The rock steps I'd built when I was a kid were still there in spots, but the trail was overgrown with knee-high grass and weeds. It didn't look like the lovebirds had been fishing, or swimming, or anything else that you generally went to the lake for.
Near the bottom of the hill, the wooden pier met up with the trail and I stepped cautiously out on the old boards. The creaks and cracks weren't encouraging, but they didn't turn me back either. At worst, the thing would collapse and I'd fall into the water. Really red muddy water. How fish lived in this lake had always been a mystery to me.
The door to the crappie house wasn't locked--and never had been as far I knew--so I turned the handle and let myself in. I realized I'd been holding my breath, and let it out slowly. The place smelled old and dusty with a hint of decomposing foam rubber, probably from the stuffing in the bench pads.
I set the lantern on the bench and took in the room. Everything was just as it had been twenty-five years ago, only older, more weathered. Relieved didn't even begin to describe how I felt. I hadn't really thought about the possibility that BigJohn might have redone the fishing hut, too. If I had, I surely wouldn't have come down here. This was my dad's place. Always would be.
When I was little, he'd bring me out here on the weekends to fish. We'd sit here in this little room for hours, staring down at the water beneath the lift-up hatch in the floor, watching the red and white bobbers bounce on the incoming waves. Sometimes talking, sometimes not. Just being.
I wanted to do that again. Just like before.
I looked up to see if things were as I remembered, and sure enough, fishing poles still hung around the room, bobbers, swivels and hooks still in place, as if they'd been waiting for me to come back. I set the worms by the lantern and edged my way around the trapdoor to get to the rods and reels. As I stepped, my foot bumped against something and I jumped. This sort of thing was happening a lot lately, and it was not fortifying my delusions of being a fearless, courageous and heroic independent woman. I bravely ventured a look under the bench to see what I had bumped.
An open coffee can--with dirt inside. Scary business.
Feeling like a complete idiot, I started to kick the can farther under the bench for scaring me then stopped. That coffee can wasn't old and rusty like it had been left here on Dad's last fishing trip. No, that can was a bright new blue color. The dirt wasn't a dusty, dried-up clump either. I bent down and poked my finger through the crusty top layer. I churned up a little moist earth and a dandy ball of night crawlers. Somebody had been fishing here--very recently.
Someone had invaded my father's private space. Had just made themselves at home like they owned the place. I felt a rush of fury that balled up in my chest like a tight hot balloon. Images of people sneaking down the hill and creeping into the crappie house bombarded my mind. What made people do such things? Didn't anybody have respect for others anymore? This was probably another case of what I mean-spiritedly call the California mentality: What's mine is mine and what's yours is mine, too. I don't really mean to pick on Californians, but those "Don't Californicate Colorado" bumper stickers were made for a reason.
Being a transplant from Texas, I didn't have any room to cast stones at the hordes of people moving into Colorado. And I didn't, at least in the physical sense, until some escapees from Orange County built a house on one acre of steep rocks up behind my property.
Not content with their little patch of cliff to dwell on, they decided all the land below them--namely my five acres--was free land and theirs to do with as they pleased. You see, they just really loved my little trout pond, and well, their kids wanted to fish, or just sit by the water, and they weren't hurting anything. What was my problem anyway? It took more than one visit from the sheriff to convince them that they really did have to respect private property, and buying a one-acre plot on the top of the hill did not entitle them to everything below it. So, yes, I get a little sensitive to trespassing. And somebody had very well been trespassing in my Dad's crappie house.
Trying to put my past and present anger aside, I flipped open the trapdoor, grabbed the dipper kept for just such a use and scooped up a little lake water for the old night crawlers and added my new ones to the can. I took down a Zebco rod and reel that looked in good shape, nabbed a fat worm and set to work.
After a less than artful start at skewering, I managed to get most of the worm on the hook. I pointed the tip of the pole over the hole and mashed my thumb against the button on the reel. The line dropped down into the water with a plop, the bobber settling itself on the surface. I sat down and cut the light to the lantern. It would be getting light soon and I didn't need to see the bobber to know if I had a strike or not.
I tugged the line out a little and held it between my thumb and middle finger then turned the crank once to lock the reel. Then, I tried to relax. I hadn't fished like this in years. All I ever did anymore was throw out a lure now and then to snag a trout from my little pond. Not a difficult task.
Still, I knew how to fish in a real lake. Or at least I had when I was ten years old, when I hadn't yet discovered boys, when I'd loved being Daddy's little fisher-girl. I couldn't remember catching many fish out of this hole, though. I know for a fact we never ever pulled a big fat catfish up through that trapdoor. But we could sit for hours staring down at that little square of lake beneath the floor, little red waves, bigger waves and an occasional white cap sloshing by beneath us. Why we looked at the water like that, I don't really know. The water has always been so red and thick that you can't see an inch below the surface. But we did look, Daddy and me.
I felt a little catch in my throat and a twitch in my hand. Maybe this hadn't been such a grand idea.
Then my fingers twitched again.
A strike. I had a fish checking out the worm. I blinked a few times and sniffed, but kept myself still and waited for just the right moment to make my move. When the strike came again, I jerked back quick on the rod and set the hook. Got him.
After wiping my hand across my eyes, I turned the crank and reeled the fish up, then grabbed the lantern and turned it on. Bud was right--it was the only way to go.
The light confirmed what I'd guessed, I had myself a really nice crappie, at least fifteen inches. Fish sounded good for lunch--as opposed to, say, bean dip. If recollection served me correctly, crappie were fine-tasting fish. They were also about eighty percent bones. I sincerely hoped Mother still had a fillet knife around. A sharp one. I eased the fish back in the water while I hunted around for a stringer.
Luck smiled on me again, and I found the stringer under the bench in a corner, covered with cobwebs. After giving it a good shake to displace any multi-legged creatures, I hooked the chain end to the latch on the floor. I unsnapped the bottom metal clip, which looked like an overgrown swivel or a mutated paperclip. After reeling up the fish and moving it away from the trapdoor, I tried to get my hand around it so I could get it on the stringer.
The crappie was not so very happy about being caught and flailed this way and that, intent on jabbing its spiny fins into me. For lack of a better idea, I used my foot to hold the thing down until I could work my left thumb into its mouth to hold it the official way. With my right hand, I squeamishly worked the bottom clip through the fish's gill and out its mouth. I hated this part, although smacking them in the head before you cleaned them wasn't much fun either. But it had to be done. Freeing up the pole had to be done as well. When the fish swallows the hook, there's nothing to do but cut the line and start over. I did, then plopped the fish and the long chain of stringer back in the lake.
Now, I needed another swivel and hook. Looking under the bench again, I didn't see a tackle box or much of anything else, so I glanced toward the bench on the other side. No tackle box there either, but there was something catching the light, so I worked my way around the trapdoor for a closer look.
The edge of a manila envelope stuck out from beneath the cushion.
I wasn't overly surprised by the find, because things were always being stuck under the bench in the crappie house for one reason or another. Dad had made it a point to keep a stash of Outdoor Life magazines and JC Whitney catalogs for when the fish really weren't biting and it was too hot to nap. Or, as that song Mark Chestnut sings goes, "Too hot to fish, too hot for golf, and too cold at home." I always liked those lyrics, even if they had hit a little too close to my own home a time or two.
Humming the aforementioned tune, I speculated that the envelope was something my dad had left here before he died, and therefore was something I didn't need or want to look at, those things tending to send me on emotional journeys I could very well do without. Before I knew what I'd done, however, I had slipped the envelope from beneath the cushion and had it clutched in my hot little hands. I am definitely a sentimental when it comes to my dad, and while I'd been worried about not getting myself all weepy, I'd managed to overlook the fact that my dad wasn't a manila-envelope-hiding kind of guy.
So whose was it?
There was no writing on the outside and it wasn't licked shut, only clipped. With no clues forthcoming, I worked the little metal ears up and opened the flap. Inside, was a stack of papers. Not a single neat stack, but random neat stacks mixed with what looked like business envelopes, newspaper clippings, receipts and crumpled scraps of something.
The sun was coming up and the lighting was getting better, but I still needed the lantern to see much of anything, like words. I slid the papers carefully out of the envelope and heard a clank on the floor beside my foot.
There, not three inches from the trapdoor--and the hole down to the deep red water--was a shiny silver key. I picked up the key and closed the hatch as best I could considering the stringer snapped to the latch. I hadn't seen the fish's white belly floating along the surface so assumed the crappie was still alive.
With the floor relatively secured, a quick glance over the papers did not send my emotions sloshing down memory lane again, although I'll admit feeling the urge to cry when I saw the word Bennett sticking out from the top edge of one paper. Not only had BigJohn made himself at home in my dad's private fishing hole, he'd used it as a hiding place for a hefty stack of what looked like legal papers and receipts. Odds were there had to be something fishy about them, otherwise why would they be hidden in the crappie house? It just figured.
As for the mysterious key, well, that just figured, too. With a murder investigation, two attempted murders, gun running and a long and weary list of improper political activities, it was perfectly reasonable that a mysterious key would be involved.
If this was your typical safety-deposit-box-surprise-evidence thing, then I had to be a good citizen and turn it in. This, of course, required that I make nice-nice with the Harper-Fletcher gang--and get an attorney. None of it sounded terribly exciting. It has also completely ruined my enthusiasm for fishing.
I put away the rod and reel and gathered up everything else. With my still-gasping crappie on a stringer in one hand and the envelope in the other, I trudged back up the hill to the cabin and sneaked inside.
As it turned out, the sneaking was a waste of time since Lucille was sitting at the table already freshly showered, painted and pooffed, sipping coffee from a china cup and flipping through a current
Redbook
magazine. She did not look at all like she was roughing it, although I knew she considered staying at the cabin exactly that. After all, the Dairy Queen was a good fourteen miles away. She looked up at me, scowled then tried to hide the fact that she had. "I see you've been fishing."
Feeling like a first-grader again, I held up my stringer and proudly displayed my crappie, which in the light of day looked a few inches shy of my optimistic fifteen. If we got a deep fried snack out of the little bony fish, we'd be lucky. Nevertheless, I smiled broadly and said, "See what I caught, Mommy." I tried to sound little and cute. "I'm so proud."
Lucille sighed dramatically, wholly unimpressed by my childish attempt at lame humor, or maybe that's a lame attempt at childish humor. Either way, it kind of hurt my feelings that she didn't play along--or even chuckle. She just kept looking at her magazine. "It goes without saying," she said flatly, "that I'm not cleaning it. I'm not cooking it either. I don't cook crappie, Jolene. It's entirely too much trouble. Too many bones. But there's a skillet and oil in the kitchen if you want to try it for yourself."
I didn't want to try it for myself, but I didn't have a great deal of choice, particularly since the crappie was now dead. "I'll take care of it, Mother. I'm sure I can figure out how to fillet a crappie. I do reasonably well with trout. How different can it be?"
Actually, very different. Even so, except for two close calls when the knife slipped, I managed to get the thing filleted, skinned and sliced just fine, meaning I still had all of my fingers fully attached and no bandages binding gaping wounds. Having accomplished these amazing feats, I was determined to fry my little chunks of fish come hell or high water. On the bright side, it wouldn't take much cooking oil.
With half a plate of the morsels draining on paper towels and the grease turned off, I dished up the rest of my cleverly thrown-together meal. I'd helped myself to a can of whole kernel corn and French cut green beans from the love nest's pantry and opened a bag of chips to round out our fine almost-lunchtime feast.
"Why, Jolene, this fish is right tasty," Lucille said, with more shock than was necessary. "I'm quite impressed."
Keep in my mind that my mother can be impressed fairly easily with anything she doesn't have to fix, and the rest of us are equally impressed that she doesn't try to cook much of anything herself.
Growing up I had more ravioli, canned stew and TV dinners than I care to recall. I'm not complaining, mind you. It was far better than the home-cooked meat dishes that appeared on the table at luckless times. Believe me, you can't fully appreciate a finely grilled sirloin unless you've had a not-so-finely fried round steak. And I'm not talking chicken-fried either. I'm talking skillet-fried. My mother's steaks were so tough the dog thought they were rawhide chew toys. So did my dad and I, for that matter, although we were not stupid enough to say so.