Rules of the Road

 

 

 

 

He took his thesis proposal to his faculty advisor’s office and left it with his secretary.  She was very pretty, so he flirted with her and she flirted back.  She asked what kind of car he drove, and he said a Dodge pickup truck.  She said she was thinking about dating someone who drove a pickup truck for a change of pace.  The guys who drove Mercedes and BMWs were becoming tiresome.  He said he’d be willing to help her out.

They began by having dinner at her place.  Afterward she did a numerology thing with his name and said he’d never have much money.  He thought that was perceptive.  Then they had sex, but not in her bed.  They did it in the spare bedroom because she didn’t want his aura disturbing her sleep.  He thought that was odd.

They went to a restaurant on their second date.  She thought he should pay.  He said guys who drove Mercedes and BMWs paid.  Guys who drove pickups trucks went Dutch.

And that was the end of that.

 

 

 

Hogback Creek

 

 

 

Mom was afraid to let me fish alone, but by the time I was eleven Dad said it was time.  “The boy can handle himself.”

“But it’s dangerous being out there all alone.  Something could happen and there’d be no one to help him.”

“He learns fast.  I’ve watched him and he knows what do.  It’s time he goes out on his own.”

“But….”

“I know it’s hard.  I wouldn’t have the first idea how to raise a girl, but you do.  You’ve got to trust that I know what I’m doing.   And you’ve got to trust the boy.  The world can be a threatening place, and I want him to walk through it with confidence and not run away when things get tough.  Don’t you?”

“Well, sure.”

“Then he’s got to practice.  There’s some risk involved in living, and I want him to learn as much as he can while he’s still under our wing.”   

“I know you’re right.  It’s just hard.”

“You’re a good mother.  We’re a good team, you know.”

“Yeah.”

 We usually fished the streams on the eastern slope of the Sierra from Lone Pine to Bishop.  My favorite was Hogback Creek, twenty miles south of Independence.  It was less than two feet wide, but its course could be seen for miles, a dusky green line of chamise, manzanita, and jimbush arching over the creek bed as it wound across the dun landscape of an alluvial fan and disappeared into the valley below.  I fished it with a pole I’d shortened to two feet.  I crawled in under the brush, hacking my way to the water with a machete Dad bought me at a war surplus store.  The best I could manage was occasionally kneeling in the thorny maze.  More often I slithered in and lay on my stomach.  Sometimes the pole was useless and I held the line in my hand.  If I could keep from shaking the brush and staying out of their line of sight, I might catch a sixteen inch rainbow in water six inches deep.  Sometimes the fish were longer than the creek was wide.

One time I was on my stomach baiting my hook when I heard a rattlesnake.  It sent a chill up my spine.  I held still, looking around, and there, not three feet away, a rattler lay coiled under a clump of jimbush ready to strike.  I wished I could tell how long it was.  I remembered a snake could strike only a third of its length.  If it was less than four feet, I was safe, but I couldn’t tell.  My heart pounded and I knew I should stay calm, so I breathed deeply, but it didn’t work.  I was scared.  I remembered Dad saying that when he was a kid and came across a rattlesnake, he’d pick it up by the tail and snap it like a whip, popping its head off.  Some of the stuff Dad came up with was pretty funny, but I knew for sure that only an idiot would pick up a live rattlesnake.

I was afraid to move.  The snake striking hmein the face was a monstrous thought.  I lay there for what seemed an eternity, but the snake wouldn’t go away.  I realized I would have to do something.  I thought of my fishing pole.  I held it in my left hand.  I wasn’t very good with my left, but I knew I would have to try.  Very slowly I moved the pole toward the snake using only my wrist, and after a while it began to ache.  I thought the pain might make the pole shake, so I concentrated with all my might and inched the pole toward the snake.  I came in from the side.  I was sure the snake could see it, but that might be a good thing.  If it struck at the pole, I could back out of range.  The prospect of doing that kept me tense.  I was soaked with sweat and my heart pounded against the ground like a sledgehammer.  For some reason that made me think of poetry, the stuff I’d studied in school that year.  Keats and Shelley and their suffering, tender hearts, their throbbing, pounding hearts just like mine, and I remembered a poem about a beautiful woman without mercy.  What a bunch of bullshit that was.  It was this snake that didn’t have mercy, and I hoped to Hell I would be around next year to read more of that corny stuff.

I finally got the pole over the snake’s head.  I hoped I had leverage to bring it down hard and hold it against the ground.  It wasn’t a sure thing, and I didn’t want to be under all that brush with a pissed off snake, but what choice did I have?  I snapped the pole down.  It caught the snake behind the head and held it against the ground.  My heart rate doubled and the pressure behind my eyes throbbed like someone beating on a big bass drum.

I pinned it.  I rose to my knees, my back pushing against the thorny canopy.  I could feel blood running under my shirt, or was it sweat?  Who cared?  It was better than being bitten in the face.  I pulled my machete out, leaned over, and lopped the snake’s head off.  I backed out of the undergrowth using my fishing pole and the machete to drag the body and severed head after me.  I dug a hole with the machete and buried the head.  It was still dangerous, and I didn’t want someone coming along and stepping on it.  Then I flung the rest of the snake into the desert as far as I could.  I looked down and saw mud on my crotch and realized I’d peed my pants.  I rinsed off with water from my canteen as I walked back to the car to wait for Dad.  I knew I would tell Dad about the snake. Mom was another story. 

“You did good,” Dad said.  “Were you scared?”

“Yeah.”

“I’d have been.  You okay?”

“Yeah.”

“You’ll probably get the shakes in a while.  Delayed reaction.”

“Okay.”

“Catch any fish?”

“Yeah, but I don’t know where they are.  Must have dropped ‘em.”

“It’s not important.  Not a word of this to your mother.”

“No problem.”

“We better get back,”

We drove back to camp, and it was a year before I fished Hogback

Creek again.