She blinked up at that moon and suddenly remembered something.
“Do you know what? My dad used to sing a song to me, about a red moon.” She tried to remember the words from the song, and caught the tail of a tune. She hummed half a line, before the memory dismantled.
“I had it but I lost it,” she said. Her father had a funny, warbling singing voice. It was a senseless song about a red moon, maybe it was a red moon pie, she thought now, Red moon pie, in the sky, something like that, perhaps... She was having a hard time holding on to anything exact. She hummed something again. Fly me up into the sky for a slice of that red moon pie ... Was that it? She bounced the fishing rod, reeled in a foot or two, and looked at the man. He didn’t seem terribly interested in the red moon song, but he hadn’t asked her to leave or quit yapping or give him back the rod or anything.
She thought for a minute, eyeing that red moon. Now she was honing in on the melody. A crinkled foil Cheetos bag skittered across the ice before them.
“I don’t have a very good voice,” she said, “but the tune went like this.” She sang a little bit. “Do you know it?”
The man shook his head.
“Damn” she said. “I had the feeling you might. I sure wish I could remember the words.” She hummed the tune again, then stopped and shrugged.
She was very cold now. The wind was picking up and her nose felt as though it was encased in ice. Her bottom was numb. She wished she had a camera on her to get a shot of the eclipse. Shelly might not believe her tomorrow, unless Shelly was out right now, seeing it for herself. What a strange galaxy this was. Red moon pie, me oh my ...
“Sure wish I could remember the words to that song,” Tracy said again. She had sung the red moon song to her mom at the end of that summer, when she was back home in Buffalo, but her mom didn’t care for it too much.
She hummed it again.
“I like it,” said the man.
Tracy laughed brightly. “I told you I don’t have a very good voice.”
“Sing it again?” the man said.
“Well, but I don’t even know the words!” Tracy hummed the tune again and added in some round vowel noises at several points, tried to do a little vibrato. Maybe her singing voice was nicer than she thought.
Humming it through another time or two, she felt she was getting closer to some words. They were right there, those words, she could almost touch them. She just couldn’t quite latch onto a phrase. She and her dad had sung it over and over that summer, when they were out at dusk, fishing for pike in the Lake Michigan channel off the dark cement pier that was streaked white with seagull poop. She couldn’t believe she’d somehow misplaced those words in her memory; they were so simple. Peeking down from my red moon pie . .. Now what was it?
Tracy thought she felt a bite on the line, and she abruptly stopped singing as she twitched the pole to make the grub jump, far below. Then she was very still, waiting for another tug on the line. She stared down the hole, into that great deep black below them. She could scarcely believe there was life down there.
Who lives on a little red moon . . . Did somebody live on the red moon? Was that it? That wasn’t quite right. She could smell the fish blood from the walleye at her side, it was hot and raw in her nostrils. The wind hissed over the ice.
What were those words? They were right there, just beyond her grasp. They kept dissolving every time she thought she’d nabbed them. What were those wordsi
She stared out across the frozen lake and it looked like alien land, gray and pocked and gleaming.
“My dad was an all right guy,” she said.
WHITE MORNING LIGHT
The Christmas morning sun split the day wide open like a cracked egg over the cold, clean horizon. White morning light soared in through the windows. Something in this world felt different to Tracy. As though everything that had come before was part of a different dream.
Tracy gazed at her stack of presents for Shelly’s family and pictured Shelly’s home, where the kids would probably wake soon to rip through their presents under the tree. She hoped she hadn’t overlapped on any presents that Shelly and Mac had already gotten the kids. She probably should’ve checked that, it occurred to her now, although it would have ruined the surprise. Tracy pictured Shelly waking to remove her sleep mask and ear plugs—she’d always been a light sleeper. She pictured Mr. and Mrs. Green, who were probably still sleeping now, in their queen-size bed with pale pink sheets. The one night Tracy had spent at their place, when Mr. and Mrs. Green were out of town, she and Greenie had slept in their queen-size bed, since his was a twin. Their sheets smelled of baby powder and dandruff shampoo and vaguely of curry. There was a jar of petroleum jelly and an issue of Reader’s Digest on the bed stand. Tracy tried to picture Greenie now, imagining where he might wake on this Christmas morning, but he felt so far away she could barely even pin down his sleeping face in her mind. She pictured the ice fisherman from just an hour or two before. She wondered what somebody like that did for Christmas—she couldn’t believe she hadn’t thought to ask. She pictured the ladies of Paxico, Kansas, waking to small jewelry boxes from their husbands placed under Christmas trees or in stockings. She pictured her father bent over and hard at work on the pieces, painstakingly winding small parts together. Tracy had about a dozen pairs of earrings currently on display at La-Di-Da, and although they weren’t fetching the same prices that Bruce Lemon had offered, she still thought it important to insert herself in the local market. She also planned to finally take Shelly up on her offer to secure Tracy a booth at the Bella Vista Arts & Crafts Fair, which would be held in Rochester, in March. Tracy pictured a tiny version of herself, in this very room on Christmas morning 1983, the last Christmas she ever spent with her father, and at this memory she was walloped by something that was not entirely painless, but thunderously powerful and acute. 1983, when these carpets were thick and rust-colored, the curtains flowered, the television set a small rabbit-eared black box. Details were knocking against one another in the very softest part of her. Was this nostalgia? Love? Was there a difference?
Could she recall this warm memory with such intense particularity if there was not also the same measure of love attached? 1983, when her father wore a red flannel shirt over a red cotton turtleneck and he drank black coffee. What she felt now was so pure, it was as though every emotion she’d ever had toward him had been distilled into this one moment, and the pained and joyous throbbing inside her almost felt like the beating of wings. 1983, when she knew nothing of the ways people fail each other; when she believed her father to be the best father.
It had all changed, she thought now, and she felt a deeply, wonderfully sad happiness at this. It had all changed, and it would all change again.
Several months later, Tracy would move into the little pink ranch home down the street, and several months after that, she would acquire her passport in order to retrieve her father’s forty-pound muskie.
Before making the trip, Tracy first called the taxidermist in Wawa, Ontario, to confirm that the tiger muskie was still there. The taxidermist, now in his eighties, but the same guy who’d worked on the fish all those years ago, assured Tracy that the fish was not only there, but it was still in great shape.
The taxidermist warned Tracy that it wasn’t the prettiest fish you’d ever see, and he asked Tracy what she knew about muskies. He explained that the name “muskie,” from “muskellange,” had its origins in the Ojibwa language: “Maashkinoozhe,” meaning “ugly pike,” because of its underbite. Nevertheless, the guy said, he’d grown fond of that ugly old thing and to this day it was displayed front and center inside his shop. He told Tracy that as much as he’d enjoyed having that tiger muskie around for all these years, he’d be delighted to return it to its rightful owner. Tracy consulted a lawyer who was an expert on customs regulations and filled out the necessary paperwork, requiring many signatures and a great deal of information about Marty; all his residences since the time the fish was caught, dates
and registration numbers on his fishing and hunting licenses.
She finally got the green light from the customs officer assigned to the case and was told that the tiger muskie could be picked up from the taxidermy office in Wawa, Ontario, where it had lived for all these years, and she was guaranteed safe passage at the Sault Ste. Marie border crossing. The customs officer provided a case number and his own contact information for Tracy to reference at the border if they gave her any trouble. She didn’t end up needing this—they waved her through with no questions.
The fish itself was hideous and magnificent. Its scales were waxy and gleaming, the deep green striping darkest at the flank, above a silvery beige. Its fins were stiff with glue but still delicate-looking, an iridescent orange. Its open-mouthed underbite was pronounced, and wide like a duckbill. Sharklike layers of needle-sharp teeth were exposed, circling a rubbery pink tongue. In its face, the thing looked more like a dragon than a fish. Its golden glass eyes had enlarged black pupils. A plaque beneath the fish read:
40-Lb. Female Tiger Muskie
Lake Superior, 1977
Martin C. Calhoun
Tracy would hang the fish on the south wall of her living room, and sometimes she would try to imagine what it must have been like for her father to catch a fish of this size. He was a fairly slight man, and Tracy considered how forty pounds must have felt at the other end of Marty’s pole.
Sometimes, Tracy ran a finger along the spiny dorsal fin of the muskie and imagined how this fin must have contracted like an accordion and splayed, slapping at the tiger muskie’s sides, fighting to gain purchase as she realized she’d been ensnared. How the tiger muskie must have fought, how she must have raged. Tracy imagined how her gills must have chugged, her tail whipped mightily, this ugly mouth snapped and her eyeballs flared bright gold, rolling like planets on an axis. All that fight, that fury, that muscular force.
Tracy imagined how, rising from the water, the muskie must have continued to fight, jerking back and forth in her middle, even as hot oxygen assaulted her gills. Seeing the world above water for perhaps the first time; knowing, until that moment, nothing of its existence.
Tracy imagined that even after the tiger muskie had been slapped hard across the deck of the boat, her cheek torn and dripping cold blood, gills fluttering, even then, that tiger muskie kept fighting. Tracy imagined that the muskie’s golden eyes bulged and raged, finally fixing upon the face of her captor, and she wondered if the maashkinoozhe paused for one moment to take notice of this, or if, with the last of her strength, she thrashed.
On the south wall of Tracy’s new little pink ranch home, the fish would catch the light of the large west-facing windows from the hours of three o’clock in the afternoon until sunset. This wall would already, upon Tracy moving into the home, be painted a deep oceanic blue that would nicely frame and offset the colors of the fish. The fish would be positioned in the center of the wall and facing right so that it stared directly out the window, those golden eyes fixed on the sliver of gray shivering lake that could be seen between the neighbors’ homes. Everyone who entered the house would comment on the fish, noticing how bright the colors became in the evening sun, and many would comment on what a perfect place this was for the fish, between the sunlight and the color of the wall and even the way that the fish had been mounted on wood that seemed to perfectly match the floorboards of this room.
It was, in fact, such a perfect place for the fish that it was almost like the little pink ranch home had been designed specifically for the very purpose of housing and displaying this very fish, back in the 1950s, when the home was first built. It was as if perhaps everything had always belonged this way, even before any of it came to life, or came to pass.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many of the themes explored in this book are inspired by Ojibwa culture. I am awed by the beauty and richness of the language, stories and spirituality, and hope I have properly conveyed the deepest respect.
For love, encouragement, and steadfastness, thank you to my family, Mom & Dad, Sissy, Mike, Cole, Pat, Jessie, and Andy, who we miss every day. Julie Buntin, dear and thoughtful reader, thank you for the time you spent with this book, and for your friendship. Thank you to the various communities that have lifted and supported me over the years, including the crew at LC&GH, where I laugh every day. Thank you to my agent, Michelle Tessler, for your unwavering belief in this book and guidance through many edits. Thank you Jack Shoemaker, Megan Fishmann, Kelly Winton, Joe Goodale, Ryan Quinn, Neuwirth & Associates, and the rest of the team at Counterpoint, for your vision and enthusiasm. Lastly, George, for your indomitable spirit, your gentleness, your constancy, and the joy and hilarity you bring to my daily life, I love you and thank you.
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