English Original
There were three of them. There were four of us, and April lay on the campsite and on the river, a mixture of dawn at a damp extreme and the sun in the leaves at cajole. This was Deer Lodge on the Pine River in Ossipee, New Hampshire, though the lodge was naught but a foundation remnant in the earth. Brother Bentley's father, Oren, had found this place sometime after the First World War, a foreign affair that had seriously done him no good but he found solitude abounding here. Now we were here, post World War II, post Korean War, Vietnam War on the brink. So much learned, so much yet to learn.
Peace then was everywhere about us, in the riot of young leaves, in the spree of bird confusion and chatter, in the struggle of pre-dawn animals for the start of a new day, a Cooper Hawk that had smashed down through trees for a squealing rabbit, yap of a fox at a youngster, a skunk at rooting.
We had pitched camp in the near darkness, Ed LeBlanc, Brother Bentley, Walter Ruszkowski, myself. A dozen or more years we had been here, and seen no one. Now, into our campsite deep in the forest, so deep that at times we had to rebuild sections of narrow road (more a logger's path) flushed out by earlier rains, deep enough where we thought we'd again have no traffic, came a growling engine, an old solid body van, a Chevy, the kind I had driven for Frankie Pike and the Lobster Pound in Lynn delivering lobsters throughout the Merrimack Valley. It had pre-WW II high fenders, a faded black paint on a body you'd swear had been hammered out of corrugated steel, and an engine that made sounds too angry and too early for the start of day. Two elderly men, we supposed in their seventies, sat the front seat; felt hats at the slouch and decorated with an assortment of tied flies like a miniature bandoleer of ammunition on the band. They could have been conscripts for Emilano Zappata, so loaded their hats and their vests as they climbed out of the truck.
"Mornin', been yet?" one of them said as he pulled his boots up from the folds at his knees, the tops of them as wide as a big mouth bass coming up from the bottom for a frog sitting on a lily pad. His hands were large, the fingers long and I could picture them in a shop barn working a primal plane across the face of a maple board. Custom-made, old elegance, those hands said.
中文翻译
他们是三个人。我们是四个人，四月的气息笼罩着营地和河流，那是极致的潮湿黎明与在树叶间诱哄的阳光的混合。这里是新罕布什尔州奥西皮松河畔的鹿屋，尽管那屋子早已不复存在，只剩地基的残迹。本特利兄弟的父亲奥伦在一战后的某个时候发现了这个地方，那场海外战事对他毫无益处，但他在这里找到了无尽的孤寂。如今我们来到这里，已是二战之后，朝鲜战争之后，越南战争一触即发之际。已知甚多，未知更多。
那时，宁静无处不在，环绕着我们：在新叶的喧闹中，在鸟儿混乱而喋喋不休的狂欢中，在黎明前动物们为新一天开始的挣扎中——一只库珀鹰猛冲下树扑向尖叫的野兔，狐狸对幼崽的吠叫，一只正在刨根的臭鼬。
我们在近乎黑暗中扎了营，成员有埃德·勒布朗、本特利兄弟、沃尔特·鲁斯科夫斯基和我自己。十几年来我们一直来这里，从未见过旁人。此刻，在我们森林深处的营地——深到有时我们不得不重修被早先雨水冲毁的狭窄路段（更像是一条伐木工的小径），深到我们以为绝不会再有访客——传来一阵咆哮的引擎声。一辆老旧的硬壳厢式货车，一辆雪佛兰，正是我曾为林恩的弗兰基·派克和龙虾坊驾驶的那种，在梅里马克河谷运送龙虾。它有着二战前的高挡泥板，车身是褪色的黑漆，你会发誓那车身是用波纹钢板敲打出来的，引擎发出的声音对于一天的开始来说过于愤怒，也过于早了。两位老人，我们猜七十多岁，坐在前排；戴着软塌塌的毡帽，帽带上装饰着各式各样的假蝇钩，像一条微型的子弹带。他们爬出卡车时，帽子和背心上挂满了这些东西，简直像是埃米利亚诺·萨帕塔的征召兵。
“早啊，钓到了吗？”其中一人一边把靴子从膝盖处的褶皱里往上提，一边说道。那靴口宽得像一条从水底窜上来捕食睡莲叶上青蛙的大嘴黑鲈。他的手很大，手指修长，我能想象出它们在作坊谷仓里，用一把原始刨子划过枫木板表面的样子。定制般的，古老的优雅，那双手诉说着。