The Fishing Trip
By Kent Suss
One hot summer when everyone was much younger, and most of the people alive today had not yet
been born, my father dropped me and my brother Neil off at the end of the driveway of the cottage where
my Auntie Nita and Uncle Mike lived, and zoomed off in a cloud of dust.
Uncle and Auntie discovered us as we appeared out of the settling dust, standing beside our duffel
bags. They greeted us with bear hugs, wrapping their arms around us and swinging us high into the
air, and then they groaned about how heavy we’d become and pretended they’d hurt their backs from
lifting us. They hustled us inside, sat us on high swivel stools at the kitchen counter, put cans
of Orange Crush in front of us and let us pop them open – sooooo sweet! Out the window, the
lights of the cottages across the lake glimmered like ships coming in to harbour.
Then Uncle Mike popped open a can of his own and leaned in close. “Eddie,” he said, “the
fishing has been terrible all week. Today I didn’t have even a nibble. I was about
to give up and come home when all at once a big green head rose out of the water right beside
me. It was Big Momma Pickerel! She looked at me with one golden eye and opened her
mouth, filled with needle-sharp teeth, and said, ‘How’s the fishing, Mike?’”
Auntie Nita rolled her eyes and gave us a wink, as if to say, “Strap yourselves in for a
tall tale, boys!”
“‘It’s going very very badly, Big Momma Pickerel,’” Mike went on. “‘I bought the freshest
minnows to put onto my pickerel rig, and I’ve been sitting out here all day without a
bite. Why won’t you take my bait?’
“Big Momma Pickerel just looked at me and said, ‘When is Eddie coming to the lake?’
“‘Not until tonight,’ I said.
“‘When Eddie gets here,’ she says, ‘bring him back to this spot, and let him cast
his line in with some of that nice bait, and see what happens!’”
I looked over at Neil. The kid’s eyes were as big as ping pong balls.
As Uncle and Auntie were tucking us into bed, Neil said, “Uncle Mike, can I ask
you something?”
“Sure, kiddo.”
“Can Big Momma Pickerel really talk?”
Uncle Mike put his hand over his heart. “I swear, Neil. All the fish in this
lake can talk. Some nights they talk so much I go out onto the dock in my pajamas
and yell at them to shut up just so I can get some sleep.”
“Who teaches them?”
“Haven’t you ever heard of a school of fish? Every little fish goes to school,
just like you will next week.”
“Is Big Momma Pickerel their teacher?”
Auntie Nita frowned at this, but Uncle Mike gave Neil a thumbs up and
said “You got it, kiddo!”
First thing next morning Uncle Mike shook me and Neil awake, and we tiptoed
past the room where Auntie Nita was still sleeping. Uncle Mike started up his
outboard motor and we streaked across the lake. We zoomed around an island covered
with pine trees into a rocky bay surrounded by cliffs. Uncle Mike cut the engine
and lowered the anchor.
I leaned out over the edge of the boat to look down at my reflection. It was so
mirror-perfect that for a moment everything was upside down; the real me was down
there in the water, looking up through the shimmering surface at a copy of myself,
floating in the sky.
Mike put minnows – shiners, he called them – onto the hooks of my pickerel rig
and showed me how to lower the line into the water. It wasn’t long before something
huge took the bait on one of those hooks and swam down towards the bottom of the
lake. My rod bent double. The boat tipped dangerously to the side.
“Don’t let go!” yelled Uncle Mike. The thing swam under the boat and leapt high
into the air behind us. I held on for dear life as the green giant blasted
skywards, its side fins splayed to the sides like airplane stabilizers, gills
flayed open, its spiky dorsal spines fanning out to scratch the sky. It flew
upward with so much force that it lifted the boat right out of the water. As the
line straightened out, it spun the boat like a sideways top: upside-down in mid-air, and
then right side up again, and then smack down in the water, the whole thing happening
so quick that Neil didn’t spill a single drop of his Orange Crush.
Big Momma Pickerel took off underwater, faster than a torpedo, and I flew from my
seat. Uncle Mike caught me by one ankle and held on. There I was, suspended over the
water, pulled one way by my fishing rod, and Uncle Mike trying to pull me back into
the boat by the foot. My bones stretched like rubber bands. My mom said it was the
biggest growth spurt she’d ever seen. But she couldn’t figure out why only one of my
legs grew – I had to wear one of her shoes with a high heel on the short leg until it
caught up with the other one.
We would have been zooming across the water by now, except that the anchor was hooked
firmly to the bottom of the lake. Big Momma pulled us so hard that a piece of the lake
bottom was dragged up to the surface, and it stayed there; to this day there are two
islands in that corner of the lake instead of just one.
Auntie Nita was waiting with her camera. She arranged us side by side on the dock, each
of us holding up part of the fish. It was so big that no matter where Auntie stood, it
kept spilling out of the sides of the frame. She had to take five separate pictures to get it all in!
Then she led me and Neil up to the kitchen and served us hot pizza fresh out of the
oven. After I ate, I left to go see what Uncle Mike was up to.
He had spread sheets of newspaper over the dock, and laid Big Momma Pickerel on
top. He was on his knees, bending over her, holding a knife with a long, thin
blade. He made a downward cut behind the gills, then turned the blade and followed the
backbone all the way to the tail. Then he flipped the fillet skin-side down and slid the
blade between the meat and the skin. He placed a creamy white boneless fillet into my
hands, and then another.
“Bring those to Auntie, eh?”
I held the fillets high over my head to keep them from touching the ground. I turned and
came face to face with Neil.
He was watching Uncle Mike.
Mike scraped the pink and yellow fish guts into a black plastic bag. He gathered up the
glittering silver-green skin and scales, the backbone and tail, the bloodied newspaper. The
last thing to go into the garbage was the green head of Big Momma Pickerel.
She stared up at Neil with those golden eyes, now starting to cloud over. She was speechless
at last, yet somehow managed to deliver a glance full of reproach.
Neil’s cheeks went slack, as if his tongue were suddenly too heavy for his mouth. A strangled
sound started to build in his throat. He looked up at me with murder in his eyes. Then he
turned and ran inside.
When Auntie Nita realized that none of her pans were big enough to fry the fillets, she
grabbed a socket wrench and detached the hood of her 1978 Chevrolet Impala. She turned all
the stove burners on, placed the car hood on top, and threw on a pound of butter. When the
butter was sizzling, she dredged the fillets in flour and put them on to cook.
The smell of that pickerel frying was so heavenly that all the anglers on the lake paddled
their canoes or motored their boats over and stood in line for a taste. There was enough for
everyone to have a plate. Guests filled up all the chairs and sat on the beds, and on the
tables, and even on the roof. There were even some anglers perched in trees, savouring the
golden pieces of fried pickerel.
Then they started telling jokes and making comments about how thirsty they were, raising
their eyebrows at Uncle Mike as if they expected him to do something about it, until Auntie
Nita had had enough of it and persuaded them to leave by putting on a Miles Davis record and
turning the volume up high. Within 16 bars they were all gone and we had the place to ourselves again.
We found Neil, sitting by himself, squeezed into the broom closet with his plate in his
lap. He hadn’t eaten a bite. He was just pushing the pieces of fish back and forth across
his plate with his fork. Uncle Mike tried to help by holding a forkful of fish and pretending
it was a train entering the tunnel of Neil’s mouth, but Neil kept the tunnel closed tight. He
didn’t seem to care that the train crashed into the side of the mountain and tumbled down all
the way to the floor, leaving no survivors. Auntie Nita sighed and handed Mike a paper towel
and told him to clean it up, since it was his doing. She took Neil’s hand and led him to the
kitchen, where she opened a cupboard and reached for a box of Captain Crunch.
The next morning when Uncle Mike came to wake us up, Neil pretended to be asleep.
Uncle Mike and I had great luck that day. We didn’t catch any fish, but we caught a boot, and
Mike refused to go home until he had caught me a second one to go with it. We pulled enough
boots out of the lake that I didn’t have to buy a new pair for the next three years of school. None
of them matched, but I didn’t mind. I wore one yellow boot and one high heel until my short
let caught up with my long one.
Nobody ever took my boots home by mistake.
It was late afternoon when we returned. Neil was chest deep in the water, wearing a
diving mask. I watched him sink slowly out of sight. When he came up, his hands were clutched
together. He waded to the dock and dropped a silver minnow into a gallon jar full of water. It
darted back and forth, magnified through the glass. Then Neil held his ear to the side of the jar.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Listening.”
“Duh,” I said. “For what?”
Neil said, “To hear it talk, duh!”
I said, “I hate to tell you, but- ”
Then I stopped myself. That was a lie. I wanted to tell him that fish can’t talk. I would
have enjoyed it. But one thing I’ve learned from being Neil’s brother is that people
don’t always want to hear the truth, and there was a little bit of that desperate, murderous
look in his eyes left over from the day before, so instead of educating him, I found another
mask, and waded into the cold lake. I floated, still as seaweed, waiting for a minnow to come
near enough for me to scoop it up in my hands. Neil was miraculous at catching them, but I
found it to be impossible. I was better at spotting pretty rocks on the lake bottom, and so
I started a stack of them beside the minnow jar.
Auntie Nita came down to the beach in a flower print one-piece bathing suit. She wore oversized
sunglasses and a giant white straw sunhat. She sat in a beach chair and opened a novel as
thick as my head. Later she told me it was her lucky day because she had a front-row seat
for what happened next.
Uncle Mike walked up the dock, his arms full of boots and life jackets and fishing
tackle. He couldn’t see his feet, and he couldn’t see Neil’s minnow jar, either. He stubbed
his toe on it, tripped, and fell headlong. Everything in his arms went flying. He got to
his feet with a groan.
The jar was rolling on its side. A single minnow had escaped, and managed to flip itself
between the boards of the dock and back into the lake. The rest wriggled over each other in
the wee bit of water left in the jar.
Mike picked up the jar and carried it to the end of the dock. He crouched and emptied it – minnows
and all – back into the lake.
I turned to see what Neil would do about it.
He was already on the dock. He began to run, , towards Uncle Mike. He gained
momentum as he hopped over the scattered boots and life jackets, faster and faster, a compact
five-year-old cannonball. Just as Uncle Mike rose from his crouch, Neil held his arms out in
front of him and threw his full weight against the man’s rear end. Uncle Mike flew off the end
of the dock, arms and legs splayed out like a frog pinned to a dissecting table.
The splash that Mike made when he hit the water was so big that all the anglers on the lake
were convinced it was raining, so they all packed up their gear and went home.
When Uncle Mike came sputtering to the surface he roared so loudly that all the leaves in the
forest were shaken loose from their trees, as well as the squirrels, plus one angler who had
climbed into a birch tree for a nap after the fish fry the day before and hadn’t woken up
yet. The Canada geese took one look at the barren trees and decided that winter was coming
early, so they cut their vacations short and flew south.
Mike hauled himself onto the dock like a walrus and went lumbering after Neil. Neil high-stepped
around trees and bushes, shrieking with terrified delight, while Mike chased him, bellowing
threats and curses. Neil made a break for the house, but Auntie Nita got there before him and
blocked the door, and shouted, “No wet people on my floors!”
Neil took off around the cottage one way; Uncle Mike took off the other way. A few seconds
later I heard a scream. Uncle Mike appeared, carrying Neil over his shoulder. Neil squirmed
and twisted and started to slide down, and by the time they reached the dock, Mike’s arms were
wrapped tight around Neil, and Neil was clinging to Mike’s neck, his legs squeezing his big
belly. Uncle Mike ran the last few steps and launched himself and Neil, entwined in each
other’s arms, into the deep, cold water at the end of the dock.
The wave they made was so big that it loosened all the docks on the lake from their moorings
and set them floating away. When the cottagers finally tracked them down, the runaway docks
all looked the same, so everyone just towed home the first one they found. In the end, everyone
was happy that they got a new dock, even though it was an old one. There were still dock-christening
parties going on three summers later, since everyone had to have one and a fear of missing
out prevented the cottagers from permitting any two to be scheduled for the same weekend.
That splash also broke something loose in Neil and my Uncle. The anger and the silence between
them was somehow washed away. They were both laughing as they surfaced. Uncle Mike lifted
Neil onto the dock and then Neil pulled on Mike’s arm to help him wriggle out of the
lake. Mike groped in his motorboat for a minnow net, and together they filled the jar and
established a fresh school of minnows.
Uncle Mike didn’t even change out of his wet clothes.
When Mom came for us in her car, Auntie Nita leaned into the window and said, “Your boys
spent so much time in the water I think they grew themselves some gills. Better get that checked out.”
Uncle Mike leaned in and passed Neil a small jar of water with the cap screwed on
tight. Inside was a single minnow, swimming in circles, looking unblinkingly at Neil
through the curved glass.
Mike said, “Here’s something for you to show your friends at school. I hear fish like schools.”
We left Mike and Nita waving on the dusty road, his arm around her shoulders.
For a long time, none of us said a word. The leaves blurred past the car windows like
ripples in a deep green lake.
Then I heard whispering behind me. Neil was talking to his fish.
I said, “Hey Neil, what are you going to name it?”
“He’s already got a name.”
“Oh yeah?”
“It’s Dwayne.”
“As in ‘Dwayne the bathtub, I’m dwowning’? Cute.”
“It’s not cute!” Neil shot back. “It’s his name!”
“Riiiight,” I said.
“He told me himself.”
Neil didn’t bring Dwayne to school. He kept him at home and fed him pizza and Captain
Crunch until he was too big for his jar and had to be moved to the bathroom sink. When he outgrew
the sink, Neil moved him – fittingly, I thought – into the bathtub.
At the end of September, Mom rented a pickup truck and put our old wading pool in the back so
we could transport Dwayne back to the lake. He seemed happy to be among the other fish
again. He thanked us for the ride and all the food.
I wake from a dream, turn on the lamp beside my bed, and watch Neil sleeping. Then I tiptoe
over to his bed and lightly run my fingers along both sides of his neck, feeling for two
slits heaving in and out. I am just checking to see if he has – if he still has – his gills.
Uncle Mike is gone now, but he comes to me often, on the dock in his pajamas, yelling out
over the lake for the fish to be quiet so he can get some sleep. Maybe he never did
that, but all the same, it’s an image that hooks me and pulls me along for a ride on the
waves of memory. I don’t know if the reflection I see when I look back is a true image of
what was really going on in those early years, but Mike is always there, looking up from
under the surface, ready to leap into the air.
Kent Suss |