Chasing a Blond Moon(60)

Sometimes investigations were easy. This one wouldn’t be, but there was a thread: Lansing. If he got desperate, he would try to wend his way into the Department of Defense system, but only as a last resort. If Toogood was from Lansing, why had he come to the U.P. and remained here? Were there relatives in Lansing? Had he had contact with them after his release? So many questions and no good answers.

He was studying the map again when Nantz returned.

“Gear’s loaded,” she said, hardly able to contain her excitement.

“Do me a favor in Lansing?” he asked.

“Sure.”

He handed her the folder. “Oliver Toogood, Trapper Jet. He graduated from Lansing High School in 1947. There ought to be an old yearbook with a photo.”

“If they haven’t cleaned the attic,” she said. “I’ll give it a try.”

She nuzzled his neck. “Let’s move it, big boy! We’re burning daylight!”

Walter looked at the unpainted cabin as they put on waders and asked, “What’s this?”

“Where your father lived before I dragged him back to civilization,” Nantz said. “The term ‘lived’ is figurative,” she added with a wink.

“Looks like a hermit’s place,” Walter said.

Service shot a dirty look at his son, but saw that the boy was smiling.

“Chill, it’s a joke,” the boy said.

Nantz said, “Some joke. It looks even more pathetic inside.”

Slippery Creek was difficult to fish with a fly rod. It was overgrown with wild grapevines and tag alders, but there was a promising riffle about two hundred yards downstream. Service led them to it through several groves of white birch, letting Walter lug the portable grill and cooler.

Nantz took rods out of their tubes and put them together while Service checked the grill to make sure they had gas. “I checked it at home,” Nantz said. “Let’s fish.”

She handed two rods to Service, both of them eight-foot 4-weights.

“Rig Walter,” she said. “I’m gonna fish.”

Walter’s initial casts were clumsy, and like most beginners with a fly rod, he broke his wrist like he was trying to throw a ball. Service showed him how to point his forefinger down the rod and to lock his wrist. “It’s a lever,” he explained. “The weight is in the line, not the fly. The line takes the fly out to the target. It’s like a slap shot. The trick is timing, not back swing or force.”

“Yessss!!!” Nantz shouted.

She had a fish on and was letting it run, enjoying the tug.

“You don’t have to exhaust it,” he reminded her.

She laughed. “It’s gonna be in our bellies in an hour. This is catch-and-digest night.”

He loved watching her fish. She took it seriously, learned quickly, and over time had become a pretty good caster.

Walter hooked a small brook trout after about fifteen minutes of trying. His son fished with a singular focus and made corrections without comment. The trout slashed at a Size 18 royal stimulator, a dry fly that did not mimic a particular insect. He played the fish pretty well and got it to his leg. “It’s a trout,” the boy said, “maybe eight inches.”

“Let it go,” Service said. “Let’s shoot for ten-inchers.” He looked over at Nantz. “How big was yours?”

“Big enough,” she cackled.

Service never rigged his rod. He watched Walter and Maridly and coached, and they groused and laughed, but in an hour they had six fish gutted and ready for the grill.

He sprinkled them lightly with brown sugar, inside and out, salt and pepper, and set them aside on tin foil. He fried bacon slices in a small pan until the bacon was beginning to firm up, then put one strip inside each trout and another on top. He cut lemons into thin slices and put slices inside and on top of the fish and pinned them with twigs he had whittled. When the fish were ready, he put them on tin foil on the grill.

Walter and Nantz continued to fish, releasing what they caught.

“Smells good!” Nantz shouted. “There’s wine in the cooler.”

He opened the cooler and dug around. Not wine, but champagne, Taittinger. There were also three glass flutes.

“Three?” he called over to her.

“His first fish with a fly rod. We’re gonna celebrate as a family. Firsts matter.”

“Why the brown sugar?” his son asked as he stared at the trout on his paper plate.

“Takes out the iodine flavor.”

The boy inhaled the two fish and wanted more. “Cook a couple more if I get ’em?” he asked his father.

Nantz poked Service. “Sure,” he said, “but they aren’t always so cooperative.”