Mayflies

Mayflies

By David Bulley

Jerry had to remind himself over and over to be careful with her. After ten years of marriage and three kids and more love and more crap than anyone should have to endure, this was the first time ever that Mary had come to the stream. He reached back a hand.

"Careful, Sweetheart, it's slippery right here."

Mary took his hand, but frowned at the contact. "I'm not a child."

"I never said you were."

"You're acting like I might break, or like I'm too stupid to be careful."

Jerry blew out, puffing his mustache in an old fashioned harumph. "I'm acting like I'm talking to a person who should have worn proper foot gear." Jerry hit himself in the forehead with the heel of his hand. "I'm sorry," he said.

Mary lifted a finger. She held it at an angle toward the sky, as if it were too dangerous a weapon for pointing directly at Eddy. She pulled her lips into her mouth, considering. Then she lowered the finger. "Okay," she said. "I'll be careful."

Jerry held his fishing pole case in one hand, and Mary's hand in the other. He slipped, sideways, down the steep embankment until he and Mary both stood on a narrow sandbar.

The sun was low enough so the trees cast shadows across the water. Green buds were just unfolding from the very tips of the maple trees. Pussy willows were out for maybe another week. Jerry could feel a bright chill off the water.

"You warm enough?" he asked Mary.

Mary shivered to show that she wasn't warm enough. "I'm fine," she said.

The counselor told them to spend a little time in each other's lives. Jerry complained that Mary didn't like fishing or golf. Mary complained that Jerry didn't like the people in her book club, or any of her other friends and what a mess it was at her company picnic last year when Jerry told her friend Susan to go screw herself. Jerry complained that Susan was hitting on him. Mary complained that Jerry slept with her just three days later.

The counselor said, "Do you want to try or not?"

Jerry scanned the water. He pointed. "Look Mary, see the trout?" He checked to see if she was looking in the right place. She was.

"I can't see them."

Jerry said, "Stupid me." He took off his UV blocker sunglasses and gave them to her.

Mary put them on. "Oh! There they are, like ten of them!"

Jerry smiled and started rigging up his pole.

Mary opened one of his fly boxes and started poking around. Jerry pulled his own lips into his mouth, and turned back toward what he was doing. Mary said, "What are you going to use?"

"Nothing in that case." He whispered to himself and then said, "In this case here, I'm planning to use a mayfly. If the almanac is right, the hatch should start in a few minutes."

"Hatch?"

Upstream, but close enough to the bank, the first tiny cream colored mayfly climbed out of the surface film and flapped its round wings to dry them. Jerry stepped in and scooped it up. He held it in the palm of his hand for Mary.

"Look here: Every spring these guys swim up from the bottom of the stream, and then they struggle and claw through the surface film--nothing to us, but tough stuff to an insect. They dry their wings, and then fly away up to the trees all around here.

Mary cupped Jerry's hand, helping him hold up the tiny fly. She leaned in. "It's pretty," she said.

Jerry grinned then puffed the insect into Mary's face. She jumped back. "Oh!" she said. She laughed, and then Jerry laughed too.

She stepped in and took his hands.

With his chin, Jerry pointed at the stream. The sun shone through a clear spot in the trees to bath the stream in smooth yellow light. Mayflies erupted out of the water, hundreds of them. A few trout rolled lazy, not really trying.

Jerry said, "This ain't so bad is it?"

Mary said, "It's beautiful."