Salmon

 

 

 

 

       “Hey honey, is there anything besides salmon left? It just seems like we’ve been eating a lot of salmon lately.” I said.

       “No dear, we finished off the last of the pot roast last night.” She said.

       “Oh, well, that’s fine, I like the way you make salmon anyways.” I said.

       “Thank you, honey.” She said.

       Her words were followed by the clacking sound of silverware on ceramic plates. The salmon was still cold from being defrosted, and it had that sort of funky, metallic taste about it, but I didn’t dare tell Mary about that.

       A warm fire was kindling in the fireplace in the living room and though they were all the way in the dimly lit kitchen, the couple could still feel the slight draft of warmth rise out and in from within the room down the hallway.

      The house was a two bedroom, one bath ranch that had been purchased in the fall of fifteen years ago. A large weeping willow tree rose gracefully out of the ground in the garden out front. The tree itself was twice as old as the house and had always added a sort of rustic feel to the place. The house itself was painted a pale gray with deep red bricking on a few of the walls. It resided in a quiet neighborhood that, other than a few rowdy vandals, had never seen a scrap of crime that had become so prominent in the city a few miles east.   

       “Are you going hunting tomorrow?” she said.

       “I don’t know, depends on when Mike is up.” I said “You know how long he takes to get ready, knowing him, we probably wouldn’t get out until nine, and then it’s too late. You can’t see anything at nine.”

      “Maybe you should call him early?”

      “No, Mike doesn’t answer his phone until at least twelve.”

      “Why is that?”

      “I don’t know, why would I know?”

      “Isn’t he your friend?”

      “Were not that close.”

      “Close enough to go hunting with.” Mary finally muttered.

   I finished what was left of my salmon in vague distaste. There was a small leaf of spinach on the side that I decided not to pursue. I left the table after muttering a short “Love you” to Mary.

      I walked upstairs and sat at the edge of the bed, rubbing a sore spot on my knee I got when I was kid in Michigan, playing around in the woods behind our house with a couple friends. Back then we couldn’t afford real fishing gear, so we had paperclips on string tied to awkward sticks we just found laying around the forest floor. These were our “state of the art” fishing rods.

                There was a small creek that ran through the woods. By now it had probably dried up, but back then it was wide enough for a catfish to squirm through. The creek flowed into a large pond at some point, ten wound back down into a narrow stream.

                The pond was our hangout. It had some large boulders that dotted the shore and a few areas where the tiny pebbles blended with the sand and dirt.

                It was on an unusually sunny day in the middle of May when we caught it. She was a beauty, biggest damn salmon I’ve ever seen. How it ended up in that stupid little crook is beyond me.

                It started off with the three of us, that is John, Caleb, and I. We sat on one of those rocks sipping on a few cans of beer we stole from Caleb’s dad, the alcoholic. So we were slightly buzzed when this particular series of events went down.

                “Bet I’ll catch another one today, like yesterday . . . remember yesterday?” Caleb said.

                “You didn’t catch nothing yesterday, I remember . . . you caught that little green thing and told everybody it was a fish.” I said.
                “That was a fish I tell you! Stop being stupid, it was a fish and you know it.” He said.

                “Whatever.” John said.

                John always had a way with words.

               

We fished like that from sunrise to sunset. Just sat there and fished.

                At one point, I got up and went to go take leak in the woods a few yards away, so I stuck the fishing rod in a crack in the rocks and left it like that, with the rubber ball we used for a bobber floating in the middle of the pond.

                I took in a deep breath as a can of beer left my body and onto a bush making a funny sound. Suddenly, Caleb screamed for me.

                I ran over to where he was, with my rod in one hand and his in the other. The hand with my rod in it was held out far over the water like he was trying to reach something with it.

                “What the heck are you doing?” I asked, bewildered.

                “Dude, get your a*s over here and help me pull!”

                At that point I saw John out in the water checking through it and parting it like he was looking for something.

                I hopped up to Caleb and grabbed the line with both hands and pulled.

                Whatever was on the line was huge and strong, it took the both of us just to hold it in one spot. John finally found it, and dove in the water for it. The water was only a few feet high, but John went all the way under.

                He finally came up holding what looked like a massive silver sword that glinting brightly in the dying light. Caleb dove off the rock and into the water to help bring it ashore while I was left holding onto the rod. The thing squirmed so viciously that It pulled the line in such a way that I lost my balance and fell over onto a bunch of rocks, cutting open my knee. I stood up and moved over to the others and helped them hull the damn thing to shore.

                Twenty minutes later, after we had brought it ashore and let it dry to death. The stupid thing was eight feet long and near a foot wide.

                “What should we do with it?” Caleb asked.

                “We’ll bring it back to my place and cook it.” I offered.

                So we did. We sat at the table and ate the old wooden table and laid it in two pieces on the cutting board, cooked and ready to go. My knee started to hurt. It wouldn’t be until much later that I would find out it was infected. Instead. I ignored the pain and indulged myself in the fruits of our catch

                And yet, for some strange reason, though it was fresh and healthy, the fish bore an odd, sort of funky, metallic taste.