Bitch Creek Read Free Page B

felt the fish close its mouth on his fly. He pulled hard with his line hand to set the hook, came tight, felt the live weight of a heavy fish, and swept up his rod. The fish bolted for the middle of the creek. Calhoun’s reel screeched. He held his rod high and let the fish take line.
    â€œYeow! Whoopee!”
    The shout came from so close behind him that Calhoun nearly dropped his rod. He jerked his head around. Sitting on a boulder that had been exposed by the falling tide, not twenty feet away, was maybe the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. Big dark eyes, black braid sprouting out of the back of her pink cap, a wide exuberant smile, long tanned legs.
    He opened his mouth to speak to her—he didn’t know what he was going to say, but he figured, under the circumstances, she’d excuse him if it turned out to be something stupid—when his line went slack.
    â€œAw, shit,” the woman said. “That was my fault. I’m damned sorry, mister.”
    Calhoun reeled in and examined his fly. The tip of the hook point was bent, and he remembered failing to check it when he’d nicked an underwater rock earlier.
    He went over to her and showed her the fly. “ My fault,” he said. He bit it off and tied on another. He noticed that a spinning rod was propped against the boulder she was sitting on. “Catching any?”
    â€œI’ve been following you since I got here,” she said.
    He smiled. “Nobody follows me without me knowing it.”
    â€œHey,” she said. “I’m an Indian. Been thinking of taking up fly fishing for some time. Sure looks like fun. Mind if I tag along?”
    He noticed that she was wearing a wedding band. “Let’s find us some more fish,” he said, “and you can try it.”
    â€œI’m not much good with a fly rod,” she said.
    â€œWe’ll give it a shot.”
    So they walked the edge of the creek, following the ebbing tide toward the east where the sun had just risen behind a cloudbank, and she spotted the wakes first.
    He handed her his rod.
    â€œNo,” she whispered. “You catch ’em.”
    â€œTake it,” he said.
    â€œI’ll screw it up.”
    â€œSo then we find more fish. Go ahead.”
    She took the rod, bent low and crept into casting range, then began to work out some line. Her cast was sloppy and well to the side of the fish, but she twitched it back and Calhoun saw the wake turn. “Get ready,” he whispered. “He sees it. Keep it coming. Wait till you feel him.”
    Suddenly the water exploded. “Hit him!” Calhoun yelled.
    She hauled back on the rod, but it did not bend with the weight of the fish.
    â€œDammit!” she said. She pulled in the fly. “I was so excited I forgot to hang onto the line.” She patted herself over her left breast. “My heart’s thumping like that little two-horse outboard of mine.” She cocked her head and grinned. “Okay, mister. That’s it. I’m hooked. You’ve got to teach me.”
    So they stood there on the bank of the little creek while the tide ebbed and the sun burned off the fog, and Calhoun stood behind her, guiding her wrist and counting rhythm for her, very aware of the soapy smell of her hair and her slim muscular body close to his, and within half an hour she was casting as if she’d been doing it all her life.
    Along the way she told him that her name was Kate Balaban—her maiden name, actually, which she went by—and how when her husband had gotten sick, she’d bought a little bait-and-tackle shop on the outskirts of Portland and was trying to run it all by herself. Walter—her husband—thought it was dumb and frivolous, and she guessed he was right, because so far she’d barely been breaking even, but she was determined to make a go of it.
    Calhoun told her more than he intended to—that he was building a house in the woods