When Is a Man by Aaron Shepard Page A

shore and clawed at the ground. His fingers were stiff and nearly useless, but his momentum slowed enough to let him wrap his arms around a boulder at the edge of the bank. It shifted, slid a few inches, then held. He kicked and squirmed until he pulled free of the waterlogged waders and hauled himself onto ground. Retching up water, weeping, he reached back for the waders and tugged them to shore. He wiped the water and mucus from between his nose and upper lip and saw that his numb and trembling fingers were scraped and cut. He wiped blood from small gashes on his cheeks and dabbed the raw mess of his forehead. His ribs and shoulders throbbed with every movement. He rose unsteadily, legs threatening to cramp and buckle, and staggered through the willow whips and cottonwood saplings. On his way back to camp, he found the scope precariously lodged in a cluster of driftwood and debris along the bank.
    In the trailer, he piled blankets and sleeping bags on top of himself and passed out for the rest of the afternoon. He woke up in the dimming light, exhausted and battered, and troubled by a feeling that he’d been watched while he slept, exposed to a strange witness.
    Last winter, he’d felt this same fear and loneliness. His body’s quiet betrayal had been not unlike the babbling menace of the Immitoin. Here, animals passed by at night, snapping twigs and snuffling outside the trailer while he rolled onto his stomach trying to ignore his bladder. At home, it had been the walks down the dark hallway to the bathroom six or seven times after midnight. Dribbling into the bowl, frightened by jolts of pain. Then waiting for the doctor’s word. No comfort, no refuge: not in other people, not in one’s own body.
    He was hot under the blankets, feverish. He held one arm tight across his sore ribs, hand in his armpit. With his other hand, he reflexively pawed and cupped his groin. No pleasure in it. His cock and balls lay warm, soft, and limp in his fingers, and after another light, testing squeeze, he brought his hand up under his other armpit and settled deeper in his blankets.

    The next morning he woke to a light rain hitting the camper roof. The air smelled sweet when he opened the door. A raven called, a single note, tock , like a pebble being dropped into water. The sounds were muffled, as though the air had turned to loam. He stepped outside and saw that the hills had disappeared under clouds and the trees shone with rain. His waders, which he’d turned inside out to dry, were still saturated and cold. They’d been torture during last night’s count. He pulled them on and shuddered. The huckleberry bushes and rhododendrons drooped across the path, their leaves soaking the shoulders and arms of his fleece pullover. The rain and overcast sky conspired with the creek to hide the fish beneath the grey mirror of the surface. His world had become increasingly and unpleasantly aquatic.
    Last night the traps had taken four hours to empty. Stiff muscles and a chill made him inefficient and slow: whenever he thought he’d processed his last trout, five more would swim into the upstream trap. The spawning run hadn’t quite hit its peak, and would only get worse over the next week or so. He needed to rest and then dig in for the long haul.
    Nine days had passed since he had last gone to town, seven since he’d driven Jory to the Flumes. Food was running low, and a trip to Shellycoat loomed on the horizon. Dr. Tamba’s e-mail still nagged at him, surfacing now and then with an uncomfortable sharpness: procrastination induced its own particular nausea. If he went to town, he would feel obliged to reply, which required a plan for the future, and he had none. He thought about life back on the coast. The fieldwork and writing he would have to continue in order to maintain his income, all the lost momentum he would have to regain. A desperate, strung-out sort of restlessness gripped him over