Family Tradition

Chapter Five

“Are we still going to do it?”

“Yes.”

“Aren’t you…scared?”

“No.”

“Really?”

“We’re going to do it!” Bess shouted, pumping the oars of the small blow-up raft. Bess sat astern, which might explain why the raft’s bow lifted several inches out of the water.

With my luck, the damn thing’ll sink!

Bess—chestnut hair and beautiful autumn-leaf eyes—weighed 240 pounds. At five-foot one, that was a lot of gal. Her friend—her only friend—Mavis, sat aloft at the puny raft’s bow. Mavis had chestnut hair too, and eyes more caramel-brown than autumn leaf. At 85 pounds, she looked like a skin-covered skeleton in baggy shorts and X-Files t-shirt. Just before Bess had picked her up, she’d posted her suicide note on David Duchovny’s message board. He was just…so dreamy.

“We’re both outcasts!” Bess shrieked in reminder. “We’re both misfits! Nobody at school likes us! I’m fat, you’re skinny! We’re never going to have dates! And we agreed! We’re going to kill ourselves.” Her eyes inadvertently glanced at the Remington pump shotgun on the raft’s vinyl floorboards amid several empty packages of Suzy-Q’s and pork rinds. She’d stolen the shotgun from her father, who was always saying to her at breakfast: “I guess the diet starts tomorrow, huh, honey?” Fuck you, she thought. The shotgun, she knew, housed five rounds. The first she’d discharged into Dear Old Dad’s face right over his plate of syrup-and-butter-drenched Eggo waffles and two glistening breakfast links.

“Enjoy your breakfast, prick!” then WHAM! The Remington 16-gauge round had turned her father’s face into a splat of meat balls and sauce. His brains flew out the back of his head and hung on the wall in curiously colored lumps, and even more spectacular was the way his toupee popped off his head. She’d dug Dad’s keys out of his pants and driven the Caddy straight to Mavis’, but not before snitching those two hot, greasy Jimmy Dean links off Dad’s plate.

Bess and Mavis were best friends. They both hated themselves and hated everyone else who happened to inhabit the earth. Seventeen, juniors at Anthony Eden High in Port Angeles, and virgins—neither of them had been on a date, neither of them attended the junior prom, and neither of them had ever kissed a boy.

Never even close.

Together, they were the Freak Show of Anthony Eden. They were the Girl Nerds. They were the female dorks with whom not even the horniest boy in school would copulate with even if he were drunker than William Holden on a typical day of filming. Bess and Mavis were anathema.

Though they both would’ve loved to kill everyone in school, like those two dweebs in Colorado, Bess deemed it would be too much trouble. Too messy, and too logistically complicated. And what they hated more than everyone who’d ever teased them and tormented them and laughed at them, they simply hated life.

So today, they decided, they would end it.

Bess rowed onward, toward the middle of the lake. Yes, it was best to just kill themselves and get the shit over with.

“fter emptying her fathers’ cranial vault, Bess had had the presence of mind to similarly empty his wallet. Several hundred bucks in cash, not that they’d need much of it. She’d filled the car, bought the raft, and proceeded to the lake.

She could see no other destiny for either of them.

“It’s time,” she said.

Mavis’ skinny face seemed to narrow. “Can’t we…wait a little while?”

“Why?” Bess snapped back. “The world sucks, people suck, our lives suck. I’m ready now.”

“But-but…” Mavis chewed a finger. “Let’s go back home. We can kill ourselves next week.”

Bess looked angrily astonished. “Mavis, are you stupid? We can’t go back home! Hello! I blew my father’s brains out this morning!”

“Well, I-I… I’ve changed my mind!” Mavis admitted, now close to tears. “I don’t want to do it! I still have things to live for.”

Bess’ gargantuan breasts jiggled when she blurted out a laugh. “Like what?”

“Well… The season-finale of The X-Files.”

Bess scoffed. “That show’s sucked shit since the third season!”

“It has not!” Mavis defended. “And David Duchovny just keeps getting better and better!”

Bess blurted another laugh so hard the raft bobbed. “That piece of wood couldn’t act his way out of a paperbag, and his name is mud in Hollywood!”

“It is not!”

“Don’t be a ding-dong. When that show goes off the air, he’ll never get work again. Ever since he forced the producers to move the show to L.A., he’s number-one on the black list. When that show’s gone, he won’t be able to get a job at a car wash.”

“Shut up!” Mavis shrieked.

“We agreed! We’re gonna DO it! We’re gonna shoot ourselves in the heads. Our bodies’ll fall out of the raft, and we’ll never be found.”

“But I want to go home!” Mavis bawled.

Exasperated, Bess threw the oars into the water.

“Nooo!” Mavis wailed.

“There! Now you can’t go home. ’Cos you can’t swim, you anorexic little nerd!”

“Better than a big fat BLIMP nerd like you! The back of your neck looks like a pack of hot dogs!”

Bess’ eyes bulged in outrage. “At least I’ve got tits! You look like a boy!”

“And you look like Jabba the Hut!”

Soon the two best friends were scuffling, slapping at one another and pulling each other’s hair. Several times the raft nearly capsized but before that could happen—

ker-SPLASH!

Both girls fell out of the raft.

“I can’t swim! I can’t swim!” Mavis shouted.

Thing was, neither could Bess. But even in her thrashing terror, she found solace in the back of her mind. It was her destiny to come out here to die, and die she would, just under slightly different circumstances.

At least that’s what she thought.

Just as she would begin inhaling water, a giant hand grabbed her hair, pulled her up, and began dragging her to the island.

««—»»

“Well I shore don’t know where my brother Enoch is,” Esau announced, “but you’ll get to meet him soon enough. How long will you’n yer friends be stayin’ at the lake, Mr. Morrone?”

They were back out in the stinky bait shop. “Oh, I don’t know,” Ashton said.

“Couple days, at least,” Bob offered.

“Well that’s just great, Mr. Morrone,” Esau said. “The longer the better. Anything in particular you’re fishin’ for?”

“Uh…”

“The trout’s bitin’ now. That’d be the north end of the lake, on the other side’a the island. East side, you got yer carp and yer pike. And yer catfish you’ll find on the west.”

Aston whipped out his billfold. “Sounds, great, Esau. Now, we owe you for the pull-ferry, parking, electric and water, plus we’ll need some bait. So what’s all that come to?”

“Uh-uh—” Esau scratched his nose. “Usually it’s my brother Enoch who does the calculatin’. Uh—”

Ashton snapped out a crisp hundred-dollar bill. “This should cover it for today, shouldn’t it? You can keep the change.”

Esau audibly gulped. “Why, that’s a might generous of ya, sir!”

“It’s our pleasure.”

“You’ve been very accommodating,” Bob added.

Esau rushed to the refrigerator. “Let me get’cha some bait here real quick. Get’cha some worms, get’cha some slugs—fer catfish, mind ya—get’cha some baby crickets fer trout—” As he rushed along, he dropped the variety of bait into a box.

“Say, Esau,” Ashton asked. “I’ve always heard that eel makes for good bait too.”

“Eel? Oh, sure, and I’m just about ta fix ya up with some,” Esau replied. “The bigger fish like the carp, pike’n muskie, they jump all over eel chunks. And we won’t even charge ya fer the eel. We got all kinds of that junk. South side’a the lake is fulla the damned things.”

Ashton’s brow rose. “Is…that so?”

“Yes sir, see there’s a run-off stream from the mountains, keeps the south side colder. And this funky eel we got out here? It prefers lower temperatures. None of the other fish go near the south side ’cos they’re scared’a the damn things. But, see, the eel don’t eat other fish, all they eat’re zebra mussels, and we got trillions of ’em on the south side.”

“Is…that so?”

“Shore is, Mr. Morrone,” and then Esau grabbed a handful from the fridge and showed them. Three-inch-wide chunks of chopped eel lay bloody in his hand. He dropped it in with the rest of the bait.

“Say, Esau?” Bob asked. “You wouldn’t happen to have any of those eels lying around whole, would you?”

“You kiddin’?” and then Esau opened the second refrigerator, hauled out a big plastic box, and plopped it on the counter. “See? Ugly soms-a-bitches, ain’t they?”

Ashton and Bob’s jaws both dropped instantaneously. What Esau displayed for them was a box containing at least thirty pounds of Crackjaw eel.

««—»»

“Where are those fucking idiots?” Carol said, lighting a Salem. She and Sheree sat on the pier with their feet in the water. “They’ve been in there with that fat rube for half a fucking hour.”

Sheree needed a moment to break from her distraction. All she could think about was Carol’s previous sexual advance, and the promise of more to come. Though she’d never really enjoyed her trysts with women while in the porn business, there was something about Carol that had her sexual engine running red-hot.

“I’m sorry, what did you say?”

“The Blobsy Twins—you know, our boyfriends?” Carol responded. “What the hell’s keeping them?”

“Ashton’s all hard because the redneck kid’s a fan of his show,” Sheree speculated.

“Yeah, but could you smell him? I’ll bet the guy hasn’t taken a shower in month.”

“At least. He smelled worst than the dumpsters at Pike’s Market during the summer.” Sheree looked out onto the lake. “At least we’ve got some scenery.”

“Yeah, it is pretty out here.” Carol spewed a thin stream of smoke from her lips. “But I could sure as hell use a drink.” She jerked an impatient gaze over her shoulder. “Where are those two hams?”

Just as she’d said it, though, Ashton and Bob’s trumpet-loud laughter belted out from the bait shop. “See ya soon, Esau!” “Thanks for everything!”

Sheree and Carol went to meet them by the path. Ashton rushed up and put his arm around both of them. “Girls! You’ll never believe it!”

What? Sheree thought. You eat a lot?

“Yeah,” Bob jumped in. “Ashton was right. The southern end of this lake is teeming with Crackjaw eel!”

Wonderful…

Ashton’s breath gusted on their bare necks as he giddily explained, “That hayseed in there had a whole box of Crackjaw eel! He thinks it’s junk! He cuts it up for bait!”

If he cut you up for bait, he’d have enough to last ten years…

“Yeah!” Bob said just as giddily. “This guy’s got no idea what kind of gold mine he’s sitting on.”

“Shit, I’ll bet just the eel he had in that box is worth ten grand alone!” Ashton hugged up against Sheree. “So here’s the plan. We act like we’re just fishing for trout, but what we’ll really be doing is dropping traps in the south end.”

Bob’s face beamed. “Yeah! As long as that rube and his brother don’t catch on, this lake can be our very own cash machine!”

Bob and Ashton did a high-five. “We’re gonna be rich!” Ashton claimed in glee.

Carol frowned and pointed out, “But you guys already are rich.”

Bob and Ashton brayed laughter.

“Honeybunch,” Bob informed. “Money’s like sex. There’s never enough!”

— | — | —