Lines on the Water by David Adams Richards Page B

time. And he knew his old pool very well.
    The problem was, that year he was told by people from away that he no longer could fish it. They put up a sign near the water, and met him on the shore three times to tell him he wasn’t welcome. This happened quickly and without warning. And I still don’t know the full extent of it. But he did not happen to have riparian rights to the water. The camp that did—a mile or so below him—had decided that he was a bother to them and to their camp guests.
    For a while he put up a fight, said he’d get proof and no one could fool him. Said he would rock the pool or fill it all in. But he could no more do that than hurt someone. Then there were lawyers and all the rest of it involved. He told me that everyone had decided it wasn’t him but a Mr. Jeffreys from Halifax who owned the water. He said he would build another camp somewhere—even though this one was forty years old. He looked about, saw others fishing on the water he once considered his, water which he never tried to regulate himself, and asked me to drive him to the south branch.
    So I did. We got into the Jeep one morning and went around the Fraser Burchill Highway to the south branch of the Sevogle on a day in late July. He sat in the Jeep with his hands folded, looking out the window, looking like a child who has just been punished.
    “I’ll show you a place to fish,” he said. “It’s where I’ll build me new camp. I’ll go over to Fred-ric-ten—that’s what I’ll do—I’ll go to Fred-ric-ten, and talk to the Forestry.”
    I took a road beyond Clearwater Pool, came to the top of a hill. We both looked down, where far, far away the river turned into the sun.
    For miles there wasn’t a tree. The ghostly remnants of trees stood in single file, blackened and desperate against the yellowish horizon. Like the rainforest, like all those things man had come to take for granted, to step upon, it had been clear-cut out. Old Mr. Simms had not been there in years. His lips trembled just slightly, the river in the distance glittered like a bayonet affixed against the sky.
    “I’m a fool,” he said.
    “NO, yer not,” I said.
    “I got no place to fish now.” He smiled, shaking his head.
    The next Saturday I went to his camp. However, this time, the door was closed.

Nine
    BY THE END OF THE sixth summer I had managed to learn to fish. And I fished mostly alone, leaving the cottage where Peg and I lived in the summer at dawn and trying to get back by mid-afternoon. I always carried with me, besides my dog, two rods, two reels weighted with weight-forward lines for those rods, three boxes of flies—bugs and butterflies being my favourite—a flashlight, a spare pair of jeans, and waders, two jugs of water (for the radiator), a thermos of tea, and a lunch bucket of sandwiches.
    I love travelling the rivers alone, and now spend much moretime by myself than with other people, even though I’ll never forget them for teaching me what they could.
    By then, my line was touching the water where I wanted it to and I was able to cover the water I wanted to as well. (But I still got knots and flubbed casts and had days when nothing went right.) I no longer used a blood knot, but went with nine or ten feet of leader. I was using both hands, without having to think about it, and felt comfortable whenever I went fishing.
    Often I did not make it back by afternoon. It would be dark when I left in the morning and dark when I got back out at nightfall. I stood in pools in the pouring rain, too stupid to come out of them, and I wallowed about the shore in the desperate fly-soaked heat too stupid to go home. And more than once I had to rely on luck to get my old truck started, miles away from anyone.
    Some days I would start into Little River Pool just above the Miner’s Bridge on the Norwest, but go on the long rough road into B&L.
    The year before, Peter had seen a grilse jump in the swift little run, directly off from where the