Paul pulled up to the prison at ten minutes to nine. He did not want to be late. There was a light rain falling from a pewter sky, which only seemed to increase the mugginess. He cracked the window and lit a cigarette staring at the raindrops rolling down the windshield. When his cigarette burned down to his fingers unsmoked, he checked his watch, turned on the wipers, turned them back off, and lit another. He rested his wrist on top of the steering wheel and drummed a beat on the dash with his fingers.

At ten past ten, the rain stopped. He cleared the windshield again. A man walked out of the bare metal door next to the gate. He was slim, and walked with a measured step. His cheap suit was too short and too loose. He looked both ways, and although he didn’t acknowledge Paul, he crossed the road and walked directly to the car. Paul got out and the man stopped a step away.

“Look at you. It’s been a long time, Vince.”

“You knew where I was.”

They held each other’s eyes for a moment. Paul pursed his lips and dropped his chin. Then, Vince gave him a lopsided grin. The grin he remembered from the river. He opened his arms and Paul came in for a hug. Paul took Vince around to the trunk. “I thought you might want your own clothes.”

When Paul opened the trunk there was a clean, faded plaid shirt and pair of old jeans topped with a package containing new underwear and socks. Behind them were rods and waders. Vince nodded and smiled. Without modesty, he stripped right there, beside the road, in the rain, underwear and all. “Jesus, you’re thin.”

“I had to give up dessert for five years to keep my virginity.”

“Serious?”

“You’ll never know.” Vince said in a low, dead-panned voice. Paul chewed his cheek, mulling over prepared excuses, but he couldn’t read Vince any more the way he once had. Vince was closed off somehow. Maybe he was, too. Vince closed the trunk and posed. “How do I look?” The clothes hung on him and Paul was glad he had included a belt.

“I figured you’d grown some. I didn’t know…”

“Hand-me-downs beat prison clothes. Shall we?” They got in the car and drove off, leaving the cheap prison suit on the side of the road in a cloud of blue smoke.

“I was getting worried. I thought maybe you grabbed the bus.”

“The screws getting one last screw. Like they don’t know where I’ve been every minute for the last five years and when I’m getting out. They made it as slow as possible. One last piss down my neck.” He didn’t turn to Paul when he talked, and Paul looked at his profile. He could see that Vince’s jaw was clenched and a vein stuck out on his neck. Older than he remembered, harder too.

The fields rolled by like pages flipping in a book. Vince stared out the window, and Paul stole glances at him. They drove in silence, mulling over years of unspoken conversations, careful to remember the things they could not say. Paul turned at a crossroad.

“Where are we going?”

“I figured after all that time inside, you might want to go fishing.”

Vince looked at him and smiled. “I was hoping when I saw the gear.” He was quiet for a while. “You know at night, to get to sleep, I would imagine I was on the river. Let the roar of the water drown everything out.” He turned and spoke to the window and Paul imagined him looking out the window of his cell. Then, in sotto voice, “It gets awful loud in prison at night, if you know what to listen for.”

They continued in silence. Finally, Paul pulled over into a wide spot on the shoulder. The Ponderosa pines that had started off in ones and twos now ran in sparse forest mixed with alder and cottonwood along the river. Paul hunched forward, both hands on the wheel. “This was the last spot I ever saw him.”

They had long ago stopped referring to him by name or by relationship. Instead, they referred only to “him” or “he” as if using his name could raise him up like some elder god.

Vince got out without saying anything and looked up at the sky. “Might be clearing.” The low clouds were giving away to the fluffy cumulus monsters of spring and the sun alternately showed through the clouds and threw shadows on the hills as they scudded by.

They both walked to the trunk and got dressed in silence. The getting ready was like a meditation for the brothers. Through the process everything else fell away, until their minds were solely focused on fishing. Vince finished dressing first and reached for his rod, began putting it together. He held it parallel to the ground and wiggled it while he waited for Paul. Paul finished up and they walked to the river together where they stood on the bank, shoulder-to-shoulder. Paul pointed with his rod. “We can work downstream until near dark, and then hoof it back on the trail.”

Vince just shrugged. He was used to having his day planned for him. Paul led the way down the bank. The water downstream curved away from them, so they forded the stream to be on the inside of the curve. “This is one of the few shallow spots,” Paul said over his shoulder. Vince cupped his free hand over his ear, an old habit so he could hear his brother over the stream. On the water, there was a breeze. It was ten degrees cooler, and did not seem as muggy.

When they were both on the other side, they continued downstream. The river narrowed and picked up speed, then dropped into a pool formed by the curve. The outside bank was a log jam of full-sized trees that still had vestiges of root balls which tangled them up and formed the jam, although their branches and even their bark were long gone.

Vince was staring at the log jam on the outside of the bend, belying the power of what was now a meandering stream. Paul noticed. “In the spring and fall, the storms in the mountains pour through here. Full trees get swept down. This is where it begins to level out and hold more fish.”

Vince pressed his lips together and turned to Paul who was taking off his pack. He handed his brother a box of flies. Vince opened it and smiled. “You stocked me a box of dries.”

“I remembered.”

“I suppose you are still dredging the bottom?”

Paul shrugged. “Where the big ones are.”

“I like to think that taking a fish on the surface with a dry frees the fish from the water, the way flying frees us from gravity. They would never dance or leap like that without our help. But when you pull them from the hellish depths, all they want is to return to the ignorance they’ve always known.” Paul had no response to that.

Vince looked at the water, and there was no obvious hatch. He decided to prospect with a Blue Winged Olive. Vince chose a tiny leech pattern. Each rigged up and then Paul waved his hand underhand, a sweeping motion as if he were about to bow. “You first. You earned it.”

Vince smiled with tight lips again. “That I did.” Paul could barely hear him and was not sure he was meant to.

Vince shed the rust off his cast as he worked the line out. Soon he was casting with metronomic efficiency. Paul watched without moving. After each cast, Vince took a few steps downstream. He had cleared the riffle at the head of the pool and was flirting with the log jam. Each cast was a few inches closer to the logs.

He could feel the cold water on him. Pressing against his thin frame through his waders. The weight of it. For a moment, he wanted it to sweep him away, to immerse him, and finally, be done. He was so very tired. Soul tired. He eyed the widow-maker at the bottom of the log jam, a branch being pulled down and then springing out of the water with the force of the river rushing by. That’s where he would end up. Unable to escape the sweeper. Paul would be unable to reach him without suffering his fate. Just stop fighting it and let go. He waded out to deeper water. He could feel the muscles in his feet relaxing and he felt the water buoy him. Just one more step is all it would take. Involuntarily, he started to hold his breath.

This is Part I of Cloud-shadow dragons. Part II is here.