Amber was the first to move. She reached across the table and drew the green envelope toward her with the tips of her fingers. She slid out the printout from the federal building, looked at the account number, and then slowly slid out the contract. Her eyes went down the first page. She read the figure once, and her lips parted. She read it again. “Clayton,” she said, quietly. “Two million, nine hundred thousand dollars?” I nodded. “For the flies. All forty one patterns, out of that old notebook. They sign on Friday. And the Ruthie, the fly of my wife, goes on the front of every package, with her name, in her own handwriting, copied from the recipe cards.” I tapped the table. “She would have laughed herself silly.”
Travis said nothing. His face had gone gray, the color of river rocks. “Dad, I can explain,” he said at last. “It is not what it looks like.” I said, “Son, I have been a ranger for thirty two years. I know exactly what a thing looks like. A man who is stealing a pension does not need a good explanation. He needs a good lawyer.” Amber put down the contract and turned to him, with a face I would not wish on my worst enemy. “Travis. Is it true? Did you take the pension of your father?”
Then he began to speak, very low. Three years earlier, he had borrowed against the house to buy the drift boat and the new truck. Then he lost a big commission, and the payments piled up. When I moved into the basement, my retirement check was the only thing that kept the lights on. “I told myself I would pay it back when I got a promotion,” he said. “And then I told myself you did not need it. You live in a basement. You eat sandwiches. You do not even drive.” He looked up, his eyes wet. “Dad, it was seventy four thousand, four hundred dollars. I know the number. I think about it every night.”
A green envelope tucked into a wooden fly box held a contract, a printout, and the last chance for a son to stop.
Amber stood up so suddenly that her chair slid back against the wall. She had both hands over her mouth. I saw that she had not known. She said, in a voice like glass breaking, “Travis, you let me stand in that kitchen and ask your father for seven hundred and fifty dollars. You let me read the list. I wrote Carpet cleaning, feathers. I was embarrassed that I had to write it, and you let me think it was necessary.” She turned to me. “Clayton, I am so sorry. I would never. I would have moved us to the basement before I took one penny from you.”
I told her I believed her. Then I laid out my terms. They were not harsh, but they were clear. The drift boat would be sold by the end of the month. The money would go straight into my account. The remaining sum would be repaid through the federal retirement office, on a schedule that I would set, so that no check could ever be diverted again. I would be moving out within a week, to an apartment by the river. And Travis would take a weekly meeting with a financial counselor at the church, whether he wanted to or not. “I am not doing this to punish you,” I told him. “I am doing it because I love you too much to let you keep being someone you do not like.”
Travis nodded, slowly. Tears ran down his face and fell onto the table. “Dad, why did you wait two years to say anything?” he asked. I thought about it. I thought about it honestly, because he deserved honesty. “Because I wanted to be wrong,” I said. “Every month I paid that envelope, and every month I hoped I would find out I had made a mistake. A father keeps hoping longer than a man should. I was not testing you, Travis. I was giving you the chance to stop.” He covered his face and sobbed, and I got up, went around the table, and put my hand on the back of his neck, the way I did when he was six.
I moved out on a Saturday. Travis drove the truck himself, and he carried my tying bench up from the basement without being asked. The apartment was above a fly shop on the Clark Fork, with a window that looked straight down onto the water. The first morning, I stood at the glass with my coffee and watched a heron stalk the shallows. Travis stood beside me. He did not say anything. After a while he said, “I think I understand why you never wanted to leave this river.” I said, “It is not the river. It is that nobody asks you to be anything but quiet.”
The contract closed on schedule. A man from the company asked me what the fly was named for. I said, “A woman who laughed too loud in church.” In the spring, Ruthie flies went on sale in shops from Montana to New Zealand, in little green packets with her name in her own pencil writing. I bought a packet at the shop downstairs, just to hold it.
Travis paid his debt in eighteen months. He sold the drift boat to a young guide and kept the truck. Amber stayed. They went to counseling together. On a Sunday in August, he showed up at my door with a rod case and a sheepish grin. “Dad, would you take me fishing?” he said. “Not for fun. I mean, really teach me. The way you taught me when I was little. I have forgotten how to cast.” I laughed, and I grabbed my vest, and we walked down to the water together, in the long gold light, a father and a son.
I stood him in the current to his knees. I put my hands over his hands on the rod. “Slow,” I said. “Back to ten, then forward to two. Let the line do the work.” His cast was a mess. It fell in a tangle. But on the fourth try, the fly landed softly on a seam of water, and the line unrolled like a ribbon, and the water boiled. A big brown trout took the fly. Travis hauled back with a whoop, and I stood in the river and laughed until I cried. It was a Ruthie, of course. It was always going to be a Ruthie.
