Fit to Die

by Joan Boswell

  For that, as it turned out, was the problem with Mononcle Hippolyte. It was also why Jacques and his mother didn’t know about this youngest boy of the Crow’s Beaks, the one the family had hoped and prayed was long since dead.

  Fifty years ago, Hippolyte had been locked away in an asylum for something so dreadful that the family had given part of their land to the church to atone for his sin. They were so ashamed, they’d even asked the priest to excommunicate their son and erase his name from the parish records.

  It had taken much pestering by Jacques to discover what Hippolyte had done. At first his grandfather had refused to discuss it, saying it was best left alone. Even his uncle didn’t want to talk about anything other than fishing and the weather.

  Then one night after a bit too much piquette, the moonshine Pépère bought from Papa Drouin, the two brothers finally divulged what had really happened. Hippolyte had killed a man, an Anglo to be exact, which made Jacques wonder why his family had been so upset. After all, fifty years ago, killing a man, especially an Anglophone from Ontario, was no big deal. And still wasn’t, as far as Jacques was concerned. But it turned out the family’s shame came not from the murder but from what Hippolyte did to the body afterwards.

  All that summer, Hippolyte had been trying to catch a hundred pounder. Several times he’d almost caught the enormous muskie, but each time it got away. Until one day he arrived at his secret fishing spot just in time to see the giant flapping fish being hauled into a boat by someone who had no right to be there.

  At this point, Hippolyte said he didn’t remember much, just sparks going off in his head, and next he knew he was hauling a big sucker of a muskie into his own boat with some strange looking bait stuck in its mouth. “Then,” he said, his eyes wide in remembered wonder, “them fish started jumping out of the water like the devil himself was snapping at their tails. I figured maybe it was this funny lookin’ bait, so I put another piece on the hook. I tell you, Jacques, us Tremblays lived like a monsignor that night, eh Pierre? And for the rest of the summer. We never had it so good. Why people called me Seigneur Poisson, eh, Pierre? Sir Fish, much better than Crow’s Beak, that’s for sure.”

  But the Tremblays’ feasting was brought to a sudden and sickening close when hunters discovered the mutilated remains of a body hidden amongst the rocks on an isolated peninsula, the one people now called English Bait Point. It didn’t take the police long to discover Hippolyte was the one who’d killed the man and chopped him into tiny bait-sized pieces.

  Jacques shivered, and not from the cold. He wiggled his fingers to make sure they were still there and wiped the icicles from his nose. Exhausted from pushing through the drifts, he wasn’t sure how much longer he was going to last. English Bait Point had better be straight ahead.

  A few minutes later, he stumbled over a rusty metal bucket with a broken handle. He sighed with relief. The old man’s fishing pail. He was on the right track.

  Feeling more optimistic, he pushed forward with renewed energy. However, the farther he moved away from the stranded bucket, the more he questioned why Pépère had thrown it away. Maybe it was useless for carrying gear, but for sure it was better sitting on an overturned pail than on snow.

  This uneasiness increased when he discovered the augur. This was serious. Not even for a free jug of Papa Drouin’s piquette would Pépère throw this new drill away. Even if he had his old homemade spud with him, he didn’t have the strength any more to drill one hole with it, let alone the five he always made in the ice. But then again, Hippolyte was more than strong enough for the two of them.

  Fear for his grandfather took over when Jacques uncovered the clump of pink crystals in a nearby mound of churned snow. There was no mistaking the signs. The two old men had been fighting. And one of them was hurt. That must be why Pépère had dropped his gear.

  Jacques reached behind to ensure the long case was still slung over his back then picked up his pace. He prayed he wasn’t too late.

  A short distance later Jacques spied the looming mass of shore and hoped he’d arrived at English Bait Point. He turned to follow the shoreline in search of the cliff that marked the end of the peninsula. Once around it, he should see some sign of the two fishermen.

  Jacques couldn’t understand why his uncle insisted on fishing next to this reminder of his bloody crime. At first Jacques had thought maybe Hippolyte wanted to seek forgiveness from his victim’s spirit. But after more pestering, it came out that throughout his long stay in the asylum Hippolyte could think only of the gigantic muskie he’d caught beneath the cliff of English Bait Point. He was bound and determined to be Seigneur Poisson once again.

  All summer and fall until the lake froze over, Hippolyte had spent the daylight hours trolling back and forth in the water around the point. But other than a few good-sized muskies, no giant had snagged his line. Surly to begin with, he’d become more so as the season progressed. Once, he had rammed the boat of another fisherman who had dared to fish in his spot.

  Hippolyte had begun to experiment with bait. First, he’d tried worms, crayfish and other standard fishing lures. But when that had failed, he’d tried raw chicken. With bloody chunks of freshly killed rabbit he had some luck, so he’d started trapping them in earnest. Before long, Jacques’s mother, revolted by the blood and squealing rabbits, screamed at him to stop, and when he didn’t, at Pépère to do something about it.

  For a time, they thought he had returned to normal bait, but one day not long before the lake froze over, Jacques had discovered his great-uncle chopping a deer haunch into tiny bait-size chunks. However, since this was on English Bait Point and well out of sight of his mother, he’d decided not to say anything, particularly when the next day Hippolyte had brought home his largest catch of the season.

  Unfortunately, it was not the largest fish caught by the Crow’s Beaks that season. Pépère had brought home one monster fish after another, muskie, lake trout, you name it. He had the golden touch. And with each large fish his grandfather had brought home, his uncle had become quieter and quieter, while his eyes had grown colder and colder.

  Then accidents had started happening to Pépère. The first one had occurred in the barn when a pitchfork fell out of the loft, skewering the old man to the ground. Fortunately, it had pierced the loose material of his jacket, not his chest, so he had walked away, yelling at Jacques for leaving it in such an unsafe place. But Jacques was sure he’d left it beside the manure pile.

  Next, his grandfather had almost sliced his leg in two when the ax had ricocheted off the piece of firewood he was splitting. Close inspection had revealed a nail hammered into the center of the log. Pépère had put it down to just one of those things. Jacques remembered seeing his uncle with a can of nails and a hammer shortly before the accident.

  Once the lake had frozen over, things calmed down for as long as the two brothers couldn’t fish. When the ice was thick enough to support them, each had returned to his own special fishing spot. Except this time, it was Hippolyte who brought the big fish home. A thirty-pound walleye was followed by several others of equal size. No one dared ask what kind of bait he was using. Pépère was so infuriated he moved to English Bait Point.

  And the race to become Seigneur Poisson had geared into overdrive. To this point, Pépère had only been toying with Hippolyte’s obsession. Now he was determined to take the crown away from his brother. So far there was no clear-cut winner. Both brothers were bringing home monster walleyes the like of which made Jacques decide he’d never swim in the lake again. It also made Jacques begin to suspect the kind of bait his grandfather was also using.

  Then last week, another accident had happened. Hippolyte had been cleaning a rifle when it accidentally fired. The bullet had knocked the toque clear off Pépère’s head and he had only escaped the next bullet because he’d hidden behind the milk separator.

  That was when Jacques’s mother had decided enough was enough. One bullet could be labelled an accident; a second bullet was s
omething else altogether. She had told Hippolyte to leave. Today was his last day. Tomorrow he was to go to a group home a hundred miles away run by the good Sisters.

  This was the reason why Jacques had agreed to abandon Les Canadiens to come out in such weather. While normally Pépère could look after himself, Maman was right, there was no saying what the God-cursed Hippolyte would get up to today when you couldn’t see sky from ground.

  Through the lessening snow, Jacques could see the outline of the cliff at the end of English Bait Point. He slipped the gun case off his shoulder and unzipped it. When his mother had said “Go find Pépère”, he knew he might be needing his rifle. He pulled it out of the slender case and ran his fingers along the well-oiled stock. He’d killed many a deer with this. No reason why he couldn’t kill Hippolyte if he had to.

  He dug into his pocket and pulled out some cartridges. He jammed them into the magazine and hammered the bolt home. He was ready.

  When he reached the end of the cliffs, the snow suddenly stopped, and the sun came out. At first he was blinded by the sudden brilliance, but as his eyes adjusted, he saw what he had come to find. From one side of the bay to the other ran a familiar line of orange tip-ups; the specialized ice fishing rods his grandfather used. They reminded Jacques of a cemetery of lopsided wooden crosses, each stuck into a mound of ice at the edge of a small hole. Before the first lopsided cross sat a figure covered in snow.

  Jacques was about to call out when he realized he was seeing only one fisherman. Anxiously, he searched for the other. But the bay remained as empty of other human life as the lake behind him.

  Sacrifice! He was too late. It had happened.

  Ignoring the cold, he removed his mitts and felt the icy steel of the trigger. It was now up to him to finish this off.

  He moved cautiously towards the hunched back of the silent figure. He was halfway there when he began to wonder why the fisherman hadn’t moved since he’d first seen him.

  He was about thirty feet away when he noticed a dark patch at the feet of the still figure. At first he thought it was just a shadow. But when he drew closer, he realized with dread it was frozen blood, a pink crystalline mixture looking much like the snowcones he bought at the carnival.

  He pointed his gun and pushed silently forward. The fisherman still didn’t move. Jacques was beginning to wonder if he was still alive.

  Suddenly the cross bar of the tip-up jerked down into the hole. The figure lunged forward. Next thing Jacques knew, a gigantic silver fish was flopping on top of the packed frozen snow.

  “Arrête!” shouted Jacques, “Stop, and raise your hands high above your head.” Jacques had seen enough westerns to know these were the right words.

  The figure remained rigid, then the hood slowly swivelled around and pointed the long Crow’s Beak nose towards Jacques.

  “Come on, Mononcle, hands above your head!” Jacques jabbed his gun towards the silent figure.

  Two icy mittens slowly rose.

  “Eh ben! What have you done with Pépère?”

  “Jacques! My grandson. It’s me…your Pépère.” The man struggled to raise himself from the overturned bucket.

  “Stop right there. How do I know it’s you?”

  “Mon Dieu. What is the world coming to that a grandson doesn’t know his own grandfather?” One mitten brushed back the hood while the other lifted the toque from the high cheek-boned Tremblay face.

  Jacques relaxed with relief when he saw the familiar bald pate and the twinkling brown eyes, but stiffened when he saw a deep gash extending from his grandfather’s eye to his mouth. A frozen trickle of blood still clung to his cheek.

  “Tabarnac! What did that crazy man do to you?”

  His grandfather removed his mitt and ran his hand over the bloody gash. “This? It is nothing. A disagreement,” he replied with a slight shrug of his shoulders.

  “Where is Mononcle?”

  Pépère crossed himself, then pointed. “Sainte-bénite! There’s been an accident.”

  Jacques followed the line of the pointing finger to a spot beyond the last tip-up, not far from where the inlet flowed into the bay. It took him a few seconds to discern what looked to be tracks spoiling the smooth surface. Then he realized they led in a direct line to a patch of black water. A frozen red toque lay at the edge of the hole.

  Jacques looked back at his grandfather. “Mononcle Hippolyte?” he asked.

  “Oui” Pépère crossed himself again.

  Jacques was tempted to look into the hole where his uncle had fallen through, but he didn’t, knowing as did anyone who fished on this lake that the ice where the river flowed into the bay was never thick enough to support a man. Still, he was a bit confused by the presence of a large patch of what looked to be frozen blood close to the hole.

  “Oui. I told him to stay put in the white-out, but Hippolyte wouldn’t listen,” continued Pépère. “He was sure the big fish were over there, eh?”

  By his grandfather’s feet lay a number of equally enormous fish, each with a perfectly round staring eye, some frozen, others limp with glistening water. Next to them, on the patch of icy pink were chunks of raw bait.

  As horror slowly engulfed Jacques, Pépère beamed and said, “Now I am Seigneur Poisson, that’s for sure.”

  R.J. HARLICK, an escapee from the high-tech jungle, decided that solving a murder or two was more fun than chasing the elusive computer bug. When she’s not inventing the perfect murder, she’s roaming the forests near her country home in West Quebec. “Seigneur Poisson” is her first published short story.

  NATURAL MEDICINE

  Jones scammed the health nuts every day.

  Jones sold them grass and made them pay.

  He sold them herbs he said were healthy:

  Bought cheap, sold high, got very wealthy.

  Sucked in the wife of the town M.E.,

  And every year he raised her fee.

  He was an expert id motivator:

  “Quit now and you’ll regret it later.”

  His clients stayed, they paid—regretted.

  Nature Guru spent—was wildly feted,

  Until the day they found him dead

  His throat chokeful of twelve-grain bread.

  And the M.E. said—without any pauses—

  “It’s clear this man died from natural causes.”

  JOY HEWITT MANN

  LOVE HANDLES

  H. MEL MALTON

  Peter loved my shape for nine of the ten years we were married.

  “I love the way your little belly pooches out like that,” he’d say, cupping my stomach in his big hands and jiggling it in a friendly way. He’d nuzzle underneath my chin, where the skin was beginning to take on a soft roundness, and he’d take my upper arms between his fingers and gently squeeze. “Mmmmm,” he’d say, “like warm bread.” It wasn’t as if I was running to fat. Just spreading is all, the way you do past forty, if you’re not a health Nazi. I like my food, I’ll admit that. So did he.

  We’d met at a gourmet dinner club. Each month a group of us would get together at someone’s house and revel in the glories of food, cream sauces and fresh, tender vegetables drenched in butter. Exquisite pork tenderloin marinaded in port and thyme, robust red wines and dazzling desserts glazed in syrup. We’d fallen in love over a coulis of raspberries and praline ice cream, and our wedding feast was to die for.

  Everything changed in the spring of the last year of our marriage. Something got into him, I don’t know what it was. Fever, maybe, or a mid-life crisis. All of a sudden he was passing up my Dijon Chicken with apricot-basil sauce and asking for tofu instead. On his birthday in June he had a token bite of my famous Chocolate Death Cake and then pushed the rest away, saying he was full. He’d started jogging in July, and by August he had dropped fifteen pounds and was pumping iron.

  “Peter,” I said one night, “are you having an affair?”

  “Of course not, Pumpkin,” he said. He called me that, but my real name’s Phyllis. �
��I’m just trying to improve my lifestyle so I’ll live longer,” he said. “I wish you’d join me.” It was then that he cupped my belly with his hands, and he didn’t say he loved the way it pooched out. He jiggled it, but it wasn’t very friendly. “You could stand to lose some of this, you know,” he said. I smacked him with my pillow and started spending more time in my garden and less time with him.

  Not long after that, he started trying to get me involved in his “improved lifestyle”. First, he volunteered to do the grocery shopping, a thing he had never done before. He totally ignored the list I sent him off with, and instead came back with organic vegetables, a fifty pound bag of rice, a bunch of dried peas, beans in bulk and a vegetarian cookbook.

  “Give it a shot…for me,” he said.

  Oh, I tried. I soaked and boiled legumes until the bed sheets billowed with his new found flatulence. I concocted salads and pilafs, soy cakes and falafels and did my level best to acquire a taste for them. But secretly, late at night, when Peter was snoring and farting and perhaps, losing weight in his sleep, I would sneak down to the kitchen, take my stash of farmer’s spiced sausages from the back of the freezer and fry ’em up. Sometimes I’d add some garlic glazed potatoes and top it off with a sticky homemade Chelsea bun.

  I went jogging with him once, finally giving in after he promised to take me out to dinner afterwards.

  “What’ll I wear?” I said. He was standing at the door stretching like an Olympic triathlete, bending this way and that and breathing through his nose. His newly minted hard body was already encased in skintight running gear, like a muscular sausage. He wore a tank top with “Just Do It!” screaming across the front of it, his chest hair bristling up out of the scooped neck, a patch of moss on a hunk of granite. He’d recently booked time on one of those tanning beds. and his skin had turned an interesting orangey-bronze colour that I guess he considered attractive. I yearned for the pale soft doughboy I’d married.