On a Saturday I took Jo Anne up the Gunnison River, and inside a pinkish-gray canyon I taught her how to fly-fish. After hooking herself once in the neck, she was out on a table rock in the middle of a riffle, lifting an elk-hair caddis fly from the surface, looping it lazily in a figure-eight pattern above her head, and letting it settle as naturally as a leaf between the riffle and the froth of a beaver dam. She was wearing tight khaki shorts and tennis shoes rather than waders, and her long legs were sunbrowned and shiny from the spray of the current sluicing over the rock. She caught a fourteen-inch rainbow and brought it in without a net, then squatted down to unhook it.
“If you’re going to turn it loose, dip your hand first so you don’t give it a fungus,” I called.
She smiled and shook her head. It was obvious she couldn’t hear because of the echo of the river inside the canyon walls. She wet her hand and cupped the rainbow’s stomach and eased it back in the current, then dried her hands on her shorts and walked across the rock and stepped up on a fallen cottonwood, balancing with her arms, the rod flopping in one hand, until she was back on the bank.
“Wow!” she said.
“Where’d you learn to wet your hand before returning a fish to the stream?”
“Saw it on television.”
“I brought some ham-and-onion sandwiches. You want to eat?”
“I want to fish some more.”
The sun had slipped over the mountain, and a shadow had fallen on the bottom of the canyon wall, draining the glare from the water, turning it slate green. “It’s about to get cold,” I said.
“I don’t care.”
“You’re something else,” I said.
“In what way?”
“In every way.”
I took the fly rod from her and leaned it against a willow that had turned yellow with the season. I slipped my arms around her and pulled her against me and buried my face in her hair, then kissed her where her shoulder met her neck. I ached all over with desire when she stepped on my shoes and pressed her stomach against mine, her mouth parting.
“Oh, Jo Anne,” I said.
“What?”
“I was just saying your name. Jo Anne McDuffy. What a grand Irish name.”
She rubbed her face on my chest and squeezed me as hard as she could, not letting go, her tongue on my skin, her eyes closed, gripping me tighter and tighter until I thought my heart would burst.
* * *
I WANTED TO BELIEVE that somehow my troubles with the Vickers family and the iniquitous mindset they represented would go away, as well as the problem Henri Devos had created by arguably stealing what was at that time a large amount of money from a twenty-year-old girl who lived on tips. When I thought about that, I wanted to break my fists on his face.
On the Monday after Jo Anne and I had gone fishing, I asked Mr. Lowry for the afternoon off, with a promise to make it up on the weekend, and drove to the liberal arts building on the campus where Henri taught. He wasn’t hard to find. Three female students were hanging in his office door while he was telling a joke, his feet on the desk. Then he bent his head sideways and looked at me through a space between their bodies. “Excuse me, ladies, an outlier friend of mine has just arrived,” he said.
They laughed as they left, smiling at me, innocent to the core. I took off my hat and waved goodbye to them. Henri removed his feet from the desk and straightened his back. “Come in and close the door, please,” he said.
“I think I’ll leave it open. Jo Anne isn’t the only one, is she?”
“You’re mistaken, as always, Mr. Broussard.”
“Forget the formality, you damn fraud. Where’s the money you owe her?”
He lowered his eyes. “Would you close the door, please?”
“No.”
His face soured. He bit on a thumbnail, then got up and closed the door and sat back down. “I’m working on repaying the debt. I’ve made some bad financial choices. I’m doing my best.”
“Sell your Mustang.”
“The loan company owns it.”