faint hum to the river air. Dad and I had not raised a single fish. Nor had our companions.

"Don't worry," he told me. "Tomorrow morning we'll knock them dead. See if we don't."

And the veil came down like a theater curtain and I slept like a stone, full of hope. My intention was to get up earlier than the others and be first on the water.

The section we fished was called the Holy Water. It was open to fly-fishing only, but that is not why it was called that. There were several theories. One was that a bible camp had been held there each summer for decades. Another was that the name was a corruption of the steelheader's phrase, the holding water, meaning that fish liked to lie there and remain. I teach English and this interests me - how words slur their pronunciation and change their meaning from misuse and repetition. I should be spending this summer amassing graduate credits in education towards my masters degree, and the resulting salary increase, instead of wasting my time fishing. Lucy tells me this - she whom I will marry within the year. I tell her, "Well, I have only one father to lose, and many summers in which to learn to be a drudge. So have a heart, will you?" Her countenance tells me she won't or doesn't.
A year or two ago, my luck changed markedly.

I don't know what it was, or why, but suddenly I got the touch. I started catching steelhead like crazy. Don't mistake me, I'm grateful for it. I've been outfishing Dad and everybody except perhaps Matt, the expert, but sometimes even him, too. It seems wrong to catch more fish than your father. I started out accompanying him to the rivers as a child, barely able to walk, because there was no way I could get out of going short of feigning sickness, which is not my way. So I piddled around by the water's edge and got my feet and my seat wet, but never caught colds. I got stung by yellow jackets, whipped in the face by the willows of spring, and when the time was ripe fitted with the smallest pair of neoprenes ever made. I was issued a fly rod suitable for a dwarf. Quickly I became a good caster, but only a fair fisher. Many years later grace arrived.

As for my argument with Lucy about having only one father to lose, I've used it for three summers now - and three long hospital bouts of horror after which Dad was returned to us weaker and ostensibly his old self, but I don't know. They sent him home because they had run out of new ways of torturing him and were embarrassed at the extent to which he had succeeded in staying alive, in spite of the prognosis.

"Let's go fishing," he challenged me, with a lopsided grin. I said let's fatten you up first, but he never put on weight; it was beyond his means to eat much. He sought the sun, instead, and was as brown as a coffee bean by April. His hair had thinned and he had developed a bald spot in the center of his forehead that was moving ever backwards. He covered it up with an old bandanna. One was predominantly red, another mostly blue. He was a sight, this phony pirate.
Each summer I had thought would be the last one, but he had rallied after each resurgence. Sometimes we had to take him back to the hospital for a two-day stay, during which time they pumped nourishment into veins badly weakened by the chemo needles.

You'd think a man with a history like that would be blessed with a little good fishing, wouldn't you? Instead, his son, who had gone through life with nothing happening to him at all, got the gift from above. This summer he was particularly fit-looking, vigorous-seeming, almost handsome because he was so thin and brown. He kept us all rushing to keep up with him. But his luck didn't change. Bad didn't seem to bother him the way it would me. It would leave me raging at the skies. Instead he greeted each morning as though happy to have made it through one more night and truly enjoyed being out-of-doors the next day. He was an expert caster, and to see his floating line curl out through the air would be inspiring to a novice or pro alike.

Sometimes in late afternoon he would run out of gas. Then he would lose color. His eyes were pale blue and he habitually wore khaki shorts in summer, which gave him a military look, which was half-true, for he had been a reluctant army major during the Korean War. If I stupidly asked if he was okay, he looked at me strangely and assured me he felt fine. His eyes would turn bright with deception when he said it. I mean, how can a father lie so to his son, when that son has only his best interest at heart? It isn't fair.

This summer, I thought, is going to be our last. I know it, he knows it. It is our secret from each other and the world. We must keep it from Uncle Matt and Doc Charlie, too. Even if they suspect, it is something not to be mentioned around the camp fire. Not by the riverside, either. Nowhere. He will not last until Christmas. He is burning up his energy just the way a fighting steelhead burns up the lactic acid in his muscle tissue. How long can he last against this terrible disease? And I knew - my Lucy aside - I would never regret spending the summer this wasteful way it seemed.

We arose by common consent by first light. Our grassy meadow was ringed with young alders and wispy cedars that had escaped the chainsaw. Seventy-five feet below the Kalama purled sweetly. The joy of rivers is that they never stop flowing or making their gentle river sounds. We slept soundly until it was time to awaken and then awakened quickly in the half-dark and knew at once where we were, each of us, and that it was the finest place in the world for an August morning. It was time to quickly eat and begin fishing.

Stumbling around by flashlight, it was my intention to grab a quick cold breakfast and be the first to hit the riffle. I was determined to hook the first fish. But Doc was up before any of us and was already preparing breakfast for all. He had broken a dozen eggs into a huge cast-iron pan and was heating them gently on the white gas stove. The other burner held a pot of boiled coffee just giving off its aroma to the air. He poured us each a wakeup cup as we scrambled out of our sleeping bags. There was toast and jam to go with the eggs. Nobody had much to say. When the coffee was gone, we went fishing. The dirty dishes could wait.

The Holy Water is comprised of three pools, each separated from the other by a short riffle marked by its own special character. Everybody has a favorite. The runs and riffles are short and undistinguished, though. The Kalama, up in its canyon, is not large, but its flow is often deep because of all the bedrock it must flow through. This gives the fish plenty of shelter and protection during the long months in which they must wait until spawning time arrives, nearly a year hence. All they have to do is hang around and ripen.

The water is deceptive, too. Many experienced steelheaders would think of it as trout water. Yet when the light comes from a certain angle, a fisher peering into one of the pools could make out a window in which half a dozen adult steelhead can be easily seen at any given time. They would average seven pounds in weight. Not until later in the day would the light change enough for the man to become aware of the fish's overall mobility, speed, and size. Then they would begin to move around in the pool, as first one then another and finally a third would leap into the air, porpoising, playing, or whatever it is they do, whatever their reasons. A fish might leap high and fall back with a terrific splash. It always surprised and alarmed me. Or it might just stick its back out with a bulge. Were they doing it for the simple joy of watery movement?

I took a morning fish on the surface, a pleasant way of fishing, though I generally do better wet. A dry fly strike comes as a bit of a surprise, even though you are expecting it. I saw the fish coming from a long way off and observed the hot pursuit, just under the surface, like a shark; I viewed the take- a great clumsy swirl, and tried to roll cast my line out of the way, for some dumb reason, which served to hook the fish in the snout perfectly. It was a fluke, but I'll take the credit. The fish was an eight-pounder, just beginning to assume rainbow coloration. It fought poorly, as sometimes happens with a fish that ends a chase with a take. It did some more scrapping while I unpinned it, leaving my shirt front soaked with river water. It was a badge I wore proudly until it dried, only a few minutes, it being so hot.

My second fish was smaller but fought its little heart out and left the surface of the pool in a froth. It too went free. And two other fish were lost when I felt the hook come away on the strike with a little pluck, and there was a third hit, when I didn't feel a thing but saw and missed it on the strike. The activity was over by eleven o'clock. It was a highly successful morning for me, and I was astonished when my watch told me I had been fishing for six straight hours, with only a moment's pause to eat a Danish and relieve myself in the bushes.

We all had agreed to quit fishing by noon and to meet back by the fire circle and compare notes. I had seen Matt playing a fish earlier, but the others had been out of sight the full time. Dad had raised three, but lost them all, early in the battle, I learned. His usual luck. Doc had raised two, lost one, and landed the other, both on his customary wet flies.

Dad greeted me, "I hear you had another good morning." He grinned as though it had been his own. He didn't seem dismayed over his three lost fish, as I would have been. In fact, he never was, never had been. He gave me a friendly poke in the shoulder, which surprised me, because we are a family that doesn't touch. It is, as it were, against the law.

"Aren't you hot?" I asked him, for I who love cold was perishing. Not a drop of sweat glistened on him.

"Not a bit. A perfect day." He stretched at the sky.

We-the-wilted and Dad drifted back to camp, dropped our waders, and sought shade. I was half sick and could eat but little lunch. The only bigleaf maple in the area offered us its dappled shade. Dad hunched over the fly-tying vice, while the others dozed. I stayed awake to keep him company. Then I slipped off. I awoke to see some time had passed in the form of a pile of neat spiders and skaters on our makeshift tying table. They were not your usual steelhead fare, and I wondered about it.

He said, "I have a hunch that what might bring the fish to the surface is a fly that floats high and dry, without even the hook touching water. Let's see if I'm right."

It was a hunch that paid off that evening. He was the only one to raise a fish in the thin hours before dark. By stationing himself in the tailout of Pool Number Three, where the water was only three feet deep, he got numerous good fish to chase his fly, though few of them approached it seriously. They bumped it with their noses, crashed down on it with their bellies, bulged up under it with a pillow of water that pushed it away, struck at it with their tails. Everything, in short, except take it in their mouths. But then at dark two fish struck solidly - and broke off the delicate three-pound test tippet on the take. I remember how one of those lost fish leaped and leaped against a background that was rapidly losing its bright capacity. Me, I didn't touch squat.

Then one took Dad's fly solidly and stayed on. I greatly enjoyed seeing my father take the fight to the fish. He never gives it a moment's pause. He plays it as a matador might play a great bull, countering its aggressive rushes with a light touch and sureness of hand, always remaining in control or else quickly regaining it when momentarily lost. Eventually a fish tires. This one soon did. It went over on its side in a sign of submission. Instead of beaching it and possibly injuring it in the process, Dad reached down and plucked the tiny debarbed Wilson hook from its gumline. The fat ten-pounder slid away into the all-enveloping darkness.

I found myself clapping softly in the warm night air. The sound echoed up and down the hushed canyon walls. At first I didn't know where it was coming from. Then I realized it was from me. It was my remains of the noisy tribute. Embarrassed, I stopped my hands. Dad shot me a look of mild annoyance, then smiled sweetly. He bowed like an actor would. I think it was our finest moment.
Matt and Doc were back at the fire circle when we arrived. We gulped one warm beer each. Soon we spilled into our sleeping bags. In the morning we hit it again, but nothing worked, not even the spiders from last night. Dad broke a fish when it went over into the fast water. I had taken a fish on a weighted Spade that might as well have been fished on a wet line. The steelhead had sucked it up of f the brown stones. Wet, it counted for naught in the day’s total.

It was an unusual overcast morning, with a sky we thought would burn away by eleven but instead brought a cooling patter at noon. Encouraged by a temperature plunged into the low eighties, we ate a full lunch and went back to our hard fishing. It was Wednesday, the week already split, half behind us. One by one we dropped out of the competition from boredom and heat and inaction. Dad was first. “I miss the sun,” he said, and went inside the unused tent for a nap. When the sun winked out before dusk, Matt and I visited Pool Number Two, and I watched him take and release a fine fish on one of his cat-fur specials. His usual nice job of playing it, too.

When we returned, Dad was sitting by the fire, smoking ordinary. This was disturbing, because we smoked only dope together, not awful cigarettes. He had given them up years ago. He must be experiencing pain, I decided. I put the matter out of mind quickly because I could do nothing about it. We turned in early, exhausted in our different ways. An out-of-doors tiredness is progressive.

In the morning, very early, Dad was out of the sack and attending the white-gas stove, where he had set the coffee to perk. I suspected a bad night, one with not much sleep in it. Halfway through an eventless morning, we took a break together. We had just finished whipping to death Pool Number One, our favorite, and knew that a rest wouldn’t do either us or the pool any harm.

I decided to ask a personal question. “Is it bad?”

“It’s been worse. No, not too bad. I didn’t sleep much. Well, there’s lots of time ahead to sleep.’ He snorted a chuckle. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. Only when you’re fishing, sleep doesn’t matter much. What would you say to a morning joint? Would it strike you as the height of decadence?”

“Not if I don’t have to smoke it.”

He brought out a crinkled tube and lit it. My nose sought it out. “I seem to have developed this dual attitude about everything,” he mused, toking deep. “For instance, I have contempt for most dope smokers and now I am one. And I believe that work is important for self-respect, but I don’t work much anymore. Law continues to fascinate me, but I hate it, too. I want to see you successful, Son, but I want to see you happy, too, and the two don’t always go hand-in-hand. What a twisted world it is. The respect of others is what really counts.

“Money only matters if you don’t have any. I’ve been blessed. Now if you are flat broke, your problems are different. You, me. Your Lucy will make you a good wife. Still, you might do better. Does any of this make sense?”

“Dad.”

“I know, it seems a little disjointed to me, too. Someday you’ll be all that’s left of me on the planet. It’s why I babble so and don’t talk to anybody else.”

“Dad.”

“You want me to shut up. It’s this garrulous weed talking. I’ve always believed marijuana is the crutch of sissies. Now I’m a sissy myself - by spurious definition. Isn’t that hilarious?”

And a third time, “Dad.”

“This isn’t necessary for you, but it is for me. Life, pain, death - they’re all forms of communication, nothing more. They draw a family together, when the natural tendency is for everybody to fly apart at the seams, like cheap waders. That’s the good that comes from dying.”

What was the use in cautioning him not to go on?

“Be kind to your mother. Like Lucy, she’s a weak person, in many of her ways. I love her deeply, but with my current double vision I can see how we were a lost cause and she wrote me off, long ago. Each of my remissions secretly disappointed her. She was anxious to get on with her life. Instead, I hung around like a fart in a phone booth. Such a delay was a terrible insult to her and her plans. Still I’m glad it’s me going first. I couldn’t stand life without that woman, even if she has a fault or two or three.”

I sighed.

“Okay, okay. I’m done. Let’s tackle the next pool.”

We did, and it was I who hit the fish at the throat of Pool Number Two. It was a fish that was unwanted and unappreciated, and I horsed it in to the beach and jerked the hook free.

My father said, “You were a little hard on that fish, weren’t you? All that muscle and shoulder work isn’t really necessary. But you know all this. They why do you do it? You must remain ever respectful of your quarry. He isn’t your enemy, you know.”

I wanted to cry. I had wanted that fish for him, not for myself, who had a bloodless eternity ahead. If the truth be known, I had lost my joy in fishing early this season. I hated fishing. I retreated into a fly-caster’s silence. Finally Dad hooked a fish, deep in the pool. It was a really wild fish, one that jumped and jumped, as lightly hooked fish often do. It tore all over the surface, never resting. He fought it with his customary patience and finesse. When it finally fought free, my heart plunged in empathy, but he only laughed.

“I had my fun, didn’t I? And I don’t think I made any mistakes. If so, you’ll point them out to me, won’t you? You’re the expert.”

I couldn’t think of a thing to say and he knew it.

At Thursday’s dusk we climbed back to the meadow at the end of the day and sat around the cold embers marking the wagon-wheel fire chicle. Fishing alone later, after Dad had returned for a snooze, I had taken another fish, secretly and shamelessly, and had tried to keep the news to myself, but Uncle Matt had seen it and insisted on commentary. “Here comes old lucky,” he announced, as I trailed into camp. They had each taken a fish, too, while Dad continued skunked.

I glanced at my old bamboo fly rod by lantern light. All day long I had felt half-angry and unsettled. Sure enough, I had put a slight set in the eight-foot, nine-inch Hardy as a result of playing one or both of those fish too hard. I had abused the fine craftsmanship after years of considerate treatment of it, and this was the price I must pay. This made me angrier yet with myself. It was one of those days when you are grateful when it ends.

Friday morning dawned clear and hot. The Kalama River usual. The day is a jumble to me. Did I really catch three bright steelhead, fighters all, or did I dream them? The memory of a great day is like that. Matt took two, including one that drowned his spider in a mighty splash, missed it, came for it again, missed it again, then returned and picked it up out of the froth with dainty lips. Doc landed only one out of four hooked, but it was the season’s best for all of us, a fourteen-pounder. But Dad’s morning is the one I really remember. It is a teacake shared by each of us.

I remember his slender graphite rod bent. Why did he disdain bamboo suddenly? Did he want something new and tough? The rod was always bowed with a fish. He ran through his variants and spiders in short order, plus the cat-fur skaters he was issued with his morning coffee. A few of the flies he left in branches high above him, others in the mouths of eager fish. He was into fish all morning long. I saw many of them in the air. By ten o’clock he was begging another pair of monsters from Matt, ignoring the rules. He had his hand pleadingly outstretched, demanding another two killers. Matt gave them to him sadly. A little after noon, it was, Please give me two more. Matt obliged. By lunchtime, Dad was sitting up against some stones, the terrible sun in his eyes. Under the deep tan I could see how he was paling rapidly. His bandanna hat that made him look like nautical had slipped and gave him a falsely jaunty look that was all wrong. A sick clown is not what he was.
“Dad, what can I do?”

Words are strange things to have to say. They are always wrong. But there are no other sounds that contain meaning. He could not reply. A little spittle stood at the edge of his lips. I deigned not to wipe it away. His eyes told me he was cold, bitterly chilled. The temperature was in the mid-nineties, but a shiver ran down my own spine from empathy.

Matt said, “I’ll get Doc.” Yes, I thought; if a doctor isn’t handy, a dentist is the next best thing, especially if he has some painkiller. In a few minutes we were carrying Dad with locked arms up to the fire circle and the cars. I was surprised that he weighed no more than a bundle of deadfall sticks. We drove our phalanx of cars away to Seattle without a thought of speed limits. No cop dared pull us over. Dad lay slumped beside me, vacant-eyed.

At the hospital his doctor, whom we all knew well, said, “If there is no objection, I’m not going to put him on life-support. It only seems to keep a person alive. It’s a false hope.” My mother broke down then. All attention turned towards her and her problem; it was the way it had always been and I continued to despise her for it. She brightened accordingly, but only when we kept it up. I disappeared into a deep interior recess where I sometimes go. I am unreachable there. We awaited the news. Outside the window the sun withheld its clouds and continued providently gray.

He did not suffer much. At least I don’t think he suffered much, but then what do I know, a healthy son? I can only guess at what goes on in the mind of a dying man. Dad rallied a bit, remained for hours talkative and bright, almost chatty. Then he slid into a coma. A coma, I discovered, is the most private place still in this world.

He died a week later. The great finality of death always comes as a surprise, no matter how much you expect it. A dead man looks very much like one that is alive and sleeping. Only, a certain glow has escaped him. The glow is all.

Each summer the three of us return to the Holy Water and park our cars in a crude wagon wheel. We construct a new fire circle. It is easy for others to miss the entrance to our camp and most cars drive right on by without spotting it. Our cars are parked like a caravan expecting an attack. One never comes, though. We continue to build the circle for the fire that we don’t need and is often a scourge. We look long into the dying embers before turning in each night. No word is issued to the others. None is needed.

We will continue to do this so long as we are able. It is how it is with survivors.

(Bob Arnold is the author of Steelhead Water, Steelhead and The Floating Line, and Country/City: A Year at The River. He has published numerous articles, many on fly fishing. This short story originally appeared in Esquire but has since been rewritten. He lives on a lake in Northwestern Washington State and fishes the nearby Skagit and Stillaguamish Rivers. He is also a photographer and artist, whose work can be viewed on his web page: http://www.lakeketchum.com or http://www.kingfisherpress.com