Lani Waller’s new book “Grasshopper Bridge” will be published in a joint venture between the Native Fish Society and Wild River Press. For further information contact Lani Waller HERE.
Grasshopper Bridge
At eight in the morning Jim Burnette turned off the morning news, left his study and walked slowly down into his fishing tackle shop which doubled as a garage. He opened the trunk of his car and carefully started his packing. A canvass duffle went in first, stuffed full of clothing and tackle, then a bag of miscellaneous things he might need. Just in case. He paused, looked at the pile of gear and did a quick review. Everything seemed ready including his favorite piece of equipment- an old and weathered handmade wooden rod made from a Chinese bamboo called Tonkin cane.
It took someone over one hundred hours to complete such a rod and they sold for over a thousand dollars each in 1952 . That was a lot of money to a fourteen year old boy, and Burnette bought it at exactly the right time- when he could least afford it, with money saved from his newspaper route.
He looked at the rod, then his fishing clothing. All was good to go, including one of his wife’s scarves folded carefully inside his favorite fishing vest, along with a pocket knife she had given him on their tenth anniversary. She had the knife engraved with his name and he had carried that knife all over the world, in and out of so many places and circumstances he couldn’t remember them all. Both the knife and her scarf were his way of staying connected when he was far from home, a reminder of time and of his life and what he believed it really meant.
The inventory continued and Jim looked next at his boxes of trout flies. He had too many and he knew it, but like most fly fishing addicts, he always thought of flies in the same way most men think of money. You can’t have enough. One box in particular caught his attention and he opened it just to make sure they were all there- well over two hundred grasshopper flies with their angular legs and long buggy wings sticking out in all directions. Some of the flies were simple. Others were crafted with great detail- curling antennae, carefully molded bodies and perfect legs. Some even had large and bulging eyes. “Why in the hell do they need eyes?” Burnette said to himself as he looked at them. “It’s creepy, if you ask me. The goddamn things look like they are looking back at me, like they can see me.” Wonder why I even bought them, he thought. I never use them. He looked at the trunk and nodded. Everything else was OK and ready.
When he shut the trunk lid of his car, Nancy heard the sound and came walking down the spiral staircase and into the garage where Jim was waiting. The two of them stood there for a moment facing one another. She looked at him in the same way she always did when he was leaving. But this was a little different because he knew what she was thinking.
Their doctor had opened Jim’s chest six months ago, and it wasn’t good news. “Nothing we can do, it’s too late” he told Jim in the recovery room. “You’re on borrowed time, Burnette. I’m sorry.” Jim looked back at his physician intently and raised his eyebrows and shrugged his shoulders because he didn’t know what else to do. “I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it,” he told himself.
Nancy’s looked at the car, and all the equipment, and exhaled softly. “You take care of yourself Jim Burnette.” She said. “Don’t worry,” he replied, looking back at her. “I’ll be back in ten days.” “I know,” she replied. “I’ll keep the fire burning.” Burnette kissed her, and touched her waist gently. She smelled sweet and her arms were soft and careful. She paused and smiled again. One of those smiles he couldn’t hide from and when she looked at him like that, she took all the space inside his chest and it felt like nothing else was there.
“Okay,” she said. “Be on time, so I won’t have to come looking for you.” Burnette nodded. “Yes, even if it’s great,” he answered. “I’ll be back on time.” He felt her arms tightening around him, “Just where in the hell has all the time gone?” He asked himself. They had married late and that might have something to do with the fact that it seemed like yesterday in some ways. In all the seasons of their life together, Jim had taken her fishing only once but it was the right time, a warm day in June when the wind was soft in the trees and the bass weren’t biting but she looked beautiful sitting in his boat as if she somehow belonged there. Her eyes were steady and clear.
Moments later as the boat slid quietly inside a warm cove of slender green reeds he asked her. She nodded and smiled. They were married three months later.
“You took the scarf didn’t you?” She asked suddenly, breaking his reverie as he took the car keys out of his pocket. “I know you did because it was missing this morning when I opened up the drawer.” She took his arm and her eyes seemed electrified. “OK, here are the rules. You can’t lose the scarf but you can use it to polish your antique fishing rod. If your really have to.”
Jim smiled and nodded, and felt her fingers slipping through his hand and as he turned away from her and toward the car he considered her response about the scarf and the way her eyes looked. As he turned the ignition key he had a strange feeling but he didn’t know exactly what it was.
As he left the driveway he watched her waving in the mirror. He swallowed carefully and returned her gesture. Usually it wasn’t like this. Old age he thought…maybe that’s what it is. Or my chest.
He drove on the first day stopping twice to fill the gas tank and wolf down a couple of soggy cheeseburgers. At nine that evening he passed the sign saying “Reno 315 miles.” Getting closer now, he thought.
Two days later he finally crossed the Montana border. The mountains along the western border hadn’t changed. Their summits were still carved in solid, unyielding stone with patches of snow holding in the deep cuts and slanting crevices. The dark stands of pine and spruce hadn’t been logged and stood like sentinels along the lower slopes. The valley itself hadn’t changed either, a rich tapestry of moving colors and textures of long yellow grasses, the moving waves of grain, the tattooed bark of cottonwood and the tambourine flutter of their turning leaves blowing in the wind. When he closed his eyes, he could smell the scent of wet hay and sage, the clean Montana air. “The Big Sky,” he said to himself. “Not a bad description. Maybe we should have moved here, he thought. All these rivers. All these trout.”
As he looked out the window he could see and hear the mechanical grind and thrashing blades of the summer harvesting machines and the way they were cutting through the fields. It happened every year at this time. The same thing. Over and over again. When the farmer’s combines came grinding through the tall stalks of yellow grain, immense hordes of grasshoppers would lift almost vertically in a swirling cloud and scatter in the warm summer breeze as they tried to escape.
Burnette smiled. I’ve hit it just right, he thought, for he knew that many of the airborne insects always ended up falling onto the surface of nearby creeks and rivers and as always the trout would be waiting for them with their mouths wide open. Perfect.
At four o’clock in the afternoon he finally left the main highway and took a hard left onto a gravel road. He could see the bridge just ahead and the one lane dirt road which bordered the section of the river he would fish.
Three men were working on the bridge, replacing the support timbers and heavy planking. Burnette waved as he drove carefully across the structure and his tires shook and vibrated as the three workers looked at him with a curious stare. One of them, a tall and lanky older man said something to his younger companion with a deliberate slant of his head and a pointing thumb as the workers stopped and turned toward Burnette.
That’s odd, he thought. “ Maybe it’s my long hair and California plates,” he said to himself. “Maybe that’s what it is. What else could it be?” The men continued to stare for what seemed an unreasonably long time, and then went back to working on the bridge.
Jim looked once more, this time at the vertical timbers of the bridge. They were covered with grasshoppers and tor whatever reason the work wasn’t bothering them. That’s odd, he thought. Maybe they were just blown there. But there was no threshing in the adjacent fields and the air was calm.
He took a drag from his cigarette and thought about quitting as he pushed it down into a full ash tray. Fucking things, he thought. They haven’t helped any. He looked out the window and over the low railing of the bridge. The green pools and silver riffles of the river were winding through the valley like a snake, and as he drove over the bridge he felt it vibrate and tremble. That’s odd, he thought- that the bridge should move that much with just a single car on it.
Ten minutes later, and downstream about a half mile, he looked down at the long strands of green moss undulating in the cold and clear currents below, then a quick and certain movement as a beautifully speckled rainbow trout suddenly curled into the sunlight, and sucked in a large and struggling grasshopper from the surface. A good sign, Burnette thought.
He left the river behind and turned into the driveway in front of the motel office. After the usual salutations and small talk about the weather, the maid service, meals, and a polite “Welcome to Montana” soliloquy, Burnette told the caretaker that he would fish alone and that he wouldn’t need a guide with him. “Just a pick up at dark each day for the ride back to the lodge. I’ll be waiting on the bridge.” The caretaker simply nodded and said, “Yes, that would be best. I was hoping that would be what you wanted.” Burnette nodded, retired to his cabin and unpacked.
The first four days passed quickly and the fishing was good. The grasshoppers made all the difference and the river boiled with rising trout, gorging themselves on the endless parade of drowning insects. Most of the rising fish seemed to like a simple, old fashioned fly called “Joe’s Hopper.” Burnette liked that. To a seventy five year old fisherman who still remembered his youth and the way things were then, the trout’s preference for a fly made up that long ago seemed proof that perhaps some of the things he had learned when he was a boy were still relevant. But I wonder just who in the hell Joe really was? He thought. No one seemed to know. Then or now.
Then, five days later- the last day of his fishing- it happened. An easy, late afternoon cast, one almost thoughtless in its execution, hit a dark seam of current only inches from an overhanging dark clay bank. When the rise came, it did so in an almost invisible whirlpool in the current, as the trout sucked in the floating Joes Hopper. Jim raised the wooden rod tip to set the hook and the line lifted in a silver spray of light, then tightened and stopped.
Burnette looked at the curving little rod. There was no movement, no signal, just the river currents pushing and vibrating against the line and leader. After several seconds passed, the thought crossed his mind that the fish had taken the fake hopper, expelled it and in the process the hook had snagged on something. Not this time. “Good work Joe” he said out loud. “Good work.” As he watched, the line moved slowly from the edge of the river to the center of the pool and then stopped. Now what? Burnette thought, as he carefully moved the rod from side to side. The answer was immediate and the largest Brown trout he had ever seen suddenly rolled to the surface, like an alligator, then turned around and ran directly downstream with a force Jim could not stop.
Forty minutes later the two of them, still connected, each alive and breathing in an atmosphere which would drown the other, stopped, stood their ground and pulled against one another. As hard as they could. As the taut line held in the current Burnette relaxed, opened up and let it all come in again. Maybe it didn’t matter what time it was. Maybe it didn’t matter what he had in his chest. Not anymore. And it didn’t matter how old he was. Not right now. He was fifteen years old again, transformed by the water and the forests and mountains all around him and there he was, still a living part of everything and still connected to all of it. “That’s the best of it,” he said to himself, looking at his line suspended in the cooling Montana air. “That’s what I’ve always loved the most. “
As that thought receded, he felt a stab of sudden pain in his left wrist. It was beginning to swell, probably broken or badly sprained by the fall he had taken only moments ago. To hell with it, he thought. My right is still OK. The three thousand dollar bamboo rod had splintered as well, probably beyond repair. “Shit,” he said out loud, cursing his bad luck. “Shit.”
He looked quickly at the broken piece of equipment. It had always been more than just a fishing rod. It was also something else, pointing to the choices he had made in his choice of a career, and the way he wanted to live. And through all those years, most of what fishing with that rod hadn’t fixed, explained, or helped, Nancy had.
But now in this moment, it seemed miraculous that the fish could still be on, given the half mile journey downriver and the fact that Jim had fallen in, and as he stood there and felt the tremor still alive in the line, he wondered just how much longer a thirteen pound Montana trout could last. When the fish turned and ran downstream again, Jim realized he was surrounded by impossibly high clay banks on both sides of the river. “Fuck it” he cursed again, “I’ll swim for it, this could be the last one I ever get.” As he tried to keep up with his fish, paddling with a bad arm and the other clenched around the cork handle of his rod he wondered what Nancy was doing at this particular moment. Maybe watching TV, he thought as the cold water gathered around his throat and he went floating downstream still alive and chasing his dream at seventy five, and the largest trout he had ever hooked.
Ten minutes later, and a hundred yards downstream, the alligator trout decided to stop again. As Burnette stood up and waded carefully toward it, he looked up at the darkening Montana sky and he knew that the truck from the lodge was probably on its way and that he was running out of time, so he told the trout that he just wanted to look at it- just for a moment- and that he would release it and that it really wouldn’t be any worse for this temporary encounter with a human being. For a moment nothing happened and Jim smiled, and considered the possibility that perhaps the trout was thinking about it. Then, without hesitation the immense fish answered and bolted back downstream again in a powerful run and Jim Burnette was out of tricks, unable to go any further. The wooden rod collapsed completely as the line broke. It was over.
He looked at the fractured and splintered wooden rod, the silver ferrules which joined it together, the dark and sweaty cork handle and his name carefully inscribed in black ink. He couldn’t count all the trout which had yielded to its pressure over the past forty years. “Well over a thousand” he said out loud, and he was right. His jaw tightened. That should be enough for anyone, he thought. Even me.
He gazed once again at the shoreline and the grass bending in the wind. He could see the river rushing over its polished stone and gravel bed. He could see the sun burning down upon the surface of the stream in a rainbow blaze of many colors. And inside that moment he could feel himself still alive inside his soaked shirt, still solid and strong, the tension in his shoulders, and the way his heart was beating. He could feel the earth itself beneath his feet and Jim believed it knew he was still there, and still standing where he wanted to be. Where he was supposed to be when he wasn’t with Nancy.
He touched his side and could feel his pocket knife inside his shirt, still wrapped inside her silken scarf and he looked up into the growing darkness as the river ran around him and the life he had chosen. His eyes scanned the distant horizon, the black silhouette of the forests and the winding river in front of him. He looked at his watch, and then up at the sky. The first stars had appeared. I have to quit now, he thought. It’s time to leave. The truck will be waiting.
When he reached the pick up point he could see the lights of the vehicle dancing up and down in the darkness still about a mile away. He stopped where he was supposed to and as he held his swollen wrist and waited, he heard a cracking sound somewhere up ahead, as if a branch was breaking in the night. It isn’t a bear or a deer, he thought. They don’t sound like that.
Then two more sharp points of sound, one after another, each steady and careful, rising in the night and when he looked, Nancy was somehow there, coming out of the trees and standing in the road on the other side of the wooden bridge. She was looking at him in a strange way, with her head tilted to one side and Jim could see the lines in her face and her bright eyes burning in the dark.
The truck appeared next and Burnette wasn’t sure if the driver could see
Nancy. Jim froze in place, terrified and unable to move, as the vehicle drew near. And then, his question was answered. He knew then what it was.
“Now fucking what?” he asked himself. “What comes next?” Nancy looked at Jim, then the driver briefly as she crossed the bridge and came up to her husband of thirty five years. He was shaking as he tried to speak but no words came, and as he looked into the light in her eyes, he knew then what it was and that it wouldn’t be much longer. He tried to reach out and put his arms around her, but his hands wouldn’t move. His mouth was dry and his chest was burning.
“I didn’t know what else to do,” she whispered as she looked back at him and put her arms around his neck. “I wasn’t sure what part of the river you would be fishing on and I wasn’t sure just where you would lose the trout, so I was lucky to find you.” She put her hands on his chest. “Oh, Jim” she said. “I’m here. I’m really here. This isn’t a dream. This is really happening.” He could feel her fingers pressing against him, and the failing rhythm of his heart. How could this be? Jim thought. It couldn’t be, but somehow it was, springing from an ancient place in the human heart and mind, a place which emerges during the final moments of ordinary life, a temporary bridge between life and death. The strangest thing was that Jim always had a place in him that didn’t believe he would ever die. That always happened to someone else on the evening news or in the movies and magazines. Or someone else he knew. He had always ignored all of that like most men do, and he lived as if it was never going to happen to him and perhaps that was the best way to live. He didn’t know.
He drew his breath in sharply and fell to the ground, as the driver jumped out of the truck and knelt over Burnette to feel his pulse. “You just go on,” Nancy whispered, as she held Jim’s head in her lap. “Do what you have to do and don’t worry, Honey. I’ll find you again. I promise. I will find you.”
Nancy stood back as the driver picked Jim up and put him in the front seat of the truck. As driver pushed the rusted metal door closed, Burnette thought it sounded harmonic, with a far away squeaking noise not unlike the notes of a musical instrument, but one he had never heard before.
The driver released the parking brake, and stepped on the accelerator as Nancy stood there in the road, growing smaller, crying and waving in the rear view mirror. As the truck crossed the bridge. Burnette could see the grasshoppers on the bridge turn and look at him, as he passed by them.Seconds later the driver was gone, the truck no longer existed and the river was no longer there.
Only Nancy remained, and as Jim looked at her for the last time, she returned his gaze. Her eyes were like they always had been, unwavering, steady and clear, still shining in the gathering darkness, still looking at him.That was all that mattered. That, and the promise she had made. The rest could go to hell.