MAY 1911
PATHS ALONG the river were rife with swamp cabbage, and sweet peas, and meadow grass. Even the city work crews, most of them ill-paid Irish immigrants, who had arrived at dawn to shore up the banks with huge boulders, could not disturb the larks floating from tree to tree. The clouds in the sky reflected in the river, as if they were stepping-stones that might allow a man to walk across the water, all the way to New Jersey. Eddie fished every Saturday near the same spot. Each time he wished that he would come upon the trout he’d set free. People were said to revisit the scene of a crime, and dogs had been known to find their homes after traveling hundreds of miles, wasn’t it possible for a fish to be driven by memory?
As Eddie trekked through the unfolding ferns, the undergrowth gave off the scent of cinnamon when it was crushed underfoot. He felt the watch inside his vest pocket, beating, as if he had a second heart. He’d brought along another bottle of rye, in case Beck gave him any trouble for again coming onto what he considered to be his land. He found a quiet place and hunkered down. Though it was early in the season, crickets were calling, and there was the hum of mosquitoes as they drifted over the shallows. Eddie had brought along his rod, but today he merely watched the stream, looking for a flash of silver. After an hour, and then two, he still saw only the shimmering water. Clearly, trout were smarter than men, choosing not to return to the site of their previous sorrows.
He went to the shoreline and began to photograph the river, hoping to capture some of the beauty of the place. The air was soft, as it often was in this lovely month, and Eddie inhaled its sweetness. He found himself uplifted as he worked, caught up in something outside himself and his petty wants and needs. The clouds drifted like ice in a tumbler. Through his lens the river seemed made of light, there was the shimmer, and for a moment the world seemed whole to him. As the afternoon lengthened, the light began to fade. The river darkened and shadows cut through the woods. There was a shuffle in the bushes, most likely a covey of quail or a raccoon. Mitts, who had been so well mannered all day, now reverted to his exuberant ways. The dog didn’t wait to find out what his quarry was, or whether it was larger and more dangerous than he, before he leapt into the brush and disappeared. Eddie went crashing after him, calling out and whistling. Once darkness fell it would be all but impossible to find him, and there were said to be coyotes that stalked their prey in these valleys.
Mitts’s bark echoed from the woods. Eddie did his best to catch up, but he was soon hindered by thick mud as he crossed several small rivulets. The land was a cattail marsh, and blue herons had begun nesting, with dozens of enormous nests set into the top branches of the tall, half-dead sycamores circling the wetland. Eddie finally reached firmer ground. The last of the day’s sunlight was a pale yellow drifting through the branches. Mitts was making a serious racket, growling low in his throat. The last time the dog had taken off Eddie had raced to find him in a clearing. Grabbing Mitts by the collar, he’d been struck by an unnerving sense that he wasn’t alone. For an instant he’d thought he spied the figure of a woman. A white shirt, masses of black hair, a slim beautiful form. But there was no one in sight, only the wavering branches.
Now as he made his way over a grassy valley where Queen Anne’s lace and red clover grew wild, Eddie sighted a tar-paper shack. There was Mitts in the clearing, barking like mad. The dog, and now his master, had discovered Beck’s abode. On the porch, a wolflike creature had been tied to a post with a chain. The beast lunged at Mitts, but the chain snapped him backward. Mitts darted closer, enjoying the freedom of taunting the fierce creature. When Eddie ran to grab Mitts, the hermit’s monstrous pet did his best to reach the both of them, but got no farther than the first steps before he was pulled back. Eddie noticed the beast had yellow eyes. He wondered if Beck wasn’t a liar after all. No dog had eyes like that.
There was enough of a racket to wake the dead, but apparently Beck had slept through most of the clamor. Now Eddie’s shouts had awoken him. He came out his door in a black mood, dressed in long underwear, holding a rifle. His unkempt hair was tied back, and he squinted through the falling dusk. He didn’t appear to recognize Eddie, for he aimed straight at his intruder.
Eddie quickly threw his hands up to show he had no weapon, only his camera and equipment. “You know me,” he called. “The photographer.”
When he held up his camera, he managed to pierce the hermit’s fog of sleep and drink. Beck nodded. “I know you’re around these parts far too often. You and the rabbit that pretends to be a dog.”
“I presume that’s your dog.” Eddie eyed the snarling creature beside Beck.
Beck snorted. “He’s a wolf.” He roughly patted the wolf’s head, and the beast quieted. All the same, the creature showed a glimmer of his teeth to Mitts, who submissively lay down in the ferns.
The dark was settling in, and Eddie would have liked to take his leave and start for home; it was later than he’d hoped, and the journey was long, at least three hours. Still, he didn’t wish to offend the hermit. Not when the old man carried a gun and knew these woods better than the squirrels that ran through the brambles.
“It’s one thing to have you steal my fish, but I sure as hell didn’t invite you here. It’s my home, you understand. No one else’s,” Beck said darkly.
“This was the dog’s idea, not mine,” Eddie assured Beck. “He took off on me.”
“Ah, Mr. Friendly.” Beck came down the steps. He fitted his rifle over his shoulder and nodded for Eddie to follow toward his campfire. “Now you’ve stayed so late you’re likely to drown if you try to make it out of here on your own.”
Eddie shadowed the hermit to a ring of stones placed a few feet away from the shack, to ensure sparks from the fire wouldn’t fly onto the tar-paper roof.
“Did you ever hear of the fish that climbed out of the Hudson?” Beck asked, as he took hold of the bottle of rye Eddie handed over, a peace offering quickly accepted.
“I didn’t expect you to believe in fairy tales.”
Beck grinned. “I believe in dogs with tails.”
“In this world, a fish can’t walk,” Eddie ventured to say. “That much I know.”
“It can if it has two legs.”
There was a metal grill fitted over the campfire, used for cooking fish and game. Beck kept the sparks hot, and he quickly got the fire going by tossing on some tinder wood. Between this spot and the river was a series of freshwater bogs, some so deep the water reached a man’s waist, where there might easily be snapping turtles nesting. The hermit was right. In the dark it would be difficult going. Eddie had no choice but to placate Beck if he wanted to be led through the marshland.
“Let’s just say I’ve never heard of a fish with legs,” he allowed.
“You think you’ve heard of everything?” the hermit asked. “I’ve seen a fox change from red to white right before my eyes. One minute he was scarlet, the next it was as if snow had fallen down on him. You ever hear of that?” He gave Eddie a look. “No. I venture not.”
Beck had reached for a battered kettle, into which he spilled some water from his rain barrel; he added ground coffee beans and soon enough signaled to Eddie, offering a cup of what appeared to be mud.
“I think we’ve got the same thing in mind on this subject,” Beck said. “The fish with legs.”
“Fishing will have to wait for another time.”
Beck narrowed one eye. “You really do think I’m stupid. You’re too dumb to go night fishing. You’d wind up drowned.”
They were sitting together on a log. Set up against the cabin was Beck’s canoe, a beautifully made hand-built boat fashioned of birch and poplar. Eddie hadn’t imagined the hermit capable of such fine work. People on the hill said that in the winter Beck carried his skiff along the ice until he located a current running through, for it was a rare season when the Hudson froze solid. A good fisherman knew where his catch could be found, regardless of the weather.
“I don’t believe you’re stupid,” Eddie insisted. “Far from it.”
“Do you believe in mermaids, then?”
Eddie treaded carefully. He gave the hermit a swift sidelong glance as the old man began to pour rye into his coffee. “Do you?”
“There you go. That proves you think I’m stupid. She wasn’t no mermaid. There’s no such thing. Just a flesh-and-blood woman once upon a time.”
Eddie’s pulse shifted. When he’d worked for Hochman the process of finding someone always began this way. A single sentence could create the beginnings of a map.
“Dead?”
Beck gulped the last of his coffee and rye. “The dead are with us even as we walk. That much I know.”
“We’re talking about a woman in the river?”
“Now you’ve got it.” Beck clapped him on the back, pleased. At last Eddie was grasping his meaning.
Eddie brought out the photograph from his vest pocket. “Did the fish on two legs look anything like her?”
Beck peered at the photograph in the firelight, then handed it back. “Nope, didn’t look a thing like her. But the dead one did.”