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hard little self. She could miss it or call it names, it didn’t matter. She could call it up for a quick fantasy visit. (Was it odd that she didn’t have fantasies—sexual fantasies—about Dick?)
    It had been more than a year since she’d gone to one of Jack and Sally’s parties. Sally occasionally mentioned that one man or another asked where her sister was. Sally sometimes added, “Did you ever think of him?” Sally meant courtship: mixed doubles, charity balls, theater parties, a first kiss. Elsie had made shorter work of it.
    Now here she was back in the woods. She looked under a fallen tree limb and found a black beetle. She tossed it into the stream. It drifted ten feet, then a trout sucked it in.
    She ate her carrot and apple, drank half her canteen, and moved upstream.
    When she stopped to fill her third test tube, she saw something move. The tip of a fishing rod. It stuck out from behind a pine tree on the far bank. She corked the test tube, put it in her pouch, and circled into the brush. She crept back toward the stream until she saw a man. Not a fly fisherman. An ultralight spinning outfit. He was using live bait, letting it drift. She couldn’t tell if it was a bug or a worm. No license pinned to his hat or shirt. He reeled in. He’d lost his bait. He picked a bug from a can and put it on the hook, tossed it upstream, shut the bail.
    Not anyone she knew. Middle-aged, nicely faded blue shirt, rolled-up sleeves. Panama hat, beat-up but too classy for this neck of the woods. Sort of like Jack wearing broken-down patent-leather dancing pumps around the house on a Sunday morning.
    He got a bite. The rod bowed; he held it high as the fish ran for the bank, almost in front of her. She ducked down. She heard the fish thrash, the drag whine. She pushed a clump of leaves aside so she could peer out. He was playing the fish calmly, not horsing it in. All she had to do was stand up and he’d be flummoxed. She watched. She felt a voyeurish intimacy—his gaze was so intent, his right forearm showing little bands of muscle. The fish ran back upstream. He lifted the rod tip and reeled in. He let it run out some more line. The fish swam in an arc, then another, each one closer to him. He stepped into the stream, lifted the rod high, and grabbed the trout. She thought at first that was a dumb move, good way to scare it into a last wriggle that would free it. But he’d got a finger into the gills. He stepped back on shore, set his rod down, and bent the trout’s head back sharply. He held the dead fish at arm’s length, his finger still hooked through the gills. She guessed twelve inches, maybe a hair more. He considered it for some time. He wiped his right hand on the seat of his pants and pushed his hat back. She liked his face. She’d always been a sucker for the face of a passably attractive man doing things deftly.
    She lay on her side of the stream and watched him gut the fish with a pen knife. He slit open the stomach and squeezed out a darkpulp. He sifted it with his fingertips, plucked out a more or less intact bug. A black beetle? He lobbed it into the stream and watched. A little swirl and it was gone.
    He made a small fire on a flat rock. Another violation. He pulled apart the sections of his rod, tucked them into a cloth case. At least he wasn’t greedy. He washed the cavity, laid the fish by the fire. He cut a long twig and trimmed it. (Cutting or uprooting live plants …) He skewered the fish from anus to mouth and held it over the fire. The tail curled, the skin crisped, the eye turned white. She caught a whiff of wood fire and cooked trout. Still squatting and holding the stick, he moved nearer to the water, groped a bit, and pulled out a half-full bottle of white wine. (No alcoholic beverages inside the park … This meal could cost him more than a dinner at Sawtooth Point.) She watched him wiggle the cork loose with one hand and take a swig. He put the open bottle back in the stream, twisting