High Horse

The dawning sun had not yet broken through the stands of birch and mountain maple that lined the lower reaches of the Tuckasegee River as Ohio wheeled her old Jeep Cherokee through the dark. Spectral wisps of fog crawled over the rock-cluttered riverbank and floated silently over the gravel access road, illumined only by the burning headlights of the Jeep as it nosed its way through the muck. Ohio watched the gloom sweep over the hood like a rolling wave, breaking upon the windshield and dissipating on either side of her and the sleeping body in the passenger seat. She cranked the window down and poked her head out of the opening, her brunette ponytail falling behind her shoulder as she eased off the gas pedal. She heard the soft crunch of tire on crushed basalt echo flatly in the dark, the reverberations absorbed by the moisture of the dusky morning as she strained to read the diamond-shaped Public Mountain Trout Water placards nailed to sturdy trunks of beech. The weathered signs were posted just above freshly laminated notifications that warned of increased bear activity.

She nudged the Jeep into a shallow pull-off between the access road and the river, cut off the engine and sharply elbowed the sleeping body in the passenger seat next to her. The doors of the Jeep groaned as she and Robbie Tongs pushed their weary bodies out of the front seats and shook the sleep from their limbs. Robbie stomped his feet and rubbed his bare arms with his hands. They left Charlotte in the early morning hours and had made the Blue Ridge mountains in record time, the rear cargo area of the Jeep filled with rods, tackle, gear, and nets. Ohio suspected that Robbie hadn’t bothered going to bed before she had picked him up that morning, a hunch supported by the pervasive odor of vinegar that seeped from his pores and open mouth as he snoozed away for the entirety of the drive, head against the window and the brim of his ball cap pulled down over his eyes. The washed-out chatter of AM radio barely covered his ragged snores.

Ohio leaned against the quarter panel of the Jeep and peered at the crystalline water that cut through the valley floor, tumbling over exposed rock, and rippling itself into a series of gentle runs and riffles. The surface did not yet completely mirror the dawning sky but provided enough luster to reveal the flatter pockets of water along the banks and behind the aging slabs of granite that dotted the river. 

“What the fuck are we doing here?” Robbie asked, his central Carolina drawl thick enough to stand on. He wore a pair of baggy, cut-off camouflage cargo shorts cinched tight around his emaciated waist, and a graying, loose tank top that hung from bony shoulders. A Winston Cup ball cap sat perched on the crown of his head at an angle.

Ohio kept her eyes on the water, watching the surface for the tell-tale ripples of rising trout. “I’m going to catch some fish,” she said. “I don’t know what you’re going to do.”

Robbie ambled around the nose of the Jeep, rubbed his eyes, and sat against the fender. He hauled a can of dip from his pocket. Ohio kept her head pointed in the direction of the river but paid close attention to Robbie as he attempted to pack the can, gripped between his trembling thumb and middle fingers. It slipped from his unsteady hands; an audible shit whispered into the breeze as brown-black tendrils of loose-cut tobacco spilled into the dirt. She watched as he got on his knees and tried to salvage what he could, using the lid to scoop errant chunks of chew back into the can. She observed how violently his hands shook as he tried to gather the tobacco, how the tremors were absorbed by the lid and can, and then sent back again, through his fingertips into his palms, the dense kinetic energy trapped in an endless circuit, desperately seeking a point of release. He stuffed a pinch into his lower lip as he hauled himself to his feet. “What are you looking at?” 

“Nothing,” Ohio said. “Just reading the water.”

“That’s fucking stupid,” he said and spit. “Gonna be at it awhile?”

“Long as it takes. Sometimes thirty minutes, sometimes an hour.”

“Goddamn, we’ll be here all day.”

“Two days, actually.” 

Robbie said nothing. He shoved his hands into his pockets and threw back his head, staring up at the morning sky with his mouth wide open, as if he were providing some sort of assistance to the rising sun and sucking the residual moisture from the air. How did he not swallow his dip or, at the very least, not choke on the excess saliva? In some respects, it was impressive. Not just his ability to avoid asphyxiating oneself, but how anyone could manage to drink as much as Robbie Tongs and still manage to function as well as he had, for as long as he had. The liability of keeping him around had far surpassed his utility as a line cook. His performance was slipping, he botched orders, dropped product, couldn’t keep pace, and it was no secret that he drank while on the line. Hell, he didn’t even bother trying to hide it—kept a six-pan of cooking wine right there on his station. Conrad had already moved Robbie off dinner service and onto lunch, so Ohio couldn’t fathom how this trip was supposed to resolve anything. She shook her head, not out of disbelief, because she believed every minute of it: forced to spend the next 48 hours of her hard-earned vacation time with her much older, jaundiced, debilitated train wreck of a co-worker. Robbie fucking Tongs. 

“There’s an extra Thermos of coffee in the backseat for you,” she said.

“Any beer?”

“For Christ’s sake,” she groaned. “Get your shit together.”

Robbie rolled himself off the fender, hands still in his pockets, and walked back around to the passenger side of the Jeep. “Jesus, Ohio. A simple no would’ve worked.”

Ohio placed her hands in the pouch of her hoodie and hung her head.

“I’m not from Ohio,” she said, but Robbie had already disappeared into the interior of the Jeep.

Ohio had wiped down her station, restocked the lowboy coolers, and was tucking her knives into her canvas roll bag when Conrad approached her. His chef’s coat was already unbuttoned, black undershirt caked in sweat, and he held two wine glasses in his hand, both a quarter full. He handed both glasses to her and hopped up on to the refrigerated prep table so that he was sitting on the long cutting board that ran the length of the cooler. He took one of the glasses from her, brought it to his face and inhaled. 

“Smell,” he said.

“Yes, Chef.”

Ohio was taken aback. Conrad had never outwardly shown her any attention before, beyond buying a round of shots for the crew at Hugo’s after a shift, and Ohio had preferred it that way. If she was flying under the radar, it meant she was keeping up and more importantly not fucking up. She dipped her nose into the wine glass and took a deep breath through her nostrils. Morello cherries, leather, spice, vanilla. She lifted the glass and swirled, the harsh UV lighting of the kitchen softly filtering through the deep violet-red that swished along the sides of the glass. She watched how the motes of charred oak left over from the barreling process fell to the bottom and collected where the stem met the bowl of the glass. “What is it, Chef?” 

“Taste,” Conrad said.

Ohio pulled the glass to her lips and tipped it back, holding the liquid in her mouth for a moment so that the profile could settle on her palate before swallowing. It was savory, sour, intense, persistent—delicious. “Tuscany?” 

Conrad grinned, the fine crow’s feet at the corners of eyes pulling together into one, singular crease. He looked more tired than usual, but towards the end of weekend service everyone in the kitchen began to appear a little worse for wear. Ohio wasn’t sure if it was the wine or fatigue or a combination of both, but she felt more at ease knowing that she had the next three days off. Paid, too.

“Good,” he said. “A Brunello. What would you pair it with?”

Ohio racked her brain for a minute. She wasn’t sure when she might get another opportunity to prove her worth, prove that she belonged on Conrad’s line, the lone female in amongst a troop of scarred up, chest-beating, dick-waving gorillas. One day, she hoped, they’d answer to her. “Wild game. Something a little funky and lean.”

Conrad cocked an eyebrow. “Go on.”

“Venison—” she said. “No, boar. Braised shoulder. Allow the boldness of the Brunello to balance the absence of fat.”

“Good,” he said. “You may have just earned yourself a featured dish next week.”

Ohio wanted to smile, she wanted to shout. Six months of busting her ass, night after night. And never as much as a compliment from Conrad. Just commands and orders, but now—a feature. She knew she had earned it, but she pushed it down. She couldn’t reveal how excited she truly was—that shit didn’t play around here. Victories were celebrated on personal time, not Conrad’s time. She took another sip of her wine. “Thank you, Chef,” she said.

“Don’t fuck it up,” he said, pushing himself off the prep table. “Oh, and I need you to do me a favor.”

“Whatever you need.”

“You’re taking a few vacation days, right?

“Yes, Chef. Going fishing.”

“Where?”

“Mountains. Trout.” 

What the hell did it matter? she thought.

“Catch and release?”

“Yes, Chef.”

“Hm. That’s a shame,” he said, shaking his head. “Listen, you’re taking Robbie with you.”

Ohio wasn’t sure she had heard him correctly. “Robbie Tongs?”

“We got another fucking old ass Robbie running around here that I don’t know about?”

“Uh, no, Chef.”

“Then that only leaves one you’re taking. Stop by and pick him up on your way out of town. He’ll be waiting.”

“Yes, Chef.” 

Conrad drained the remnants of his glass, turned it on its side and whipped the dregs out of the bottom onto the freshly mopped floors with a flick of his wrist.

“Uh, Chef,” Ohio asked, “Why am I taking Robbie with me?”

“Because he’s a fucking drunken shitass,” Conrad said, as if that needed any further explanation. 

Ohio opened her mouth to say that Robbie Tongs needed an intervention, an extended stay at a rehabilitation center, to go to AA and take it seriously, but she thought better of it. She knew that in this tough-shit world that substance abuse was the furthest thing from anyone’s mind—one of those things people shrugged off and chalked up to blowing off steam, a perk of the job, and anyone that couldn’t handle that was considered a pussy. 

“Yes, Chef,” she said, “Tell him to be ready at 3am, tomorrow morning.”

Conrad nodded. “This is what we do in my kitchen. We take care of one another.”

If you really wanted to look out for someone, you would get them the help they really needed, she thought.

 “Hey, Chef—” Ohio lifted the wine glass. “Where’d you get this? The Brunello, I mean.”

Conrad laughed. “The Bar Manager: Early. Know your people, Chef. He who runs the bar, runs the world.”

He turned and walked through the pass and pushed open the double doors that separated the kitchen from the dining room. Ohio drained the remnants of her glass, savoring the spice and tang on the sides of her tongue, the back of her molars salivating as the wine washed past and down her throat. It occurred to her that in place of the customary cigarette given to those lining up in front of a firing squad, Conrad had only offered her a half a glass of wine.

Ohio stood, thigh-deep, in the middle of the river and fished the pockets of water that eddied along the far shore. The swift current wrapped itself around the legs of her waterproof waders as it swept past her, one of the many immovable objects the water would find its way around on its journey down the western slope of the Eastern Divide. Her eyes tracked the mayfly pattern at the end of her leader as it drifted and bounced over the riffles, mimicking native insects that she had noticed the Speckled Trout rising to munch on earlier that morning. The water was clear and cool, but Ohio knew that as the sun marched towards its precipice that her silhouette would only grow longer and more visible to the notoriously skittish fish and that the subsurface temperatures would grow warmer, forcing the trout towards the deeper troughs of the river bottom, with only the boldest risking the mad dash to the surface and taking a shot at her fly. 

She only caught sight of Robbie during her back cast. So far he had only managed to repeatedly dunk his head, ball cap and all, into the cold mountain waters; guzzle water liberally from the few gallons Ohio had thought to bring with them, half of which ended up absorbed by the front of Robbie’s tank top or soaked into the dusty gravel of the road; and nap in the shade of the native rhododendron and mountain laurel that grew in thick stands along the bank. Ohio hadn’t felt the need to warn him about the satinbacks or copperheads that sought refuge in the same places, preferring to allow him to discover that bit of information on his own. 

Ohio wanted to focus on getting her casting mechanics back. Her wrist was breaking form mid-cast, bending too much as she brought the rod forward to the ten o’clock position and preventing the tip of her rod from building enough tension to shoot the filament in a taut line from fly to rod. She concentrated on keeping her wrist straight and rigid as she held the rod high and worked it back and forth, allowing the bend of her arm to happen at the elbow, not the wrist. Despite her poor form, she managed several solid presentations, mending her line as it hit the surface so that it didn’t create drag and coaxed a few trout into strikes, but she missed just as many hook sets as she achieved successful casts. Ohio was growing frustrated with herself, she kept lifting her rod tip before the trout had fully taken the fly, unable to focus on the timing, her attempts to turn her mind off and fish by intuition disrupted by a growing concern that maybe Robbie had slipped and cracked his head open on a rock or had actually gotten himself snakebit. She did feel somewhat responsible for him, after all. 

“Good goddamn,” he hollered, “I got one.”

Ohio turned and caught sight of him twenty yards down river, standing on one of the many outcroppings that jutted from the bank. He held the Zebco with both hands, rod bent and doubled over, as he cranked on the reel, the fish on the other end attempting to run up stream. When the hell had he moved downriver and how had he managed to get onto a fish before she had? She had given him that rod, the Zebco—one of those rod and reel combos that children and beginners used, with the button on the reel that released the line as you cast and was generally idiot-proof—along with a Styrofoam cup of Red Wigglers—because she didn’t want to be bothered with teaching him how to cast a fly rod, manage line, and play the water. She seriously doubted that his quivering hands would have been able to finesse the rod or discern the delicate nuances of the fly as it danced across the water. Largely, she hadn’t wanted to provide him with an opportunity to have any more success than her, but here he was, with what she figured to be a 12-inch ’bow on the end of his line.

“Set the drag,” she yelled. He needed to let the fish wear itself out. Fight with it, not against it. She wanted to get over to him before the trout made its way under a rock or submerged limb and broke the line. There was nothing worse than finding a bloated fish floating sideways on the surface with a hook in its mouth and a trail of monofilament dragging behind it. He shook his head, unable to hear her over the rush of water that funneled between them. She pointed at the end of the line zig-zagging its way downstream and then at the reel. Robbie took his hand off the reel and held his arm out to his side indicating that he had no idea what she meant. He truly had no idea what he was doing. She quickly reeled in her own line, hooked the fly to the cork handle, and tucked the rod under her arm and began to wade towards the rock where Robbie stood. As she pushed across the current, she watched him step into the river, shoes and all, and start cranking the reel, spooling the line back in, leaning into it until he had successfully hauled the fish from the water. He held the rod in one hand, the line in the other, with a wriggling silver rainbow trout, bright green scales along its spine and the long pink stripe that ran down its side glistening in the daylight, dangling from the end of a J hook. It was a beautiful fish, and the longer that fucking oaf had it hanging by its jaw, suspended in mid-air, the less chance it had of surviving. 

“Keep it wet,” she said, dragging her feet along the river bottom as fast as she could without allowing the current to completely sweep her off her feet as she angled herself downriver. She didn’t trust him to remove the hook without mangling its jaw or squeezing the fish and crushing its swim bladder in the process. She needed to get over there as quickly as possible. She pointed at the fish and then the water. Robbie looked at her quizzically for a moment before bending over and placing the fish in the water, where it floated on its side, gills gently rising and falling. She tucked her rod into her armpit, tip pointed back and away from Robbie, as she approached the outcropping and unhooked her landing net from her waders. She scooped the trout into the netting and held the net low enough for the fish to remain submerged and yet high enough that it wouldn’t have enough water underneath it to propel itself over the edge of the net. “Here, hold this,” she said, “Don’t move.”

She kneeled in the water, the current surging around her waist, and wet both her hands before gently gripping the trout around its midsection, righting it so that its belly pointed towards the bottom and its dorsal fin skimmed the top of the water and pointed it upstream, allowing the oxygen-rich water to rush through its gills.

“Trout have this cool slime coating that protects the scales from bacteria and parasites and shit,” she said. “You don’t want to touch the fish with dry hands, otherwise the mucus will stick to ’em and pull right off the fish, opening it up to disease.”

With the trout still secured in one hand, Ohio grabbed the needle-nosed forceps that hung on a lanyard from the shoulder straps of her waders and pinched the exposed barb of the hook flat against the curve. She then stuck the forceps into the fish’s mouth, clamped them over the shank of the hook, and delicately worked the hook backwards through the lower mandible, angling it so that the hook slipped back through the entry point, rather than ripping it out. 

“What difference does it make?”

Ohio looked up at Robbie, the sun now directly behind his head, crowning the brim of his ball cap in what might resemble a halo, had it been bestowed upon anyone other than Robbie Tongs. The residual shade obscured most of his face, making it nearly impossible for Ohio to tell whether the question was sincere or more nihilistic in nature, not that she expected him to know the difference, but she did notice that a gray line of stubble had sprouted on his jawline since this morning. It occurred to her that she had never seen him with facial hair. Even for someone as disorderly as Robbie, he had always remained remarkably clean-shaven. She thought about his station, how well-kept, precise, and orderly everything was. How could someone who had such control in some aspects of their life be some completely reckless in others?

“It’s etiquette, kind of the fly-fisherman’s code,” she said. “Treat the fish right so that it can spawn and create more fish for the next guy to catch. Support the fishery, leave no trace, all that good stuff.”

“Yeah,” Robbie let loose a long gob of tobacco spit that landed precariously close to Ohio before being swept away by the current. “I get that and all, but we got to put this thing on ice and take our haul back to Conrad when we’re finished. Whole reason we’re up here, ain’t it?”

Ohio held the trout, now hook-free, loosely around the base of its caudal fin. She lowered the net and pulled it out from under the fish and held it for a moment longer to ensure it was stable before she released it back into the wild. The trout weaved back and forth against the current, slowly gaining more and more strength until it flicked its tail with a mighty push and slipped from Ohio’s fingers, dashing upstream and disappearing into the protection of the deeper, roaring water. She rinsed her hands, stood, and wiped them against the canvas exterior of her waders, and looked over Robbie’s shoulders at the signs that designated this section of the river as Catch and Release only. “Conrad said that, huh?”

“That’s what he told me,” Robbie said, wiping a dribble of tobacco juice away from the corner of his mouth as he climbed back onto a rock. “Wants to run Wild Mountain Trout special next week.”

Ohio thought it funny how out of place Robbie looked here, against the greater silence of the world, far removed from the chaos and cacophony of the cramped confines of the kitchen. His blown-out sneakers were soaked all the way through, a puddle of river water gathering around the soles. Ohio could almost see how he had once been a capable line cook, part of that old guard—the rough-and-tumble stock. The ones who gave every inch of their bodies to their work and then again to their vices, but here, against this serene backdrop with his rod at his side, butt-end planted firmly on the rock outcropping, he looked like the kid that had been sent away to summer camp, posing for a photo to be mailed home to uncaring parents. A grown ass man reverted to juvenescence by his surroundings. If it weren’t for the elaborate tattoo of an antlered buck on his bare shoulder, the graying wisps of hair that curled from beneath his hat, and the fat wad of chew that bulged from his lower lip, he’d be a boy ready to be shown the world, and it would take everything from him.

Ohio hadn’t realized how far they had worked themselves away from the Jeep as they fished, casting upstream and letting the flies drift back down with the current. Trout were ambush predators and would always hold in steady water, pointed against the current, waiting for their meals to come to them, so the best strategy was to present your fly so that it passed in front of the trout while you remained downstream. If you hooked one, it would have to fight both the reel and the current as it tried to escape. Before they packed up and headed back, Ohio had finally managed to land one after spying a monster lurking behind rock. She hadn’t been able to resist the urge and threw a stonefly pattern in its direction—the last cast special. She felt a little better about her morning and looked forward to re-rigging—a terrestrial maybe, a #14 atomic ant or a big juicy Charlie Boy grasshopper pattern that the larger, more predatory Brown Trout would not refuse—after she and Robbie had eaten some lunch. He had impressed her slightly, his booze-soaked redneck ass hooking into that Rainbow on nothing more than a hook and a worm. She could tell he knew it too, standing a little taller in his sopping wet sneakers as they followed the riverbank back towards where they had left her Jeep. After lunch, she’d have to remind him that not only was she a meaner and faster cook than he was, but a much better angler as well.

As they rounded the bend, Ohio caught sight of the Jeep: its entire contents were emptied onto the gravel like some ancient Appalachian giant had picked up her Jeep by the front wheels and shaken everything loose. She wondered if her Jeep had been broken into. She had chosen this spot for its seclusion. She had never needed to compete with other anglers on this section of water before, who would be out here to rob her? Certainly, she would’ve noticed another vehicle traveling down the road. It would’ve been damn near impossible to have missed it as any approaching vehicle could be heard long before it was seen. None of her belongings were missing though. She could see all her fishing gear plainly, strewn across the road. 

Robbie halted mid-step and threw his arm in front of her, as a driver might do to a passenger when slamming on the brakes unexpectedly, preventing her from taking another step. He sniffed at the air and pointed towards the Jeep. The sweet, tangy aroma of half-digested blackberries filled her nostrils as she inhaled. She looked at him. So what? Wild berries grew in scads out here. She heard a deep, tremorous huffing erupt from within the interior of the Jeep. The fine, blond hairs of her arm went vertical as her body reached the understanding that her brain was still working to arrive at: her scattered fishing gear, the smell of berries. That bellow.

“No fucking way—”

Robbie shushed her, putting a finger to his lips and began to quietly back away, motioning for Ohio to do the same. A bulky, black mass was visible through the rear window, snorting and grunting as it rooted around, its massive weight causing the Jeep’s suspension to creak and groan as it tottered from side to side. Robbie slowly placed his rod on the ground and beat a steady retreat, inching backwards on the balls of his feet. Ohio quietly followed his lead. One long, careful step after another. She kept her gaze fixated on the Jeep—her old, rusted, yet completely paid-off Jeep—as they stepped off the gravel road and discreetly slipped down the bank. As they waded through the rushing water, treading carefully over the slick, rounded rocks of the river bottom, Ohio vacillated between the need to remain un-eaten and a desire to remain upright. She instinctively latched onto Robbie’s arm, fixated on the stability of her footing. He glanced at her. Could he feel how forcefully her hands now trembled? Did he recognize the familiar jitter? Did he appreciate the irony? 

The bear managed to pop open the rear door and hung its head out of the side, staring down its tawny snout and drool-streaked muzzle at them with brown, expressionless eyes. Ohio watched the bear place its massive front paws, ten 2-inch claws in all, on the ground and begin to exit the vehicle. Ohio felt an imbalance of temperature between the warm liquid that ran down her legs inside of her waders and the cool water that swirled around them. 

Ohio and Robbie hauled themselves onto a vast slab of exposed granite that rose from the river like the back of a giant tortoise, pushing themselves onto it with the palms of their hands. Water broke against the face of the rock and cascaded around the sides creating a constant, clammy mist that hung over the boulder and ensured that the surface remained slick and damp. 

“There’s a bear in my Jeep,” Ohio said, once they had pulled themselves clear of the water. “A fucking bear.”

“It’s a sow.”

“Excuse me?”

“Female. You’ve got a female bear in your jeep.”

“Okay, Robbie. There’s a female bear in my jeep. What fucking difference does it make?”

“For starters, she ain’t got any cubs with her. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have made it this far.” Ohio watched him spit. It must have been instinct rather than necessity, as the only thing that erupted from his mouth were a few errant shreds of tobacco. 

“That’s it? It sounded like there was a silver lining somewhere regarding her being a female bear and all.”

“Yep, that’s the silver lining. Well, that and she’s in the Jeep and not here on this rock.”

“Bears can fucking swim, Robbie.”

He patted the front of his shorts and removed the can of chewing tobacco from his pocket. He opened it, a small dribble of water spilling from the inside, and turned the can upside down. A waterlogged, wintergreen-scented black mass slid from the can and landed on the rock with a splat. He toed the glob with his sneaker and looked out over the rush of water separating them from the bear. 

“Can’t run us down on water, I reckon. Not unless she’s the second coming herself.”

“And if she is?”

“Ah, hell, we’ll just slip on off the other side of the rock back into the water. She won’t be able to gain enough purchase on the river bottom to bring her weight down on us.”

“That’s reassuring,” Ohio said. 

Robbie sat down on the surface of the rock and began to untie his shoelaces. Once he had loosed each one and pulled them off, he dumped the remaining water out of the heel and laid them out to dry. Ohio noticed the curious absence of socks. 

“Just pull out that fancy phone of yours and call Fish & Game. They’ll come handle her.”

Ohio reached for her phone in the bib of her chest waders but struggled to haul it out. Her shaky fingers wouldn’t cooperate. She balled her fists. She could feel her fingertips bouncing against the palms of her hands. She took a deep breath and looked up at the surrounding mountains, the shadows hanging low and mean across the valley. She unclenched her hands and tried again; her steadier fingers able to find a grip on the phone. “Can’t get a signal,” she said, “You?”

Robbie kicked the soggy lump of tobacco into the water with his bare foot. He leaned back, placing all his weight onto his hands, and looked up at her. “Out of minutes.”

“Out of minutes?”

“Yeah, you know, like a prepay. I ain’t reupped yet.”

Ohio lowered herself into a crouch next to Robbie so that she was eye level with him. She leaned in so close that she could discern the lingering stench of alcohol layered beneath the deep, dank scent of soil and river water. “But you can still call 911 without minutes, right?”

“Probably—if my phone wasn’t still over there,” he said, nodding in the direction of the road and the bear and the last few scraps of hope that Ohio could have held onto.

“Oh, you fucking muppet,” she said. Her heart slammed at the walls of her chest as her pulse quickened, picking up pace until it had accelerated to the point where it felt much less like a heartbeat and more like drumroll. She whipped around and marched across the boulder, finding the point furthest away from Robbie before sitting down. She was sick and tired of being wet, the dampness now infiltrating the inside and outside of her waders. The ceaseless moisture fusing with her increasing exasperation until she could feel the unrelenting weight of aggravation tugging at her limbs. If Conrad hadn’t saddled her with Robbie fucking Tongs, and if Robbie himself wasn’t such a fucking fridge magnet of a human, she might not be in this mess to begin with. She would have selected a different spot, further down river. A place where a bear wouldn’t be tearing her Jeep apart like a child on Christmas morning. A place where she wouldn’t be in a situation that would force her to sit in a puddle of her own piss in a pair of waterproof waders. She couldn’t even empty them out without him knowing and there’s no way in hell she would give him the satisfaction. If Robbie hadn’t been here none of this would’ve happened. None of it. 

Ohio watched the bear reenter the Jeep and cram itself between the driver’s and passenger seats in an attempt to get to the front of the vehicle. The Jeep rocked back and forth so violently she thought it might tip over and roll over the bank into the water. At least maybe then insurance might cover it. She sighed. If he hadn’t been here no one would have stopped her from walking right up to her Jeep—the one that still had a bear in it.

“Ohio, what the fuck you doing all the way over there?” Robbie asked.

“Staying away from you,” she said.

“The hell did I do?”

“Nothing, Robbie. That’s the point. You are fucking worthless.” 

Robbie sat up, placed his elbows on his knees, and sniffled. “Probably—but you know what?”

Ohio said nothing.

“That bear is going to wander off sooner or later,” he continued, “and then we can get into that Jeep and leave this place and neither of us need speak to one another ever again.”

Ohio looked at the bear as it dug at the upholstery with its paws, searching for those lost bits of potato chips, pistachios, and French fries that inevitably made their way into the hard-to-reach crevices between the seats and consoles, along the sliding rails that allow you to adjust the seat to give yourself more, or less, leg room. Wide chunks of yellow foam were snarled in the bear’s matted fur and strewn across the backseat like scattered popcorn as the bear dug and dug, kicking the foam behind itself. Would there even be a passenger seat left for Robbie to sit in? Ohio pictured him sitting there on springs and a metal frame, pathetic and hopeless. She turned and looked at him perched on the rock; head hung between his knees.

 “What do you mean?” she said. “We work together. We going to have to like, you know, communicate and shit.”

Robbie lifted his head and tilted it to the side. “Ohio, you really think I’ve got a job waiting for me when we get back?”

It hit her like the mountain of bear scat she knew had been deposited in her backseat. Conrad hadn’t asked her to take Robbie out here to dry out. Of course he hadn’t. Even someone as bull-headed as Conrad would know that a few days of sobriety wasn’t enough recuperation for someone as done in as Robbie. He didn’t fucking care at all, he just needed a few days to get a couple guys in, have them work a shift and see who fit the bill before letting Robbie go. For Conrad, the food always came first, the synchronicity of the kitchen second. His regard for individual lives? Much further down on the list.

Ohio had never felt so sheepish as she did now. Not even when she forgot to turn down the heat on the giant vats of stock that Conrad insisted be always rolling, and scorched 100 quarts of roasted veal bones, red wine, mirepoix, and bouquet garni—the base for an entire menu’s worth of soups, sauces, and demi-glace. She was the most crucial component of her co-worker’s termination. Robbie had known the entire time, and yet, he came along anyways. She felt a tear welling at the corner of her eye, wiped it away, and took a deep breath, her shock and pride—a giant indigestible lump—catching in her throat as she swallowed. She stood up, brushed herself off and walked over to Robbie, taking a seat next to him.

“Question,” she said. “Why do they call you Robbie Tongs, anyways?”

He peered at Ohio for a moment, before looking back out over the water towards the bear and the Jeep. “Same reason they call you Ohio, I reckon.”

Ohio buried her head in her palms. She couldn’t watch as the bear pawed at the driver’s side window, the glass spider-webbing under the pressure. Ohio remembered buying that Jeep, the exorbitant interest rate that she had agreed to, and wondering how a used car could still manage to hold a new car smell. She remembered making her last payment and receiving the title in the mail, free and clear. She remembered putting the key in the ignition this morning and wondering why it was that she valued her job so much that she agreed to this in the first place. She peeked through her fingers just as the window began to bulge outward, the bear fully putting her weight into it. Ohio clamped her fingers shut again and waited for the window to burst. She flinched as it gave way with a quick pop and the safety glass shattered as it hit the ground. 

“You’re from Iowa, too?” Ohio said, as she pulled her hands from her face and exhaled. She looked at the bear through the empty gap where her driver’s side window had once been. At least she wouldn’t have to worry about how she would air the thing out. 

“Hell nah,” he said, “because no one can be bothered to believe anything beyond what’s already convenient, you know?” He reached between his two bare feet, picked up a small pebble and tossed it into the churning water. “Can’t say I blame them though, knowing someone is a lot of work.”

“Huh,” Ohio said. She stared straight ahead at the jeep—her gutted, shit-covered Jeep. “I’d always heard it was because back when you and Conrad were coming up, you never had your station set with extra tongs and always had to steal his pair when the rush hit. He’d lose his shit and scream, ‘Robbie, tongs!’ every time he needed to grab something.”

“You ever known me to not have my station set?”

“No, I guess not.”

“Yet you believed that story.”

Ohio swallowed. Robbie had made his point.

“It’s okay,” he said. “I don’t blame you. I mean, look at me. You didn’t know me from Adam, and someone gives you some bullshit story—started by Conrad, no doubt—about how the drunk got his nickname, then you’re liable to believe it.”

Ohio put her hand on Robbie’s shoulder. “Listen, Robbie, I’m really—”

“Save it, Ohio, I ain’t mad at you. You were just doing what you were told,” he said. He reached over and pulled her hand off his shoulder and held it. His hands were perfectly still.

“Listen, I always had my tongs. I ain’t such a shitass that I can’t even remember my tongs,” he said and smiled. “I just liked fucking with him.”

Ohio laughed. “Conrad?”

“Yep,” he said, releasing her hand and propping his elbows back on his knees. “Every time he’d turn around, I’d snake ’em from him.”

“You think he knew why?”

“Shit yeah, he did, but he had an image to protect, so he turned it around on me. Say something often enough, eventually it becomes the truth. But hell, he knows, and I do, too.”

“That’s worth something, you know,” Ohio said.

The bear hauled itself over the front seats and backed out of the Jeep, its hulking hind quarters stepping out of the rear door one at a time. Her short, stubby tail swung back and forth in a steady rhythm as if she were keeping tempo. She turned in a circle, once and then twice, like a dog trying to find the most comfortable position on the couch, and sat down in the dirt on her haunches, slumped against the side of the Jeep. Ohio watched as the bear opened her monstrous mouth, her prodigious yellow teeth pale against a purple tongue, and yawned. Her heavy eyelids slid shut as her head tilted back and a rumbling, sonorous snore spurted from her nostrils.

“Maybe it is,” Robbie said. “Maybe it is.”

Originally from Charlotte, North Carolina, Tucker C. Newsome is an MFA candidate at the University of Wyoming. His work has appeared in 12th Street and The Brooklyn Rail, and he holds degrees from both Kansas State University and The New School. Tucker currently resides in Laramie, Wyoming.