Too Much of a Good Thing

by J. J. Murray

  “We could do a treasure hunt, too,” Joe says. “It’s a shame we missed the regatta. They would have had a blast.”

  “What’s a regatta?” I ask.

  “The whole lake gets together down at Ranger’s Beach to have swimming races, canoe races, egg toss, spike driving. . .”

  “Don’t forget underwater banana eating,” Elle adds.

  “They haven’t done that one in years,” Joe says.

  Gulp. “Someone ... eats a banana underwater.”

  “Yep,” Elle says. “You had to peel it and eat it without coming up for air.”

  “Sounds appetizing,” I say.

  “It isn’t at all,” Elle says. “Of course, that was back when you could drink the lake water.”

  Ick.

  “We’re not getting many of these dishes done at all with all this talking going on,” Elle says, “so why don’t you two go for a canoe ride? I can finish up.”

  I look at the incredible pile of dishes. “We’ll help.”

  “No,” Elle says. “Go on.”

  Joe has already put down his dish towel.

  Is this a test? “We can go after we’re done,” I say.

  Joe takes my towel. “Let’s go.”

  Down at the dock, both of us wearing life vests, I complain a little more. “Joe, that’s a lot of dishes.”

  “There will be more for us to wash tomorrow.”

  True.

  He holds the canoe snug to the dock with his legs and helps me into it with a hand, telling me to stand in the middle before sitting. It’s a tippy thing, but I get situated. He climbs in behind me, and with a few paddle strokes, we’re floating free into the middle of the lake, the sun setting, the reflections on the water so beautiful.

  “This is nice,” I say, leaning back onto Joe’s chest.

  “Yeah.”

  “Did you take Cheryl out like this?”

  “Yes.”

  And then he’s quiet for a while.

  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought it up,” I say.

  He rests the paddle in front of me, a few drips of water hitting my shoes. “It’s okay.”

  “Did Cheryl like to fish?” Why do I keep asking him about Cheryl? We’re supposed to be creating some new memories of our own, not reliving his old ones. I just can’t help it, I guess.

  “Some,” he says. “She preferred to go down to the beach and paint or read or help Mom. Up here is where she rested.”

  I am definitely going fishing a lot now. I have to do everything I can to separate myself from Cheryl. “You ever, um, make out in this canoe?”

  “No. It’s too tippy.”

  “We’ll have to be careful, then ...”

  I turn as far as I can until my lips find his, and we kiss ...

  A siren goes off, startling me so badly I almost tip us over. “What was that?”

  Joe laughs. “It’s just a loon. Look.” He points out into the water.

  A black head like a periscope stares at me with beady red eyes twenty feet from the canoe.

  “The loon must be our chaperone, huh?” Joe says.

  With the worst timing. “Are there a lot of those out there?”

  “I hope so. If there are a lot of loons, that means the lake is healthy for all the wildlife around here.”

  “And they just ... pop up and go off like that?”

  “Sometimes.”

  Rock bass that bite and loons that pop up and scream.

  I may never go swimming in this lake.

  61

  Joe

  The next morning a little after sunrise, when my mom and dad always get up, we eat a huge breakfast while Shawna takes a shower. I tried to get Shawna to take a bath with me in the lake this morning, but she wouldn’t, and she wouldn’t even give me a reason. “I’ll keep you warm like I promised,” I told her, but she still refused.

  Junior tries to explain it to me over some Canadian bacon and Chelsea buns fried in butter.

  “Anayeoga kwa hiari yake hatahisi baridi,” Junior says. That Amina taught him a lot of Swahili. “It means that ‘a person who bathes willingly with cold water does not feel the cold.’”

  Ah. The water is too cold for Shawna. It does take some getting used to.

  I watch the kids eat ... and eat ... and realize that they are all going to gain weight up here.

  That van is going to hate us on the return trip home.

  Jimmy, who always sits closest to Dad, asks, “We’re going fishing, right?”

  Dad leans back and squints. “The book says the best fishing is later this afternoon, Jimmy.”

  “Oh,” Jimmy says, and he continues eating.

  The “book” is a series of tables listing the best times for wildlife activity. I don’t take much stock in the “book,” and neither does Dad, but when you’re tired and full and want to take a nap after breakfast, the “book” comes in handy.

  “That book isn’t always right, Grandpa,” Joey says. “Especially up here.”

  Dad winks at me. Now I know he has planned to go fishing all along. “Well, I might be able to take out three ladies ...”

  “What about us?” Jimmy shouts.

  I’m sure a few loons came up from the deep to check out the noise, too. All voices carry around here, but Jimmy’s voice can be heard over in Ottawa.

  “Your dad will take you out, Jimmy, and we’ll have us a contest,” Dad says.

  Murphy fishing contests are the stuff of legends. According to my grandfather, “‘Aylen Lake trembles whenever the Murphys compete for fish.’” He told me that when I was maybe five. “‘Look, Joe, see all the waves? The lake is trembling. ’”

  “How about first fish, biggest fish, and most fish?” Rose suggests.

  I smile inside. This is the Rose that’s been in hiding for almost a year. Aggressive, competitive, passionate.

  “Most tonnage,” Dad says. “Only one category today. The boat that brings home the heaviest catch wins.”

  Shawna comes in looking so fresh and clean. “Morning, everyone,” she says as she sits. “Mmm.” She bites into a Chelsea bun. “Delicious.” She turns to Dad. “Where are we going?”

  “Fishing,” I say. “And it’s a contest.”

  “And who’s my fishing guide?” Shawna asks.

  “Grandpa,” Rose says.

  “Good,” Shawna says.

  “Hey now,” I say. “What’s good about it?”

  “Your daddy is older and wiser than you are, and he knows the lake better than you do,” Shawna says.

  Dad smiles.

  I wolf down the rest of my bacon. “Fellas, we have some fishing to do. Get your gear and meet me in the Charlenor. Jimmy, get us a couple dozen leeches and worms. Joey, you secure the poles. Junior, make sure there’s an anchor in that boat.”

  “You’re taking the Charlenor?” Dad asks.

  “It’s older than you, Dad, so it knows where the fish really are,” I say. I stand and kiss Shawna briefly. After all, she has doubted my fishing prowess, and I intend to prove her wrong.

  “What’s the Charlenor?” Shawna asks.

  Elle sighs. “That old brown boat down there, named after me and my sisters: Charlotte, Ellen, and Eleanor. We Murphys tend to name things we can depend upon.”

  I smile. “And you can depend on me, gentlemen, to find you some big fish today. Ladies, y’all are going to lose.”

  “Wanna bet?” Shawna asks.

  “Most tonnage, huh?” I ask. “The boat with the heaviest catch—and they all have to be legal keepers, now—the boat with the most wins. The losers have to ...” I look at Mom. “The losers have to sweep the house and do the dishes tonight for Grandma.”

  Mom smiles. “Ooh, I like this bet. I get the night off after dinner either way.”

  I turn to Rose. “Is it a bet?”

  Rose smiles. “We’ll, uh, leave the brooms out where you can find them.”

  And away we go ...

  I take the boys first to Wake’s Rock, whe
re we catch several keepers, most around a pound. Junior catches one on his first cast but stews when he can’t add to it, getting hung up on the rocks. After a few minutes of inaction, we go to a shoal nearby. We feed a lot of little fish but catch nothing substantial. Joey suggests Ballet View, a little point with a shoal facing a wilderness ballet camp. I have never seen a single ballerina dancing on the beach, yet the name has stuck. As soon as I get us anchored, Jimmy has a big one on.

  “It’s a pig, Daddy!” Jimmy shouts.

  It’s so big, the fight loosens the anchor and we start to drift. We watch Jimmy struggling and whooping it up, Joey wondering when it’s going to jump, me wondering where the net is.

  “Whoa,” Junior says when the fish finally breaks the surface, head shaking and backing away. “That’s a pig.”

  Jimmy works it closer and closer to the boat as I ready the net. I hand the net to Junior. “Junior, you do the honors.”

  “Oh, no,” he says, “I don’t think—”

  I put the net in his hands. “You can’t miss something that big. You have him hooked hard, Jimmy?”

  “I think so,” Jimmy grunts. “Yeah. The pig is mine. I think he swallowed the hook.”

  Jimmy guides the bass closer to the boat. Junior misses on his first attempt but comes up with the fish on his second.

  “Wow!” Junior says.

  I reach into the net and grab the lower lip of the bass, pulling it out. “Easily four pounds.” I look into the bass’s mouth and see ovaries. “This pig is a sow.”

  “A female?” Jimmy asks.

  “Yep. Swallowed everything except the sinker.” I cut the line and add the fish to the stringer.

  Junior still hasn’t moved, his eyes fixed on the fish.

  “Go on, Junior. There’s bound to be a few more like that. Go to the front and cast towards shore.” I see Joey about to do exactly that, but I mouth “wait.” He winks and throws out into deeper water instead.

  Junior casts a little shorter than I would have, but in a few seconds ... “Something’s after it.”

  I watch his line tightening and moving to the right. “Wait for it, Junior. Don’t set the hook too soon.” The line snaps tight, and Junior’s rod tip bends. “Now!”

  Junior rears back and nearly falls, righting himself just in time, setting the hook probably into the bass’s brain.

  “You got yourself a pig, Junior,” I say. “Take your time.”

  Junior’s fishing style reminds me of Jimmy’s when he first started fishing “with the big boys.” He’s excited, wide-eyed, grunting, laughing, and talking to the fish the entire time. “No, this way, come on, come on, is the net ready? No, not yet, come back here! Is he getting any closer?”

  Five minutes of commentary later, Joey has the fish netted and in the boat. I lift it out of the net. “Jimmy, he may have you beat.” Jimmy hands me the scale. Jimmy’s “sow” weighs in at four pounds even. Junior’s just breaks four and a quarter.

  “Dang,” Jimmy says. “By a quarter pound.”

  “Both of them go up on the wall,” I say. I slide the fish onto the stringer. “Fellas, we’re at our limit.” Eight nice fish in less than two hours. Not bad. “Now if you want, we can stay here and catch bigger fish to replace some of these.”

  “Do you think we’re winning, Daddy?” Jimmy asks.

  I lift the stringer. “We may have fourteen pounds of bass here, gentlemen.”

  “Wow,” Jimmy says. “The girls probably haven’t even caught one keeper yet.”

  Joey keeps casting. “But what if Grandpa fishes, too? If they get their limit, they’ll have ten fish. You didn’t specify it was only the girls against us.”

  “So what if he does fish?” I ask. “Won’t it be great to beat them and Grandpa? He’ll have to sweep and do the dishes, too.”

  They all agree that having Grandpa do anything domestic is worth seeing since it is a rare event. He’ll do massive maintenance on the house, but when it comes to dusting or vacuuming or drying a single dish, my dad is all thumbs.

  I take the scenic route back to Murphy’s, hugging the shoreline, looking at cottages, and cruising through Vanity Bay, so named because of the nice beach and the bathing beauties that usually hang out there. No one’s lying out on the sand, but the boys make sure Junior knows what might be there later.

  “Dad,” Joey asks, “can we take out the Charlenor later?”

  “To go fishing again?” I ask.

  Joey’s face reddens. “Something like that.”

  “Sure.”

  Jimmy jumps up and points. “Is that Grandpa’s boat already at the dock?”

  They haven’t left yet? I guess it’s possible. Shawna does take a long time to get Toni ready to go anywhere, but Dad wouldn’t let that happen. No. They’ve already been out—and they’re already back.

  “I’ll bet they got skunked,” Jimmy says.

  I don’t have the heart to tell them that we probably lost. My dad would never come back that soon unless he has something mammoth for Mom to take a picture of to e-mail to every Murphy on planet Earth.

  We’re going to be doing some sweeping, all right.

  62

  Shawna

  We kicked booty! I’d say “We kicked some bass,” but that doesn’t sound too Christian.

  And my arms are actually tired!

  After we all put on raggedy sweats and old fishing hats, Kaz took us to Ranger’s Point, where we fished over a mass of underwater rocks, telling us, “Throw up on the rocks and reel in slowly. I’ll get the net ready.”

  It was so calm he didn’t even have to anchor, so we floated around—and caught some serious tonnage. Rose and Toni had fish on at the same time, I nearly got pulled over the edge of the boat, and we all lost more fish than we caught. Toni and I weren’t setting the hook right or something. We were catching so many big ones that Kaz was continually weighing and exchanging smaller fish from the stringer. And then ... nothing. Not a nibble or bite for thirty minutes.

  “Not bad for an hour’s work,” Kaz said, holding up the stringer. “Has to be close to twenty pounds here.”

  “We won!” Rose said.

  And then we went back to the dock, tied up, put the stringer in the water, and I went back to my bed to take a nap—after trying to get the fishy smell off my hands. Yeah, I held quite a few and almost took the hook out of one. Toni caught two “pounders,” as Kaz called them, naming one TJ and the other JT.

  An hour or so later, Elle shakes me.

  “The boys are back.” She holds two brooms and hands me two others. “They are going to need these.”

  I run down to the dock and see Jimmy and Junior holding up their stringer. They caught a lot of fish, too! But they couldn’t have beaten us! Rose was so sure!

  “Grandpa, did you fish?” Jimmy asks.

  “I didn’t have time, the girls were catching so many,” Kaz says.

  Jimmy’s little face caves in.

  “Rose,” Kaz says, “could you lift our stringer up for them?”

  “Gladly.”

  Rose pulls up the stringer from under the dock. The boys’ eyes droop. They look like puppy dogs, the poor dears.

  I hand a broom to Jimmy.

  “But we haven’t weighed them yet, Shawna,” Jimmy says.

  “Jimmy, just look at them,” Joe says. “They have us by at least five pounds.”

  How they can weigh fish with their eyes I’ll never know.

  Joe takes the other broom from me. “You went to Ranger’s, didn’t you, Dad?”

  Kaz smiles. “Uh-huh.”

  “C’mon, fellas,” Joe says. “Grab a broom. We’ll sweep the dock and the stairs first.”

  While the boys do the worst job of sweeping I’ve ever seen, putting more pine needles onto the stairs than were there in the first place, Rose and Kaz sharpen up some knives, Elle providing them with a roll of aluminum foil, a cutting board, and some paper grocery bags for tracing.

  Toni points at the knives. “What are
those for?”

  Kaz drops down into the water while Rose lays a fish on the cutting board. “We have to clean the fish while they’re fresh.”

  Toni looks at me. “But, Mama, I thought ...” She looks back at the fish.

  “What did you think, honey?” I ask.

  “I thought I was taking TJ and JT home with me.”

  Now what? “Oh, honey, we can’t take them all the way home. They’ll die.”

  Toni’s eyes fill with tears. “We can put them in buckets, and, and then we can get a big aquarium, and—”

  “No, sweetie,” I say, drawing her to me. “We caught the fish to eat one night.”

  Toni pushes me away and runs up the stairs.

  “Toni?” Kaz calls out.

  She stops but doesn’t turn around. “What?”

  “TJ and JT are too small to eat,” he says. “Want to help me let them go?”

  I nod at Kaz and mouth “thank you.” So wise, even though her two fish are as large as most of the others. Toni comes back.

  Kaz pulls a fish from the stringer. “We’ll trace, uh, JT here—”

  “That’s TJ,” Toni interrupts.

  How can she tell? How could Kaz tell?

  “So it is,” Kaz says. “We’ll trace TJ right quick, then let him go, okay?”

  “Will he stay around the dock?” Toni asks.

  “You know,” Kaz says, “he just might.”

  Wonderful. At least I’ll know the names of the fish that are biting my toes.

  “Joey, Jimmy, Junior—any of you all want to trace your fish?” Kaz yells.

  Junior and Jimmy come back, tracing their huge fish. Kaz traces TJ as best as he can while it flops around, the tracing at least an inch larger all around. They set their tracings in the sun to dry, and Kaz hands both fish to Toni ...

  And she holds them both up by the lip like an expert. “Bye, TJ,” she says, and she kisses the fish! Lord, that’s nasty! “Bye, JT.” Another kiss. Then she drops the fish into the water, waving at them until they dart away into the deep.

  I pull her aside. “Toni, honey, you shouldn’t kiss the fish like that. They have germs.”

  She looks at me as if I were from another planet. “Fish live in the water, Mama, so they’re clean.”