Matt’s chewing slowed and he watched his father’s big blue eyes.

“Did I ever tell you about the time Ron and I caught that monster steelhead at lower Black Falls?”

Matt shook his head.

“You know how the falls are. Ron had put a size eight stimulator right behind the vertical logs. He was always a hell of a fisherman.”

His father coughed again.

“The steelhead hit the fly and escaped the pool and headed downriver like a torpedo. We had to chase it through those jagged slate grooves and we almost slipped and killed ourselves. A hundred yards downstream it snagged on a submerged log. It wrapped so much line around the log it was caught like a dog to a lazy neighbor’s tree. There was only a foot of line and the steelhead just swam there in the clear water, all forty inches. I tell you what, it was absolutely beautiful with the sun glinting off its flank. Ron and I watched it for a minute. It was like a jewel, Matt. A living, breathing jewel.”

His father paused and gripped his cane.

“So what happened to it?” Matt asked.

“A minute later it broke off and swam downstream to Superior. It was the biggest fish we’d ever caught or seen in years of fishing the Black. But that’s not what’s important. While it was caught there, glinting in the light, I saw time curling off its fins in that pure water. Layers and layers of time. I saw beauty. I thought of your mother. I thought of you. I thought of Andrea and even Elmo.”

“Dad—”

“—we are a moment, Matthew. And the best of that moment was my family.”

Big John trembled and reached to hug his son. Matt gripped him, spilled his popcorn, and sobbed.

“You are my jewel. And soon here I’m going to watch you swim away, downstream. I’ll be with you again, down at the big lake.”

The crowd roared as Bobby Edstrom hit a double off the ivy.

Matt held his father and cried. And in him he felt the wild North- woods and the beating heart of a lion.

Day 5

DAY 5

Matt Kearns bolted upright, police sirens faint in the distance. They came from down near Lake Superior, far to the north. At first he felt hope, but that turned into a sick feeling in his stomach. He didn’t want them to come at all. Up here was death—or prison. They’d speed up here, deep into the woods, not realizing their blaring sirens were their funeral songs. Sure, if they did come, he might be able to use them as a distraction, but for how long?

Who cares? Let them come. Use any distraction you can, Matthew,the little voice said. If they die, they die. You have no way of preventing that.

I didn’t do so well in the bog, Matt said.