The Real Thing (7 page)

Chapter 8

D
J hangs back with me as Dante walks briskly down a path and into the woods, not a single glance behind him. He's either angry I skunked him and DJ, or that's just the way he normally hikes.

As we follow, DJ points up at a huge rock jutting out over the forest. “That's Old Baldy,” he says. “It's only about fifteen hundred feet up.”

Whew. When someone says “mountain climbing,” I think of K2 and snowy peaks. This climb will be a cinch.

“That's where we're going next. Normally, we would have made a fire and fried up whatever we caught on the beach before climbing, but the ones you caught are too big. I'll clean them for you, and Red will cook them for us later.”

Whew again. The last time I dissected something it was green, unpleasantly froggy, and extremely dead. Granddaddy cleaned any fish we caught, and though I watched Granddaddy do it, I doubt I could remember all the steps. And those were saltwater fish from the Atlantic. I'll bet Canadian fish require extra steps.

Dante keeps a blistering pace once we start our ascent, bounding up the path. I barely keep up, fifty feet behind DJ, trying not to turn the burned-out stumps around me into grizzly bears. Only that thought makes me sweat, the ascent no more than a steady climb up a dirt path bisected by roots. Dante looks back occasionally, but other than brief glimpses of his eyes, I mainly get to watch his two “butt-fists” in action. Nice. Proportional. Definitely squeezable. Strange, they now remind me of the tennis ball he was squeezing last night.

I am sweating profusely and oozing bug repellant by the time we near the summit, but I don't care. As we near the jutting rock, the pathway gets rugged and narrow, and I have to use branches, roots, and even small pine trees to help me get to the top. Dante walks right out onto that huge rock and sits, seeming to brood over the horizon. I wish I had brought my camera. He looks as rugged as the scenery, and that shot would be sensational.

The view is breathtaking, though I'm a little nervous to be so far above the towering trees we passed. They're way down there looking like the ends of green party toothpicks. I follow DJ to another part of the slab, and he points out several little lakes to the north and west where he and Dante had fished before.

“That's Lake O'Neill,” he says. “We call it Pole Lake, though. The one to the left is Wilkins. It was a pain dragging our old wooden boat back to them, but the fish were so thick you could just reach in and grab them.”

I doubt that, but it's a nice image.

I take off my hat and let gentle breezes dry my sweat as I finger-comb my hair, the rest doing me some good. It probably isn't much later than 7
AM
.

Dante still broods. I'll bet he's angry that I haven't given up yet, that he hasn't licked me yet.

I'm mad he hasn't licked me yet, too, but that's a whole other fantasy.

On our way back, Dante and DJ add small pebbles to a cairn of rocks just off the path. I balance a piece of white quartz on top of theirs, and we start our descent. I slide a few times on the way down, but I don't shout out, righting myself and continuing, never falling more than a few paces behind DJ.

Two tasks down, three to go.

When we get back to the boat, Dante pulls a cutting board and a wicked-looking filet knife from a bin and hands them to DJ. Then Dante grabs a plastic cup and wanders away down the beach.

“Um, I guess this means you have to clean them now,” DJ says.

Joy.

I stare after Dante long enough for DJ to explain. “There's a natural spring down there,” he says. “He drinks a cup every day he's up here.”

“Superstitious?” I say, finally breaking my silence. That has to be some sort of record. I've been with them for nearly three hours.

“Delicious,” DJ says.

He pulls the smallest fish out of the live well. “I can do them for you.”

Yes!

But no. That would be a victory for my brooding host, and I intend to go undefeated today.

I sigh. “I really should do it. I caught them. But I'll need some help here.” I step closer to him and whisper, “I have never done this before.”

“It's not that hard,” he says. “Just messy.”

And slimy.

DJ hands me the smallest fish, still wriggling like a hoochie-coochie dancer, and I grab it by the lip. “You have to break its neck first,” he says.

I grimace. “How do I do that?”

“Turn the fish over.”

I do, and I am now staring at its whitish stomach.

“Put your index and middle fingers inside its gills,” he says.

He's kidding. I look up. He's not kidding. “These gills look, um, sharp.”

“They are,” he says.

Oh, that's comforting.

“As you put in your fingers, slide your thumb to just behind his head. Then . . .” He pulls back his wrist. “It's like popping a pop top.”

I don't want to do this, but
“tenere provare”
rings in my head. I slip my fingers in through those scary-looking red gills and slide my thumb back, pulling with my fingers and pressing with my thumb at the same time. The fish's tail jerks back and forth before I hear a sickening crack.

The fish goes limp, blood spurting from a little hose or artery—whatever. It's spewing blood, and it's not a beautiful sight.

“Now what?” I ask.

DJ talks me through the next few steps with the filet knife. I start the knife just below a little fin where its—gulp—anus is. I start my cut and bring the knife all the way back to where I broke its neck, the fish's guts flopping out like . . .

I don't have a metaphor for this. I don't ever want to have a metaphor for this.

The fish's guts spill out, and it's nasty.

He points to a spot with a hooked finger. “Just . . . get under all that, pull it toward you, and the entire head should come off at the same time.”

DJ is an excellent teacher, and though my fingers will never forgive me, I now hold the fish in two parts. DJ takes the head and entrails and begins feeling something with his fingers. “Look,” he says.

I don't want to look, but I do. I watch a little . . . lobster come out of a sac.

“It's a crayfish,” he says. “Dad will want to know. He always asks what they've been eating.”

How . . . delectable.

The rest of the cleaning process is much less grotesque. I slit either side of the top fins and pull them out. I peel back the skin to the tail on both sides of what's left. I slide the knife as close to the ribs as I can, and—

I have two okay-sized filets in my hand, nice white meat with little specks of green and blue.

DJ gets a roll of aluminum foil from the boat and wraps them up. “Now all you have to do are the larger ones.”

Larger fish take longer, and by the last fish—the behemoth—my fingers hurt so badly. I have little scales and other nastiness under my nails, I have cut myself several times with the knife, and each fish surprises me with half-digested crap that DJ identifies with glee.

Dante returns with a burst of Italian as I'm wrapping up the biggest filet.

“
Papino,
the first one had a crayfish inside, the next two had minnows, and the last one had two crayfish, a frog, half a perch, and some bugs,” DJ says.

Those were bugs? They looked like—

Again, I have no metaphors, no similes.

They were just plain freaking slug-nasty.

I hand the stack of wrapped filets to Dante while DJ cleans up the cutting board and knife.

I then remove my hiking boots and socks and march into the water, washing as much crap off my hands as I can. I even pick up some sand and rub my hands together. They look cleaner, but they smell like death.

“Andiamo,”
Dante says to DJ while I'm still in the water.

I gather my socks and hiking boots and slosh to the back of the boat, water soaking up into my sweats. I climb in without either one of them offering to help me.

Two tasks down, three to go.

Damn. I check my nails.

Two
nails
down—on
each
hand—only three to go.

Chapter 9

“Y
ou caught them all?” Red asks.

I haven't stopped scrubbing my hands with scalding hot water, antibacterial soap, and a Brillo pad for the last fifteen minutes.

“I could have stuffed two of these for dinner,” Red says. “And the biggest was really five pounds, three ounces?”

I am scrubbing off skin now, but I don't care. That fishy smell is still there.

“You could have had the big one mounted,” Red says, setting the world's largest cast-iron skillet on the stove and firing up a gas burner. “It's bigger than anything Dante has ever caught up here.”

Really. So
that's
why he wasn't speaking. I not only outfished him, I caught a fish bigger—in only thirty minutes—than any fish he's ever caught in
years
up here.

“Christiana, why aren't you speaking?” Red asks.

I smile and turn off the water, smelling my hands. They still don't smell nice, but at least I know they're cleaner. “I'm just proving I can
tenere provare
without speaking.”

“You didn't speak the entire time you were fishing and hiking?” he asks.

“Not to Dante,” I say.

“Amazing,” he says. “You had trouble breathing, didn't you?”

“Ha ha,” I say.

“Come over here,” Red says, “and I'll show you how to make my famous Lime Pine Batter.”

Red's secret batter is fun to make. While I use an old-fashioned glass juicer to squeeze the juice out of six limes, Red adds two cups of flour, two teaspoons of baking powder, two pinches of salt, four egg whites, and a cup of water to a bowl. After I add my lime juice, he pulls a can of pineapples from a cupboard.

“The secret to the secret recipe,” he says.

I smell my hands. They're kind of limey. Cool. They don't smell like fish anymore. My cuts sting like hell, but at least my hands aren't fishy anymore.

Red opens the can with an old-fashioned twist opener but doesn't remove the lid entirely, instead pouring the pineapple juice into the bowl and putting the can into the fridge. Then he mixes it until all the lumps are gone.

“Dry the fish,” he tells me.

I hesitate.

“Use some paper towels,” he says. “Just pat them dry.”

Oh. I thought I'd have to do something more sophisticated than using a paper towel.

I dry the filets, patting them gently, and drop them into the batter. Red drops an entire stick of real butter onto the skillet, where it melts quickly and begins to steam.

“They're your fish,” Red says, handing me a spatula.

“That's what I keep hearing,” I say.

“Just let them get nice and golden brown.”

I look at the clock. “When's lunch?”

He smiles. “When you say it is.” He winks. “Just ring the bell.”

I begin laying filets onto the skillet. “Is this all we're having? No chips?”

“We still have salad left over from last night,” he says. “And we're not in England, Christiana.”

I am suddenly so hungry! My mouth waters as I watch the filets cook, and as soon as the first little one browns, it is in my mouth.

That batter is orgasmic. Lime Pine, and I'm fine. Whoo. He should sell this stuff. I mean, I already have the jingle he'll need: “When on fish you want to dine, use Lime Pine and you'll feel fine.”

Okay, so I'll never work on Madison Avenue.

Once they're all crispy and brown, I walk outside and ring the bell. I don't set a single plate on the table, merely transfer the filets to a huge platter I find. This platter is going in the middle of the table, so if Dante wants any, he'll have to move closer to me.

In theory.

In actuality, no one sits during lunch, all of us just standing around and chowing down. No one touches the salad, but with around seven pounds of filets, there is no room for salad.

I keep up my silent routine, and other than a few strange looks from Lelani, no one seems to mind.

And then it starts to rain.

Not in proverbial buckets or with cats and dogs. Niagara Falls breaks bad around the cabin, lightning streaking across the dark sky like skeletal fingers, sonic thunder booms rattling the dishes in the cupboards.

“No workout today,” DJ says.

My hamstrings rejoice. The climb wasn't all that strenuous, but I'm beginning to feel it in my legs. No way I could survive Dante's boxing workout today.

“We will wait,” Dante says, looking out a window at what used to be the lake. It has disappeared, walls of rain obliterating any view of the water. Even Turkey Island becomes a dark green blur.

“It'll be muddy,” Red says.

“It will make me work harder,” Dante says.

“It might make you pull something,” Red says. “We'll wait till tomorrow, all right?”

Dante isn't happy, but I don't care. I need all the rest I can get. Boxing in mud? I'd probably slip a disc.

While we wait . . . and wait—Canadian storms seem to be lazy and like to hang around—DJ and I start a thousand-piece puzzle of Raphael's
School of Athens.
In fact, most of the puzzles we have to choose from are famous pieces of art in a thousand or more pieces, from Michelangelo's
The Creation of Adam
to Picasso's
Ma Jolie.
We avoid a Monet—
St. Lazare Station
—since it has two thousand pieces of varying shades of blue and green. I don't want to go blind.

And then . . . we piece together a famous puzzle while Dante paces from window to window and the thunder rolls. DJ tells me he has put this one together before with Evelyn on just such a day, and I feel honored. He also tells me about every famous philosopher we eventually see as we work. I point at an old man lounging on the steps. “Who's this?” I ask.

“Oh, that's Diogenes,” DJ says. “They nicknamed him ‘the Dog.' He lived in a tub and walked around barefoot. When Alexander the Great himself told Diogenes he'd grant him any favor, Diogenes said, ‘Please move out of my sunlight.'”

I like Diogenes. He could be from Red Hook.

After four solid hours of rain, Dante gives up and decides to go swimming. No one joins him, and I almost caution him about, oh, the lightning still flashing in the sky, the huge waves crashing into the dock, the drop in temperature, and the darkness. It's not my place to say anything, though, and I'm happy in my place in front of the puzzle.

More fish for dinner, more silence, more rain, more of that puzzle, this time with Lelani helping us. Just before nine, I place Michelangelo into the puzzle. I'll bet this Italian wouldn't go swimming during a thunderstorm. He only painted them.

After that, we all drift to our beds.

Kind of boring, yeah, but peaceful, and the steady drip of rain puts me deep into sleep in no time at all.