Too Much of a Good Thing

by J. J. Murray

  I can’t argue with her logic. Strange, but Toni watches Kaz and Rose cleaning the other fish with eager curiosity, maybe because those aren’t her fish she’s seeing dissected. I’m so glad she didn’t name all our fish.

  “Leeches and crayfish in this one,” Rose says.

  I don’t stick around to hear the rest of the autopsies, instead floating up the stairs to watch my men—all four of them—sweeping the deck (and each other).

  “You missed a spot,” I say.

  “Where?” Junior asks.

  “As far as I can tell,” I chuckle, “just about everywhere.”

  I turn and look at the lake. This place is just ... heaven. That’s what it is. It’s heaven on earth. The air tastes good, the food tastes tastier, the sky is clearer, the bugs—ow! And right through the sweatpants, too!

  I hurry inside and join Elle for another cup of Red Rose tea. I have to find this stuff when I get back to Roanoke.

  We clink teacups. “To the spoils of victory,” she says.

  “Yes.”

  We watch Jimmy “accidentally” swat Joey on the butt, Joey “accidentally” swinging around and nearly taking off his head. Junior arrives in a pose right out of Star Wars, using his broom as a light saber. The brooms crack together, they pivot, and the battle is on.

  That deck is never going to get clean.

  “You all caught a lot of fish,” Elle says.

  “Beginner’s luck,” I say.

  “I don’t know about that,” she says. “Not many folks who live up here year-round catch that many in only an hour’s time. You might be a natural-born fisherwoman.”

  “Thank you.”

  She takes a sip. “Junior caught the biggest fish of the lot.” “He did?” He didn’t tell me. I wonder why? I know he’s a humble child, but beating Jimmy has to make him feel pretty good.

  “Yep. He beat Jimmy’s fish by a few ounces.” She taps the table. “That reminds me of a time Joe’s brother, James, and he had a fishing contest. His wife called while you were napping, by the way. They’ll be up late tonight with their six boys. It will be bedlam here tomorrow for sure.”

  Eleven kids and one bathroom is not bedlam—it’s sheer terror.

  “They’re staying here?” I ask.

  “Oh, no. James has a cottage across the way. They’ll be here for Sunday lunch. Has Joe told you much about James?”

  “Just that he’s a missionary, right?” With six kids.

  “To Irian Jaya. Anyway, before either of them was married, they must have been no more than twenty-three, they went out to fish, and whoever caught the smallest one had to do dishes for a week. Something like that. Well, Joe lands a big one, and James lands a big one, and neither of them has a scale. So they come home in the Charlenor, Joe driving, James in front all hunched down.” Her eyes narrow. “James, the future missionary to Irian Jaya, lets Joe weigh his first. Maybe three pounds. James’s fish weighs in at six pounds, an all-time Murphy family record. Joe can’t believe it, and neither can Kaz, but as soon as Kaz shakes that bass a little, rocks and pebbles start popping out of its mouth.” She laughs. “They are two of the most competitive people you’ll ever meet.”

  “Rose is like that, too,” I say.

  “Yes. I’ve been worried about Rose, but seeing her up here the way she used to be all the time, I’m not worried anymore. This place brings people back to life.” She touches my hand. “I’m glad you’re here.”

  “I’m glad to be here,” I say.

  “And I sure am glad you’re getting married this fall. We’ll be able to stop by, see you hitched, then get on down to Florida early for a change.”

  I sigh. “There’s so much to do when we get back. I don’t know where to begin.”

  “Oh, weddings run themselves if you let them. And you’ve already had practice, right?”

  “I didn’t have my kids then.”

  “Or his,” she adds. “It’ll all come together. We had a wedding up here once, up at the chapel.”

  Joe had told me about the open-air chapel just a few cottages away, with rough-hewn benches and a view of Turkey Island.

  “The bride wore a beautiful white dress and hiking boots.” Elle laughs. “It was one of the most beautiful ceremonies I’ve ever seen. You’ll see what I mean at chapel tomorrow.”

  The next morning, after the boys take lake baths and the girls take hot showers, we walk to the chapel. It’s not a long walk, but the last part uphill is a killer. Someone had put benches to rest on along the way, and Elle takes full advantage.

  The chapel has a shingled roof complete with skylights and a stained glass window in a frame hanging under the GEORGE T. STEPHENS MEMORIAL CHAPEL sign. The wooden benches, most under the roof and some out in the sunlight, could easily seat two hundred or more. Carvings of a bear and a wolf stand in the corners of a simple stage, a fish carved right into the podium. Most folks dress casually in jeans, flannel shirts, and sweatshirts, and the pine trees sway out as if trying to touch us.

  Yes, this would be a beautiful place for a wedding. The bride wore hiking boots. I thought it was funny when Elle told me about it, but now that I’ve walked up that hill ... the bride had to wear hiking boots.

  The service is a Murphy family affair with Kaz leading the singing, Elle playing the small electric organ, Joe reading the scripture, and James doing the sermon. Our kids sit with James’s kids, and we take up two full rows.

  At one point in the service, Kaz says, “It is one of the traditions of the chapel to have the heads of the households in each cottage introduce their families and tell us where they’re from.”

  Around the chapel we go, and people are up here from everywhere, and most aren’t from Ontario. There are people from North Carolina, Illinois, Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania, and, of course, Virginia and Irian Jaya.

  After all have introduced their families, Kaz steps closer to our row. “My name is Kaz Murphy, my wife, Elle, is on the organ, and we’re from here.”

  “And Florida,” Elle says.

  “And Florida,” Kaz says, and some folks laugh. I can tell by his voice he much prefers being at Aylen. “And we have with us Joe and his family up from Roanoke, Virginia.” He takes a deep breath. “There’s Jimmy, Joey, and Rose, and we have with us Joe’s fiancée, Shawna, and two of her kids, Toni and Junior.” He pauses and smiles. “And yesterday, those five kids—and Joe and Shawna—caught thirty-four pounds of bass in a little under three hours.”

  Oohs and ahs. That’s right. We bad.

  “As a result, friends, there are no more fish left in the lake,” Kaz says, and the audience really laughs this time. “Elle, do we have enough to feed everyone here?”

  Elle stands and starts counting the people! She is so cute! “Almost. You’ll all have to go out again on Monday.”

  “We’ll let you know,” Kaz says.

  They sure take pride in their fishing up here. And in a way, Kaz has broken any ice that might be behind us. Folks won’t see my kids as black kids. They’ll see them as a young fisherman and a cute fisherwoman. That Kaz is pretty sneaky.

  We sing lots of hymns, and then James, a taller, skinnier version of Joe, stands at the pulpit after we sing “Amazing Grace.” He leaves his Bible on the podium and walks closer to us. “My dad is a great fisherman,” he says. “He taught me and my brother, Joe, everything we know, and before I get into the scripture, I want to tell you a little story about ... my brother, Joe.”

  After our scripture reading, I was expecting Jesus and the feeding of the five thousand, but now I’m not so sure. I squeeze Joe’s hand, and he squeezes mine.

  “Now I wasn’t with Joe at the time, so you’ll have to take this story with a grain of salt,” James says. “Joe was at the Twin Islands using frogs for bait, back when they didn’t cost an arm and a leg.”

  They fished with little frogs? How cruel!

  “Joe got a strike on his first cast, but the bass snapped the line,” James says. “Joe said a few choice words ...�
�

  Folks laugh.

  James looks side to side. “I’m sure they were biblical.”

  More laughter.

  “Anyway, he cast out and caught a big one. As Joe was trying to get the hook out of the fish, he saw a little frog’s flipper in the fish’s mouth. Using his hook disgorger—Joe has every fishing gizmo known to mankind—he opened the fish, and the frog crawled out into his hand. And he recognized the frog as the one he just lost when the fish broke his line. Being a true Murphy and not wanting to waste a thing, Joe put that frog back on the hook, caught another fish, and then he let that frog—which caught two fish—go.”

  “Is that true?” I whisper to Joe.

  “All true,” he says.

  “Joe sent me an e-mail containing a picture of him holding those two fish, so I have to believe him. Do you?”

  A few folks are scratching their heads, but most are nodding. That’s how powerful the Murphy family fishing name is up here, I guess.

  “That’s one fish story I like to tell,” James says, “but here is my all-time favorite fish story.”

  And then we get the story of Jesus feeding the five thousand that is so familiar to me. The Lord made a lot with a little. Sure, it was a miracle to feed that many with only a few fish and some bread, but the lesson James wants us to remember is much more practical.

  “I’ve been a missionary going on twenty years. We often have to make a lot out of a little while trying to bring the Gospel to a land that has a million and a half people from two hundred and fifty different cultures, most of whom have existed there for thirty thousand years with no knowledge of the Bible. There are times when we don’t even have a little to make a lot out of. As you all know, fishing is a game of waiting. Fishing requires patience. As a missionary, I have learned to wait on the Lord. ‘God will make the feast,’ I tell my kids. ‘He’ll bring the fish.’ And He does. Not always when we want it, but He always brings it in time.”

  Nothing fancy, this church. Practical sermon, nondenominational, a focus on the Bible—what all churches could be if they tried.

  Sunday lunch afterward is bedlam, indeed. Rose, Junior, and James’s son Matthew sit at the “adult” table on the porch while the “kids”—the other eight—make quite a racket out on the deck as they eat on card tables. I haven’t met many missionary kids, especially ones who have been raised for most of their lives outside the United States. James’s wife, Kathy, tries to explain it (and them) to me.

  “Six kids,” she says. “I know. What was I thinking? And why? Well, it always gave us an excuse to come back to the States. All of them were born in the U.S. They’re a little out of touch. I guess that’s the right phrase.”

  “Mom, please,” Matthew says.

  “Oh, honey, but I wouldn’t want you any other way,” she says, putting her arm around his shoulders. “That’s why we get up here as often as we can. It’s so simple here. The kids can be curious and ask questions and not feel stupid because they don’t know this song or that movie or because they don’t wear the ‘right’ clothing.”

  All of James and Kathy’s are extremely polite, and each has a “gift” of some kind, whether it is photography, chalk art, website design, flying a Cessna, drawing, or singing.

  “It’s been quite an education for them,” James says.

  Irian Jaya sounds almost exactly like The Castle, except without the crocodiles.

  Matthew, a strapping boy with rosy red cheeks, tells us about his home. “Irian Jaya is beautiful. Dense tropical rain forests, snow-capped mountains, and beaches, too. The fleas are kind of bad, and it’s really hot and humid, but the people are incredible.”

  “Most of them don’t wear many clothes,” Kathy adds. “That ... that was a shock at first. At least the men cover their, um ...” She looks around. “Oh, yeah. I’m at the adult table. The men cover their penises with hollowed-out reeds that look kind of like carrots, and that’s how they come to church.”

  Interesting.

  “They still farm with stone tools, their tribal elders often wear bones in their noses ...” James’s voice trails off. “I used to think Aylen was primitive but not anymore.”

  I look down to the dock because, suddenly, nine children are being quiet. “What are they doing?” I stand, and Joe stands.

  All the kids have crowded onto the dock while Junior and Luke (I think) hold something.

  “Oh, that,” James says. “It’s a slingshot.”

  It is the biggest slingshot I have ever seen.

  “They’ll launch just about anything just to see how far it goes,” Kathy says.

  “They claim they can hit Turkey Island with a potato,” James says.

  “We can, Dad,” Matthew says. “We hit the point two years ago, remember?”

  I sit, but when they release whatever it is they’re firing and it disappears into the blue sky, I flinch. It makes me so glad that my kids only play with Game Boys and CD players.

  63

  Joe

  I’ve been watching Shawna take everything in, and though some things bother her—the bugs, the bats, the rock bass, the cold water—most things don’t. I’m glad. This is my ancestral home, and I want her to feel at home. I don’t know what I’d do if she didn’t like this place. I would still marry her, of course, but trips up here without her just wouldn’t be as fun or fulfilling.

  After James’s brood leaves for the night, Elle, Rose, and Toni relax with another thousand-piece puzzle, the boys play tabletop hockey using a bottle cap for a puck, and Shawna and I flip through old photo albums, howling with laughter at what I used to look like.

  “You were so skinny, Joe,” she says. “And red-headed. What happened?”

  “I have aged.”

  “You were cute,” Shawna says.

  I wasn’t. I was skinny and had braces.

  I play adventure guide the rest of the week, doing my best to exhaust the kids so Shawna and I can go off quietly into the woods to make out while mosquitoes buzz all around us or out onto the lake in the canoe to watch the sun set in her eyes. It hasn’t been easy. These kids have more energy than I’ll ever have again. We do dueling tubes at Ranger’s Beach, and Rose is “queen of the tubes,” mainly because she has such sharp claws. We go fishing every morning. We fish at night. We fish when the fish normally aren’t biting during the heat of the day. We go to Blueberry Mountain to pick blueberries, giving up because it’s been so picked over, instead floating around under the mountain in life vests. We even cliff dive there.

  It isn’t exactly cliff diving, though it’s deep enough. It’s more like cliff dropping. After climbing thirty feet up a rocky ledge, you step out to an outcropping, take one step, and plunge. We all wear old sneakers for this. The boys jump with abandon. Rose simply steps off and holds her nose. Toni can’t make the climb to the highest perch, so she jumps in from around ten feet up. Even I go up—and jump off backward like I used to do when I was a kid.

  Shawna isn’t pleased.

  “Don’t do that again, Joe,” she says. “My heart was in my mouth.”

  I join her in the sun as the kids plummet in front of us. “I can’t wait to be with you,” I whisper as more children fall from the sky into the water.

  “Neither can I.”

  Like a lot of things, you never know what you’re missing until it’s not there anymore. My sex drive evaporated when Cheryl died, my energies diverted to my kids. Now that the kids are starting to recover—and starting to thrive—my sex drive has made a comeback with a vengeance. I want Shawna worse than I’ve wanted anything, and though that may sound un-Christian, I think that’s God’s plan. If more couples went about lusting only after their spouses, the divorce rate would plummet overnight. I only want Shawna, and she only wants me.

  We try waterskiing one afternoon when the waves simply quit waving. The lake is a sheet of glass, perfect for teaching “newbies” how to ski. After Dad pulls Jimmy and then Joey around the lake with Toni inside the boat cheering them on, I
prepare Junior, adjusting his skis and giving him some pointers.

  “The trick,” I say, “is to sit back and let the boat pull you up. You will want to stand up as soon as you can—don’t. Stay in a crouch until your skis are on top of the water. Otherwise you might take a nasty spill.”

  Junior nods.

  “I’ll be in the water with you. If you fall and you’re okay, wave your hands in the air.”

  “Okay,” he says. “I hope I don’t fall. Joey and Jimmy are so good.”

  “And they fell from the time they were nine up to the time they were eleven. Don’t worry if you don’t get up this summer. We’ll be coming back.”

  He takes a deep breath. “I am getting up this summer.”

  I’ll say one thing for Junior, he never gives up. While Shawna paces the dock and winces, Junior falls eight times in a row before he gets it, and once he gets it, he really gets it. Like most anything else in life, it’s the getting up that’s the problem. Once we’re up, we generally do okay.

  “I did it!” Junior yells once he’s on the dock. “Mama, you’re next.”

  I smile. “I’ll get you some skis.”

  Shawna backs off the dock. “Ah, no. Maybe next summer.”

  I write in the air above my hand. “Cliff jumping and skiing.” I close my hand. I open it and write something else.

  “What are you doing?” Shawna asks.

  “Making a list of all the things you’re going to do next summer,” I say.

  She narrows her eyes. “I heard the first two. What was that third one?”

  I only raise my eyebrows.

  “Oh,” she says. “Oh. That.” She looks down. “I’m sure we’ll do that, too, Joe, um, unless I’ve just had a baby.”

  The world stands still for a while, for quite a while, as a matter of fact. I vaguely remember seeing, of all things, my feet. “Shawna, I ...”

  She winks. “We’ll talk later. Aren’t you going to ski?”

  I step closer. “You want ... another?”

  “Don’t you?” she asks.

  “Yes, but ... Of course I do, but you see—”

  She kisses me. “Good. Now, go on and show me something, but don’t hurt yourself.”