December 7, 1915

Winter arrived, the snow covered the ground and did not melt. Evergreens shrouded in thick, white coats stood like ramparts guarding the town. The river still flowed. Angling remained my therapy and the time to review my conscience. I decided to stay in Steamboat, help Corina and stay out of trouble. Du Bois’s thoughts of departure, already ambivalent, could become timely and necessary with JJ’s threats. Would the drunkard make the effort to contact the French War Department? Would they even answer a letter from the U.S. during a war? One thing for certain, du Bois is listed somewhere as a deserter and traitor. As he said, “The South Seas are a good place to get lost.”

I wandered to Soda Creek at the Lincoln Avenue Bridge after I finished prepping for the lunch crowd. The rainbows still ate fish eggs drifting in the water column from brookies and browns spawning upstream.  I needed to think and in addition, the fish proved willing to provide entertainment. The brilliant red stripes and dark green bodies of the trout helped me ignore my cold, wet hands.

A voice shouted from the main street, “Lad, you never give that fishing a rest.”

“It keeps me humble,” I replied to A.M. Gooding Jr.

“And wet and cold.”

“The sun is out at least,” I smiled.

“You’re using a speckled tan jewelry bead and a hook. I must say, it looks like a trout egg.”

“It fools fish. I put a bit of a toothpick in the bead hole with the tippet to keep the bead about a finger width from the eye of the hook. It gets them in the lip and it’s easier to release them to catch another day.” I stopped angling and continued, “I’ve been thinking of you. I missed the blue rock shooting contest at Thanksgiving. How was it?”

Gooding scrambled down the bank, slipping in his dress shoes, while saying, “It was a good time for all. I wish you could have competed. I heard you have a standard poodle willing to stand between the bear and you.”

“Or JJ,” I mentioned.

“Is he still bothering Corina?”

“Yes, little things like breaking the gate at her house and hollering threats from the garden.”

“The practice is now Gooding and Gooding, attorneys and counselors at law. I’m in the Maxwell Building with my father. Should we work on a restraining order? It may take a while. It needs to come from the District Court in Glenwood.”

“You should talk to Corina about that.”

“I will.”

After a pause, I asked, “What have you been doing? Anything fun?”

“I drove to the new Dinosaur Park in Utah that President Wilson set aside. The canyons are terrific with eighty acres of fossils of gigantic creatures. We should go camping there next summer.”

“Sounds good. I’m in.”

“Oh, I got my elk up on Buffalo Pass. Our hunting party stocked up the shelter that you, du Bois and I built last summer.  There is lard, flour, and plenty of canned goods. I was the first to hang meat, so I chopped enough firewood to last for weeks. The stove keeps it very toasty. You and du Bois should ski with skins up there before he heads to Honolulu. Talk about the extremes of weather.”

“That would be an adventure,” I laughed. “He has not committed to leaving yet. I’ll see what he has to say about that.”

A.M. Gooding pulled his watch from his vest pocket, clicked it open and said, “I better buy lunch at the Cabin and get back to the office. Maybe I’ll see the soprano, Madame Bren-Kraus.”

“I served and met her this morning at her breakfast table. She arrived yesterday. Charming and talkative, she enjoys conversation. Perhaps you’ll see her.”

“I wouldn’t mind meeting her.” Then feigned rolling his eyes and said, “I wish I could be a man of leisure like you.”

“Right, I start work in the dark to have a little time in the sunlight,” I retorted.

He climbed up the embankment saying, “Good for you.” Then he shouted down to me, “Let’s get a beer while we still can. Prohibition starts in three weeks. Come to the office some evening after five o’clock.”

“I will,” I shouted back, gave him the thumbs up gesture, and flipped my tiny tan bead with a fishhook next to a snow-covered boulder. The dry fly above it, my visual indicator, drifted passed angles of ice and then disappeared under the surface. I lifted my rod, had a rainbow rushing from bank to bank and struggling to be free. Good, I thought, I am still in my therapy session.