A River Runs Through It: Part 2 Summary & Analysis

Norman transitions in his memories to the summer of 1937, when his father had retired and was living with their mother in Missoula, while Paul was a reporter in the capital of Helena, and Norman was living with his wife’s family in Wolf Creek, 40 miles away.

One day in this summer of 1937, Norman goes to see Paul, following his mother-in-law Florence’s request that the two take her son Neal fishing when he comes to town. Norman isn’t sure what Paul will think, but he knows that Paul loves Norman’s wife and mother-in-law—though Paul still can’t see why Norman wanted to get married in the first place.

Norman finds Paul outside a Montana club at 10:30 in the morning, looking like he’s about to get a drink. Norman shares the news: his brother-in-law Neal is coming from the West Coast and wants to fish with them. Paul says a West Coaster fishes with worms and he can’t condone that. He says that even though the brother-in-law may be from Montana originally, everyone from the West Coast moved there to become accountants, businessmen, or gamblers—since they couldn’t make it as fly-fishermen.

Paul and his editor begin drinking early each morning so that they won’t feel badly about anyone they criticize in the small-town paper. When Paul asks Norman to get a drink with him, Norman apologetically says that it’s too early in the morning for him to drink. He decides to quickly say something else, so he tells Paul that Florence had wanted Paul to fish with Neal.

Paul loves Florence, partly because she, also a Scot, looks like his father, with blue eyes and sandy hair. Florence had said that Paul was the best fisherman anywhere, though Norman says the extent to which Florence knew about fishing was that she could exclaim at the amount caught in the fisherman’s basket every time. Florence most likely was hoping that Paul and Norman, the “preacher’s kids,” would improve Neal’s morals, though most people in town knew not to hold Paul up on a pedestal.

Paul agrees to fish with Neal, since Florence wants him to. Then Norman buys them both a drink. Norman says that Neal will arrive the day after tomorrow, and the following day they’ll fish on the Elkhorn, a small stream. Usually the two are scornful of those who fish in small streams, but the Elkhorn has special Brown Trout and other unique features.

Paul proposes that beforehand, he and Norman take the day off to fish the “big river,” which they both know refers to the powerful Big Blackfoot with its many powerful fish. Its headwaters are on the Continental Divide, near a mine where the lowest temperature in the continental United States was officially recorded at 69.7 degrees below zero. Much of the Blackfoot was created instantly, when an enormous glacial lake (covering today’s Montana and Idaho) broke its ice dam—the biggest flood in history that has geological proof behind it. The Blackfoot is a difficult place for trout to live, since the water is so swift and powerful, but it’s the river the brothers know best, having fished it since the beginning of the 20th century.

The next morning Paul picks up Norman at Wolf Creek. Once they pass the Continental Divide, Paul starts telling one of his stories about his antics, though he talks about them in a removed way, as if reporting on them. In this story, he fished alone until evening; when he was returning home to Helena, feeling lonely, a jackrabbit started following his tail lights on the road. The way Paul tells it, the story is poetic and subtle—it ends with Paul looking back at the rabbit, whose eyes are shining, and then failing to see a turn in the road and crashing.

Paul doesn’t mention that he always starts drinking when he’s done fishing (though never during). Norman is left wondering whether he’s been told a funny story or a sobering tale about a serious car crash that ended up costing his brother hundreds of dollars.

Above the old Clearwater bridge by a canyon the Blackfoot River is louder than anywhere, roaring and intimidating small fishermen and small fish. The brothers begin to fish on the same side. Norman doesn’t love this area, since cliffs and trees block his possible span and force a “roll cast,” in which the fisherman attempts to get distance without extending line behind him. Norman starts by winding his rod slowly so that a long part of the line stays in the water. He then has to use all his power to shoot this line out over the water. It looks like a rattlesnake striking when done well.

Paul watches Norman and is careful not to seem superior, but suggests that the fish are out a bit farther, on a diagonal. They both act as if Paul hadn’t said anything, but Norman obeys the directions, and finds that more fish are biting.

Norman sees a large black shape rising and sinking in the foamy mid-current, which usually is too strong for most fish. He thinks to himself that this fish will now be further downstream than where he saw it, and he wonders where he can cast from. He crawls up onto a rock slick with water, and asks himself where he’ll land such a big fish if he hooks it—a question he says all fishermen should ask themselves.

For Norman, during fly-fishing there are no thoughts that don’t have to do with the task at hand. Hope and Fear characterize these thoughts, and are in constant tension. One Fear, he says, is that there are rocks all downstream, so Norman can’t land the fish right away, before getting to a sandbar. Another Fear counters that the fish will escape if he tries to fight it downriver, so he should try to land it closer. The two Fears argue back and forth.

Norman moves to wondering what the fish is thinking. He can’t be convinced that a fish feels nothing but hunger and fear. He imagines that the fish has caught sight of the two brothers and is saying to himself that it’s lucky it’s Norman and not the other brother who’s about to fish here.

Norman casts his rod and immediately catches the fish and lands it on the sandbar. The fish jerks back and forth until Norman slices its head off with his knife. The fish is too large for the basket and, with its crustacean-like black spots, looks oceanic. When Paul sees it, he tips his hat to Norman in respect.

Norman watches Paul jump into the river and swim out to a cliff, where he climbs up and steadies himself to cast. Water is sliding off him and seems to make a kind of halo, flickering with the vapor rising from the river. Paul casts hard upstream and then pivots gracefully downstream, circling several times in an elegant motion that he calls “shadow casting.” He thinks fish see the shadows of the fly over the water and immediately hit it when the fly touches. Norman notes that shadow casting never worked for him—he’s not sure if he believes in it, but perhaps he just didn’t have the arm and wrist strength of his brother.

Paul is relatively short, but has developed muscles specifically for fly-fishing: his right wrist and arm are far bigger than his left. Norman watches the multiple rhythms: their father’s four-count, Paul’s piston two-count, and the arcing four-count of his loop. A couple emerges from the woods, and they both exclaim at Paul’s skill. When Norman starts to move to the next hole, the woman, who’s wearing bib overalls, asks if he’s not going to stay to see the big fish. Norman answers that he’ll see them later—Paul is his brother.

It’s late when Paul and Norman head back towards Helena, so Paul suggests that Norman stay with him for the night. Paul says that he’ll have to leave Norman for a few hours that night, though. Around two in the morning, Norman gets a call from a desk sergeant who tells him to come into the county jail—Paul has been arrested. Norman doesn’t have to pay bail, since Paul covers the police beat and has friends around, but the sergeant says that Paul will have to come back. He beat someone up and broke some dishes and a table at a bar, and he’s going to be sued. The sergeant says that Paul has been drinking too much lately, and he’s been brought in often. Norman doesn’t want to hear much more: perhaps one problem, he now thinks, is that he never was too interested in hearing such details about Paul.

The sergeant says that Paul is behind in the big poker game at Hot Springs, where things can get more serious than mere fist fighting. Though somewhat confused, Norman gathers that Paul had gone with the half-Indian girl he’s been seeing to Weiss’s restaurant, where they have booths with curtains that can be drawn for couples. A man had stuck his head into the curtain and yelled, “Wahoo,” a racial slur, and Paul knocked him over the table. The man had said it was just a joke. The sergeant agrees with Norman that it’s not funny, but it’ll still cost Paul a good deal.

Norman confesses that he’s not sure what to do, and the sergeant tells him that he also has a troublemaking younger brother. Norman asks what he does to help him, and the sergeant says he takes him fishing. Norman asks about what happens when that doesn’t work. The sergeant is silent, and then tells Norman to go see his brother.

Norman’s mind flashes back to the woman wearing overalls who had admired Paul’s shadow-casting. Then he enters the room, where Paul is standing by the barred window. The Half-Indian girl is sitting at his feet. She is one of Norman’s favorite women because of her glistening black hair. One of her great-grandmothers had been a Cheyenne tribe member back when the Cheyenne defeated General Custer with the Sioux, and cut off the testicles of the Seventh Cavalry after the defeat.

Paul’s girl enjoys getting into trouble, walking arm in arm with Paul and Norman on Last Chance Gulch on a Saturday night so that people would be forced off the sidewalk into the street. She loves having a man get into a fight over her, but Norman says that she makes up for it by being such a beautiful dancer. Norman calls her Mo-nah-se-tah, which is the name of the Cheyenne chief’s beautiful daughter.

Now Mo-nah-se-tah doesn’t look as beguiling as usual—she struggles to get up, but her legs buckle and her stockings slip down. She and Paul both smell like alcohol. Norman carries Paul’s girl out the door as Paul follows. The sergeant suggests, as they leave, that they all go fishing.

Since the Indians not on reservations have to live on the outskirts of town, by the slaughterhouse or dump, Norman doesn’t take Paul’s girl home but rather puts her to sleep in the guest bed in Paul’s apartment. She says to him that Paul should have killed the man who insulted her. Norman says maybe he did.

It’s dawn when Norman drives the 40 miles from Helena to Wolf Creek. He tries to figure out what might help him reach out to Paul. He thinks of other troublemakers in his father’s family, from Scotland to Fairbanks, Alaska, whom he’s heard about from his aunts, who still adore their big, funny brothers. Every Christmas until they die, these uncles scrawl notes to their sisters saying they’ll return to the States soon.

Norman notes that at sunrise, everything is “luminous but not clear”—it is the time when it seems it may be possible to help someone, even if it seems unlikely. As Norman drives into a canyon, he reminds himself that Paul isn’t like other people in his family: he is an artist, and would never run away to Alaska.

Still, Norman is aware that there exist others with brothers they want to help even if they don’t understand them—all of whom possess the futile but tenacious instinct of being “our brothers’ keepers.”

Norman arrives home and goes to sleep. He’s woken up by his wife Jessie, who reminds him that they have to meet Neal at the train station. Norman is relieved to remember that his wife’s family has someone to worry about themselves—it even seems funny to him. He jokes to Jessie that it will be a “pleasure” to meet Neal. She says she knows Norman doesn’t like Neal. Norman agrees, and she says he’s funny.

Neal descends from the train wearing white flannels and a red, white, and blue V-neck sweater over a turtleneck sweater—the only passenger to ever arrive at Wolf Creek, Montana looking like that, Norman thinks. He recognizes his family and says, “Oh,” ignoring Norman. Neal turns his head and waits to be kissed. His suitcase is his mother’s, embroidered with her maiden initials. When Florence sees it, she cries.

That night Neal tries to sneak out of the house, but Florence and Jessie see him. Norman, to avoid being asked to do so, volunteers to accompany Neal to Black Jack’s Bar. The bar is a freight car with its wheels removed, and a mountain goat painted on its side. The bar itself is an unevenly split log, while the stools are grocery crates. Inside is a regular named Long Bow—in this area, “to pull the long bow” means to tell tall tales about one’s own hunting and shooting. However, Norman once saw him shoot five aspirin tablets that his friend had thrown into the air.

On the other end of the bar is a woman known as Old Rawhide, the town prostitute. She had been elected town beauty queen of Wolf Creek a decade earlier after riding a horse bareback around the town’s 111 inhabitants. Wolf Creek is tiny, but has two regional celebrities, a steer wrestler and a roper, who each win hundreds of dollars at county fairs over the summer (though this doesn’t count their hospital expenses). Old Rawhide splits her winters living with one or the other, never lasting long at either. In the summers she lives at Black Jack’s and picks up stray fishermen.

Neal and Norman sit next to Long Bow, and after a few drinks Neal begins out-lying Long Bow with his own outrageous tall tales. Norman notices that Neal’s strategy with women is to first ignore Old Rawhide as an initial ploy, and Norman realizes it’s a good one. Neal is talking about tracking an otter up to freezing-cold Rogers Pass, making it up as he goes along. Finally Old Rawhide, who’s sick of being ignored, asks “Buster,” as she calls Neal, why otters are at the top of the Continental Divide, when they only occupy creeks and mud slides. Neal stops and suggests they have another drink—one for Old Rawhide, too. Shortly after, Norman rises from his crate, and Old Rawhide slides closer to Neal. Norman reminds him that they’re going fishing the next morning, but Neal doesn’t seem to be listening.

The next day Paul is there early: he and Norman never go against the rule by which they were raised: to never be late for church, work, or fishing. Florence nervously tells Paul that Neal was home late and isn’t up yet. Paul says to get him—he didn’t even go to bed himself. Paul and Florence stare at each other: as Norman puts it, no Scottish mother likes to have a lazy son in bed, and no Scot fisherman likes to wait around for a male relative with a hangover. Florence gently wakes up Neal.

The group loads the truck of Ken, Jessie’s other brother, and the six of them pile in. They follow the pothole-ridden road (making Neal even more uncomfortable) until the moment when the Elkhorn River empties into the Missouri. But Ken, who lives in Wolf Creek, is an expert with his hands and deftly manages the terrain. His wife Dorothy is a registered nurse, and she, Florence, and Jessie (essentially Wolf Creek’s medical center) bend over Neal, who is lying on a mattress in the back of the truck.

Since Ken knows everyone in town, they’re able to enter the private land of a man named Jim McGregor and fish on his part of the river. The ranch road grows more and more rugged until it only consists of two ruts. As soon as it reaches the riverside, Paul jumps out; he’s ready with his leader and flies before Norman has even moved. Jessie warns Norman not to abandon Neal. Paul calls over his shoulder that he’ll start upstream, and they’ll meet in the middle.

Norman notes that Paul might have caught so many fish partly because he spends more time in the water—he’s quicker than anyone to reach the river, change flies, tie knots, etc. Norman also imagines that Paul doesn’t want to give Norman a chance to talk to him about the other night.

Ken says he’ll fish the beaver dams upstream. Jessie pinches Norman on the arm and repeats to him that she shouldn’t leave her brother. Norman and Neal walk down a trail. Once they’re out of sight, Neal says he’s not feeling well, and will stop there to fish the meadow. Though he’ll only be a few hundred yards away from Norman, Norman knows it’s a bad idea, since Neal can’t be seen from the bend in the river—but he’s impatient to fish, so he agrees.

Norman walks slowly down the trail, trying, as he says, to leave the world behind. He notes that fishermen have the tendency to want the world to be perfect: perhaps they’d fish better if they didn’t spend so much time waiting for perfection.

Norman wonders if he should speak to Paul about the other night, or at least offer to help him with money. He follows these questions until his conscience ebbs away, though without coming up with any answers. At one point he turns back to check on Neal, who has left the meadow and is nodding off on a rock, his neck nearly sunburnt. Norman says this still water isn’t good for fishing. Neal points to all the fish he sees, and Norman, without looking, says they’re “squaw fish” and “suckers.” Norman is exasperated that Neal can be a native of Montana without knowing what a sucker is. Norman asks Neal again if he wants to fish with him and Paul, and Neal says no.

Norman knows he won’t catch fish if he keeps fooling around, so he leaves Neal behind and quickly reaches a hole packed with fish. At first, when a fish strikes he sets the hook too quickly, so that it can’t get embedded in the fish’s mouth—instead, he knows, he has to jerk the line as the fish strikes. He’s too used to the fast waters of the Blackfoot, so his timing is off.

After Norman fixes his timing, he soon grows tired of the small, easy-to-catch fish. Norman wonders what Paul is doing, since he can’t ben wasting his time on 10-inch Brook Trout. He notes that fishing is its own world, but it also includes multiple worlds: one involves fishing for big fish in a small area where the willows on the riverside complicate things for the fisherman. This area, where Norman now is heading, holds “Brown monsters” from the Mississippi River.

Norman changes his leader and fly, and waxes his line so that it’s sure to float. He arranges the trout he has caught in the basket, and then closes the lid on that “world” of small fish. He catches sight of a large storm cloud in the distance, and many fish begin to jump—a sign that the weather is changing.

For Norman right now, the Elkhorn River, mythical Brown Trout, and the weather are all that exist in the world. The Elkhorn marks the edge between the Rocky Mountains and Great Plains: black mountains that turn brown and yellow with the prairie grasses, just as the trout has a black back and brown and yellow sides. Their ugliness makes them somewhat beautiful, Norman thinks.

Norman wanders upstream until he reaches a hole where not a single fish is jumping: he assumes that there must be one massive fish there who is scaring the others away. Norman steps to shore and casts from the lower end of the hole. Nothing moves, and he begins to wonder if the hole is entirely empty—if not, it means the big fish has to be out of open water, under the willow bushes (a difficult place to cast).

One summer, Paul had been watching Norman fish in open water and, frustrated, said that you can’t catch trout in a bathtub—you can’t be afraid to lose a fly by casting into the willow bushes. Their friend George would always tie more flies for them, Paul had said: a mark of a good day’s fishing is leaving a few flies hanging on the bushes. Still, Norman doesn’t like the prospect of losing flies, even if they’re free.

Norman wants to know why fish are jumping everywhere but in this hole. Fly-fishing means looking for answers to questions, he notes. He practices a few casts into the bushes, then walks up to the thick osiers (willows) upstream. He doesn’t make a powerful first cast, but lets the fly float until suddenly checking it, so the fly drops straight down. He notes that a quiet excitement in life is watching yourself as if from afar, creating something beautiful.

The leader settles on a branch. Norman isn’t sure if he drops the fly into the water, or if the fish leaps out of the water to take the fly, but suddenly the fish has struck. Norman notes that when a big fish strikes, the fisherman’s arm, shoulder, or brain weighs the fish as if on the scale, so that he won’t be disappointed when he lands it: Norman guesses that it weighs seven or eight pounds. The Brown trout thrashes through the bush, weaving it into a basket with the line. Suddenly, it’s gone—for all Norman knows, it may have disappeared into thin air. He wades into the bush to see the knots of fishing tackle, all that’s left.

Norman notes that while poets talk about “spots of time,” fishermen are the ones who really experience eternity compressed into a moment: he’ll remember the fish forever, he says. He hears a voice saying that the fish was a big one. Norman turns to Paul and says, looking down, that he missed him. Paul says that no one can catch such a big fish in the bush. Norman thinks he’s just trying to comfort him, and asks how Paul caught his fish.

Paul says it was in shallow, open water without bushes, since Browns usually feed along the river’s edge where grasshoppers and mice fall in. Norman is dismayed: he thought he had fished the hole just how Paul had taught him. The problem with learning from a master, Norman thinks, is that you only pick up some of what he teaches.

Suddenly, without knowing why, Norman asks if he can help Paul with money or anything, because of the other night. Then, nervous at Paul’s silence, he says that maybe Paul needs help fixing the car from the night he chased the rabbit. Paul simply bows his head and remains silent, until he says it’s going to rain.

Then Paul asks where Neal is. Norman is caught off guard, and has to think about it. Paul says Norman will be in trouble, and Norman, thinking about the Scots waiting for him, says he knows. Norman says he’s done, though he hasn’t reached his limit. Paul tries to convince him to continue, but Norman says he’s through—this day won’t let him do what he really wants to do, whether it’s catch a Brown or say something helpful to his brother.

Paul tells Norman they should find Neal, and says he shouldn’t have left him behind. Norman should try to help him, Paul suggests. Norman sputters that Neal doesn’t like him, Montana, or fishing, and that he doesn’t like Neal, and he didn’t leave him. He feels his excitement from fishing turn to anger at Neal. Paul suggests they help Neal by taking him fishing with them. Norman says Neal doesn’t like fishing, but Paul says he might like someone trying to help him. Norman repeats that he doesn’t understand Paul, who always turned aside any offer of help himself.

Norman and Paul start upstream as the black cloud descends over the canyon. Present-day Norman, now thinking back to that day in 1937, imagines it was like this in 1949, when a giant fire from Mann Gulch swept over the divide, and sixteen Forest Service firemen were killed. Suddenly, the storm rides over them. They look for Neal all over the meadow, then realize he must be safe and dry—at the truck.

Paul and Norman trek back to the truck, soaking wet. Norman pokes his head through the canvas into the back of the truck. The women are holding carving knives—they’ve been making sandwiches—and point them at Norman. Jessie accuses him of having left Neal. Florence says the “poor boy” was exposed to the sun for too long. Norman looks scornfully at Neal’s pale face, shielded by his mother from reality.

Norman feels better having Paul beside him, and hopes that one day he can help Paul as much as he’s trying to help Norman. The women make Paul a sandwich but refuse to give one to Norman. The water leaking through the canvas of the truck turns to vapor, and Norman can smell the vapor of alcohol rising from Neal’s body. He feels that he is half in a sweat bath and half in a cold river. He says silently to Jessie that he did not leave her brother—Neal left him.

On the way home, the truck gets stuck in the muddy ruts of the road. Ken drives the truck and Paul and Norman push. Norman suggests to Ken that Neal get out and help, but Ken says he needs weight in the back of the truck or the wheels will spin out. Weak with hunger, Norman keeps pushing with Paul until they arrive, and Paul leaves for Helena.

Norman falls asleep. When he wakes up he realizes that he’ll need to get out of his wife’s way for a few days if she’s to forgive him. He calls Paul to ask if he wants to meet at Seeley Lake, by the Blackfoot Canyon, where they have a cabin. Norman asks Jessie if it wouldn’t be a good idea for him and Paul to get away briefly. She looks sidelong at him and says yes.

Two days later, as Norman and Paul are driving west, Paul begins to tell Norman about a new girl he’s picked up. Norman wonders if he should listen to this story as literature, or perhaps as an impersonal news story. The girl will only let him have sex with her in the boys’ locker room at the high school gymnasium, Paul says. Norman is wondering if Paul is trying to say he’s in trouble with a woman, or if he’s just concerned about keeping Norman informed even after Norman has settled into marriage.

Norman thinks about how hot it is, and how the fish will probably be all lying on the bottom. Soon he and Paul reach the tamarack trees where their cabin is located, and they hear a car turn off the road behind them. They look around and see someone fall out the side of the car, which has no doors: on the car’s floorboards are a coffee can, a bottle of liquor, and strawberry soda. It’s Old Rawhide who has fallen out of the car, and Neal is nodding in the back seat.

Old Rawhide walks right up to Norman and says she’s brought “Buster” to go fishing with them—she calls all men “Buster” except Norman, whom she calls “you.” Norman thinks he’ll never be able to convince Paul that he didn’t rope him into this on purpose. Buster has no money left, Old Rawhide says. Paul tells Norman to help him, but in response to Norman’s question, Old Rawhide says they don’t need money—they just want to go fishing. Norman peeks into the driver’s seat and asks Neal if he wants to go fishing, even though it’s so hot. Neal repeats that he wants to fish with Norman and Paul, and Paul says, “Let’s go.”

They all pile into Paul’s car, and Norman notices they don’t have a fishing rod. He doesn’t dare tell Paul to stop for a minute for Norman to check to see if they’d left the rods in their car—for Paul there is no mercy for fishermen who leave their gear behind. Norman leans back in the car and wonders why his two ways of trying to help people are always offering them money or taking them fishing.

Norman suggests to Paul that they turn away from the canyon, where the water is too rough for Neal, to another bend in the river with pine trees beside it, giving them a shady place to park the car. Norman approaches the fishing hole, recalling one time when he had seen a bear clamber up the mountain on the other side like a bolt of lightning.

Norman peers into the back of the car, where Neal and Old Rawhide look like they’re asleep. Neal rises up slowly and stiffly, and looking out to the river, asks if it’s possible to wade out to the sand bar. Norman says he probably can, so Neal says he’ll fish there. Old Rawhide wakes up and hands Paul the liquor bottle. Paul gives it directly to Neal, as neither he nor Norman will drink before the fishing is over.

Norman notes that in Montana beer doesn’t count as drinking—Paul counts out eight bottles, and tells Neal where they’ll bury them so that they’ll keep cold. Now, looking back, Norman as narrator recalls wistfully how delicious those beers stashed in the river would be—beers made in the next town over rather than in Milwaukee or St. Louis.

As Paul and Norman wander downstream, Paul remarks that Neal will one day realize he doesn’t like Montana and will leave. Norman says Neal just likes to tell women he likes to fish. They sit on a log and Paul suddenly says maybe he should go to the West Coast, where he’ll be able to do more than just cover the local sports and the police blotter and spend his time getting into trouble. Norman suggests that Paul can cover more important beats in California, and even have his own column. After a pause, Paul stands and picks up his rod, saying that he’ll never leave Montana—he likes the trouble.

The brothers begin fishing, but it’s too hot for the fishing to be any good. For Norman, it seems that all of life has migrated from water to land, except that he himself hardly feels alive. Norman tries to fish around big rocks where fish could be found in the shade, but he only finds shadows. Then he wonders if the grasshoppers will be out in the sun and drag the fish into the open—he fastens on a fly that looks like a grasshopper, but still has no luck.

Norman recalls fishing’s “curiosity theory,” which says that fish will sometimes strike at things just to see what they are, not because they look tasty. He ties on a fly covered with deer hair and feathers. He recalls one time when he was fishing and saw a strange creature trying to swim across the Blackfoot River—a bobcat—and thinks that this fly looks just like the wet bobcat. Slowly, a sign of life appears from below and begins to circle the “Bobcat Special,” sinking and then bobbing back up. The fish finally catches sight of Norman and darts out of sight—the only time the “curiosity theory” has nearly worked.

Norman wants to quit but doesn’t want to tell Paul he didn’t catch anything, so he decides to try one more hole. He walks down the bank and suddenly smells something awful—a dead beaver. Here the fish are jumping, since the dead animal has drawn a swarm of bees over the ground and water. Norman knows that he has the right flies, “generals,” that can imitate insects well. Paul tends to disdain special flies as unnecessary equipment, but Norman quickly draws out a fly that is meant to imitate a bee. His friend George makes flies by filling a tank with water and studying the insect from below, where it looks utterly different—so this fly doesn’t look much like a bee from the fisherman’s perspective.

Norman immediately catches three fish, and spends a little more time to catch a fourth so that he’ll have an even number. Now Norman doesn’t feel ashamed to walk back upstream and rest in the shade. He knows he’ll have to wait awhile, since Paul won’t be satisfied with just three or four. Norman sits and stares at the river until it seems that he, the watcher, joins with the river so that there’s only one of them left—it’s the river, Norman thinks.

Downstream there is a dry channel where the river had once run. Norman notes that one can come to know something in part through its death, especially since he had once known the river when it did flow through this channel. It has a pattern in death, of sharp angles that aren’t exactly straight or smooth. Norman also feels himself becoming the river by knowing how it was made, rushing from glaciers and turning around at big rocks or trees, before picking up sand and rocks and settling to quieter points, then starting again.

Norman notes that fishermen often think of the river as having been made with fishermen in mind, and speak of the “head of the hole” at fast rapids, the “pool” of the turn in the river and the “tail of the hole” at the shallow water where they can wade across and try the other side. Watching the heat mirages, Norman feels that his own life patterns are like the river’s. Now, looking back, he notes that he started this story here, though not yet aware that life stories are more like rivers than books. He had sensed that ahead there lay a sharp turn, circles, and quietness.

Norman shares the fisherman’s phrase to describe the study of a river’s patterns: “reading the water.” He suggests that telling stories involves the same. The problem is to guess when life should be treated as a joke, as it is easier to read the “waters of tragedy.”

Suddenly Norman hears Paul’s voice, asking if he did well. Paul has caught about ten or twelve, and he suggests they go get the beer. The reality of the day, of the beaver, of Old Rawhide and Neal, rushes back to Norman. Paul and Norman are both so thirsty that they find it difficult to swallow. Paul wades into the river where he’d buried the beer. He says he can’t find the bottles, and Norman, unbelieving, looks himself. They’re gone. Paul exclaims that they couldn’t have drunk eight bottles of beer, plus the liquor.

As they trudge up the trail, Norman apologizes, saying he wishes he could have stayed away from Neal, but Paul says he couldn’t have. With a sudden burst of energy the brothers roar and race through the river to the shore, propelled by frustration at the thieves. They catch sight of the car, but neither of them can see Neal or Old Rawhide. Then Paul asks what’s on the sandbar. Remembering his previous memory, Norman suggests that it’s bears. Paul says it’s not, since it’s two red figures. In fact, it’s two bare red bodies. Paul and Norman both curse.

The bodies are about to blister and run a fever. Looking back as a narrator, though, Norman remarks that the days are gone when you could sleep naked next to a girl in the middle of a Montana river. Paul and Norman wade out to wake the pair up, though Paul pauses to take another look, so that, as he says, he’ll always remember. Norman will never again fish in this hole, which he will always think about as a wild game sanctuary.

Norman knows that when the two wake up they will be blind and furious, so he tiptoes around them warily. Even the hairs on their head are fried. Norman points to a tattoo on Old Rawhide’s backside, which Paul says is LO on one cheek and VE on the other. Suddenly, Old Rawhide jumps straight up, red and white with a blue-black tattoo. She looks around wildly and then throws on a few pieces of clothing. Then she saunters back, and asks why the brothers have come back. Norman points to Neal, who groans.

Paul separates Neal’s clothes from Old Rawhide’s. Norman says Neal won’t be able to stand the touch of his clothes, so Paul says they’ll take him home naked. At that, Neal exclaims that he doesn’t want to go home. Norman says that three women will take care of him there, but Neal says he doesn’t want to see the women. Old Rawhide grabs hold of Neal’s arm and leads him slowly across the river. Norman puts her and Neal into the backseat and covers them with a light blanket so as not to get arrested for indecent exposure. But they wriggle out of it, so they drive to Wolf Creek with the pair entirely exposed, Neal mumbling about not wanting to go home. Finally Paul grabs Neal’s arm and says there’s no other place he can go. Paul gets into an argument with Old Rawhide about whether she was going to stay and take care of Buster, but they mainly just curse at each other.

They drive towards the log dance hall, a regular locale for fighting. Norman stops the car in front, and Old Rawhide grabs the rest of her clothes and jumps out, yelling to Paul that he’s a bastard. Paul jumps out to follow her and finally kicks her in the backside. Norman thinks Paul doesn’t really care about her: for them both, the bastard is the one in the back seat, who ruined their summer fishing, violated everything their father had taught them about fishing, and had drunk their beer in the middle of the river. Paul and Norman watch Old Rawhide race down the road. Then Paul says Norman’s in trouble, and they continue home.

As they arrive, Neal tries frantically to get into his clothes, though he keeps stumbling out of his pants. He looks like a shipwrecked person found on an island. As they go inside, Florence asks what they’ve done with her boy. Jessie appears and tells Norman he’s a bastard. Norman tells her to get out of the way and let them bring Neal to bed. Jessie, Florence, and Dorothy instantly kick in to nursing mode, until Neal is laid out like a red carcass on white sheets. Paul manages to sneak out the door to go to Black Jack’s, but Norman is held up by Florence, who asks him how Neal has gotten to be burned from head to foot.

Norman knows he can’t lie: part of Scottish faith means a complete foreknowledge of sin. He says that Neal didn’t feel like fishing with them, and when they got back he was asleep in the sand. Florence understands he won’t say anything further, and just says that she loves him. Dorothy pokes her head out of the bedroom and says that Neal will be fine—it’s a second-degree burn, so won’t be more than blisters and fever. She suggests that Norman and Paul head out, as they’re probably not wanted there.

Before Norman closes the door, Jessie tells him to wait. She says he doesn’t like Neal, does he—and Norman asks why he can’t love her without liking Neal too. Norman asks Jessie not to keep testing his love for her. She says he doesn’t seem to understand that she’s trying to help a family member, and isn’t able to, but Norman says he should understand that. Jessie suggests that Norman and Paul finish their Blackfoot fishing trip, but she tells him never to lose touch with her.

Jessie steps backward, then asks why Neal is so burnt. He repeats what he’d said to Florence. Then Jessie asks if he’d happened to see the whore running through town carrying her clothes just before they arrived—he says he did, at a distance. She asks if he’ll try to help Neal with her, should he come back next summer. After a long pause, Norman says he will. Jessie says he won’t come back; she asks why people who want help do better, or no worse, without it. Norman thinks he sees tears in her eyes, but he’s wrong: he’ll never see her cry, and Neal will never return. They vow never to get back out of touch with each other. Looking back, Norman as narrator says they never have, even though now Jessie has died.