Catfishing

I suppose everyone’s daddy looms large in his life: standing all tall and strong, nearly blocking out the sun, the moon, or the stars. So it was with my pa. I remember his favorite shirt for the weekends, a blue plaid thing with the subtlest of red-ribbon lines running through every third or fourth checker column. It was short-sleeved and sometimes, when it got cold, he wore a long-sleeved white or black t-shirt under it. In the really cold he wore a CPO jacket over it of a non-committal, mud-colored plaid not the same size or weft as the blue plaid shirt. He smelled of coffee and cigarette leavings, his yellowing teeth a testament to his three-pack-a-day habit. He smoked at dinner using his special dinner-table ashtray. I had made it in art class out of clay in the shape of two elephants facing off. It was muddy red with unsure edges. He smoked while he shaved or shat. He kept a Pall Mall burning just outside the shower so he could reach out once or three while he shampooed or washed up. He liked his whiskey, not something nice like Jameson, but never so low as bottom shelf; not to excess that I ever saw. Ma might have differing stories here. And he drank Budweiser in the red and white cans, four or six at a sitting watching a ball game or grilling “junk burgers” on the charcoal grill out back.

We fished occasionally, at a slow spot at a bend in a small creek a mile or so from home. We caught mostly catfish, once in a while a crawdad, and a ton of tree branches and discarded clothing, newspapers, and beer six-packers, grocery bags. The water was brown and slightly rank. Reeds and frogs lined its bank, skunk cabbage grew in the squishy terrain leading up to our spot, and at some distance were the carcasses of various makes, models, and years of abandoned autos, all rusted through, all what today’s pickers—junkers, we’d call them—would love to snatch up and restore on TV. Occasional green snakes would slither under foot and red-tail hawks would circle overhead. If we went late enough and dusk started to settle, owls would send up their occasional question, answered by scurrying rodent feet under the deadfall. Early enough and we heard the morning rat-a-tat of woodpeckers seeking termites and grubs.

“Catch!” Pa yelled as he hucked a Styrofoam cooler my way. I ducked and it caught the side of my head with a sharp, insubstantial corner. A sure sign we were heading to our fishing spot. Butter and cheese sandwiches were packed haphazardly in the white, fluffy box, worms were dumped into Tupperware containers along with moist soil, and grape sodas were nestled on top: fishing trip set. With poles over our shoulders, we were the picture of Andy and Opie, kicking stones down a dirt road, mock-whistling tunes from TV shows.

“If they had a professor and a skipper, how come they couldn’t fix the boat on Gilligan’s Island?” I quizzed. “How come they could make go-carts and shell-telephones and all kindsa fake bamboo stuff and plates and forks and all that stuff, but they couldn’t make some boards and fix the S.S. Minnow? They were so stupid!”

“Because nobody would watch a show about a bunch of smart people who saved themselves after two episodes. It’s funny to watch Gilligan mess everything up every week and have the Skipper bop him on the head with his skipper hat. The real question is, why did Ginger and Mr. and Mrs. Howell have all their clothes with them for a three-hour tour?”

I scratched my head at that poser; I hadn’t considered the wardrobe changes that these three had made in every episode. Poor Maryann, Professor, Skipper, and Gilligan, wearing the same clothes day after day, getting dirty, covered with banana cream pie and radiation and coconut milk. It then occurred to me that Mr. Howell had, like, a travel trunk full of cash with him too…and what about a radio that could get every radio station in the world—from Hawaii to Europe—without needing new batteries or an outlet to plug into…that always had the pertinent news story at exactly the right time. Wonders of childhood never ceased.

At a certain bend in the road on the way to fishing, there was a creepy shed-house surrounded by a yard full of junk: a pile of cinder blocks for an unfinished, unstarted project, an engine block, a rusty-yellow swing set with only one swing (and that with only one chain, making it hang lopsided and forlorn, like no child would ever, had ever, swung on it), a rubber basketball with a clean black slit cut into it, a headless doll, a bicycle tire used to mark the entrance to the driveway. A red reflector.

“The Jessups” read a hand-painted sign nailed to a post behind the tire and reflector. I think every small town has a Jessup family: dirt poor but proud—stubbornly so. Kids in hand-me-hand-me-hand-me-downs, snotty faces unwashed, knotty hair uncombed; upwards of a dozen cats, some strays that just showed up, some born under the pile of “kindling” that sprouted weeds in a back corner of the yard, many currently pregnant or nursing newborns; dreams of better ways piled in clumps around the yard, dreams preempted by the half-dozen Banker’s Club gin and vodka bottles strewn along the driveway (clearly headed for the trash bin that was always overflowing and never collected); an odor of sewage and rotted gardening hanging over the place.

The Jessup children were somewhat known to the public school. They were registered, all except little Jessica, not yet old enough to go to kindergarten. James Junior was eldest, usually known as Jester; next was Jesse; then Jessica. James Senior apparently loved his family name so much that he wanted it in all his kids’ names, Jester being his own nickname from his days in the Metal Chargers motorcycle gang, a parti-colored Harlequin tattoo emblazoned (and fading) on his left forearm. Raymona—aka Mona the Moaner, Jester Senior called her (though to be honest, in order to fit in with the Jessups’ theme, she thought of herself as Jezebel Jessup)—wore an ever-present, ever-expanding housecoat, pink flowers faded into the sky blue fabric so as to be indistinguishable as flowers. Hair in a constant state of curling. Bedroom slippers that made regular appearances at the Kroger’s, the Rite-Aid’s, everywhere but church. (Annual Easter and Christmas treks ensured salvation, didn’t they?)

“What’s that?” Jester Jessup Junior pointed at the fishing pole crooked over my shoulder.

“Fishin’ pole. We’re gonna get catfish for dinner. Down to the crick.”

“Creek,” Pa corrected me, like every time.

“Creek,” I echoed.

“Fun?” Jester asked.

“Fun,” said I.

“Can I come?”

Pa said, “You’ll have to ask your parents for permission.”

“Oh, it don’t matter,” Jester answered. “I can go everwhere I wanna, if I wanna.”

Pa let Jester trail behind us, nothing more said vis a vis permission. Good thing we packed an extra butter and cheese, thought I.

As the sun began to dip, we left off Jester with four of the six fish we caught. Pa figured (rightly) that the Jessups could use the extra provender more than we could, and he didn’t mind sharing. Jester Senior thanked Pa and me for the fish and pulled a boning knife out of his toolbox in the ramshackle shed and commenced boning them fish.

“Hope they have some bread or rice or something to go with,” Pa said. Pa liked looking out for people. I’m sure he would have brought a loaf on back out, but he didn’t want to offend, he said. “Some people have more pride than they can afford.”

As the summer wore on, Jester Junior and Jesse took to following us on our more frequent than usual fishing trips. Pa seemed to think the Jessups more than appreciated the extra food on the table, though Jester Senior rarely grunted more than a perfunctory “’anks” for it. Pa screwed together some tree branch poles with fishing line for the boys so they could make their own haul. We provided the bait and the butter and cheeses and the soda pops—orange and grape and cherry, and for two weeks every sum, them good, local strawberry and peaches. Mid-summer saw blackberries in the brambles, which we children greedily snarfed up ‘til we were sick at our stomachs. Little green apples and white cherries started appearing, but we eschewed them, not wanting to wrestle the wild-fruit bellyaches and diarrhea again.

When the catfish weren’t biting, Pa taught the Jessup boys how to skip stones, a skill I had attained at the raw age for four years, six months. They were fascinated how a thing that should sink could seemingly float on water and air. Physics was as lost on them as soap and shampoo and Kleenex. They weren’t much for shoes, neither. While Pa and I wore hiking boots on our treks, the Jessup lads went bare-footed until their soles were as hard as leather, and just as brown.

“Better get on back,” Pa said as, again, the sun began his downward trail. We watched as a red-tail hawk swooped down on an unseen rabbit or mouse. An owl hooted, a fish flipped out and back into the water a ways off. Rose-colored fingers of evening crept across a blue-to-purpling sky. High summer was here and the four of us became an afternoon and evening fixture on that dusty road to the fishing spot. Folks in town began to noticed Pa’s adopted sons and make snide comments about “them poor Jessup childern and their good-for-nothin’ daddy.” I hunched my head down into my neck, but Pa just walked on like nothing.

The Jessup boys hardly talked, except to ask Pa a boatload of questions about this and that: how do you tell a red-tail hawk from a goshawk? Why do turkey vultures circle before they swoop? How do pollywogs turn into frogs? Why do wild blackberries make you sick? And on and on like that. And Pa answered every one of them questions like he was a schoolteacher. In actuality he was a lawyer with a practice in town. When I got to junior high school I started comparing him to Atticus Finch, naturally.

We passed the summer, the four of us, in just such a manner. Kicking up dust on the road to the fishing spot, Jessup boys trailing behind shouting every question under the sun at Pa, him answering to the fullest, us sharing out the day’s catch. At home, Ma wasn’t all too happy to be eating so much catfish, so Pa froze more than half of it. Ma preferred a nice pork chop or a beefsteak, along with a salad of greens from her garden. She had an abundance of tomatoes and squashes, just like every other gardener on Planet Earth, so Pa asked her if he could take a bagful on over to the Jessups, as they seemed to have no garden.

“Sure and why not,” Ma answered. Secretly, she beamed inside with pride at her green thumb, but was rankled a bit that it would be wasted on them unappreciative Jessups. Not a one of ‘em would likely mumble so much as a “Thank you kindly” for such bounty, but Pa reminded her that the joy is in the giving not the hearing of Thank-you-ma’ams. Ma reddened a bit and said, “You’re right, of course.” Church never set well with Pa, what with all the hypocrisies, but he knew the good parts of the lessons religion purported to bestow.

“I thought of being a Christian,” he once confided in me, “but then I met some Christians and decided to take a walk in the woods instead.” As far as I ever knew, the same went for Judaism, Hinduism, Islam, and all the other truckload of faiths.

January of my freshman year of high school Pa announced that we were moving away come the end of summer. His mother was ailing and she needed us to be there for her, so we would be leaving our comfortable little Southern town for the East Coast in August. He promised Ma he’d reopen a new and better practice once we arrived and got settled, and Ma knew he would. He always followed through on his promises.

Jester Junior had grown tall and lean while Jesse had stayed short but got a bit round in the belly and face. He began moaning on our regular walks to the fishing spot, but greedily accepted the butter and cheeses and soda pops without any more thanks than his Pa gave for the catfish summer after summer. Jester Junior began emulating Pa in cleanliness and speaking; he once asked Pa to teach him to tie a necktie. He also asked more and more questions about girls and women, sex and getting along with all that. Pa gladly walked him through it all, advising on hygiene and how to properly speak to a young woman a young man was interested in. “Remember: a girl that will have sex on your first date probably did on every first date. Choose wisely.”

July bled into August and the days seemed to run forever and ever. Woodpecker clappity-claps early and owl hoots late bookended our days. In between were catfish, quizzes, and stone skipping. The summers of youth are ever so: never-ending yet ending all too soon, as the date of our removal approached.

As the moving trucks clattered closed and we three, Ma, Pa, and me, clambered into our Ford Country Squire station wagon, Jester Senior shambled up our drive, one wife and three children in his wake.

He put out an oily hand to shake Pa’s. Pa extended his’n too, gripping Jester Senior like a colleague or equal.

“’anks for what ya done fer my childern,” he said, eyes low.

“Was all my pleasure, Mr. Jessup.” Jester Senior’s eyes lifted and widened at being called “mister.” A hint of a smile crooked his mouth and a glint of tear shimmered in his eye.

Off we drove eastward, a passel of townsfolk waving, a small family shuffling on back home.