The Hidden Summer (10 page)

CHAPTER 10

GOING FISHING

A couple of days later, we’re still talking about Jakobe and the unseen woman. We haven’t seen any sign of either of them again.

“You think they’re gone?” asks Lydia, chewing on her hair. “You think we’re really alone out here?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “Probably. I bet they were just out for a walk. Some lady and her son who live in the neighborhood.”

We’ve been through this several times now. I will admit, as I’m drifting off to sleep safe in my bed at home, my mind drifts to what I would do if someone suddenly bursts in Marvin’s door. Someone who isn’t a six-year-old. But I don’t tell Lydia this. I only think about that sort of thing when my mind is wandering away from me. I don’t like to think of anyone else having discovered Lodema. It’s my place . . . I mean our place. And that’s that.

“We should get started,” I say, emphatically. “They like the early morning.”

“But . . . ,” says Lydia.

“It’s going to be too hot if we don’t get started.”

“Fine,” she says. “Hand me a cup.”

This is our first day of fishing, and I’ve been looking forward to it. It’s not blazing hot yet, and the trees are casting long, cool shadows. I hand Lydia a plastic cup. She volunteered to take care of the bait, so she starts turning over rocks and logs looking for insects. I pull out the Swiss army knife Marvin gave me, and I size up the young willow trees around us. I choose a couple of promising branches—strong, but not too thick.

“So what are we going to do if we catch one?” asks Lydia, her hair falling into the dirt as she shoves over a piece of dead wood.

“We’re going to gut it, and we’re going to eat it,” I say.

Marvin taught me to fish. For a while, we went almost every weekend. Not here, of course. Sometimes we’d drive to the lake and stop for boiled peanuts or corn dogs at our favorite gas station. Sometimes we’d go to a pond owned by some guy he knew out Highway 280, and we’d buy fruit at Al’s Farmer’s Market and eat it without washing it off.

Marvin always said he was going to buy me my own pole. He left before he ever did. Or I guess we left. Marvin had a house on Red Mountain, and Mom and I moved in when he and Mom got married. I had my own bedroom in the basement, with my own television and my own CD player. I could hear Marvin’s heavy, steady footsteps over my head late at night; they were the last sound I heard before I fell asleep. Sometimes I think about walking over to check if Marvin’s still living there, but I’m not sure which would be worse—to see him there, sitting at his kitchen table without us, or to not see him there at all.

Marvin was—is—an engineer, but I think that’s a waste. He should have been a teacher. He loved explaining anything—how the engine of the car works, how to spot Orion and the Big Dipper and a bunch of other constellations, how to bait a hook. When I caught my first fish, he rubbed the top of my head so hard that I got dizzy and nearly dropped the pole. He cheered and whistled while I reeled it in to the bank. When I cut my fingers trying to get it off the hook, he took the line from me and slipped the fish off as easy as pulling a roasted marshmallow off a stick. It flopped on the ground, and I would have felt a little guilty except that Marvin was grinning and trying to give me five with his slimy, bloody fish hands and calling me Little Nell, which no one else has ever called me before or since him.

Sometimes I miss being called Little Nell. It’s like she only existed for as long as Marvin was around, and they vanished at the same time.

Even though Marvin had his own pole, and half the time I would use his, we always cut down a second pole. It was part of the ritual. Now I fold my knife up and run my hand down the two fresh-cut pieces of wood—they’re smooth and cool.

I reach into my pocket for the fishing line.

Marvin left me three gifts when he and Mom split up—at least I like to think he left them as gifts, not that he just forgot about them. The knife was definitely a gift. He gave it to me the last Christmas. And on our last fishing trip, he’d stuffed a roll of fishing line and a pack of hooks into my backpack. I tried to hand them back to him when we got home, and he said, “Keep ’em for next time.”

I think that means they were a gift.

So this is the next time. Only Marvin isn’t here. I tie a piece of fishing line on the tip of each pole, where I’ve notched a little groove with my knife. I measure out the line and snip it off between my teeth, then run it through the hook.

I practice casting a little and nearly hook Lydia’s ear. This could be a huge mistake because by now she has a cup full of beetles and grubs and earthworms. Dangerous ammunition.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” she asks, taking a few steps away from me, but not reaching for any beetles. “Have you ever done this without Marvin?”

I don’t really feel the need to answer that. Instead, I hand her one of the poles.

“It’s not that hard,” I say. “I just need to warm up a little.”

“I don’t even really like how fish taste,” she says.

I look over, careful where I swing my pole, and notice that her lips are slightly purple. Her teeth are stained bluish, too. Mine are probably just as blue. We had blackberries for brunch. The vines grow thick along a fallen tree by the pond, and the berries practically burst when you pick them. My fingers are stained with them, under my nails and in the creases of my knuckles.

“You’ll barely taste the fish once we fry it,” I say. “It’ll taste mainly like batter. Come on, practice casting.”

I practice swinging my own line far out over the water, making a slow curve in the air and then waiting for the satisfying
plop
of the hook into the pond. I wait for the ripples to disappear, then I jerk the pole and bring the hook swinging back toward me. Then back out into the water, smooth and gentle. I relax into the rhythm and listen to the birds chatter. There are options other than fish, of course. Marvin had a couple of rifles, and he loved to hunt—deer, quail, sometimes even squirrels. I never had any interest in hunting. I won’t kill anything I think is adorable.

Once we feel comfortable—Lydia masters a good cast quickly—we take a good look in her plastic bug cup. I pick up one of the grubs and work it onto my hook. Lydia watches me, opts for a worm, and baits her own hook.

“These aren’t bad,” she says. “Slimy, but not scary.”

“You didn’t mind looking under those logs?” I’d actually thought that finding bugs might get to Lydia. It’d be comforting to see her scared of something.

“There were a few spiders,” she says. “But it’s interesting, you know? Seeing what’s under there? Under every log, there’s this whole little world. And we never even know it’s there.”

“Huh,” I say. I bet she wouldn’t say that if there’d been roaches under the logs.

These ponds haven’t been fished in a long time—maybe never—and it takes all of thirty seconds before I feel a tug on my line. That first bite is just an overgrown koi. It’s like a goldfish meant for a very big bowl. I toss him back. As he hits the water, Lydia shrieks. She’s got one. It’s bending her pole into the water, so I can tell it’s better than an overgrown goldfish. She lifts the fish out of the water with a jerk of her pole, and I grab it. It’s a bream. A decent-sized one, longer than my hand.

When you’re catching a fish every five minutes, fishing is very exciting. Not very challenging, but exciting. There’s a breeze blowing over the water, rays of sun are filtering through the trees, and every so often, a fish gleams silver as it breaks the surface. Lydia laughs every time she gets one on dry land.

I think of long summer days in the apartment, listening to Mom’s steps to figure out which room she’s in. Sometimes I can tell her mood by the sound of her high heels. She slams her feet down on the wood when she’s angry. Sometimes it’s not worth leaving the apartment because, before I can get through the front door, I have to get past her and talk to her. And talking can go very badly. When I’m trapped in my room, I try to make the time go faster, watching each minute tick by: 11:01. 11:02. 11:03.

Now I breathe in the wide-open air, and I think the sky is a shade of blue I’ve never seen.

By mid-afternoon, we have over a dozen good-sized bream, more than enough for us and Saban, too. If we just had ice and a cooler, they’d keep for days. As it is, we need to eat them this afternoon. It’ll be a feast.

I pick up the first fish, my thumb in his mouth. He’s not moving anymore. I grab him by his tail and hold him against the inside of a plastic cup. I use the edge of a spoon to scrape the scales off him, moving from his tail to his head. They glitter in the bottom of the cup. Next I stand him on his stomach, like he was swimming. I pull out my knife again, and I hold him with one finger in his gills. Then, slicing behind the gills and slanting backward, I cut off his head.

I could never do anything like this to a bird.

I run my knife inside the fish and scoop out everything we don’t want to eat. The whole process takes about five minutes. The nice thing about bream, Marvin told me once, was that they’re too small to fillet. When we caught bass, they’d have to be sliced open and the bones removed; it was twice as much time and effort.

Marvin’s stuck in my head now, clinging like the fish scales on my hand. For once, that’s not such a bad thing. Usually when I think of him, I feel heavy and empty at the same time. But with my hands busy and scaly and slimy, remembering him makes me happy. I feel like Little Nell again. I work my way through the pile of fish, slicing and cutting and tossing heads into the grass, and if I close my eyes—which is a bad idea when you’re using a knife—I can imagine that Marvin is next to me, casting out into the pond.

“Saban’s eating a fish head,” says Lydia.

I look over. It’s true, and it’s not pretty.

“Well, I’m not taking it away from him,” I say.

Lydia yells, “Drop it, Saban!” a few times, then gives up. He looks at us suspiciously and drags the fish head a little farther away.

I pile together leaves and twigs and get a little fire going. While I wait for it to get hot enough, I arrange a little cast-iron skillet, a bowl, a bottle of oil, and bags of cornmeal and flour in front of me. I go through the motions just like Memama taught me: First, make a mix of half flour and half cornmeal. Next, swish a fish around in the mixture, getting it good and coated. (Memama dipped the fish in milk and egg first, but dairy products aren’t very convenient here.) I feel the meal and flour underneath my fingernails, gritty like sand.

I pour oil in the pan and set it over the fire. When I start to see tiny bubbles, I toss a fish in. I hear the same sound sizzle whenever Memama’s frying okra or potatoes or eggs. It’s the same sound the corn-bread batter makes when it hits the hot pan.

As I lay the fish in the pan, it strikes me that even though I’m thinking of Memama, I’m not exactly missing her. It feels like she’s nearby, almost within sight just like Marvin was a minute ago.

“You’re quiet,” says Lydia.

“I am not.”

“You are so.”

“I’m just thinking.”

“Are you missing home?” she asks.

“No,” I say, surprised. “Of course not. Are you?”

“A little.”

I hardly even hear her. I feel more at home right now than I have since the last time I was curled up on Memama and Grandpops’s couch. I’ve got Marvin and Memama looking over my shoulder.