Tape dangles from 4x4’s hand as the leak is examined. He jokes about pulling a MacGyver. The TV show of the same name is a hit in Maine for the title character’s make-do approach to problem-solving. The tape lies on the wet waders like ordinary material and won’t adhere.
The newcomers depart, no summons issued. Undaunted, Light-eyes dons the leaky waders and heads into the lapping water, determined not to miss his shot.
His casting is filled with whistling energy. I step back quickly, suddenly aware of his great patience here today. Patience he maybe did not feel while working to attach the flies, while waiting his turn with the pole and the waders. I feel the contrast between the two natures of these fishermen.
But his turn is short-lived. The line soon catches in the pines overhead and breaks away. He does not want to lose the fly, so he comes ashore, shucks the waders, dons his sneakers and climbs the tall skinny tree. He reaches high and snags a dangling line, grasps the thin branch and yanks the fly loose. Turns out it’s a different fly—one he lost the other day!
Astonished he throws it down to Tall-one, who reports that its full of pine tar.
“No problem. I’ll boil it! That’ll loosen the tar.”
The pond is smoothed out, but big drops make rings on the surface as the young men gather their gear. All that remains of the outing is the little splake. It’s been lying in Tall-one’s milk jug, without water, ever since it was caught.
Light-eyes lifts it out and sets it in the sandy shallow water. The fish flops onto its side. He drags it through the water a few times, trying to load its gills with oxygen. But slightly it revives. The tall fisherman gives its life a try, pushing it back and forth, jiggling the fish from side to side. At last it gains breath, begins keeping its head down. The splake’s sides sheen up with purple iridescence in the late-arriving morning light. Late-arriving oxygen. Slowly it makes its way toward the deep.
The Unemployed Eat
The fishermen have invited us to throw a fish-fry using their catch. The quiet one is to bring an electric skillet and has already provided four kinds of fish: white perch, hornpout, brook trout, and smelts. The fish have been saved up, filleted and frozen, waiting for a celebration.
I whip up a little tartar sauce. I make shortcake and cut fresh strawberries. Our son, J. D., cleans house. Still unemployed, Allen works in exchange for rent. He has been installing a drop ceiling in the room upstairs. Résumés for both of us are afoot, but we are still unemployed.
The fish-fry begins with the early arrival of guests. Paul and Lucy, of Hippie Hill, come to the door with their son Amos. I slide past them with apologies; run next-door to alert the fishermen: find they aren’t quite set to come fry fish, so return to find Paul decanting some of his earthy homebrew. Allen is still upstairs cleaning up from ceiling installation. The homebrew, a dark potent beer, will get him down quick.
Meanwhile the kettle is on for Lucy. I begin pouring gingerale for Amos, a fifth-grader who just won the district chess tournament. J. D. is up in his room watching TV, expecting company of his own. The fish are already here, in whose honor the fry is being held. I’ve got them out thawing on newsprint.
Paul is pouring for Allen and himself. He speaks of the week’s upsets, which include the washing away of his newly dozed drive up the steep hillside. Then there was the rejection of a load of perfect birchwood by an area wood-turning mill. His load of wood had been ordered by the mill, yet after Paul unloaded it from the truck, by hand, it was rejected. Lucy says he is very determined to enjoy the evening.
The tall fisherman arrives and begins mixing up batter. I pick up a bowl of thawing, gutted smelts and run warm water over them. Ice lies in small glistening chunks inside silvered cavities against tiny backbones. A push with my thumb dislodges the ice. I pick up another smelt, working quickly for I am hungry. The fisherman has forgotten the electric skillet, so I run next-door for it. I want to prod his friend into coming, too. Even though Light-eyes is the talker, he is shy around new people. I am unsuccessful in convincing him to join us anytime soon. I do extract the promise that he will come sometime and bring plates and bowls.
I return to find Paul, Lucy, and Allen visiting in the living room corner of the house. Amos is at the counter where the quiet cook is presiding over the preparation of fish. Handing the cook his skillet, I look into the bowl to see little smelts slathered in batter. Smelts remind me of sardines. As the cook heats and begins testing the oil, Light-eyes appears sooner than promised with the extra tableware.
Talk begins heating up. I dart about, listening to conversations, readying sauce, checking on another of our neighbors’ contributions: Tater-tots in the oven. Allen, Lucy, and Paul are talking about medical geography and Legionnaires Disease. At the counter Amos tells me about Young Author’s Day at school—how he felt sorry for a Maine author and publisher who tried to get the uncooperative kids to write a poem. Conversations begin crisscrossing throughout the living space, lines of talk about flyfishing, microbiology and card games. At last a game of euchre is decided upon for the middle-aged hippies.
I finish the sauce and go to a corner shelf to take down the deck of cards. Beside the orange plastic couch (from a dental office), on the red square coffee-table (made out of an old window shutter), I begin pulling out face cards, nines and tens, for use in the game.
Aroma of deep-frying fish fills the house. I plead for a plate for Lucy. She has been wrestling the rototiller six hours today and should have first crack at ‘em.
Soon all are eating crispy fried fish of one sort or another, baked tater-tots, and Lucy’s tossed salad. I start with smelts, try trout, and finish with hornpout—light-tasting flaky flesh. With two exceptions, trout have the most protein of fish listed in bulletin 72, Nutritive Value of Foods, put out by the University of Maine Cooperative Extension. At 21%, it’s tied with shrimp, and lags a bit behind canned tuna. Protein, as central muscle cell builder, is composed of busy polypeptide chains, conferring strength for us to move both our own bones and the bones of birchwood or rototillers.
It’s all here, the food of fishermen—crisp, tawny, finned, light. As much as each can eat. We fill our plates, drink homebrew or apple juice sparklers. As cook keeps cranking out deep-fried fish, bubbling and sizzling in the oil-filled pan, we refill our plates.
For dessert I pile shortcakes was strawberries and fresh whipped cream. Upstairs, J.D. and a recent arrival, Rick, eat shortcake and talk; they prepare to depart for the evening. At some point Phoebe shows up, Paul and Lucy’s daughter. She has been managing the local high school baseball team, but now she’s here for shortcake. Then the young people drift out, heading next-door to watch video comedies.
Outside darkness settles. Allen, Paul, Lucy and I settle down to play euchre. At my request we hear again the story of Paul’s first winter in Maine, the winter of the Bucksfield bungalow, which he spent trying to keep warm with only the green popple he could cut from the land. He was house-sitting for absentee owners.
“Poplar gives a bitter smoke,
Fills your eyes and makes you choke.”
It’s not known for warmth, either, producing the lowest BTUs (British thermal units) of any Maine tree. And the bungalow was insulated with rags. But Paul also had his own land—sixty acres—over the hills in a remote township. And it was waiting for him, a place of his own to work, to plant and build upon. To develop with his hands. He would meet Lucy and together they would build two wooden houses on the land, one of which would burn to the ground, leaving only scorched stone.
It