A River Runs Through It

Paul and Norman are joyfully welcomed by their parents. Paul and his mother enjoy a reunion that is particularly poignant. Norman asks their father to go fishing with them the next day. He is thrilled to be asked.

Paul cannot bear to stay at home for even one night; he leaves just as his parents are going to bed to meet up with some friends. While Mrs. Maclean goes to bed, Norman and his father stay up and talk. Rev. Maclean wants to discuss Paul and what Norman knows about Paul’s troubles. Rev. Maclean says that in order to help someone, you must give of yourself to someone who wants help. Norman admits that he doesn’t know if Paul needs help or not. Their consolation is that at least they can all go fishing together.

Paul makes breakfast for them all the next morning, after a night of drinking. Soon they head out to the river. They leave their father in a calm stretch of the river to fish, and Paul asks Norman to fish with him, which is unusual; typically, they separate to fish.

Norman watches the river carefully before starting to fish. He notices that Paul isn’t catching anything yet. He chooses his fly carefully—a large, flashy bug that Paul often made fun of in the past. Soon he is bringing in Rainbow trout after Rainbow trout, while Paul gets nothing. Paul grows jealous, so to ruin Norman’s fishing, Paul throws rocks into Norman’s fishing hole. Norman is feeling “more perfect” (89) every minute.

Then they move down to the next hole, where Paul starts catching fish and gives Norman a fly like the one he is using. The two men fish together, competing while also helping one another. Norman stops fishing when he has caught ten fish. He says that three of the fish are the finest he has ever caught; these fish were the ones he caught with the fly his brother gave him and the last fish that he caught when fishing with his brother. He goes to sit with his father and talk.

They sit together as Paul walks downstream to fish in front of them. He will stop when he has caught his limit of 20 fish. Just as Paul is casting for number 20, his father throws a rock into his fishing hole, and Norman understands where Paul learned that trick. Paul sees them and laughs, and he moves to another spot. Together, Norman and his father watch Paul catch his last fish. Norman remembers, “At the end of the day, then, I remember him both as a distant abstraction in artistry and as a closeup in water and laughter” (101). This is the last fish that Norman and his father will see Paul catch.

Early the following May, the police come to tell Norman that Paul has been beaten to death with a revolver and his body thrown into an alley. Rev. Maclean takes comfort from the news that Paul went down fighting; all of the bones in his right hand were broken. Mrs. Maclean never asks Norman any questions about Paul’s death; she deals with her grief alone.

Norman’s father occasionally asks Norman more questions about Paul’s death, but there is nothing more to know. He presses Norman; they ask each other if they could have done more to help Paul.

Norman recalls his father telling him to write the story of their family life together in order to understand what happened. He wisely tells Norman that it is those whom we love most that we usually know and understand the least. An older Norman narrates the last few paragraphs of the novella, saying that all of the people he has loved are now gone. He is reunited with them in the river as he fishes; he is reunited with them in memory through the timeless, enduring flow of life embodied in the river.