Read part I of River Apollo here.
Only once had Paul encountered a bear on the little creek that ran in front of his property. It was years ago and well upstream from his house. The gentle valley that the stream flows through intensifies ever so slightly; enough that things feel close and tight in a semi-subconscious way. It was making its way across the face of a hillside roughly 75 yards away from him. He watched it, frozen and fascinated. The wind shifted and the black bear stopped, lifted her nose, and ran directly away from him. It was fast and it made a lot of noise.
The intensity of the sounds around him immediately brought him back to that moment. Even in broad daylight, a stone’s throw from his garage, the idea of being the first victim of a bear attack in this area in modern times was very real. The potential news headlines and memories all flashed through his mind in the seconds it took before he saw the two white tails bounding through the trees. Deer. Loud, spooked deer. Deer, he thought, are so loud when you’re not looking for them. They’re supernaturally silent when you are looking for them.
Paul’s heart was already beating fast from the prospect of a new, large fish feeding steps away from his home. A near-mauling had him feeling like he needed to sit down. He was already at a baseline of tired. A cigarette hadn’t touched his lips for over twenty years. Moments like these were what nicotine and the little ritual of light and puff were made for, and he had a quick yearning for a smoke. Decades without it made it quick to suppress.
Had it been two minutes since the last rise? Even with the mini-drama involving the deer and a brief mental relapse, Paul was confident that it hadn’t been two minutes. He was also confident that the flurry of activity was perceptible to the fish.
Paul knew fish. He sensed them. He knew them and he sensed them in equal measure. And thus he was confident that the deer and his reaction to them were the kind of thing that would put most fish down; certainly a large trout sipping dry flies in the middle of the afternoon.
Brushing himself off, he walked back up to his garage. He pulled the old wooden door closed. He made his way through his small garden to his house. It was one house comprised of many parts. The original foundation was, by all indications from the local historical society, the oldest structure in the area. For Paul, it meant that random people came poking around from time to time. It also meant leaks and crooked doorways. There were three distinct additions. His contributions were the most recent and the most architecturally sure.
He didn’t buy the house 25 years ago for the history or the house, per se. It was the proximity to the water, the trout, and the… whatever the opposite of proximity is to busyness and bustle.
And so even though he had matured and warmed up to the constant stream of anglers walking around his property, his initial response to a knock at the door was more often than not cool. As his elevated heart rate had yet to return to normal the response was cool. Maybe there is a bear and it is knocking at my door, he thought.
Upon opening the door he wished it was a bear.