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late october

in the wilderness

I know the smell of pine loam moldering in the fall.

Watch a coyote hunt a house cat in the Chinese cemetery.

Native rainbow trout shake their heads at a 1⁄8 Rooster Tail spinner at midday, swallow it come evening.

I know that Rowan loves JT, even after he beat her.

the wanderer

Rowan smells like water. I told her that once. I said, “You smell like an eddy.” I was thinking of the North Fork of the Clearwater. The backcountry runs, rocks and pools, clean enough to see the trout cut to shadow.

Rowan was drinking a Monster in front of the Mini-­Mart. She said, “A what?”

She’d sliced the knees out of her jeans, scissored them way back to the side, and I kept looking at all that exposed skin.

I said, “Like an eddy on the river, when you wade in. You know?”

“When I wade in?”

“To fish,” I said.

She tilted her head, and the hair she’d pulled up bobbed to the left. “So I smell like a fish?”

“No,” I said, “not like a fish. You smell like an eddy.”

She smiled, already shaking her head, laughing at me.

I said, “Messing with me, huh?”

It was last school year. I was a freshman then, a year younger than her. I’d gotten more work in the cemetery and I imagined that I’d take her out, do something nice for her. Rowan was with JT but I tried to ignore that.

Rowan finished her Monster and threw the empty down on the cement. “I’ll see you around?” she said, and made a fish motion with her hand.