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Jim awakened the next morning to the sounds of trucks making their early morning deliveries beneath his open hotel window. His room did not overlook the water as he had hoped. It faced east and overlooked the narrow alleyway behind the hotel that was littered with paper and cardboard and big brown dumpsters that smelled in the hot air and attracted flies and dogs.

Last evening, he became lost again in his writing and stayed up longer than he should have. But it could not be helped, as it was a good night for writing.

He found a table in a small park that overlooked the harbor. Carne asada and taco vendors pushed their colorful, hand-painted carts nearby along the avenue. As the evening wore on, it was apparent and highly amusing to know that not all of the tequila on one particular carne cart was used strictly for marinating the meats. As each hour passed, Jim watched the old man fill and roll his tortillas with increased flamboyance and gusto, and would occasionally juggle the large tortillas as they spun vertically in the air. His coordination began to wane later in the evening and too many were dropped onto the pavement or tore, so the juggling act stopped. Jim imagined the old man's wife kept a keen eye on her husband's supplies and profits. It would be hard for the vendor to explain to his wife at the end of the evening that the flour tortillas she worked hard to make in her brick oven were lost to his foolishness.

Jim ordered breakfast in the hotel's restaurant after checking out of his room and as he sat and sipped strong café he thought about this trip and what he had seen and experienced during the past two days and nights. He was here at great expense to fish for trout in the shadows of the Andes with his guide, Nico. So far, he felt like the lead character in a tragedy with a sad outcome that was too familiar. Listening to the loud trucks rumble and brakes squeal under his window that morning reminded him that again, as with countless other times in his unfortunate life, his luck ran pitifully shallow and things never seemed to go as planned.

He was disappointed, but somehow he was not surprised.

His insistence that he write and attempt to sell his writings, even through the lean years, had cost Jim his marriage a year ago. His wife of thirty years slowly began to look upon failed writers with contempt and disdain and didn't view them in the same romantic light as other artists that worked in, say, oils or watercolors. His medium was the written word that he formed and forged into stories. But because most everybody was capable of writing, his "art" was nothing special in Mary's eyes. Jim was certain she would not have left him if he were a starving French Impressionist that wore a felt beret. She would probably be overjoyed to live a simple and frugal life occupying a cold flat somewhere in Paris.

The people at Yelcho Lodge knew of his stay at the hotel and assured him that he'd receive confirmation of the airplane's pending noon arrival in Puerto Montt by mid-morning. It was approaching eleven thirty and he was on his fourth coffee and he felt that old feeling again. A feeling that today would not be his day either, that something beyond his control had gone wrong. Jim paid the hotel clerk separately for his call to the lodge.

Nico's familiar voice was annoyingly pleasant as Jim listened to the situation down in Chaiten . . . No, the airport mechanic was not able to repair the airplane. Necessary parts would be ordered. Yes, they would contact the hotel as soon as they could after repairs were made.

Jim hung up the hotel phone and wanted very much to cry or scream or throw his luggage and fine split bamboo fly rods through the plate glass fronting the hotel. How could everybody be so pleasant? His plans were quickly unraveling and optimism suddenly left him. Thoughts of fishing the Yelcho evaporated and he simply lost his will.

"Por favor, ¿me pide un taxi?" Jim asked the clerk as he blinked away tears.

"Esta bien?"

"Estoy bien. Fine. I am fine. Everything is just fine. My stay here was most pleasant. A taxi. Please."

Jim's legs felt heavy as he approached the counter at Tepual airport. The act of frantically searching his jacket pockets for money brought a defeated smile to his lips as he realized that this was the only fishing he'd do in Chile. Keeping his eyes fixed on the counter-top, he muttered, "Santiago, please. One way."

He would disembark at the Santiago airport and see yet another pleasant and pretty face behind another ticket counter and the last words he would speak in Chile would be "Cleveland, USA. One way."

Dan Brown's weekly outdoor column is brought to you by Frankie's Bait and Marine, in Chisago City, and St. Croix Outdoors, in St. Croix Falls, Wis.

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