third break.
I tied on another fly and began casting again.
"You've been gone a long time"
A human voice was talking to me from behind a clump of alder bushes. WHAT? Was I hallucinating? I was alone, always had been, always would be.
"I expected you up here before this", the brush continued.
I stopped casting, completely unstrung. I peered into the brush and still could not identify the source but the bushes shook enough that I knew this was not a hallucination. And what do you say to an introduction like that.
"I've been watching you. Quite a while now. Let's see, this is the fourth year isn't it?" And out of the brush stepped a grizzled and filthy creature about forty years old with a wool stretch cap, army surplus jacket, jeans that had never seen the inside of a washing machine, an unlit handrolled cigarette in his lips, and a big grin showing yellowed teeth. He was enjoying himself.
"You've been watching me?" I asked incredulously
"Oh sure, I live just back there aways. I seen you the first time you ever came up here. Couldn't fish for shit then, caught the trees more than you ever hit the river. But you kind of got along with it omehow. Couldn't figure how you could just walk right up the road and down like that. Sure looked like you didn't want to get caught though. I seen you dive for the bushes once or twice when a truck went by." He paused for a moment but when he saw I was still speechless, he continued politely. "Then after awhile I saw that you was coming in here real regular, and you were getting better with your fishing and the casting, so I got to watching for you."
"I never saw anyone else in here," I mumbled.
"Oh hell no, 'course not. I ran'em off. A lot of guys will sneak in here up on the tracks and try to drop down and fish this stretch 'cause it's hidden. But I figured 'what they hell, why not save it for you since you were always coming back, walking right up the road and all." Then he mercifully stopped talking, letting his words fall and penetrate.
I won't ever know what I would have said.
