V
I don’t really know quite where to begin. My name is Jenica. I was the girl this great man saved. It turns out he was a millionaire, and he
left all of his money, his land, his cabin, this little book…to me. I was pretty confused when I first heard
about it. He was such a friendly old
man. I went to see him a few times a
month ever since the accident. He would
always treat me so well, and he taught me how to fly fish. I never would’ve guessed he’d never caught
anything. I caught something the first
time I went out with him on that river.
He seemed so happy for me. I
guess he didn’t have the heart to tell me.
Yeah I saw in the papers that awful article about him
never having caught anything, but I don’t think the man writing it had ever met
him. My dad said it was just people’s
way of using libel and slander. But I
guess he really hadn’t ever caught anything.
Now that I think back, he always seemed to flick his line back a little
too quickly. It almost makes me think
that he didn’t want to catch anything.
He was just happy to be there and have the chance to fly fish.
And it makes me sad to see the way people treated
him. All because he wanted to just keep
doing the thing that he loved.
My whole family went to his funeral, but we were almost
alone in doing so. There was one other
elderly gentleman, dressed from head to toe in a great black suit, and who even
wore a bowler hat. Yeah, he came
too. His face was as wrinkled as a
spider web. He was one of the former
partners of my old friend. It turns out
our friend had at one time been one of the most sought out investors in the
country. But more than that, he said he
was a great friend, and had kept in touch right up to his death. He said it was a shame that he had lived so
humbly, that so few knew who he was. But
he was happy that the caretaker had allowed the title of fisherman to be
printed on his program. He said that in
all those years he’d never heard of him being as happy as he was since he came
to Montana. After the ceremony the man
turned and squeezed my shoulder and told me that his friend almost never put
his money into a bad investment, which I think meant he thought I was a good
investment, and he left.
I guess now I should finish his story, because I was the
one who found him. I came to the cabin
one chilly fall morning. I had my pole
with me, he had just bought his new pole a few days before, and I was pretty
excited to see him use it. He always
seemed so agile with that old pole of his.
I knocked on the front door, but instead of hearing him call out to me
to come in like I normally heard. I
heard nothing. It was the first time I
hadn’t heard his expectant, kindly voice.
I waited for a moment before looking inside the cabin, but no one was
inside. So I went out back to the river
bend, and there I saw him, laying there in his suspenders his hand still
grasping his pole in one hand, and in the other grasping a large dead brookie.
The doctors said he died of a heart attack. He was probably overcome with emotion at
having caught a fish. I’ve heard of
people saying that someone they knew died of a broken heart, but I don’t
believe he did. He was too strong of a
man. He had persisted in following his
heart through years of derision and loneliness.
I think his heart was too big. He
died doing what he loved, and I’m guessing it exploded from joy. He truly was a fisherman.
Now that his story’s ended, I feel I should include a
small note I found at the end of this book.
I think this was what he wanted to be the shining conclusion of his
book. And I can’t agree more, as he was
the man who taught me to love fly fishing.
It has often been said that if you give a man a fish you
feed him for a day and if you teach a man to fish you feed him for a
lifetime. But fly fishin’ does much more
than just feed a man. It’s as if he
releases his soul into that vast wilderness with each consecutive cast. Indeed, if you teach a man to fly fish you
free his soul. And now I return home,
free.
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