The Signal by Ron Carlson

told Mack that a good fish would last as long as the candy did in the boy’s mouth—and no chewing. Mack held the rod in one hand and rolled one shirtsleeve and then changed hands and rolled the other. His father would stand back when a fish was on, never beside him as if to take the rod; Mack was on his own. He’d give him a lemon drop and back away, saying a couple of times, “Nice work, son.”
    The sun was hot now. He could see Vonnie’s line angled out into the lake where the big fish did what he wanted. Eventually he worked his fish in, horsing him more than he’d like, always it seemed at the edge of snapping the line. Back and forth in the red shallows the big brown trout swam, frantic when he saw the man. Mack let him go each way five times and then lowered his pole almost to the water and reeled in, lifting and taking the line in his hand and backing straight away, dragging the trout onto the wet rock shelf and then farther onto the dry sandstone, where it twisted and jumped in a tangle of line. Mack got his fingers in the gills, dropped the fish, grabbed him again and lifted him into the air. It was an eighteen-inch brown, heavy as a single muscle. Holding him between his knee and the rock, Mack tapped him sharply on the head twice with the handle of his knife and the fish shuddered and stopped. Mack carried his tackle and the fish, still hooked, back into the rocky lichen and laid it all there. He had to circle again away from the lake to the rocky summit to mount the glacier and he joined Vonnie where she stood as if her line were seized by the lake itself. “Let’s try to get down,” he said.
    “He’s too tight.” Every step she took bent her pole further.
    “Let’s wait, just wait.”
    There would be some slack and she’d take it and then give it back. Slack, reel, yield.
    “Maybe they both took it,” he said. “It looks like two fish.”
    “Mack,” Vonnie said. “Just one, but he’s worthy.”
    “You want a granola bar?” he asked her.
    “Not really.”
    “It’s from Hagen’s.”
    “You went there too?”
    “I’m not as dumb as I look.”
    “Yes you are.” He opened the homemade biscuit and held it before her mouth. She took a bite and said through the chewing, “Did you get bear claws too?”
    “I did.”
    “We’re at capacity with baked goods.” He took a bite of the bar and then held the canteen so Vonnie could drink.
    “You got a headache?”
    “Very small, but we’re up here.” There was some slack and she took it and more and she reeled in.
    “He’s coming in. He’s swimming under the shelf.”
    Vonnie reeled steadily. “Can you see him?”
    “No.” Then Mack saw something and it was the fish’s shadow in the water and then the trout near the surface. “He’s too close.” Vonnie snugged the line and the fish responded, leaping and in that second seeing the world, the two people in the white snow, it twisted with every ounce of itself, and the fish swam away, the fine broken leader trailing from its mouth. They could see him race down, diving through the bladed sunlight of the lake water, and then stall and settle again as if nothing had happened.
    Vonnie looked at Mack, her face blank and then he saw the old smile emerge.
    “Fish,” she said.
    They were at the wild rough top of the world.
    She reeled in and they gathered their jackets and walked back as they had come to step off the glacier and go around to the lake.
    “How long will our footprints be in that thing?” she asked.
    “Eons,” he said. “It’s going to confuse the anthropologists in the distant future. ‘It looks like one of them had real expensive boots,’ ” Mack said, “ ‘but what were they doing up here?’ ” She reached into his shirt pocket and withdrew the rest of the Hagen granola bar.
    When they got to the lakeside, she admired Mack’s fish. “You want to get yours?” he said.
    “I better,” she said. They walked out the rock shelf and looked into the water. The