They Shoot Canoes, Don't They?, page 15
“Well, so much for chit-chat,” I said, kindly. “Here’s what I need. My fly-tying outfit has become such a mess, after twenty years or so of turning out thousands and thousands of flies, that I’ve decided to replace the whole shebang with a totally new outfit, something of professional caliber, of course. Why don’t you just go ahead and whip me up one, all the usual feathers and stuff, you know?”
“Wow!” she said, staring at me in a way that I could only attribute to a momentary return of visual acuity. “That’s really something! First, let me show you a really nifty little vise.”
“Perhaps some other time,” I replied. “Right now I think we should confine ourselves to matters related to fly-tying.” The poor dear was struck speechless with disappointment by my rejection of her overture, and I couldn’t help but feel sorry for her, particularly considering that she was married to an insensitive lout like Farley Quartze. Noting that she had absentmindedly extracted from a display case a tool I instantly recognized as an instrument of fly-tying, I tried to change the subject by calling her attention to it. “I see you have a hook-clamper there in your hand. I’m going to need one of those for sure, and that certainly looks like a good one.”
After a moment she asked, “How long have you been tying flies?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Probably not,” she said, and immediately began removing materials from boxes, bins, jars, and cases and stuffing them into clear plastic bags for me. I was happy to note that she was attaching to each bag a label that identified the contents, few of which I could otherwise have told from the plumage of a yellow-crested cuckold, ornithology not being one of my strong points. Having depleted the inventory of the store to her apparent satisfaction, Mrs. Quartze began computing my bill on an electronic calculator, her fingers dancing happily over its buttons. For some reason, this simple exercise in digital dexterity seemed to improve her mood just short of total delight, and I thought the moment an appropriate one to impress upon her that I was not only an experienced, nay, an expert, tier of flies but also one possessed of certain ethical standards.
“By the way,” I said, surveying the mountain of packages stuffed with furs and feathers. “I hope none of these materials are derived from threatened or endangered species.”
“Like what?” she said.
“Well,” I said, picking up a package and reading the label, “like these chenilles.”
Not only was Mrs. Quartze afflicted with poor vision, but she also had the rather distasteful mannerism of allowing her mouth to gape open every time a question was addressed to her. “Why, no,” she said presently, regaining control of her jaw muscles, “there are plenty of chenilles left. They reproduce faster than lemmings.”
“Good to hear it,” I replied. “They’re such colorful little beggars, it would be a shame if they became a threatened species.”
“Yes,” she said smiling. “You’ll probably be happy to learn that the flosses are doing fine too. And the tinsels …”
Well, that conversation took place many years ago. I have since learned a good deal about the fundamentals of fly-tying, not that I ever really believed there were such creatures as chenilles and flosses and tinsels. That was just a little joke for the benefit of Mrs. Quartze. I don’t think she got it, though, because a few days after our transaction somebody sent me a book in the mail —Fly-tying Made Easy Even for Imbeciles. Talk about your nerve! On the other hand, it turned out to be a pretty good book, once I got past the hard parts.
Psychic Powers for Outdoorsmen
Even as a child I possessed psychic powers. For example, I once was fighting with my sister, the Troll, and, as she sat on my chest braiding my fingers into a potholder, I suddenly had this vision of a snake slithering happily about in the dresser drawer where the Troll stored her fresh underwear. Naturally, I immediately dismissed the vision as preposterous. How could a simpleminded snake manage to climb the sheer side of the dresser, open a drawer, crawl inside, and finally pull the drawer shut behind? Why would a snake even want to do this? What could its motive be? The very next day, however, the Troll announced the discovery of a snake in her underwear drawer. Her announcement was made simultaneously with the discovery and had a certain operatic quality to it, beginning with a rather elaborate inhalation, which was followed by a series of staccato sounds similar to aborted sneezes, then culminated in a long, quavering, sirenlike screech, the whole performance lasting not more than twenty seconds and concluding with several loud thumps, these last caused by the Troll’s rebounding off the wall in an effort to get a clear shot at the bedroom door. As pure entertainment it left something to be desired, but I found the routine not to be without a certain psychological interest. As with most psychic phenomena, the mystery of the snake in the drawer and my precognition of its being there never yielded to logical inquiry, although for years afterwards the Troll insisted upon advancing a pet theory of her own as to the unknown cause of the event. No one, of course, pays much attention to the theories of a person who goes through life forking her underwear out of a drawer with a long stick.
Quite often in those days our house would be invaded by strange odors. “Smells like something died,” my grandmother would say, giving me a look heavy with accusation. I would then perform an age-old rite of exorcism, which consisted of removing from a secret storage place and burying outside by the light of the moon a bait can of deteriorating worms, a collection of more-or-less drying sunfish, or possibly a box of ripening freshwater mussels. Shortly after I had performed the rite, the mysterious odor would begin to diminish in power and soon be gone altogether. My family should have been grateful that they had me around to exorcise odors, but they were generally unappreciative.
I have managed to achieve true levitation only twice. In the first instance, I not only raised the person several feet off the ground in a prone position but propelled him over a fence, across the countryside, and into his own house, where his abrupt entrance through a locked screen door caused his mother to spill a cup of hot cocoa on the cat and his father to blurt out a word that nobody supposed he even knew—or so the subject of my feat of levitation reported to me upon returning to his senses several days later.
What happened was this: A kid by the name of Lester was spending the night with me, and we were sleeping on an old mattress out in my backyard. I had complained of an earache the previous night, and my grandmother suggested that I wear something around my head to keep the cold night air from my ear. Although I possessed half a dozen stocking caps, a search of the premises unearthed not a single one of them. Finally, my grandmother said she would find me something of hers to wear. She went to a trunk in the attic and fished out one of her old bonnets, a thing made out of bearskin and which she claimed once to have worn on hayrides. At some point prior to the bonnet’s being stored in the trunk for reasons of sentiment, a dog had apparently attacked it, either out of anger or fright, and had managed to tear loose several large hanks of hair, leaving in their place grotesque patches of naked skin. It fastened under the chin with two cords. Naturally, I didn’t want Lester to see me wearing such a monstrosity, since he might spread rumors about me around the schoolyard, a place where rumors about me were already rampant.
I concealed the hairy bonnet inside my shirt until Lester had dozed off, rather fitfully it seemed to me, even though I had entertained him for several hours with true accounts of the numerous grisly murders that had taken place in our neighborhood and which remained unsolved. I then whipped out the bonnet, put it on, knotted the cords under my chin, and slid down under the blankets, being careful not to disturb Lester and hoping that I would be the first to awaken in the morning in order to remove the headpiece before my bedmate saw it.
Sometime during the night, as luck would have it, the bearskin bonnet became twisted around my head in such a manner that it was leaking cold air to my faulty ear and shutting it off altogether from my nose and mouth. I awoke in a panic of suffocation and tore at the knots under my chin, but to no avail. There was only one thing to do. I lunged for Lester, hoping the moon was bright enough that he could see to untie the knots. “MOW WAAAA OOOD AAAAAAHHH!” I shouted at him. Through a ripped seam in the bearskin, I glimpsed one of Lester’s eyelids lift tentatively. Then both eyes popped open. Without further ado, Lester levitated.
After Lester’s departure, I groped my way into the house to my mother’s bedroom and shook Mom awake to have her untie the cords of the hairy bonnet. That’s when the second levitation occurred. It was less spectacular than Lester’s but every bit as good as what one might see performed on stage by the average professional magician, although, on the whole, considerably less dignified.
I also possess considerable talent for rainmaking, although only in collaboration with my friend Vern Schulze. When we were still kids, Vern and I discovered that we could produce rain any time we wished simply by going on a camping trip together. Our sleeping out in the backyard would produce a steady drizzle for most of the night. A camping trip away from home for a couple of days would call forth a series of cloudbursts that would awaken new interest in arks and set people to arguing about the meaning of “cubits.” Once when we were about sixteen, we even managed to work up a major blizzard in the middle of June by going camping in the mountains for a week. We learned from that experience that the severity of the weather is in direct but inverse proportion to the warmth of the clothes we wear camping. Our light attire, appropriate to the normal weather of late June, had in that instance brought on a blizzard. If we had gone naked, we probably would have launched a new ice age.
This past summer we had not a drop of rain for nearly two months in the region where I live, and forest fires were erupting all over the place. I called up Vern.
“Vern,” I said, “this drought has gone on too long. The whole country may burn up if we don’t do something about it. Get your gear ready. Any questions?”
“Yeah,” he replied. “Who is this?”
“You know who it is! Don’t try to pull that wrong-number routine on me, Vern!”
“You must have the wrong number,” he said. “There’s no Vern here.”
“I told you not to try that routine on me,” I snapped. “Do you want to be responsible for letting the whole country go up in flames?”
“I suppose not. What’s your plan?”
“Well, I figure a week-long backpacking trip into the Hoodoo Mountains would do the job.”
Vern gasped. “Are you crazy? Think of the floods, man! No, three days would be more than enough! A few roads may wash out, but a three-day backpacking trip shouldn’t cause any more damage than that. And it will certainly produce enough rain to put out all the forest fires.”
As soon as the word got out that Vern and I were going backpacking, the local television weatherpersons began qualifying their announcements: “The official forecast is for continued hot, dry weather; however, Pat McManus and Vern Schulze are going backpacking for three days, and rains ranging from severe to torrential should be expected.” Farmers, whose crops had been dying on the vine, hoisted their children to their shoulders to catch a glimpse of Vern and me as we drove by on our way to the mountains. Their wives, cheeks wet with tears of joy, waved handkerchiefs in the still air and blew us kisses. Upon being notified that our backpacking trip was under way, forest service officials began pulling in their firefighting crews. Long lines of weary, smoke-blackened firefighters cheered our two-man relief team as we passed, and fire-retardant bombers flew low over us and dipped their wings in salute. We drove on, our jaws set in grim determination.
“I sure wish they’d discover a less extreme way of making rain,” Vern said. “I’m getting too old for this sort of thing.”
“Me too,” I said. “It wouldn’t be quite so bad if they paid us to go backpacking, but when we do it for nothing, that’s a lot to ask.”
“Yeah,” Vern said. “Say, the bridge over that dry streambed we just crossed looked a little low to me. On the way back, watch out that it’s not washed away.”
“Right,” I said.
By the time we had hiked the first mile up the trail, we could already hear the thunder.
Materialization is one of the more difficult of the psychic arts. To perform this, I need to hike fifteen miles up a canyon to fish a stretch of water generally supposed to be barren of fish and which hasn’t been visited by Homo sapiens since the beginning of the last century. I’ll climb over giant logs, battle brush, slog through swamp, and tunnel through clouds of mosquitoes and gnats. At last I’ll arrive at a long, beautiful pool at the base of a waterfall, tie on a fly, and cast out into the pool. Crazed cutthroat slightly larger than French bread boxes will rush for the fly. I’ll try to set the hook too soon, and my line will whip back over my head and become one with a fifteen-foot-high bush embellished with thorns the size of ice picks. The fly will dangle down in front of my face. At that instant, three other anglers will materialize out of thin air, gather around my dangling fly, and say, “Too bad, fella. Look Fred, what he got that strike on is one of them with hackle from unhatched pterodactyl, wings of gossamer, and body wrapping from the hair of the tooth fairy. Lucky we happen to have plenty of them along.”
I’m also good at dematerialization. Once, using only a map and a compass for props, I made myself and two companions vanish for three days in a Montana wilderness area. I have attempted to repeat this feat several times since and have succeeded.
Generally, however, I like to practice my dematerialization in a really wild place—Kelly’s Bar & Grill. I simply say aloud the magic words, “Speaking of big fish, that reminds me of the time …” At that point, half of Kelly’s customers will disappear with a suddenness that leaves half-filled schooners of beer suspended in mid-air.
I’m not bad at hypnosis, either. All I need to do is finish expounding on my recollection and the rest of Kelly’s customers will fall into a trance or, as Kelly puts it, “stupor.” (Well, one man’s trance is another man’s stupor.)
Even Kelly, ignorant of the psychic arts as he is, can’t help but admire my powers. Quite often he will point me out to a new customer and warn, “Stay away from that guy. He’s a great psycho!”
“Psychic!” I correct him. “A psychic!”
Kelly will just chortle. If there’s one thing I hate more about Kelly than his abuse of words, it’s his asinine chortling.
The Fishing Lesson
Over the years, I’ve introduced several dozen people to the pleasures of outdoor sports. So what that some of them didn’t want to be introduced! They might otherwise have ended up as criminals or drug addicts or golfers. I like to think I’ve had some small part in saving them from such dismal fates.
My neighbor Al Finley, the city councilperson, is a good example of what can be accomplished if you put your mind to it. Up until a few years ago, Finley had never been fishing in his life. One day he happened to mention that fact to me, and I couldn’t help but feel sorry for him.
“Al,” I said to him, “nobody’s perfect. All of us have our faults. Want to talk about it?”
“Talk about what?” he said.
“Your degeneracy,” I said.
Then he called me one of those nasty anatomical names so popular with guys who like to pretend they’re tough.
“Listen, you dirty no-good elbow,” he said, “just because I don’t fish doesn’t mean I’m a degenerate!”
“Somebody call me?” said Retch Sweeney, who had just walked in.
I explained to Retch that Finley had never been fishing. Retch, as a way of expressing amazement, has the irritating quirk of repeating the same rhetorical question over and over.
“You never been fishing, AI?” he asked.
“No,” Finley said, irritably.
“I’ll be darned, you never been fishing, hunh?”
“No!”
“That’s really something! You never been fishing?”
Finley’s eyes looked as if they were going to pop out of his head.
“NO!NO!NO!NO!NO!” he screamed. “I HAVE NEVER BEEN FISHING, NOT ONCE IN MY WHOLE BLINKETY-BLANK LIFE, YOU FRACTURED KNEECAP!”
“Well, that’s probably what makes you so irritable,” Retch said.
After I had helped pry Finley’s thumbs off of Retch’s windpipe and they had both calmed down, I suggested that the three of us take a little fishing trip together. Neither one of them was too happy with the idea at first, but I eventually brought them around.
“Hell, Finley,” I said, “take a few days off from City Hall. The taxpayers can use the rest. Besides, learning to fish will open up a whole new way of life to you.”
Once he sets his mind to do something, Finley goes all the way. He rushed out and bought himself rods, reels, lines, leaders, hooks, creel, waders, fishing vest, etc. He practically cleaned out the local sporting-goods stores. What made me mad wasn’t that he put together a better fishing outfit than mine but that the city’s rate for garbage collection went up in direct proportion to what he spent. If I had suggested an African safari to him, we wouldn’t have been able to afford garbage anymore.
The night before we were to leave on the fishing trip, Retch and I went over to Finley’s place to make sure he was properly outfitted and to make last-minute arrangements. Finley was flitting about getting his stuff ready, and it was enough to make a petrified toad smile.
He had everything arranged in neat little piles according to function, size, color, etc. His tackle box alone was so neat and orderly it was pathetic.
