The Signal by Ron Carlson Page A

fish held and their shadows held. She lifted her binoculars and sighted and said finally, “There he is with a foot of my leader.”
    “Let’s hope he’s still pissed off and hungry and can beat these other guys to the punch,” Mack said, pointing, “Set your fly out here so it’s between him and the sun. You want a cup of tea?”
    “Yeah, make some tea and I’ll see what I can do about my fish.” Mack scooped the little stove tin full of water and walked back to the hillside out of the wind and made a rock corner and set up his tiny propane stove. Vonnie stood, her rod against her side and tied on another fly.
    The BlackBerry said now: Not east; W slope. Two mile line. Mack smiled. Needle in a two-mile haystack.
    Vonnie slowly walked the rocks, small steps, her binoculars at her eyes, and then she stopped. Mack watched her: a motionless figure on a silver plate. She knelt, still looking out where the fish held, and placed the field glasses on the rock shore. She worked her arm back and forth twice and then looped a slow cast that ran out onto the sunny lake surface. Mack’s stove hissed; the simmering water had begun to bubble in the two-cup tin.
    He heard a crack and the sky echoed it. A rifle shot somewhere below. Vonnie turned, a question mark on her face, and Mack saw her rod start and then bend double.
    “Here he is,” she said. Mack started to stand but saw that Vonnie wasn’t going to be delicate about it this time. She hauled and reeled once, and then, her rod in a horseshoe, she backed away from the lake. The trout slid onto the land, twisting like a dervish, a blur, and still Vonnie backed until he was well away from water. She knelt and secured him and tapped his skull quickly and then again. She lifted the big fish like a bouquet and grabbed her rod and joined Mack in the rocky lee.
    “What was that, a shot?”
    “Somebody sighting in a rifle.”
    “Or poachers,” she said. “You can’t sight in up here. You can’t be shooting.”
    “You’re not supposed to. Is that the same fish?” he said.
    “Check it,” she said, lifting the two-foot brown so Mack could see the two leaders coming from his noble jaw.
    Mack smiled. “The same fish twice. I’ve never seen it.”
    Out of the wind it was warm and Mack retrieved two paper cups from his daypack and poured the tea. Vonnie sat a minute and then quickly knelt and drew her knife, making the vent cut and the gill cross in each fish and then pulling out the guts in a single pull, expertly, and thumbing out the blood. She walked to the lake and rinsed them and washed her hands.
    When she returned with the big browns on a gill cord, she said, “How close was that shot?”
    Mack looked up and made a circle with his hand. “Up here, in the valley. A mile, two. Not three.”
    “Let’s see your hands.”
    She held them out. “What do you see; I’m not nicked up.”
    “Some ring,” he said. She took her hands away and picked up the tea. “You and Kent going to have kids?”
    “He doesn’t want them. We’re not married.”
    “You’re engaged.”
    “I’m not engaged.”
    “He gave you a silver ring with those three stones that look a lot to me like diamonds.”
    “It’s a ring.”
    “Didn’t that lawyer get down on a knee and say, ‘Yvonne, please marry me’?”
    “He gave me a ring.”
    “I don’t feel as if I’m getting full disclosure here, but it’s a nice ring. You moved in with him.”
    “I did.”
    “That’s a big house. Is it called a house?” She sipped her tea and looked out over Spearpoint. “Did you take your books out of that dairy crate?” She looked at him over her tea. For a moment it was as quiet as the sky, quiet as it should have been with all of the world far below them. He said, “You want some sugar cubes? Sugar cubes are very fine when drinking tea in the big mountains. I forgot.” He pulled out a paper sleeve and unwrapped the sugar cubes. “Take two. I don’t have enough sugar cubes in my own