We sipped and relaxed. The day came to a sort of pause. Dust floated in tiny rays as sunlight poked through the door. A barstool scraped on worn maple. Then silence. Midway through his second beer Brant exhaled, long and slow.
“I have never,” he said, “been happier in my life.”
I knew what happened. The trout streams and little towns had got to him. The church steeples, the diners and hardware stores, the pastures, the rolled hay bales, the ancient barns, the gravel roads leading nowhere except to more bluffs and deep valleys, to creeks with their gin-clear water.
My friend had been captured. It would wear off.
It has to. Otherwise, you buy an old truck, fool your wife into moving into a peeling Victorian, take up life in a small town in the heart of trout country, and spend all your time fly fishing…
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