“Every Sixty Minutes Out of Water”
By: Steve Sheppard
Few know that the Forks Library carries a good Audio/Visual selection, mostly marine related, or fishing related. Today, returning some video tapes I checked out, including my favorite, “Jaws,” I wondered into the Hoh Indian section, and there I saw an audio tape series on fishing called “The Hundred-Pound Fish.” I checked out a cassette player and plugged the first tape in:
“There are six dimensions to the hunnerd-pound feesh. It’s length stretches from the highest point you can hold your arm, while supporting it with the other, all the way to the ground.”
The tape sounded home made, and that’s because so few people are interested in catching a hundred-pound fish, or even an eighty-pound one. My old man caught a hunnerd-pound fish once, when I was about twelve. It was a King Salmon.
“I got him, Hanky. Damned if I didn’t. A hunnerd-pounder!”
“You did?”
“I hooked his ass. Right off Quilcene. And you know how I got him? He swam right into the back of the car!” he said, as if the local television station cameras were rolling. It was true. Dad lost his brakes while backing down the boat launch and slid right into Hood Canal, had to have Hack “Proudfeather” Wilson winch him out. When the car drained, there was the fish. “I always told you this was a lucky car.”
“We need a truck, Dad,” I said, admiring his catch.
“You’re right, a Ford.” He was out of breath, like he had a hard day.
“Where is the boat?” I said.
“Where’s the boat? It’s at Hack’s. I had to unhook it to bring the fish home.”
“He’s all dry.”
“That’s because the whole thing took place in the morning. So, I haven’t had time to clean him.” And this was how Dad carried on, like he was giving his story a dry run on me. But I knew him to be a clean man, with a tidy life, and was efficient with his time, even while drinking, so not cleaning the fish was peculiar.
“Get the scale,” he said, “the big one, from the shed.” The screen door slammed. I lifted the trunk door and saw the salmon curled throughout the length of the trunk of our 1963 Fairlaine, and the caudal fin covered the license plate.
It’s weight is a hunnerd pounds, wet, but she’ll lose a pound every sixty minutes out of water, so you need to weigh her fast, to see if she’s truly a hunnerd pounds.
“Has anyone ever caught a hundred pound salmon?” I yelled. There was no answer. I found the scale in the shed, the big one, with the pulley system, and a rope. I threw the rope over a wood beam in the awning, hooked up the scale, and hoisted the fish out of the trunk. It’s gills were large, hard and slippery, and dang was he heavy. I avoided the mouth, because even dead fish can bite. The scale stretched and the back of the car lifted as the fish came out. My dad stepped out in his tank top, a bottle of whiskey and glass in his hand, and sloped into the stoop of our porch, chuckling.
“Look at those springs. Have you ever seen the car so low? I don’t care what it weighs, it’s the biggest fish I ever caught,” he said.
I pulled and pulled, with all my strength, until I was in the air, hanging in the balance with the hunnerd-pound fish.
“Ninety-two,” I said, turning to Dad.
“You’re readin’ it wrong,” he said, and laid back. I’d thought he died, because he let out strong breath that altared the flight pattern of a swarm of gnats above his head. The red skin on his chest rose and dropped and he made irregular sounds through his nose. He was just tired.
It was five o’clock. There was a long discrepancy between the morning ordeal and now, and it involved going to the bar with something of a whale in the trunk, water draining out of the pipes, and Hack “Proudfeather” Wilson close by; a line of men oogling at it, and Dad describing what combination of baits to lure it in. That’s probably how it went.
I took the whale back to the shed and hung it over a horse trough. There was a giant basin where Mom gave me baths before she died, and the faucets were threaded so you could hook up a hose, so I did, and a nozzle, so I could spray as I went. Dad kept a sharp filet knife in his tackle box, which I went for, but it was gone. Must have lost it in the Canal, and he should have been sore. I went to ask, but he’d ambled into the house and was gone, so I found a knife in the kitchen.
The width is like your upper thigh and the girth elongated, like a skinny dog. The hunnered-pound feesh is bigger than most dogs, it’s mouth long and curved on either jowl, like a pair of coal tongs.
The guts of a hundred pound fish being a quarter of it’s weight, I’d hoped the horse trough would contain twenty-five pounds worth. I should have had a camera, or a plan. What a waste. How often do you unleash twenty-five pounds of guts into a tub? I should have had friends over, or sold tickets to little kids for the event. I should have video taped it and sold it for stock footage, or to the Forks Library.
But I had few friends, and no video camera, so I settled on re-enacting a scene from Jaws. I played Matt Hooper, oceanographer and shark expert.
“Hooper approaches the dark, ghostly, cold fish with his big knife and dips it in with a major incision. ‘First, I’ll cut into the pelvic fin, then pull all the way up to the pectoral. That should give us a clear view of what it’s been eating over the last 48 hours. Prepare yourself, Chief Brody.’”
A pile of tires by the basin made a good Chief Brody.
“The shark’s flesh slurps as Hooper rips and gouges through, wincing at the various smells of digestive fluid and rotting fish.”
So I did, and the salmon’s endless roe folded out onto my arms. It was bright pink and transleucent, with millions of pearl-sized eggs. This hen must have spent eight years wondering the ocean before coming home, maybe twelve – maybe she was my age exactly, and just as plum full.
“‘What’s that?’ Chief Brody says, curled in the corner holding the flashlight. ‘Looks like a cod, Chief,’ says Hooper, ‘swallowed him whole.’”
More guts fell into the tub as I cut away. The intestine, the bladder, the swim bladder.
“‘What else do you see, Hooper?’ – ‘A burlap sack, a paint can, a sock of marbles, a machete, a complete China set from the Ming Dynasty – AHA!’ Brody startles. ‘What? what? Did you find a human hand, still grasping for life?’ Hooper pulls out a large round object. ‘No, Chief Brody, it’s just somebody’s HEAD!’”
It was the stomach. Small for this size a fish, but it was still big, bigger than a bowling ball. Spawning salmon don’t eat anyway. They have one thing in mind, spawning. I tried to think about this salmon’s life as I sprayed it down with the hose.
The spinal artery was last. It’s a huge pocket of blood running up the spine that takes forever to clean. I ran a small stream of water and scraped the dark brick colored blood with the tip of my knife until my hands were numb with cold.
Salmon lead an involuntary existence. They’re amazing, cold blooded, fast swimming creatures that can barely decide between eating one squid or another. They speed through life in the darkness of the sea, urged by instinct to get larger and then swim back to within three feet of their birthplace. Their meat feeds land animals and humans, and their eggs feed fish. Some survive to become other salmon.
I stepped back to admire my work. The fish dangled wide by my noose, her dry caudal fin wilting, blessing me, the Mesolithic butcher. I dragged her guts to the backyard and dug the hole, never having felt more like a man.
The hunnerd pound feesh is bad eatin. It’s meat is too tough by then, so you may as well throw it back, or keep the trophy.
That night I dreamt about fish. I was hauling in salmon by the netfull, until Coast Guard boats surrounded me, their sirens and engines blaring. The noise woke me, and there were trucks, cars, and men talking outside. A flatbed was parked in the yard with our boat and trailer on top, covered in kelp and weeds and dripping all over. Dad sat on the porch, smoking, while the police argued with him. They took him, cuffed, to a car and put him in with the other passenger. It was Hack “Proudfeather” Wilson. They all sped away except for one car, an Escort. A heavy, butch-haired woman came to the door.
“Hanky Stockman? Come with me,” she said.
We left in the Escort. I could barely speak, my mouth was dry.
“Where are we going?”
“Downtown.”
“Why?”
“You’ll get to see your father eventually. They found his boat in the Canal – there was a dead man in the forward tank. I’m sure there’s an explanation. The police just like doing things their way.”
My aunt picked me up from the courthouse and took me home and I spent the rest of the summer with her and my uncle. The months wore slow and hard on me because of my Dad and because I broke out in a rash the day I arrived at my aunt and uncle’s, and it festered, growing worse every day. Then, just before school, I went back to the old house. Dad asked about the hundred-pound fish and wanted me to check on it. We spoke by phone through a glass wall once a week, but that was temporary, he said.
I rode my bike to the house, and saw that the doors were locked and the car was backed up on the side. Things looked like someone other than Dad put them away, and they stayed that way for a while. I went to the shed. It was a hot day, like a chain you found on black pavement, or a hot vinyl seat when you have shorts on. The shed was padlocked, but the old man said I could break a window if I wanted to, so I did.
It was musty and dry, like a hay barn. I could smell crankcase oil, dust, and a hint of rancidness. I came around to the back, near the basin, where I had left the fish in a box of ice, and there it was. Chief Brody was there, too, in his corner, nervous, knowing I was going to look.
“‘Mornin’ Chief. Let’s see how this shark’s doin.’”
I opened the box and the ice was gone, the water was gone, but the fish was there, bone dry. It was as light as Styrofoam, and crispy, like a big chunk of that stuff on Kentucky Fried Chicken. It might have weighed ten pounds, max. There was no chance of a record now, or a weighing. It may as well have been the hundred pound fish that got away.
I always dreamed of catching a fish of that size again, but never could get Dad to tell me how he got his. The tape was informative, though, the man had several good tips on catching a hundred pound fish. I checked it out again, a year later.
“Never lead on that you’re fishing for one when you are. They’ll know it. Don’t be pretentious. But for God’s sake, keep a scale in your boat, and weigh her as soon as she comes out of the water…”
Copywright © 2005, Steve Sheppard
