Scene from a work in progress

This is a scene from a book I’ve been planning for a while. It will feature Morgan Mason as the main character and it will be set in 2015 in Los Angeles. One of the parts of the story is that Morgan will need to find a character who disappeared from the LA music scene in the mid-1970s – Ethan Morgan. Ethan is the main character in the series I’m currently working on, which is set in the period from 1968 to 1973 in Southern California. Morgan has finally tracked Ethan down, narrowing his location to the area around Lake Klamath in southern Oregon. I’ve been thinking about this scene so much that I decided to write it now while it was all in my head, even though I won’t be working on the book it goes in for a few months. I hope you enjoy this.

Morgan Mason parked in a turnout near where the road stopped pretending it was civilized and turned into gravel and old promises. Dawn was still negotiating with the trees. The air had that high-desert edge to it – cold enough to keep you honest, clean enough to make you feel accused.

Fort Klamath was behind him, and with it the diner where he’d asked the wrong question the right way.

Not Do you know Ethan Morgan? That would’ve gotten him a long look and a short goodbye.

He’d asked about the Wood River instead. About the mornings. About who fished early.

The waitress had refilled his coffee without being asked and said, like she was reciting a weather report, “There’s an older guy. Quiet. Shows up before most people. Parks down at the crossing by the bend where the willows thin. Doesn’t take fish. Doesn’t talk. If you’re going down there to make friends, you should pick a different river. Maybe Crystal Creek or the Williamson.”

“Why’s that?” Morgan had asked.

She’d shrugged. “Because he doesn’t look like he needs any. Friends.”

That was close enough to a map.

Now Morgan killed the engine and sat for a moment with the quiet. He listened the way he always listened – half to the world, half to whatever part of himself still felt uneasy when things got too calm. The wind moved through the lodgepoles like someone turning pages. Somewhere in the distance a bird called out, sharp and solitary. The soft burbling sounds of the Wood winding through the meadow nearby.

He checked his watch. Not because time mattered here, but because he wanted something to occupy his hands. His hands did better when they had jobs.

He got out, pulled his jacket tighter, and walked.

The Wood River wasn’t dramatic. It didn’t roar. It didn’t throw whitewater tantrums and demand a photographer. It slid through grass and willows like a thought you weren’t sure you were allowed to have. Spring-fed and gin clear, it had the kind of transparency that made you careful with your feet and your lies.

Morgan stayed back from the bank at first. The place had an intimacy to it that made you feel like you’d entered someone else’s room without knocking. The water was close enough that any movement was obvious, any silhouette a confession.

He found a patch where the reeds opened and the bank dipped gently, giving him a clean view upstream without forcing him into the open. He crouched behind a screen of willow branches and waited.

He didn’t have to wait long.

A man stepped into the river as if he’d been poured there.

Patched neoprene waders. Dark jacket. Hat brim low. No vest. A single black aluminum fly box in a jacket pocket. Not a flashy setup – no billboard branding, no magazine-cover gear. He carried himself like someone who had learned a long time ago that looking important was a way of attracting trouble.

He moved with the economy of a practiced person: nothing wasted, nothing exaggerated. The rod came up. The line unfurled. Five weight or less. Probably a four weight. Light gear for big fish. Short casts, precise, placed like he was setting down delicate glass. The fly landed in the seam along an undercut bank with the quietness of a secret.

Morgan watched, because watching was what he did. He’d watched men in courtrooms with their futures in their mouths. He’d watched women in bars who smiled like they were selling something. He’d watched his own reflection in dark windows and wondered when it had started looking like a person he wouldn’t invite into his house.

This man didn’t fish like he was chasing a story. He fished like he was conducting an experiment.

A trout rose – just a sip, barely a dimple. The man adjusted his next cast by an inch, as if he’d been expecting that exact movement. The fly drifted, drag-free, perfect, then disappeared in a dimple that appeared in the water. The line twitched as the man lifted the rod tip.

The rod bent.

The fish didn’t explode. It pulled heavy and steady, a patient power that belonged to something old and well-fed. A big brown, Morgan could tell from the slow confidence of it. The kind of fish people drove hours for and lied about afterward.

The man gave line and took line with no urgency. He let the fish run when it wanted to run, stopped it when it tried to take too much. His hands were calm, with only small movements. His mind was doing the work without asking his face for permission.

Morgan’s eye went to the man’s fingers.

It wasn’t just competence. It was finesse. When he’d tied a new fly on before the cast, the knot was something quick and surgical, not the sloppy hurry of a weekend angler. The knot was tidy enough to be a signature. He worked with the precision of someone who’d spent years practicing under stakes that mattered.

Morgan felt a flicker of that old, annoying thing: respect. It came with the same irritation as admiration for a man you don’t like.

The fish came closer. Close enough that Morgan could see the shadow slide under the bank, then angle into the shallows. The man guided it there without drama, without wrestling. The trout flashed brown and gold in the thin morning light and for a moment it looked impossibly alive, like it was made of river itself.

And then – right at the point where the fish would be netted, right at the point where the story would become a trophy – the man lifted his rod tip slightly, pinched the line between two fingers, and made a small quick motion with his wrist.

Snap.

The tippet broke. The line went slack. The fly was gone.

The trout drifted for half a heartbeat, disoriented, then slid back into the green and vanished under the undercut bank like it had never been there.

Morgan didn’t mean to react. But his body had opinions.

He exhaled, quiet but sharp. A small sound. The kind a man makes when he sees something he didn’t expect.

The fisherman didn’t turn.

He didn’t look toward the willows.

He didn’t do the thing people do when they realize they’re being watched.

He simply started winding up loose fly line with slow, deliberate turns, and then tied on a short length of tippet from a spool he produced from a jacket pocket. He looked like he was finishing a task at a workbench.

Then he spoke, still not facing Morgan.

“You’ve been standing there long enough to either be lost or be lying.”

The voice was low and roughened – not old-man gravel, more like a voice that had been damaged and then taught itself how to keep functioning. Morgan felt his shoulders tighten before his brain could tell them not to.

He stood slowly, letting the branches fall away from him. No sudden movements. No surprises. He stepped into the open with the controlled ease of someone who knew exactly how much a man needed to see before he felt threatened.

“I’m not lost,” Morgan said.

The man focused on tying on a new fly. “That leaves the other thing.”

Morgan tilted his head, a half-smile forming before he could stop it. Sometimes his face did things out of habit. “Depends what you call lying.”

The fisherman finally turned his head. Not his body. Just his head, like a security camera panning. “Watch where you stand, I don’t want you casting a shadow on my river. The fish hate it.”

His eyes found Morgan and held him there. Calm. Flat. Alert in a way that had nothing to do with caffeine. The look wasn’t hostile. It was assessing.

“You’re not dressed like a fisherman,” the man said.

Morgan glanced down at himself: boots, jacket, the general vibe of someone who’d slept badly and driven too far. “Neither are you. No fly vest. And no net – you’re that sure you won’t catch anything?”

A minute tightening at the corner of the man’s mouth. Not amusement. Recognition of an attempt. “No, that uninterested.”

The fisherman’s gaze flicked past Morgan, briefly, to the tree line and the trail. Checking for a second person. Checking for the angle. Morgan filed it away with a familiar coldness: this wasn’t just a guy with a hobby. This was a man who lived as if the world might reach for him at any moment.

The fisherman looked back at Morgan. “If you came to fish, you’d have a rod. If you came to talk, you’d have walked up instead of hiding in the willows.”

Morgan lifted his hands slightly – open, empty, palms visible. The universal sign for I’m not here to shoot you. In his experience it often meant I might shoot you later, but it helped.

“I was watching,” Morgan said.

“I noticed,” the man replied. “That’s the problem.”

Morgan let the silence sit for a beat. He could hear the river again now that his blood had stopped rushing in his ears. A tiny hiss over stones. A small, constant insistence.

“You broke that fish off,” Morgan said, because if he didn’t say it he’d keep thinking about it until it turned into a question he asked at the wrong time.

The fisherman’s expression didn’t change. “Correct.”

“You could’ve landed him.”

A pause. The man’s eyes stayed on Morgan. They were the eyes of someone who’d seen too many people perform competence for an audience and call it a life.

“I know,” he said.

Morgan felt that answer settle into him like weight. It wasn’t bravado. It wasn’t false modesty. It was fact, delivered without ornament.

“Why?” Morgan asked.

The fisherman looked back at the river, as if consulting it. Then he spoke softly, not quite to Morgan, not quite to himself.

“Landing is the part people tell stories about,” he said. “That’s when they start needing witnesses.”

Morgan stared at him. The sentence had sharp edges. It cut, not because it was insulting, but because it was accurate.

The fisherman lifted his rod slightly and tugged at the front of the bib of his waders. “The interesting part is getting them to take,” he went on. “Everything after that is… ego.”

Morgan nodded, slow. He understood too well.

He thought of LA. Of the deals and the secrets and the way people wanted proof, wanted trophies – wanted a picture of the fish on the grass so everyone could applaud the fact that it was dead.

“You’re good with knots,” Morgan said, almost conversationally. It came out like a compliment and he hated that it sounded like one.

The fisherman’s eyes slid back to him. “Old habit,” he said.

Morgan held the gaze. “Career habit?”

A long beat. The fisherman didn’t answer. But the silence had a shape to it. It suggested steady hands, close work, consequences.

Morgan decided not to push. Pushing got you refused. Patience got you let in.

“I’m looking for someone,” Morgan said instead.

The fisherman’s eyes narrowed just a fraction. Not anger – focus. “No,” he said. “You’re not.”

Morgan raised an eyebrow.

“You’re looking for an answer,” the fisherman corrected. “People look for answers. People look for someone when they want someone else to do something for them.”

Morgan’s mouth twitched. “You might have a point.”

The fisherman nodded once, satisfied he’d named the thing correctly. Then he said, “Say the name.”

Morgan had been rehearsing this. He’d said it in his head in the car. He’d said it quietly in the motel bathroom mirror the night before, just to see if it felt ridiculous.

Now he said it out loud.

“Ethan Morgan.”

For the first time, the fisherman’s composure shifted. Not much. Just enough that Morgan saw it. A micro-hesitation in the hands. The line, already wound, held tight between reel and guide with his thumb and forefinger like a thin wire.

Then Ethan – because of course it was him – looked at Morgan as if Morgan had spoken a word that wasn’t used anymore.

“Who told you that?” Ethan asked.

“No one,” Morgan said.

Ethan’s expression didn’t change, but the air did. The river kept flowing. The world kept being beautiful. But something in the space between them tightened, like a net being drawn.

“That’s never true,” Ethan said.

Morgan shrugged. “Then call it… indirect momentum.”

Ethan studied him. Really studied him. Taking inventory. Measuring the way he stood, the way he spoke, the way he didn’t fidget. Morgan felt the familiar sensation of being read by someone who was better at it than he was.

“You’re not from here,” Ethan said.

“No. Los Angeles,” Morgan admitted.

“You didn’t come for fishing.”

“No.”

Ethan’s eyes flicked, again, past Morgan to the trail. Then back. “You came alone.”

“Yes.”

Ethan nodded slowly, as if that mattered. As if it changed the calculation.

“What do you want?” Ethan asked.

Morgan could have given the polished version. The journalist version. The version that made him sound like he was pursuing truth for noble reasons.

He didn’t.

“I think someone’s been setting hooks,” Morgan said. “Not to land anyone. Just to prove they can.”

Ethan’s gaze went hard, not with anger but with memory.

Morgan kept going, because once you said something like that, you didn’t get to pretend it was casual.

“I think it ties back to LA,” Morgan said. “To a long time ago. And everyone I ask either laughs or goes quiet. Then they tell me a story about a man who disappeared.”

Ethan stared at him. The river sighed. A trout rose somewhere upstream, indifferent.

Finally Ethan spoke, and his voice was calm enough to be dangerous.

“You should leave,” he said.

Morgan didn’t move. “I can.”

Ethan’s eyes held him. “No,” he said. “You should.”

Morgan felt the shape of the warning. It wasn’t for Ethan. It wasn’t even for Morgan, exactly.

It was for what came with Morgan.

“I’m not sure I can. What if I don’t?” Morgan asked.

Ethan’s mouth tightened – just a millimeter. He shifted his weight slightly, his boots firm on the bank. His hands remained visible. His rod stayed pointing at the sky. But the posture changed in a way Morgan recognized from cities and alleys and parking garages: the posture of a man who had decided where the violence would go if it arrived.

Ethan said, very softly, “Then I start wondering if you’re the kind of man I have to solve.”

Morgan’s smile faded. He took that in. He felt, in the marrow, the old reality returning: there were men who lived quietly in beautiful places not because they were harmless, but because they were tired of being dangerous.

Morgan looked at the river again – clear as truth, cold as judgment.

Then he looked back at Ethan.

“I’m not here to hurt you,” Morgan said.

Ethan’s eyes did not warm. “That’s not how it works,” he replied. “You’re here because something is moving. And when something moves, it pulls other things behind it.”

Morgan nodded once. He could feel the pull already.

Ethan watched him a moment longer, then turned slightly toward the trail, not inviting, not dismissing – simply indicating a direction.

“Five minutes,” Ethan said. “You talk while we walk. After that, you either go back to your car or you don’t. But you don’t stand on my river and make me wonder.”

Morgan fell into step beside him, careful to stay half a pace back. He noticed, with a grim amusement, that even here – on a quiet Oregon trout stream – Ethan Morgan had chosen the position that gave him the best sightlines.

Ethan didn’t look at him as they started up the path.

But Morgan heard him speak, almost under his breath, like a man talking to a ghost.

“No trophies,” Ethan said. “That’s the trick.”

Morgan swallowed. He knew what Ethan meant.

No trophies meant you could pretend you didn’t care.

And pretending you didn’t care was how men like them survived.