Smelt
Joseph D. Haske
In mid-April the bank that leads up to the mouth of the Carp River is a five-mile stretch of shantytown. Whiskey and beer bottles everywhere, the Carp curves and cuts its way through pine, sand, and birch into Lake Huron. Bonfires and frosted taillights mark the way down the dusty path over mud ruts and maple roots. Old men sit smoking on rusted-out tailgates, bologna sandwiches in the cooler, booze at the ready. Kids slosh through sand and clay in pint-sized hip-waders that stretch to their necks. The dippers’ nets shine in our headlights when the trail curves the truck toward the water. Dad steers down the campsite road that shadows the river and Uncle Tony tokes up from the passenger side.
“Boys hungry?” Dad tosses back a greasy paper bag with venison and butter sandwiches.
Me, Johnny, Tommy, and Cousin Ryan ride back in the Ford’s wood truck bed. Dad rigged the wood frame up and bolted it in when the metal one rusted out. It’s painted blue to match the cab, but you can tell it’s not a pro job.
Johnny peels most of the napkin from his sandwich. “My bread’s all wet,” he says.
I take a bite and get a mouthful of napkin. Don’t say a word, just spit it out.
“You boys wouldn’t make it in the Army,” Dad says. He stops for a second to sip his Old Milwaukee. “You don’t even imagine some of the shit we ate there, right, Tony?”
Dad slides the rear glass window open all the way and holds out his hand. Styx plays on the eight-track. The smoky mist drifts up through the night pines. Ryan coughs. I’m sitting on the cooler so I slide back, pop the lid, and pass a couple Old Milwaukees in to Uncle Tony and Dad.
“What’s the worst thing you ate?” I ask him.
“Bugs, rats, piss,” says Uncle Tony. “Hell, your old man even ate a shit sandwich one time, right, Gene?”
“We ate shit sandwiches every day back in the bush.” Dad’s eyes shift back and forth from the road to the rearview mirror.
Tony looks like the devil with the red glow from the cab around his slick, black hair. Smoke circles hang over his bulletproof cheeks and handle-bar moustache. They must’ve been talking about Grandpa again, ’cause they got that dead quiet look. Then Tony says, “Pass up a couple three more. Gonna two-fist it.” It’s more than five months now since Grandpa disappeared, but none of us can forget what happened. Dad says he and Uncle Jack got a plan. Says they’ll bring in Uncle Tony. Dad and Tony got more spare time now. Both of ’em laid off from the boats. Old Lester Cronin’s gonna get his payback. Dad and Tony were Rangers in the Army.
Dad and Tony don’t know it, but I heard Uncle Jack, Dad’s baby brother, tell Colonel Henry the Pete Girard story last night. When Dad first came back from Vietnam, he found out his sister, Aunt Karen, got pregnant. Grandma told Dad it was a rape but not to tell Grandpa. The family was waiting for Dad to get home to help take care of Pete. That’s when Tony first came up from Texas. Karen kept crying until Dad got the truth out of her. Peter Girard got drunk and forced her. Choked her pretty little neck with his left hand while he fucked her mean. Karen didn’t want Dad to hurt Pete ’cause he was her boyfriend right up to the day before, until she found out about Pete’s wife in Columbus. Dad told Aunt Karen none of that mattered once Pete did what he did. Pete Girard didn’t know Dad or Tony from any other locals. His family always came up in the summer from Ohio since he was a kid, but the only Metzger he knew was Aunt Karen. Jack told Henry it was easy for Dad and Tony to get Pete out to the Carp to dip smelt. They smoked a few joints with Pete behind Cronin’s Hardware and sealed the deal. Jack rode out to the river with him, in the back of Tony’s Dodge. Says Pete was a cocky drunk—bragged the whole trip out that he didn’t have to work ’cause he lived off his old man’s money—tire business down in Ohio. He told Jack he was gonna trip acid when he got out to the Carp. Make it all psycho-delic. Pete wasn’t much for fishing.
Neither Jack or Pete saw it coming. Jack went to sleep around midnight, and he woke up to the scream. Saw Tony toss something red into a five gallon bucket of smelt. Dad was on top of Pete, holding his right arm down, knee in the small of Pete’s back. Tony was holding a bloody buck knife and kicking clumps of ground and dust into Pete’s face. Jack heard Dad say, “Guess what’s next?” Jack walked over to Tony, asked him what was going on. Saw Pete’s hand in the bucket. Dad told Jack, “Go for a walk, you ain’t seen nothing. Empty that bucket of smelt while you’re at it. It ain’t no good no more.” Jack dumped the bucket. Then he heard another splash come from behind him. Nobody saw Pete Girard around town after that. Nobody around here missed him.
When Jack got done telling Colonel Henry the story about Pete Girard, he was choked up, but Henry’s face didn’t change the whole time. All Henry did was puff his cigar and say, “Those’re the stains of kin. Yessir—the binding stains of kin.” Then Jack looked at me and told me to never tell anybody that story or he’d kill me.
The metallic blue Chevy in front of us pulls off to the left. Dad hits a rut and knocks the sandwich out of little Tommy’s hand.
“What’s it like to smoke them gooks?” Johnny asks.
“I hope you never find out, boy,” says Uncle Tony. Dad looks kind of sober all the sudden. He doesn’t say anything, but he’s thinking hard.
“What was it like?” I ask him. “Vietnam.”
“Different than you think,” says Uncle Tony. “This one time we’s walking through the jungle. Middle of fucking nowhere, and we hear this noise. Sounds like a baby, but there’s nobody ’round, and we’re humping through some hot terrain. We’re thinking it’s a goat but it’s a real human fucking baby. Laying there in the paddy, by some plants—look like little palm trees. Sometimes, over there, you might think you’re in Florida or Hawaii or some damned place but for the bullets all ’round.”
“A baby?” Ryan laughs.
“Sounds like bullshit to me,” says Johnny.
“You wanna hear the story or not?” says Tony. “Platoon Sergeant says to leave it, keep going. Lieutenant Boyle says, ‘Don’t touch it. Might be a booby trap.’ What kind of shit is that? Strapping grenades to babies. But these V.C. don’t fuck around. Do whatever it takes. We saw the kind of crazy nobody believe—less you were there.”
Tony cracks another Old Milwaukee.
There’s nowhere good left to park at the river mouth so Dad circles around back to the north side road, over where the sand bar splits the river. When he finds a spot, we all hop out where the tailgate should be while the Ford jumps and sputters dead, headlights aimed at the river bank. Johnny and I run over to the hard, sandy ledge, trying to get a look at the river. It’s six feet down—can’t see much. The water, coffee and milk color, runs fast till it empties in St. Martin’s Bay. The headlights and spotlights all around make it hard to see anything but the steel mesh and poles of the smelt nets. The current crackles loud over old men’s bullshit and the C.C.R. that whines through AM radio. The wind rips through hard every few minutes, then calms. I snatch the net away from my little brother Tommy, walk the trail down to the water and start to dip. Can’t tell if Tommy’s gonna cry or he’s just shivering up there in his blue hood. Green and yellow snot leaks from both sides of his red nose. Everything smells like fish, cedar, and smoke. I breathe it all in and step into the muck. The Carp’s flow pulls me closer, almost takes me in. Dad anchors me. Must’ve followed me down. He pulls the collar of my ripped blue coat. Steadies me on the bank.
“This ain’t too far from where that kid drowned last year, eh, Gene?” says Uncle Tony from the trail. “Never found him till the next morning. One of the LeVasseur boys. Cory?”
“No, Cody,” I say. “Ronnie’s little brother.”
“Cody. We was here when it happened, eh, Gene? Took least a good six-pack afore his old man figured out he was missing. Suppose you kinda expect it with a family like that. Breed too much. So many little bastards running round there’s no ’countability for ’em. Old man never heard of propalactics or what? So drunk he couldn’t hardly walk, too. Wasn’t long, though, one of them boys was looking to take back the net from that little Cody or Cory. Old LeVasseur ’bout shit himself when he seen the boy gone. Ended that party real quick.”
“Had us all out here, shining the river with every light west of Drummond Island,” Dad says. “About four in the morning, old man Jacques was down on his knees, crying to God in French. Was daylight by the time that Williams boy saw the red sweatshirt hung up on a root downriver, right that way.”
“Half the town needed a jump start that morning,” Tony says. “I was one of ’em. So caught up looking for the kid, my headlights was on all night. When the trooper come by, I told him I was good. You know me—I ain’t getting help from no fucking pig. Had a quarter pound in my trunk. Almost got stuck out here cause of it—sweating it out till all the porkbellies split. Funny thing, it was LeVasseur himself who give me a jump. A rough shape that poor bastard was in.”
“Did you see him, Uncle Tony?” Johnny asks him.
“See who? The LeVasseur boy. Yep, we saw the body. Kid was bloated good, only a few hours in the river, right Gene?”
Dad nods. He’s helping Tommy and Ryan dip with the other net. Looks like they’re really catching ’em, too. Dad shines the flashlight on the five-gallon bucket to show us. It’s filling fast.
“You never told us what happened with the baby,” Tommy says.
“The grenade,” says Ryan.
“So I see it there. Muddy blanket stuck in a pile of jungle shit. Baby looked clean. Best I could tell, there’s no wire. Big stupid bastard I am, I kneel down to it and tell the platoon to clear out. Sergeant Preston says, ‘Step away from the baby.’ Tells me, ‘That’s an order, Vega.’ He’s scared shitless, knows I won’t listen to him, and he backs off with the rest of ’em, except your old man. Gene’s down on the ground there with me, looking for wires under the baby. I remember we looked at each other, thinking we might be blowed to shit any second. Then I picked it up. Nothing—just stopped crying.”
Tony stares out to the dark side of the trail, into the maples. “Then what happened?” I ask. “Did he die?”
“Who?” says Tony.
“In the Nam,” I say.
“It was a girl,” he says. “About then I got really scared. Started thinking what we was gonna do with it. Couldn’t just leave it there. Boyle wanted to, but he was too churchy to order us not to take it. ‘I ain’t responsible for that damned thing,’ he said. ‘You wanna get your dick shot off for a little dink baby, that’s your business. Dumbass grunts.’ That Boyle was alright for a college boy. Your old man rigged up some bandage straps to sling that baby up on his shoulder.”
That’s as far as Tony gets in his story before he’s got to take a piss.
He walks out to the tree line with his Zippo and Zig Zags.
Tomorrow’s Good Friday. We got half a day of school, but most of us won’t be there. I must’ve seen about half the guys in my class here—Chris, Jay, and Paul and a few more. It’s so dark, who knows who else is out there. I already got one turn with the hip waders. I was out there a good hour or more. The old man and I went to the shallows, but it still was up to my thighs. After a while, you really start to feel the cold in the water, even with the waders. I got my gloves and winter coat on, but there’s no way to keep your clothes dry when you’re half a net deep in smelt. I can really feel the chill now, out of the water. Dipping works up a sweat, especially when they’re running good. One pull, the net was so heavy, almost took me downstream. Dad was close by again, but even strong as he is, I wonder if he could’ve got me in time if I fell. “Keep your head up and your back straight, less you want to take a dip,” he said. I filled the bucket myself a couple times, the catch shining like Coors Light cans in the headlights of the old Ford. When the five-gallon bucket filled again, it was Johnny’s turn in the waders, so now I do the dumping. Three black trash bags sit almost full in the truckbed.
The music’s quieter now that most of the party crowd’s gone. Only the serious dippers and drunks stick around this late. The slow breeze in from the bay is just cold enough to frost my neck and give me goosebumps on my arms. The spot on the river where we’re at’s got a tree on the other side, growing sideways out the bank. It swings back and forth real slow over the brown water like an old man in a rocking chair. It’s not so crowded on the bank now that most the traffic’s gone. Uncle Tony’s still smoking with Chester Wolff out by the maples on the other side of the road. The moonlight’s bright enough now I can see their faces. They’re both real serious—probably talking about Lacey again. She left him on Christmas Day, and he still breaks down every time he talks about her. There’s nothing like a six-foot-three, two-hundred-fifty-pound Italian-Mexican with a big bushy moustache, fifth of Popov in hand, rolling around in the dirt crying like a baby in his leather Harley jacket.
When it happens, about once a week or so, Dad’s quick to point out that even though Tony’s like a brother, he’s not blood.
Tommy and Ryan sleep in the cab of the pick-up. Their blanket is the canvas tarp strip Dad uses to cover his tools in the truck bed. Ryan’s mouth is open like a smelt sucking for water. Tommy’s curled up like a bear cub. Rest of the guys took a break from the river. Dad’s chugging Old Milwaukee with my baseball coach, Mr. Roth. They’re drunk laughing by the cooler in the back. Johnny plays catch with Roth’s kid. His name’s Johnny, too. They’re both fifth graders but the Roth kid’s a fat little fuck. My brother Johnny’s skinny like me. People always say we look like twins but I’m taller, older.
Colonel Henry and Grandma Clio used to come out here every year, long as I can remember. Never showed up this year, though. They’re not big into dipping smelt, but they sit around the fire, drink beer, and smoke with the best of ’em. Last year they got here around one in the morning with some hot plates of pulled pork, mashed potatoes, brown beans, and barbecue sauce. Must be five in the morning now, and I’m starving. The venison sandwiches and can of brown beans we had are long gone now. There’s a part of me that keeps thinking any minute the Colonel’s Lincoln’s gonna turn down the path to find our spot on the river. Colonel Henry will light his cigar, take off that beaver-skin hat, and scratch his head while he tells me in Kentucky drawl to help Grandma with the food in the backseat. Their dinner leftovers will warm my hands through the foil Grandma wrapped around the plates, and I’ll feel that hot air from inside the car, just before it slips out into the dark morning frost, and my face will remember what it felt like to not be outside, to not be here.
The only headlights we see for now are headed out to Mackinac Trail.
The night’s catch steams in silver piles from buckets and trash bags in the bed of Dad’s truck. A few smelt flop around in small empty spaces in the back. Some are just there, frozen to the wood on the bed. I love smelt dipping, but I hate that fish stink, and smelt, in these numbers, can do some real damage to your nostrils. It’s that cold, muddy fish smell that grocery store fish can’t match. The way they’re piled up there, I’m not sure how we’re gonna get back home, all six of us, without somebody sitting on a pile of fish. We really killed ’em tonight. There’ll be smelt frying for weeks.
There’s no good reason for me to go back down to the river, but I’ve got an urge to get down there one more time and feel the little scaly darts pull the net downcurrent. Dad and Tony found a campfire ring. They’re smoking by the fire, roasting a couple smelt. Dad moves the stick to different spots in the pit to keep the little silver fish from burning. All three younger boys are sleeping in the cab of the truck, the windows fogged from their snoring. They all got mud on their jackets and pants. Ryan and Tommy got their sweatshirt hoods and gloves on. Johnny’s wearing Dad’s camouflage Budweiser cap with the brim loose over his eyes and nose. The cab smells like smelt, sweat, and wet sand when I open up the truck for another trash bag.
“You going back down?” Dad asks me.
“We got enough damn smelt already, dude.” Tony puffs and chokes a little on his joint. “It’s not all about the fish.”
“No, but the fishing makes it better,” my old man says. “Come sit down, Buck. You’re old enough to hear this.”
I want to go back to the river. See the smelt caught in the steel mesh and feel the cold numb of the steel net through my brown jersey gloves. The icy water of the Carp feels safer, warmer than Tony and Dad’s cold faces over the fire pit. Dad points for me to stay put, so I take my seat on a half slab of birch that’ll feed the fire before dawn.
“Your Grampa was a good man,” says Tony. “Gave me work and a place to stay when we got back from the war. I’d do anything for him.”
“Can’t do anything for him now, Uncle Tony,” I say, feeling my chest ice up. “He’s gone. Nobody gonna bring him back.”
“He ain’t coming back, but we sure’s hell gonna do something about it,” Dad says. “That’s my old man. You listen to me and listen good, boy—I don’t want you telling no one about this, not your mother, nobody. You got me?” His hazel eyes burn through my frosted soul. All I can do is nod and look down at the roots that stick out through the last few patches of ice.
Last year, out here at the Carp, the Colonel got into it good with Uncle Ray about church and God. Uncle Ray was talking about how Colonel Henry and Grandma Clio should just get married already, instead of living in sin. When Ray brought it up, made me sick to my gut. I never wanted to think about Grandma and Henry rolling around wrinkled and naked. Why would old people even want sex—leave the fucking to the young. Ray must’ve been thinking a lot about it though. Brought it up a few times before the Colonel told him to shut his “got-damned mouth.” Colonel Henry always says, “Ain’t no bigger hypocrites than you’ll find in church on Sunday, boy. Biggest sinners of ’em all.” He gave old Ray an earful, and Ray mostly stood there shaking his head.
Everybody knows Grandma Clio is the boss, but she let Henry go on, shooting Ray bad looks. Never seen Colonel Henry get so many words out without Grandma stopping him, but she was pissed off at Ray. Let old Henry lay into him. Seemed like every other word was a curse, but the Colonel cranks it up when he gets riled. Ray said something about blasphemy, and the Colonel told him why should he care about a god who let him sit there and watch three of his brothers die in a coal mine. “What kind of deity kills children and ruins the life of a nine-year-old boy?” he asked Ray. Henry and five of his brothers fell in the shaft but only two made it out. “What the hell kind a faith a boy have in a god that cruel?” Henry told us how he never went to church after that. All this is probably the reason Ray didn’t come out this year. Don’t know why the Colonel and Grandma Clio didn’t come though. They patch fights over a bottle of scotch—never take anything too personal. Wherever they are, it’s got to be warmer than here.
I wish I could go back and erase everything Tony and Dad told me about their revenge plan. I wish I was one of the younger boys, sleeping in the cab of the truck, even with all the stink. Lester Cronin’s got it coming, but I never wanted to be drug into killing, even if it’s for Grandpa. Makes sense now why Tony’s keeping such a close eye on Lester. No surprise he’s the one who’s gonna take him down.
I’m sure it’s personal, too—not just about Grandpa. Tony’s still sore over the walleye contest. They say old Cronin cheated—caught fish after the deadline. Nobody could prove anything, the contest being on the honor system and all, but everybody knows Lester Cronin caught almost a pound after the deadline was over—stole second place and Tony’s hundred-fifty-dollar prize. Before Lacey left, that was all Tony would talk about when he got pissed-off drunk.
Tony got real fumed last week when Mom told him what happened with Lester’s mother. Rumor is Lester killed her off with D-Con. Needed the inheritance money so he could keep his hardware store open. Rat poisoned her every day till she croaked. Nobody in town can prove that either, but everybody knows the truth.
I zip down my fly and piss by Dad’s front truck tire. Try to get my jeans all the way back up while I walk past the fogged windows of the old Ford, north of the fire, but the zipper jams and pinches my pointing finger. When I get the zipper up, I suck the blood from my finger and grab that smelt net one more time. Walk the path down the hill to the river. Don’t even look back up the ridge when somebody tries to start the truck. Could be that Tony and Dad had enough and are packing up, but it might be they’re trying to keep the boys warm in the cab or to keep the battery from draining in the cold. The radio was on all night and half the morning so it needs a good charge.
The dim sunlight fights its way up from behind the birches and maples and paints a pink-red sky. Hard sand from the bank falls in chunks when I step in the wrong places. I feel drunk, but I didn’t touch any alcohol this time—not even a sniff of Dad or Tony’s beer. The truck motor still won’t start. It sounds like a hacksaw in rookie hands. After a few tries, somebody finally gets the engine to turn over. The eight-track is blasting up on the ridge behind me. Sounds like Styx again. About three feet down, a big chunk of hard sand crumbles off the side. I try to grab the branches of the pine that grows crooked, almost sideways over the water, but it only keeps me up for a few more seconds. The tip of the tree bounces back like a slingshot, slapping me in the face.
The current pushes me away from the hill-top campsite where Dad’s truck is parked. I don’t yell, not even with the shock of the cold water. It’s not that deep, and I’m sure somebody heard the splash. I can’t see anybody, just the cold red sunrise and the roots and trees that stick out the steep bank of the Carp. I try to pull myself out but my clothes are too heavy. The hip waders fill fast with river and it’s all I can do to breathe, to keep my head above the dark water. The river thrashes me to a branch sticking out the right side bank hill. I grab the twisted cedar with frost-numb fingers. I think of Cody LeVassuer’s cold, white and blue carcass. I’m stronger than him. I won’t die in this river. The cold’s loosening my grip, though, and the wet’s prying my fingers from the branch. I hold on a good couple of minutes, then I give in and go where the river wants to take me. I fight with all the fight left in me to get back to the bank, but the water’s too heavy. I paddle my arms and kick my legs, with nothing left but my adrenaline. My body gives out so I rest a few seconds and try to do it again, but all the muscle in my arms and legs is gone. I’m scared when my head goes under but it feels kind of peaceful, in a way, ’cause I’m so tired.
Last summer, a couple months after Henry and Ray’s big fight, Dad and old Henry got into some deep bullshitting when we were cooking burgers and brats out at the dunes. Henry says he’s mostly an atheist, but he could be wrong. There could be a God—nobody knows for sure. Guess that’s the best anybody’s got to go with. Doesn’t calm me much, not knowing what’s next, but the river’s taking me down, taking me with her, and nothing I do can change that. My head gives way to the Carp’s brown current.
After the other boys fell asleep, Tony finished his Army story. He said that him and Dad took turns carrying the baby girl, but Dad carried it more than Tony.
“Don’t know how he did it,” Tony said, “humping the sixty and all. My fat ass had a hard enough time without the baby, but I tried to pull my weight.”
He said that the baby was good luck. Not a shot was fired the three days they carried that baby. They fed her water and coffee through a green nipple they rigged up out of rain gear.
“You would’ve thought it was a real tit the way that baby would suck on that thing,” Tony said. “We left it with a little girl the first village we come across. Humped a good thirty miles that day and then the shit got real hot. Took three, no, four KIA in our platoon alone in a roadside ambush the next day. Can you believe that, Buck?” He told me. “A baby, right there, in the middle of the fucking jungle.”
A single hand rips me out of the river with a pull like a steel crane. That kind of force, it’s got to be Uncle Tony. All I feel is the hand and the suction of the river, until the iced air stings through my soaked clothes and works its way to my head. I feel punching on my chest, steady and strong till I chunk out water. Everything feels hard and real again. Then I see the face with the hands. It’s Dad, not Tony. “Gonna be a cold ride home,” he says. “Told you keep your head up. Got to keep your goddamn head up, boy.”
Winner of the 2012 Boulevard Short Fiction Contest for Emerging Writers.