The first rock wall Esme Andersen built was in 1975 when she\u2019d just turned twenty and was halfway through an engineering degree. Her father had been diagnosed with MS, and she was home from college for the summer. People said she was pregnant\u2014\u201cLook how bloated that belly is\u201d\u2014but she\u2019d never been with a man. She just passed clots and passed out a lot. \u201cThat\u2019s why they scraped her out,\u201d Dad said. \u201cEnded up taking everything. It\u2019s a pity, you know.\u201d<\/p>\n
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I didn\u2019t quite know.<\/p>\n
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She and her dad took trips to the creek bed every day for two weeks, gathered up flat rocks from the slippery bottom of the Sidle. The rumor was Esme kept adding stones on days she felt well, sometimes only a few\u2014toiling over making the fit right, a half turn here and there. When she was poor and in pain, she claimed she felt the hum of protection within the kissing stones of her very own rampart.<\/p>\n
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After her father died, Esme ended up living alone behind that dry-stacked wall, being called strange, a fool. But I adored the wall, how it held.<\/p>\n
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Back when we first moved next to Sidle Creek\u2014not a large creek but cool enough for trout\u2014a man who\u2019d been blinded by welder\u2019s flash got his sight back when he fell into its water. When Dad gave directions to our house he\u2019d say, \u201cFollow Sidle from the bridge near Colwell\u2019s Cemetery about three quarters of a mile out Stone Church Road. If you get to the old pump station, you got out too far.\u201d He\u2019d add, \u201cYou won\u2019t see our house from the road so just turn right where the creek takes a sharp bend to the left\u2014where Prichard got his sight back\u2014and you\u2019ll see our drive.\u201d How strangers could have been helped by his directions was lost on me, but no one questioned them, and every time someone said, \u201cWhat do you mean got his sight back?\u201d Dad would tell the story about how the Sidle\u2019s water cured Mr. Prichard.<\/p>\n
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Granddad had a bleed at the muddy bank of the Sidle the same year my mom left. His best fishing buddy, Lee, gave him sips of whiskey thinking it was a clot that could thin, but it was a different kind of stroke. \u201cHemorrhagic\u201d read the death notice. Dad repeated the word three times, slow. Dad said Lee couldn\u2019t have known when he held the bottle\u2019s lip to Granddad\u2019s he was making his death come swifter. For a long time he wondered what might\u2019ve happened had Lee let Granddad drink some of the Sidle\u2019s water instead, but decided it was all good. \u201cHe didn\u2019t have to suffer years of half a life, unable to talk or walk or dance or fish. No one should have to suffer.\u201d<\/p>\n
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But when Granddad showed up in everyone\u2019s dreams, even the neighbors\u2019, he had dirt all over him. \u201cJust that dried-out topsoil from trying to get back to us from his grave. Not the muddy silt from the Sidle,\u201d Dad said. \u201cDon\u2019t you worry. He didn\u2019t fault the creek. He loved it pret\u2019 near as much as he loved us.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Before my Uncle Bobby went away to the pen, back before his layoff at the mine and his broken marriage and the drug bust and the helicopters hovering over the hunting camp while state boys dragged him from the attic with bits of pink insulation stuck to his shirt, we all fished together at Granddad\u2019s spot, like some happy family. But the truth is my dad might have sooner just gone alone. We kids were too loud. Spooked everything. And Uncle Bobby used weird things for bait that day. Hot dogs, Pop-Tarts, bubblegum, carrots.<\/p>\n
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Late-season snow runoff, and a bout with the wrong side of manic, sent Miss Turner into the deepest channel of the Sidle with stones from the Allegheny River weighting her coat. \u201cShe\u2019d given it some thought,\u201d Dad said. Those river stones were smooth and small\u2014unlike the bulky, irregular creek stone covered up in the high-water rush\u2014and she could fit them nicely into the woolen coat she\u2019d sewn with extra-deep pockets, some said, exactly for this deed. Two anglers scouting for spots to stock rainbows tried to pull her from the high cold. One of the Colwell boys, a newly minted volunteer fireman who\u2019d completed fifty-two of seventy-two passes in the final game of his senior year, overhanded a throw bag to each of them, landing them right at their chins. Still all three abided feverish shivering fits of hypothermia for a handful of days in ICU. Miss Turner lived three more years before something like cancer nettled into her woman parts and offed her slow and terrible. Dad blamed Miss Turner for using the creek wrong. He blamed her for the fact that the browns weren\u2019t taking nightcrawlers that season. He swore her actions cursed the line, cursed the hooks.<\/p>\n
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Dad always said attractor dries were best for catching wild browns. I tried every fly in the box, every single one clatched to my hat. Caught my best brown once when the stream was high and thick after a hailstorm. Filled my waders, nearly drowned. I cried out for help but no one heard. \u201cYou got yourself out. Found good footing on that creek bed. That\u2019s what counts,\u201d Dad said, patting me on the shoulder, then hugged me tighter than he ever had in my whole thirteen years.<\/p>\n
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That night I dreamed I kept finding something stuck on the undersides of rocks, stuck to the slippery green of them, and how it stuck I couldn\u2019t figure; I worried it would tack over the whole run. It was stuck to everything. When I woke up, my panties were full of blood. I told Dad and he said, \u201cThat\u2019s natural. It\u2019s time. Go to Mom\u2019s closet and get her napkins in a pink box,\u201d and I did. They were right beside the pretty purses and shoes in boxes she\u2019d left behind when she left me behind too, two years before. He said, \u201cLet\u2019s go see how they\u2019re runnin\u2019 today.\u201d<\/p>\n
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I knew the blood would come. I\u2019d learned about it a few years before. I just thought it was much, much more than it should be.<\/p>\n
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Shiners, in the minnow bucket, darted left and right. Nightcrawlers we filched by the light of night\u2019s moon tunneled dirt in the coffee can. Bait. \u201cLive things to catch live things,\u201d Dad always said each time he slipped the thin hook through a slippery body, but I heard it different that day.<\/p>\n
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He cast. Set the pole in the wooden wye he carved from a cherry tree branch.<\/p>\n
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\u201cAlways use thin wire hooks and rig close to the tail so it can still move a lot. Or through the top of its back. You want it lively in the water. Just as it would be if it wasn\u2019t on the hook.\u201d<\/p>\n
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I nodded and straightened my back, rubbed at my spine. He glanced at me then grabbed a minnow from the bucket and placed it in my palm.<\/p>\n
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\u201cHold onto that for a sec,\u201d he said. He pulled his lighter from his shirt pocket and relit the charred end of his cigarette. Took in a long drag. I watched the smoke come out his nose and thought of gills, of the insides of our lungs and wondered if they were red, too. The minnow\u2019s tickle made my throat burn, made me want to clamp tighter, but I didn\u2019t want it dead. I blinked. I swallowed all that extra saliva. I thought about where he\u2019d slip the hook through the one I held.<\/p>\n
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That\u2019s when he said, \u201cUncle Fatso takes them close to the eyeball and through the snout. They\u2019ll wiggle then.\u201d He laughed. \u201cHere,\u201d he said. I opened my hand and watched its shine flip to the ground. \u201cSon of a bitch,\u201d he said, stopping it with his boot from flip-flopping its way toward the water\u2019s edge. He grabbed it after two tries and handed it to me again. \u201cDon\u2019t worry, you can use them like this, too. Hook straight through both lips. See?\u201d I rolled my lips in while he slid the dead minnow on my line\u2019s hook. \u201cLiving or dead they still look good to the trout.\u201d He took in another drag and winked.<\/p>\n
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We moved to nightcrawlers then. We waited for a hit while the other worms burrowed deep to the bottom of the can, away from the light splashing through the trees that lined the bank. I couldn\u2019t help staring into the minnow bucket, watching their frantic flickers, their wild eyes.<\/p>\n
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Five bleeds later, I got hints when it would come on. Angry at my cowlick. Lonely. Fish looked sad. It scared me, this thing happening to me. Hurt all over. Made me slow. Run down.<\/p>\n
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\u201cMaybe flow\u2019s off a little,\u201d Dad said. \u201cMaybe it\u2019ll straighten out.\u201d Though he told me before Mom left us for Jesus and moved to a place in upstate New York to be nearer His Grace and Love, that she\u2019d had the exact same kind of pains. He wanted to take me to Crazy Miss Jean for a tincture, but I was so scared of her that I refused to go.<\/p>\n
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So, again, he took me fishing. We caught our limit quick. Let the gutted fish soak in saltwater in the sink all day. After supper, Dad said, \u201cLet\u2019s have a sundae.\u201d I couldn\u2019t bring myself to grab the maraschino cherry jar that always sat next to the salmon eggs after I spotted the canned plums. They looked too much like the clots that dropped from inside me.<\/p>\n
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\u201cHot fudge is plenty,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
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In those five months, I\u2019d learned to hate all things red.<\/p>\n
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That frightening leaking out came again just as I was halfway done with the sundae, sending the bowl clanging into the sink and me running to the bathroom. When I sat on the toilet I imagined my own eggs sliding to the bottom of the porcelain while I peed.<\/p>\n
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\u201cYou okay?\u201d Dad said from behind the bathroom door.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI\u2019m fine,\u201d I said, shoring up my voice box to keep at bay any sound of stupid crying.<\/p>\n
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After eight bleeds, Dad told me to head out to the Sidle, wade in the water some. Might cure me from bleeding so much. But I worried the Sidle couldn\u2019t help me, and I didn\u2019t want to use the creek wrong like Miss Turner, didn\u2019t want to spook the fish away. He said, \u201cRegular season\u2019s over. They\u2019ve slowed by now.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Cramps woke me. Cramps kept me home from school. Headaches weighted my eye sockets.<\/p>\n
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Snow came early. I tried to think about the cool creek water, how oxygen would be swelling, how trout hens would be building nests in the gravels, deep in the redds, to home their eggs.<\/p>\n
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A year more passed when Dad said, \u201cI can\u2019t have you suffer,\u201d and went to Crazy Miss Jean without me. She said it was a malady no one aspired to study for a long time. She said she had it, too, \u2018til she went through the change. She said people still think it\u2019s fake, a lie. She told him what kinds of stones to find at the Sidle, gave him a bottle of paregoric and told him to mix it with sugar.<\/p>\n
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\u201cIt tastes like black licorice gone bad,\u201d he said and held the tiny whiskey glass to my lips. I forced myself to drink it.<\/p>\n
Warm, warmer. Cramps eased, eyelids drooped. Rest came. Until pain rippled again.<\/p>\n
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Miss Jean told Dad to \u201csearch for a keen doctor who\u2019ll listen.\u201d She said it may take years. She gave the awful thing a name. \u201cEndometriosis, endometriosis, endometriosis,\u201d Dad said.<\/p>\n
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I repeated it. It didn\u2019t sound half as mean as it was.<\/p>\n
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Dad said, \u201cIt\u2019s a dirty rotten shame.\u201d<\/p>\n
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In my floating self, I said, real quiet, \u201cWill you help me build a wall, Dad, from both creek rock and river rock? It\u2019ll be knee-high and I\u2019ll plant flowers to line it.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u201cSure will,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
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From the steeped water in the pot, Dad took the smooth flat stones he found near the redds where the trout laid eggs. He placed the warm stones right on top of my belly where Miss Jean said my ovaries and uterus ached underneath. I could feel the Sidle\u2019s love walking deep inside. It made me want to live.<\/p>\n
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I stared at the rainbow Dad had mounted on my wall. I\u2019d caught it on opening day near the bend where Lee cut the line on his palomino when he saw Granddad slump, where he held whiskey to Granddad\u2019s lip. The shininess, those pretty dots, that magenta line the length of it. Its colors buoyed me. It stared back at me with its hopeful eye.<\/p>\n
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In those five months, I\u2019d learned to hate all things red.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":6519,"template":"","categories":[9,48,49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6515","article","type-article","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aquifer","category-fiction","category-literary-features"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n