the technique but received no satisfaction. Then, checking behind him to see how much leeway he had for the backcast, he slipped two more pulls from the reel, lifted the whole length of line, sending it backward, then stopped the rod abruptly. He waited a count and sent it forward again. The fly uncoiled in front of him and landed a little upstream of where he wanted it, but a quick flip mended the line and gave him the drift he needed. Sure enough, from beneath the fallen log flashed an apparition. Karl lifted the rod to set the hook and felt the desperate tug of life.
It took a few minutes to bring the wildly darting, running beast under control. Then he patiently reeled it in until, holding his rod high over his head, he could reach down and seize it by the tail.
The fish was no more than sixteen inches, but, as the Dutchman used to say, it had shoulders. A fine offering it would make when he reached the village. Perhaps, he thought, the chief would ask him to share a meal.
When he looked up, the young Indian was gone. The fish arched its back. Then came a sickening splash as it broke free of his hold.
Shortly he heard movement upstream. The young Indian stood on a raised bank above a deep, murky pool. He glanced at Karl, then set eyes on the impossibly dark waters for a long moment before lifting his arm and hurling a spear. It pierced the river with hardly a splash. The butt end rose, splashing madly this way and that. The young man took several quick, sure steps downriver, pulling in the cord attached to the spear, then plunged his arm in up to the shoulder. When he raised it again, he had a fish twice as large as the one Karl had lost. The Indian flung it unceremoniously to the bank. The brutal efficacy was like an arrow striking Karl’s breast.
“Good fish,” he shouted.
But by then the Indian had vanished into the reeds. Karl reeled in his line, broke down the rod, and pulled himself from the river.
When he reached the village, the chief was waiting for him. His skin had the weathered color of deadfall stripped of bark. Alongside him was the brave.
Karl showed the chief his meticulous documentation, but the chief showed no interest.
“You have the money?” he said.
“Here,” Karl said, handing it to him. “Don’t you even want to count it?”
“Your people are like fire,” said the chief. “You cannot number the flames.”
“What will you do with the money?” Karl asked.
“We will not buy sticks like yours for fishing,” said the chief. The brave laughed. “My son said you lost your grayling.”
“And your son caught his,” Karl said.
“When we want a thing, we want it only for itself, and we get it,” said the chief. “Your people always are thinking about something more.”
“Like beauty and grace, you mean,” said Karl.
“It is a strange time and place for you to be speaking of such things,” said the chief.
More than a decade passed before Karl worked these currents again with greased line and fur and feather. By then his soul had come dangerously close, through brutal experience, to losing the very thought of grace.
5
AFTER KARL ALIGHTED FROM THE TRAIN in Chicago, he wandered the streets, duffel bag in hand, taking it all in. People wore every manner of costume, from top hats and bowlers to what Karl’s father, leafing through the Sears, Roebuck catalog, called “immigrant caps.”
The women all seemed larger than life, with their bustles and high, corseted busts. Karl had never seen such an acreage of exposed female skin, an effect multiplied by the number of months in which the only women he had seen were in the Indian village, as wrapped-up as their papooses. At some point in his wide-eyed meander he came upon the bright blue waters of the lake. Many women were out sunning themselves: shameless, smooth, wonderful legs below their bloomers. What a grand thing a city was!
It did not take long before Karl’s own appearance began to make him self-conscious. No matter how diverse the fashion he saw on the streets, he did not run into anyone else looking like a lumberjack. His untrimmed beard itched with each young woman he caught noticing it. His utility shirt felt crude, his boots cumbersome. Suddenly he wanted refuge, so he asked directions to the address Uncle John had given him.
As he passed the Board of Trade, about which he had heard so much complaining in Abbeville, he could not help thinking of it as an enormous grain elevator, with all the green growth of the plains pouring through it. He pushed open the heavy door of the building where his uncle had his office and stepped into a limestone cave lit by hundreds of lamps. It was not in any ordinary sense a place of worship, but it had a church’s solemn hush.
On either side of the lobby identical staircases rose like the ascent of angels. At the landing of what was labeled “mezzanine” the staircases gave way to more conventional steps. He climbed and climbed until, by the time he reached the floor marked 5, he was perspiring.
When he found the door with his uncle’s name on it, he knocked. No answer. In Abbeville you usually just stepped into folks’ houses and called out a name, but here he wasn’t sure. He knocked again and heard an exasperated voice say, “Come on in, for heaven’s sake!”
Inside stretched a long, empty room with a few vacant chairs and low, round tables holding newspapers in various states of disarray. He noticed a window set into the wall at the far end of the room. Behind it sat a woman with flame-red hair pulled up into a swirl.
“Didn’t you hear me?” she said through a round hole in the glass.
“I thought you said to come in,” he said, leaning toward retreat.
“Three times,” she said. “You’re all sweaty.” The word in her mouth made him feel exposed. “Is the elevator broken?”
“You keep the grain right here?” he said.
She looked at him as if he were the one who used foreign words like mezzanine.
“An elevator,” she said. “It rides people up and down.”
“Well, I never heard of anything like that,” he said.
“Where in the world do you come from?” she said.
“From Michigan just now,” he said. “Been logging there. Originally from a place in farm country you never heard of.”
“Then you must be Karl,” she said out of nowhere. “Go sit down and cool yourself. He’s been a regular pest, asking after you.”
She disappeared, and moments later Uncle John entered the waiting room, looking nothing like he did in the woods. Under a starched white collar and vest flashed a silk tie stuck through with a gold pin.
“Hello, son,” he said, offering his cultivated hand. “Luella? Where did you disappear to? I need you to help me get this lad into the appropriate straitjacket.”
The redheaded woman emerged from the door.
“Should we try the Fair?” the young woman said.
A county fair in the middle of the city?
“Ask for Will Doyle,” said Uncle John.
“What should we be looking for?” asked the young woman.
“Two good suits with waistcoats. Shirts. Ties. Everything it would take to make you look at him twice.”
“I’ve done that already,” said the young woman.
Luella. Karl rolled the word silently on his tongue. It made him tingle.
“Well?” she said, looking right at him. He could not think of a single word beyond her name. She seemed delighted to prolong his state of suspension. But finally she spoke again. “The boss has given us orders.” Then she actually took his hand,