Fifty years ago, Hippolyte had been locked away in an asylum for something so dreadful that the family had given part of their land to the church to atone for his sin. They were so ashamed, they’d even asked the priest to excommunicate their son and erase his name from the parish records.
It had taken much pestering by Jacques to discover what Hippolyte had done. At first his grandfather had refused to discuss it, saying it was best left alone. Even his uncle didn’t want to talk about anything other than fishing and the weather.
Then one night after a bit too much piquette, the moonshine Pépère bought from Papa Drouin, the two brothers finally divulged what had really happened. Hippolyte had killed a man, an Anglo to be exact, which made Jacques wonder why his family had been so upset. After all, fifty years ago, killing a man, especially an Anglophone from Ontario, was no big deal. And still wasn’t, as far as Jacques was concerned. But it turned out the family’s shame came not from the murder but from what Hippolyte did to the body afterwards.
All that summer, Hippolyte had been trying to catch a hundred pounder. Several times he’d almost caught the enormous muskie, but each time it got away. Until one day he arrived at his secret fishing spot just in time to see the giant flapping fish being hauled into a boat by someone who had no right to be there.
At this point, Hippolyte said he didn’t remember much, just sparks going off in his head, and next he knew he was hauling a big sucker of a muskie into his own boat with some strange looking bait stuck in its mouth. “Then,” he said, his eyes wide in remembered wonder, “them fish started jumping out of the water like the devil himself was snapping at their tails. I figured maybe it was this funny lookin’ bait, so I put another piece on the hook. I tell you, Jacques, us Tremblays lived like a monsignor that night, eh Pierre? And for the rest of the summer. We never had it so good. Why people called me Seigneur Poisson, eh, Pierre? Sir Fish, much better than Crow’s Beak, that’s for sure.”
But the Tremblays’ feasting was brought to a sudden and sickening close when hunters discovered the mutilated remains of a body hidden amongst the rocks on an isolated peninsula, the one people now called English Bait Point. It didn’t take the police long to discover Hippolyte was the one who’d killed the man and chopped him into tiny bait-sized pieces.
Jacques shivered, and not from the cold. He wiggled his fingers to make sure they were still there and wiped the icicles from his nose. Exhausted from pushing through the drifts, he wasn’t sure how much longer he was going to last. English Bait Point had better be straight ahead.
A few minutes later, he stumbled over a rusty metal bucket with a broken handle. He sighed with relief. The old man’s fishing pail. He was on the right track.
Feeling more optimistic, he pushed forward with renewed energy. However, the farther he moved away from the stranded bucket, the more he questioned why Pépère had thrown it away. Maybe it was useless for carrying gear, but for sure it was better sitting on an overturned pail than on snow.
This uneasiness increased when he discovered the augur. This was serious. Not even for a free jug of Papa Drouin’s piquette would Pépère throw this new drill away. Even if he had his old homemade spud with him, he didn’t have the strength any more to drill one hole with it, let alone the five he always made in the ice. But then again, Hippolyte was more than strong enough for the two of them.
Fear for his grandfather took over when Jacques uncovered the clump of pink crystals in a nearby mound of churned snow. There was no mistaking the signs. The two old men had been fighting. And one of them was hurt. That must be why Pépère had dropped his gear.
Jacques reached behind to ensure the long case was still slung over his back then picked up his pace. He prayed he wasn’t too late.
A short distance later Jacques spied the looming mass of shore and hoped he’d arrived at English Bait Point. He turned to follow the shoreline in search of the cliff that marked the end of the peninsula. Once around it, he should see some sign of the two fishermen.
Jacques couldn’t understand why his uncle insisted on fishing next to this reminder of his bloody crime. At first Jacques had thought maybe Hippolyte wanted to seek forgiveness from his victim’s spirit. But after more pestering, it came out that throughout his long stay in the asylum Hippolyte could think only of the gigantic muskie he’d caught beneath the cliff of English Bait Point. He was bound and determined to be Seigneur Poisson once again.
All summer and fall until the lake froze over, Hippolyte had spent the daylight hours trolling back and forth in the water around the point. But other than a few good-sized muskies, no giant had snagged his line. Surly to begin with, he’d become more so as the season progressed. Once, he had rammed the boat of another fisherman who had dared to fish in his spot.
Hippolyte had begun to experiment with bait. First, he’d tried worms, crayfish and other standard fishing lures. But when that had failed, he’d tried raw chicken. With bloody chunks of freshly killed rabbit he had some luck, so he’d started trapping them in earnest. Before long, Jacques’s mother, revolted by the blood and squealing rabbits, screamed at him to stop, and when he didn’t, at Pépère to do something about it.
For a time, they thought he had returned to normal bait, but one day not long before the lake froze over, Jacques had discovered his great-uncle chopping a deer haunch into tiny bait-size chunks. However, since this was on English Bait Point and well out of sight of his mother, he’d decided not to say anything, particularly when the next day Hippolyte had brought home his largest catch of the season.
Unfortunately, it was not the largest fish caught by the Crow’s Beaks that season. Pépère had brought home one monster fish after another, muskie, lake trout, you name it. He had the golden touch. And with each large fish his grandfather had brought home, his uncle had become quieter and quieter, while his eyes had grown colder and colder.
Then accidents had started happening to Pépère. The first one had occurred in the barn when a pitchfork fell out of the loft, skewering the old man to the ground. Fortunately, it had pierced the loose material of his jacket, not his chest, so he had walked away, yelling at Jacques for leaving it in such an unsafe place. But Jacques was sure he’d left it beside the manure pile.
Next, his grandfather had almost sliced his leg in two when the ax had ricocheted off the piece of firewood he was splitting. Close inspection had revealed a nail hammered into the center of the log. Pépère had put it down to just one of those things. Jacques remembered seeing his uncle with a can of nails and a hammer shortly before the accident.
Once the lake had frozen over, things calmed down for as long as the two brothers couldn’t fish. When the ice was thick enough to support them, each had returned to his own special fishing spot. Except this time, it was Hippolyte who brought the big fish home. A thirty-pound walleye was followed by several others of equal size. No one dared ask what kind of bait he was using. Pépère was so infuriated he moved to English Bait Point.
And the race to become Seigneur Poisson had geared into overdrive. To this point, Pépère had only been toying with Hippolyte’s obsession. Now he was determined to take the crown away from his brother. So far there was no clear-cut winner. Both brothers were bringing home monster walleyes the like of which made Jacques decide he’d never swim in the lake again. It also made Jacques begin to suspect the kind of bait his grandfather was also using.
Then last week, another accident had happened. Hippolyte had been cleaning a rifle when it accidentally fired. The bullet had knocked the toque clear off Pépère’s head and he had only escaped the next bullet because he’d hidden behind the milk separator.
That was when Jacques’s mother had decided enough was enough. One bullet could be labelled an accident; a second bullet was something else altogether. She had told Hippolyte to leave. Today was his last day. Tomorrow he was to go to a group home a hundred miles away run by the good Sisters.
This