His mood didn’t help my nerves; I was sweating, shaking, couldn’t swallow, and the bold parting speech I’d rehearsed a thousand times had vanished, leaving pig Latin in its place. But no one seemed to notice: H2O was too miffed, and though Ma’s eyes miss nothing, she had only the single meaningless category to place my wretched appearance in—Glum. Glumness on my face was, to her, about as rare as crumbs on toast. Bill Bob might have noticed if he’d looked across the table, but since the evening meal is invariably a soapbox for Ma and H2O, he comes massively prepared to ignore it. These preparations are worth noting: they consist basically of a ravenous appetite and two transistor radios plugged into both sides of his head not for stereo effect but for listening to two stations at once—usually classical music on top of some athletic extravaganza, preferably baseball; for good measure he leaves the TV on in the next room and sneak-reads a comic book stashed beneath the napkin on his lap. As he enjoys the music, eyeballs the tube, follows the game, and scans the comic, he devours his food like a greedy dog. And his taste for bubbling stews of activity carries over into the culinary dimension, for the courses of his meal are never left autonomous, but are enthusiastically swizzled into an indistinguishable swill. This evening he inhaled a mishmash of cabbage, butter, honey, sour cream, biscuit, pepper, tartar sauce, blackberry preserves, peas, potato, salmon, lemon, and ketchup.
This multi-media-multi-flavor-multi-everything attribute is the one thing that can spur my brother to some semblance of passion. Serene and slow moving as he appears, the older he gets the more he likes doing more things at once. A classic example is bicycling. Bill-Bobbian Bicycling can only be done on Bill Bob’s bike: other models are too sparingly equipped to satisfy him. His handlebar alone is studded with a basket carryall, two horns, two bells, a buzzer, and a red weather-vane rooster that leans with him into every curve. His spokes are painted different colors and flap playing cards attached with clothespins. A strongbox is mounted on his back fender. Behind his seat is a metal tank with a tube running out the bottom, along the frame to the handlebars, and thence to his mouth; it is kept filled with orange juice, which fuel he sips at a rate commensurate with his acceleration, and he frequently burns two tanks a day, necessitating frequent pit stops in roadside shrubberies. The strongbox might contain any number of things, but you can depend on plenty of spare playing cards, M&M’s, comics, tools, and the inevitable transistor radios. Thus when Bill Bob Orviston goes bicycling he performs, as at mealtime, a variety of incongruent actions and emits a conflagration of diseuphonious noise, becoming a kind of Yankee Concentrate. On a windless day, long before you see him, you discern a rhythmic honking, buzzing, and jingling in the air, as at the approach of a flock of mechanical geese; then, still blocks away, the anemic motorcycle card-flap becomes audible; finally you make out a small crew-cut towhead atop a whirring blaring circus vehicle—a tube in his mouth, wires running from each ear, the benign hint of a smile playing upon his lips. And if you turn your head sideways before it passes out of legibility you can read the bumper sticker Ma gave him: SAVE GAS. FART IN A JAR.
The first half of an Orviston meal is wordless—full of gulps, smacks, and chewing. But by second-helping time Ma and H2O start getting stoned on a pancreatic high, start talking, talk nothing but fishing, and the talk is never reasonable for long. On the evening I was to void my room, Ma made the opening speech:
“By the way Gus, speakin’ of fishin’…” (no one had been speaking, let alone of fishing) “tell Hen ’bout that record bass ya pulled outta Blue Lake this morny, how big an’ how ya fooled it an’ what on an’ all. You’re gonna love this, Hen, listen up now!”
The tale of this bass was one I wanted to forget, but I reasoned that if I delivered the vital statistics Ma would move on to her own heroics with the June hogs, so I said, “All right. Dad, the fish was seven pounds, eleven ounces—the biggest bass taken from Blue Lake in a decade according to a local authority named Gnat Buckley…”
“HA!” Ma blurted. “Ol’ bass-brained bean-farmin’ Gnat! Hope ya give him a Howdy-do fer me, Gus. Gock-eyed Gnat. Knows more ’bout the seven B’s than any man alive.”
Right on cue, H2O asked, “And what are the seven B’s?”… tip-toeing over the last three syllables like he was barefoot and they were a clovered lawn full of honeybees.
In an obviously rehearsed recital, Ma rattled out, “Beans, Bait, Bass, Beer, Blue Lake, Jim Beam, an’ Bullshit!” And right on cue H2O made his face all crooked and revolted-looking—as if Ma’s funkicity were something new.
“… and I caught it on bait,” I said, doggedly finishing my amputated sentence.
Ma paid no heed. “Ol’ Gnat Buckley! Ain’t seen’m in years. Used t’play git-fiddle the way it made ya wanna cry, an’ not fer happiness neither. But now tell Hen what kind o’ bait, Gussy. That’s the best part o’ yer story, boy. Yer gettin’ just like yer father—always leavin’ off the best chunk o’ things—leavin’ the beer in the icebox, the fish in the river, the pie crust on yer plate, swallerin’ yer best hockers, holdin’ in yer farts, prob’ly ain’t shat fer three weeks neither.…”
“ALTHOUGH ADMIRED IN THE DEEP SOUTH,” H2O boomed, “where the fetid, yellow-brown lukewarm waters make it impossible for the noble salmonoids to eke out an existence, the largemouth bass is an outlander, a devouring pestilence, a freakish invader to the salubrious waters of the North and Northwest.…” (Ma stopped her yammering and hung on H2O’s every word, craving some flagrant slur or insult so they could get down to blasting each other.) “Of indelicate appetite, sluggish disposition, negligible intelligence, paltry stamina, and possessing a head, mouth, and stomach of ludicrous bulk in comparison with its stultified body, the largemouth bass is easily America’s most overrated, overstocked fish. If it possesses any exceptional quality whatsoever, it is its suicidal viciousness: these demented creatures have been known to attack alligators, outboard-motor propellers, and even small yachts; they frequently inhale live ducks, muskrats, water moccasins, and swimming house pets, only to die of the effects. Largemouth bass have even attacked children, some of whom have been terribly mu—”
“Now hold up, Hen!” Ma screeched, worried over his building momentum. “It weren’t no child or any kind o’ live bait that whupper o’ Gus’s gulped.” H2O paused gullibly. “Come on. Tell us ’bout it, Gusser.” I shook my head. “Well, then, I’ll tell. Hen, that huge bass a Gus’s hit the rottenedest, deadest, putridest ol’ Oscar Mayer weiner ya ever smelt!”
“Augustine!” H2O groaned.
But Bill Bob perked up, cogitated, grinned, and burst out, “Weiners, Weasels, Waffles, Wagons, Walkie-talkies, Wallets, an’ Woofers!”
Ma looked confused. “What the hell ya tryin’ to say, boy? An’ git that ketchup off yer forehead.” Bill Bob refilled his maw with mash, shrugged his shoulders, swiped at the ketchup (leaving a trail of tartar sauce), slipped a finger into each shirt-pocket to up the volume on his transistors, and dropped his eyes to the comic in his lap. Apparently only I appreciated his extemporaneous “Seven W’s.”
Ma turned back to H2O. “That fish o’ Gus’s, Hen, looked like the bass ’at come on the Ark. I’m tellin’ ya, it woulda knocked yer eye out! ‘Ol’ Garbage Gut,’ they used t’call’m.”
“Call who?” he asked, eyeing Bill Bob’s overflowing mouth with apprehension.
“The bass, ya nitwit!” Ma snapped. “Walkie-talkie, Call Who?… What we got roun’ this place is a buncha yahoos.”
“Pardon me,” H2O objected, “but this Natty Bumppo or whatever his name was might also qualify as a garbage gut, in light of the ‘seven B’s’ you cited.”
This sounded reasonable to me, but Ma only wagged her noggin. “Numbskulls, nitwits, yahoos! His name ain’t Natty Bumppo. It’s Stevie.” (H2O and I exchanged baffled expressions.) “Gnat Buckley’s jus’ what we call’m. An’ Gnat don’t eat all seven B’s. He only eats, let me see, he eats or drinks, uh, three of ’em.”
“I see,” said H2O, clinically
indulgent of these deranged computations. “Let’s consider, then: he must eat and drink, um, bass, beans…”
“Nonono!” cut in Ma. “Ya started right off on yer left foot. Gnat eats bait (crawdads from the lake, that is), Jim Beam, an’ bullshit. Wouldn’t touch beans or bass. Seen so many o’ both they turn his stomach.”
“Of course, how silly of me,” smirked H2O. “Of course your friend eats, er, cattle droppings. I can envisage him lifting a finely wrought linen to brush a clot of it from his lips.”
Ma smiled a little. “Well, I’m only speculatin’, he bein’ s’full of it.”
“A reasonable speculation,” agreed H2O, practically purring at the ululations of his own voice. “It was Brillat-Savarin, was it not, who said, ‘Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are.’”
“Which brings us back to Gussy’s bass,” Ma stated.
“Ah. I’d wondered where it was bringing us,” said H2O.
“OK. Come on for once now, Gus, an’ tell us ’bout ol’ Garbage Gut.”
I refused.
“Then I’ll tell,” Ma said, as if she hadn’t tried more than once. “That big bass, Hen, was one o’ the smartest critters there ever lived…”
“What about the two B’s?” Bill Bob burst out.
“Pull them plugs if ya got somethin t’say, boy.”
Bill Bob pulled his radios.
“Now, what ya talkin’ ’bout, these two B’s?”
“ME!” he cried.
Ma shook her head at H2O. H2O shook his head at Ma. In unison they turned and shook their heads at Bill Bob. Ma said, “Shuttup now, son, an’ plug yer ears back in.”
Bill Bob turned on, tuned in, and dropped out.
“Ever been t’Blue Lake, Hen?”
“If I have,” he replied, tossing off his after-supper Scotch, “the brain cells recollecting it have been destroyed by this merciful beverage.”
“Well let me picture it to ya, then. All along the north shore is a park, and they built these little concrete peninsulas that poke out in the water with a steel picnic table riveted down onto each one.…”
“A scene to delight the John Muir in us all,” H2O remarked. Ma ignored him:
“When the city slickers get out there an’ picnic they most of ’em git t’chuckin’ food an’ trash an’ shit in the water the way they oughtta be shot, an’ that’s where ol’ Garbage Gut comes into the picture.”
“Ah yes, our friend Mr. Stevie,” said H2O, knowing damned well she meant the bass, but hoping she wouldn’t know he knew, which she didn’t:
“Good Lord, Hen! Ya musta bribed the teacher fer yer first-grade diploma. I mean the bass, ya stupe. An’ we call’m Gnat Buckley, not Stevie. Tell yer nitwit dad about it, Gus, come on!”
I’d harvested a headache from Ma’s false starts; if I didn’t tell it, the story would go on getting half told forever: I gave in. “All right. OK. I’ll tell. But let me finish before you butt in, either of you.” Ma nodded. H2O smirked. I started in: “Gnat named this bass Garbage Gut, Dad, because it was a sort of self-appointed janitor for the lake. See, when the picnickers threw their trash off those concrete peninsulas the bass would slip up through the weeds and watch, and as soon as they left he’d glide out of hiding and suck in anything edible and some things that weren’t, so there I went like a dumb shit and killed him, and now nothing’s gonna keep that stinking lake from filling with trash…” I paused, trying to calm myself, but Ma butted in,
“So, Hen, how do ya s’pose our bright boyo fooled that wise ol’ fish ’at seen ever’ lure an’ bait known to basskind an’ had a brain like a fishin’-gear catalogue an’ not even Gnat Buckley ever got it t’strike? Why Gnat only told Gus ’bout that swimmin’ trashcan so he’d go git hisself all flustrated tryin’ t’catch’m, an’ Bingo! Gus nails’m dead! Ha! I’d give a case a Blitz t’been there an’ seen Gnat’s face! Come on now an’ tell it right, son, how it…”
“Shuttup!” I shouted. “Shut your mouth and I will! Listen. Both of you!” They shut their mouths, though their eyes gaped. Bill Bob turned down his radios and listened too. “Gettin’ dressed this morning I happened to think how fishermen usually wear quiet clothes, and how this fish must be used to watching people who fished for him and people who just sat and ate, so I went to a junk store and got some gaudy, ugly picnicker clothes. When I got to the lake I went and searched the garbage cans and found the rotten weiner still in the package; I left it that way so the plastic would help hide my line. I used a ten-pound test monofilament handline—figuring the bass’d spook at sight of rod or reel—hid a treble-hook in the weiner, stuck the line in my lunchbox, and strolled down the cement peninsulas like your average litterbugging nerd. At the second table I came to, there he was, hovering out in the weeds.…
“I sat down and ate some lunch, then started throwing crap in the lake; I threw in half a cupcake, orange peels, some boiled egg, and the booby-trapped weiner. Then I walked up toward the cottonwoods sloughing line as I went, hid behind a tree, and sat tight, waiting for my line to move.… And it did move. I jumped up. The bass saw me coming and shot into hiding but my line went with him. I waited a long time to be sure he swallowed the hook, but I didn’t need to: he’d gorged it. Then came the sickening part: when he felt the hook deep inside him he just gave up—didn’t fight, didn’t try to get away, didn’t even dive in the weeds and hide. It was like he couldn’t believe what I’d done to him, like I’d betrayed him. It was like he was thinking ‘If you can’t leave me in peace, if you can’t even let me go on cleaning up your garbage, then it’s time to die!’
“I dragged him in like a toy boat on a rope. And I saw what a helpless little thing he was. Less than eight pounds. Hell, people act like eight-pound bass are some kind of monster, chasin’ ’em around in PT boats with radar and depth-finders, calling ’em ‘hawgs’… Christ. Who are the hawgs? Eight pounds is nothing. It’s the size a newborn baby is. It’s a damned small janitor for a lake the size of that one. So. So I felt like shit. And I was going to let him go. I held him real careful and still in the water, hoping the hook hadn’t torn up his insides. He just lay there staring at me.…” I tried to steady my voice, hating to tell how it ended.
“Well. A crowd of people started to gather. All kinds of people—kids, teenagers, grown-ups, a couple fishermen, one real old guy—all of them looking at me like I was some kind of genius and at the fish like it was a sea serpent, or maybe a naked mermaid the way they started lusting after it. I couldn’t find my knife so I asked if someone would lend me one, and somebody said ‘He wants to cut the line,’ and somebody else said ‘Shit, he’s gonna let it go!’ and a bunch of them started arguing and shoving and shouting ‘I’ll take it! Keep it! Give it to me! I asked for it first! Are you crazy? Fuck you, I’m takin’ it! Give it to me, me, me!’ and then Gnat Buckley came running over and bulled his way through everybody and started screaming and hollering about what a great fisherman I was and how Einstein himself couldn’t have caught that bass, and he grabbed my line and jerked hard up on it, and now the bass started thrashing because the hook was tearing through his insides, and Gnat grabbed a rock in his other hand and started hitting at it and some kids started cheering, but the bass fought like crazy now, and broke Gnat’s grip and started swimming away.…
“But it was stunned and bleeding, and it didn’t swim far, and its compass was busted, too, ’cause it kind of half-circled back toward shore. And one of the kids jumped in and grabbed the line and this time when Gnat got hold of it he jammed his fingers deep into its gills, and this crazy old man lent Gnat his cane and Gnat cussed the fish while he killed it, and everybody shouted and laughed and egged him on, and I was alone by the water, dressed like an asshole picnicker, and when my eyes started leaking it made me feel stupid, so I just walked away.…”
I ducked to hide my face, feeling water welling in my eyes again.
Ma clucked with mock pity, then turned to H2O: “Gnat phoned up’n’give a report. Listen wha
t they found in Garbage Gut’s gut!” She pulled a scrap of paper from her apron and read, “A candy bar, two bullfrog tadpoles, rotten hamburger, two cigarette butts, a crawdad, a plastic tip off a White Owl cigar, cellophane, two minnows, a salamander, and a carrot!”
“Loathsome!” H2O blustered. “Disgusting! And people call these creatures ‘Game fish’! Augustine did well to rid the lake of it!”
Ma clapped her hands and cackled and H2O raved on, but their racket grew muted as something surged up in my blood like a tide: the room went red; wild energy pulsed through me; to commit some outrage would be such a joy, such a release. Something snapped inside me—some rope or tether—I literally heard it break and fall away. I jumped up, leaned into H2O’s face and some calm eye inside me watched with pleasure the flecks of spit that flew with my words into his eyes as I roared, “Do you know what you are?”
Aghast, he shook his head.
“You’re a fucking fishing Fascist! You’re a flyrod Nazi, and every fish but trout or salmon and everybody but flyfishermen are niggers and Jews and wetbacks to you! You’re a diarrhea-mouthed bigot blind to anybody who doesn’t drool at the sound of your suave fucking voice! You’ve never loved anybody but yourself, and you’ve had your head jammed up your butt so long it’s gone soft and reeks of it!” I almost danced as I screamed: I was in ecstasy! All my life I’d suppressed this: at last I let it fly like lava from a fissure, like sewer from a suburb, like hot green manure from a cow’s ass. H2O’s eyes bulged amid the red flannel of his face. He smacked at his lips and gurgled, speechless. Ma zoomed to his rescue—
“Gus Orviston! That ain’t no way to talk to yer father! What the hell’s got into…” But I leapt to her end of the table and shrieked, “And do you know what you are? You’re a greedy, gloating, murdering shrew! You’d butcher an elf or an angel if you could catch one! You’d blast a hummingbird if you thought there’d be a drop of blood left to lick! You’re a grease-sucking weasel and you don’t know shit about fishing, or living, either of you! You’re both buried in ruts so goddamned deep there’s mud in your…” With a lightning left, Ma caught me flush on the jaw, but to her amazement and mine, it didn’t even faze me: I shouted, “Can’t hit a girl!” and before they could move I’d slapped H2O across the face so hard it left a white hand-hieroglyph on the crimson of his cheek. Outraged, they staggered to their feet, but I ran in the living room before they could touch me, grabbed my mounted fish and casting trophies and started smashing them on the floor. My parents stopped in the doorway, afraid to approach. Then my eyes fell upon the Sears Roebuck rod and the mummy of Nijinsky. There it was: the source of all the bullshit! Ma screamed “No!” and started for me, but I’d stomped rod and fish into the phony gas fireplace before she even got close. Nijinsky flared up as if soaked in diesel. We all froze where we were, watching him burn like Miss Havisham.
The River Why Page 8