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Grasshopper Bridge, Chapter 5: The Story of Jumping Mouse

Chapter 5 of Lani Waller's final and unpublished manuscript of fishing stories, guaranteed to stir the souls of fly anglers worldwide.

Grasshopper Bridge, Chapter 5: The Story of Jumping Mouse

He looked up at the clock, pulled his cell phone, and dialed the number. “Hi, Ted,” he said quietly. “It’s me, Bill. I’m in their office. Everything is ready. All of it.”

“Good work,” Ted replied. “What have they agreed to?”

“Everything we wanted,” Bill responded. “It couldn’t be better.”

“Are you sure?” Ted responded.

“Yes,” Bill replied. “I met with him yesterday. They finally settled around midnight. It’s going to be good. Very good.”

There was a pause for a moment. “And what about the native groups? The frigging injuns. Where are they? What are they doing?”

“The usual crap,” Bill replied. “They’ve got some rocks piled up on some of the roads and some signs. The same old story. When in the hell will they ever learn anything about necessary progress?”

Ted’s voice tightened. “Yeah, OK, but what about the environmental impact study they produced? What about that?”

Bill whispered, “I can’t go into detail over the phone, but the government experts rejected the findings, so it didn’t go anywhere.”

“I’ll stay in touch. We should have this wrapped up in six weeks. I’ve talked to accounting, and they say we’re looking at something well over 5 billion.”

Bill put his phone inside his coat pocket and looked at his watch. He had 34 minutes until his meeting to sign the papers. He looked out the window. The blue Vancouver sky was perfectly clear. He heard a sudden sound coming from the concrete window ledge and it startled him. He didn’t like the way that felt. He didn’t like being afraid. It was a sign of weakness. When he looked out the window, he saw the source of the sudden noise. A pigeon. Those goddamn things, he thought. Someone should shoot all of them. Or poison them. All they do is crap on our buildings. He took a deep breath, looked away from the bird, and at his watch again. Thirty-three minutes. What am I going to do for 33 minutes? he asked himself. That’s a lot of time to be waiting.

He shifted his chair, crossed his legs, and looked down at the pile of magazines on the table next to his leather chair. He saw a small book mixed in with the others, a little dog eared but the right size. About 25 minutes of reading, he thought as he picked it up almost absently minded and opened it up to the title page. That would leave him a few minutes to check his watch and straighten his tie. The meeting would be short. And sweet. He could urinate later.

Recommended


And there it was. Jumping Mouse, by Hemothyst Storm, and beneath the title, a painting of a mouse sitting on a log and looking up at the sky.

What in the hell is this? He wondered. A book for kids in an attorney’s office? He looked at the title again and the ridiculous illustration. Jumping Mouse? he thought. How about fucking mouse? How about that? He laughed to himself. And who in the hell is Hemothyst Storm? What kind of name is that? Sounds like some kind of stupid hoo-doo voo-doo Indian name. He looked at the beginning paragraph.

“Once upon a time when almost everyone could still see the world for what it really was, and the Great Spirit connected everything alive and dead, a small mouse named Jumping Mouse lived quietly alone beneath a log, deep inside a green and fertile forest. And, as everyone knew Jumping Mouse was blind, for reasons he did not understand, but he did what he could with that, what he had to do. He lived with his blindness.

“And this meant he lived a hard and difficult life, with a greater effort and with problems others simply did not have. But when he thought about it, which was often, he did his best and tried to live with compassion for the Earth and for all living things. Not because he was afraid, but because that was the way all things should live. Whether they could see or not.

“None of this was easy, but Jumping Mouse never quit, because his dream was honest and legitimate–the dream of being able to see as others could, and to see the best he could, and because he loved his life, and because that if he did his best, perhaps someday he could be a regular mouse, and would never have to jump up into the air all the time to try and see what was really there.”

Bill leaned his head a little to the right. What is this gibberish? he wondered. What kind of crap is this? He put the book down, lit a cigarette, inhaled, and smiled. He shook his head as he exhaled. What a fucking joke. No wonder they don’t have anything. How could they? None of them will work. They just sit around howling at the moon at night when they’re drunk and make up stories like this. Where in the hell do they think they are? Who do they think they are?

He looked at his watch, the polished gold, the thin black hands pointing, the row of diamonds embedded in the rim of the timepiece. Twenty-five minutes exactly, he thought. The door will open any second now. He straightened his tie and looked down at his alligator skin shoes. Fifteen hundred. Worth every penny at a time like this. He heard a mechanical click as the carved door opened and a woman stepped out into the waiting room. Her mouth was bright red, and her eyes were polite and cordial. “He will see you now,” she said. “Thank you for waiting.”

“Goddamn right, he will!” he said to himself as he looked at her.

Not bad, he thought. And very well endowed, he said to himself as he looked at her bust-line. But she’d look a hell of a lot better if she was on her hands and knees and I was behind her. That’s what she needs. That’s what all of them need. They just don’t know it.

He stood up and walked through the open door. Nine steps. He counted every one. “Here comes 5 billion,” he said to himself as a secretary closed the door behind him. “Five hundred goddamned billion dollars.” He looked down at the stack of papers on the desk in front of him, all the contracts, and the fountain pen in the gold holder. There it was. All of it. The roads were there. The timber was there. The mines are there and, at last, the pipeline for natural gas and oil. Perfect.

He looked down at the man sitting behind the desk. He stood up and extended his hand. As the two clasped each other and the grip tightened, the man thought about the attempted blockades by the dumb Indians, all their stupid posters in the grocery store, and the commercials on TV. None of that matters. Not now. Not anymore. It’s all over, and Jumping Mouse and all of his injun friends can stick it up their butts. It all belongs to us now.


Click here to download the complete book as an .epub file (we recommend using Adobe's free Digital Editions program or IOS's native Books app to read the epub file; download Digital Editions here. Click here to see other options).

The logo for the Babine River Foundation.
Please consider making a donation to the Babine River Foundation as gratitude for Lani's contribution to the fishing world.

Click here to make a donation to the Babine River Foundation in Waller's honor.

Click here to read the introduction, author's notes, and other chapters. 

Please check back next Wednesday for a new chapter. 




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