Harry Clearwater's Famous Fish Fry
On Saturday, Billy Black and his son come to call. I think they're coming to pat the red monster on the fender. But they've brought some really fresh fillets and a bag of fish fry to coat them with, and Dad went to the superette for beer and chips and stuff in the morning. The new flat screen in the den is going to be the main event, once the horsing around is done.
I haven't seen Uncle Billy since I was twelve, the year my grandma died. He is in a wheelchair now. And it was that right foot. It had been going gimpy on him for ages. Dad said he'd hurt it in some kind of hunting accident when they both were young, and it never fully healed up. Diabetes will do that, I guess – make a wound fester.
Anyway, the doctors cut everything clean off, a little below the knee. Uncle Billy doesn't bother with any lap blankets – even as cold as it is, with the clouds just getting lower and lower – so there's his stump staring me right in the face as his son wheels him up to our front porch. I run down the two steps and give him a hug, just like I used to when I was little. With my face behind his neck, I hope he can't see that I'm fighting not to cry. He smells like tobacco and peppermint. Like his truck. And he gives me a bear hug squeeze right back, just like he always did.
"Good thing you came when you did, Bella," he says, his mellow voice all sober and serious. "Your dad's been talkin' our ears off about it since July."
I must be still tired from my first week in Forks because that makes me almost tear up, too; but I know he means me to laugh, so I do.
"You remember Jacob."
What I remember best is a fat-cheeked little brown baby, all wrapped up in a wolf pelt. Kind of a dark house – I don't know if it was our own or Uncle Billy's. Lots of interesting smells. Lots of grown-up voices. I couldn't have been more than three.
"We used to make mud pies together," Jacob adds, in case I've forgotten.
I'm not above teasing him. "Yeah, and I taught you how."
Thinking back, pretty much everything he and I had ever used to get into had involved some kind of a mess. I didn't always see him the summers I came to Forks, but the times I did, it seems to me his mom was always standing there looking at us with her hands on her hips. I guess Jacob is the closest thing to the baby brother I never had.
I'm glad to see that I'm still taller than him. By about a hair. That probably isn't going to last even to the end of school. His cheeks aren't fat anymore, and his hands and feet are already bigger than his dad's. "All paws and no coordination," Uncle Billy calls him.
And evidently lying about his age so he could get a learner's permit to drive his dad around in his Auntie's old Buick.
"Uncle Billy, I really like the truck." I have to say it pretty loud, because my dad's just made some kind of a crack, and Uncle Billy's kind of wheeling around, chasing him on the sidewalk there in front of the porch.
I guess the men heard me after all, because they stop, and then look at each other like they've pulled off some kind of a heist. If they're happy about it, I guess I should be, too, even though the reason I've gotten the truck isn't a good one.
"Thanks, Uncle Billy."
"Happy trails, Bella, happy trails."
"I rebuilt the engine, y'know," Jacob says, as my dad hauls his dad backward in the chair, up the steps of our porch. I can see Jacob is pretty proud of himself about the engine. He gives the hood an affectionate slap, and I suddenly feel like this should have been his truck, not mine. Why did his dad give it to me, then?
"Runs good," I say. I want Jacob to know I think he's done a good job. I don't really care about fourth gear, anyway. It's not like I'm Speed Racer, or anything.
"What year is it?" I ask, betting that Jacob will tell me what my dad hasn't.
"'63 Chevy. The best. She was one hot number in her day."
I hide a giggle behind my hand. Whatever day that had been, it was wa-ay before Jacob's. Even Uncle Billy couldn't have owned this truck when it was new. And the red monster is a he, thank you very much.
Talking to Jacob is easy. I feel happy for the first time since coming to Forks. But now he has me curious, too. Because although the paint on the truck is faded almost bare, I haven't found any rust. Certainly there's enough rain in Forks to rust anything metal in one year, let alone forty-some, so I ask.
"How'd your dad keep it rust-free like this?"
"He put a blessing on it."
"A blessing?"
"Yeah." Jacob looks down and scuffs at the gravel on the driveway with his toe. "My dad's kinda old school. Elder an' all."
I remember the braid of some kind of grass, hanging from the rear-view mirror. I'd left it there, figuring it was supposed to be there. I open the cab door, now, and reach in to finger the braid. "You mean this thing?"
"Nah, that's just for luck. A blessing is like, with singing, and smoke and stuff."
That calls up images to me. Beautiful images. Maybe on a windswept bluff, overlooking the ocean. When Uncle Billy still had both his feet. An abalone shell with a slow-burning twist of something in its shallow bowl, and a raven's wing. Orcas out to sea. The truck all red against the cool, dark colors of this world. A blanket over Uncle Billy's shoulders.
But that's just me imagining. Jacob is looking a little uncomfortable. "You don't believe in that stuff?" I ask.
Jacob laughs. "I believe in carnauba wax! Every damn weekend. Wax on, wax off!"
I laugh with him. "I guess I'm going to have to do that now."
"Don't worry. I'll teach you." His smile is warm. It makes me feel good. Happy again.
"Thanks, Jacob."
"Bella!" My dad has come out onto the porch. "Where'd you put the dip, honey?"
I glance at Jacob. "We better go in and help."
"Yeah."
And both of us sort of run our hands over the front fenders on our way back to the house.
My dad's den – it's not really a family room, I mean, where's the family? – is very dark. The big new flat screen takes up most of one wall. Opposite is the couch, which I always remember as old. The coffee table is now completely covered with Harry Clearwater's famous fish fry, assorted chips and dips, and two six packs of beer on the floor. Diabetes be damned.
Dad and Uncle Billy are on the couch, trying to figure out which station they want to watch. All the local commentators are having their say about the Sonics shipping out to Oklahoma City, and Uncle Billy is making jokes about that being Indian territory, so he's got no problem with it, and basically they're both acting like a couple of teenage boys with the TV to themselves on a Saturday night. Come to think of it, it is Saturday night.
Jacob and I are on the floor, other side of the coffee table from the beers. All of us are chowing down on the fish. It is good. The den is going to smell like a deep fryer for a couple of days, I can tell.
"Billy," my dad says, "where the hell'd you get salmon from?"
"I told you, Charlie, I got connections."
"Haven't had a run in these waters since you an' me were kids," my dad says wistfully. He and Uncle Billy go way back. Mom says Dad enlisted for the Gulf War – that would be the first one, not the one we're in right now – because of Uncle Billy. They served together, while Mom was having me, back here in Forks.
"Y'never know," Uncle Billy answers. "They could come back. If we give 'em half a chance." And Uncle Billy is talking to my dad, but he's looking at me in a sort of there, not really there kind of way, and I don't like it much. I know all about the salmon. They come upstream to spawn, and die.
Sitting in the dark like this, with the TV screen making dim, flickering light over everyone's faces, the image is too clear in my mind. Too much Discovery Channel.
The fish are big from living 4 years, 6 years in the sea. By the time they've gotten to the headwaters – the ones who didn't get grabbed by bears, or fished by people, or chewed to pieces in the hydroelectric turbines, or battered to death in the rapids – the ones who make it are all raggedy and old. They're dying as they dance their first and last love in the beds of tiny gravel, and the crystal clear water that is too shallow to even cover their bodies. Their gills are half in water, half in air, and they're suffocating as sure as the trout my dad and Uncle Billy would haul out on their lines. And then it's just the dead bodies, slowly getting picked clean by whatever happens by, and all around them the stars of their children, clinging in endless streamers to the tiny stones. How many of them will escape birds and other fish and even dragonflies, to hatch into fry? And how many of those will ever make it all the way down, only to turn round again when it's time?
Uncle Billy's not looking at me at all, now, but I'm all hot in my chest and my throat and behind my eyes. Why did he have to say that like he did? I want to go outside and run around the house until I feel better, but the afternoon's clouds have let down their rain, and there's nowhere I can go. So I turn to Jacob and say, "Hey, you wanna play some checkers?"
A/N: Heartfelt thanks to Minisinoo for her wonderful story Cowboys and Indians, in which I read about the sweet grass braid. I borrow it here as a prayer bracelet/good luck token for the red truck, with her permission. She writes: "The use of sweet grass is very common among many native people. It's one of the four sacred plants: tobacco, sweet grass, sage, and cedar."
If you have the chance to read her Cowboys and Indians, a Twilight fanfiction from a First Nations perspective, be prepared to be moved to tears. www dot fanfiction dot net / s / 4434193 / 1 / Cowboys-Indians
The practice of creating a sacred space in time, space, and mind by burning a fragrant plant (as Bella imagines Uncle Billy doing) is widespread among original peoples of the Americas and the world.