by Ava Finch
Missy snorts. “Or Adult Children of Dickheads.”
As a soft rain begins to pitter down, both women raise their faces to it, closing their eyes. After a beat, RayAnne turns to the lens and the camera crew beyond, who are trying to shield their equipment and gesturing for her to wrap. “After this word from our underwriter, we’ll finish our conversation with Missy back on dry land.”
Missy reels in her line while blinking wet lashes. “This is so fun.”
On the way back to the dock, RayAnne wonders if Missy would like to join her in the RV later for a glass of wine. Her temporary home is now parked and hooked up, the Tiffany end thankfully backed into a clump of alder. There might be a bottle of wine around somewhere. She’s never been very good at making friends, but, as Ky often reminds her, she never really tries.
RayAnne wakes as the last raindrops from the storm drip from the pines, hitting the roof of the motor home in nickel-sized splats. In between is the silence that is one of the best features of being on Location. They can all thank Cassi for scouting it; she has relatives in the area and spent summers on the lake as a kid, so she knows a dozen walleye holes that her late great-grandmother had fished and kept secret from everyone but Cassi. Apparently one of the sponsors has a cabin nearby as well, which helped green-light the choice. Location is leased from the owner of the decommissioned resort next door, its mailbox lettered with once-red paint: “Vacationland.” At first, most of the crew and staff complained mightily about the distance from Minneapolis, but after a week of unrivaled fishing and stunning views, they clammed up. For the next twelve weeks, this bit of the Northwoods will be home to Fishing: a little village of RVs and pop-up campers and tents, droning generators and mounds of equipment, satellite dishes, Porta-Potties, a tent kitchen, and the catering truck that arrives each dawn and leaves after dinner.
The nearest town is Hatchet Inlet, just miles from the border in an area of the state Big Rick calls North Armpit and the crew simply refer to as BumFuck. RayAnne has explored the lake with DNR maps, using her depth finder and Garmin to chart Cassi’s best fishing spots, trolling the shores for picturesque spots to film and fish.
This morning the surface of the bay on Little Hatchet Lake is calm as a sheet of foil, unlike the day before, when it was sloshing with whitecaps by the time she and Missy Fox docked. Their glass of cheer never materialized—Missy had to leave right after taping, hot on the trail of another “tool,” this one owing tens of thousands in support for four daughters, all under ten years old.
It’s safe to say RayAnne’s not keen on interviewing that afternoon’s guest, Mary Hawley, the psychologist featured in a documentary about juvenile psychopaths, Why Does Jennifer Kill?, which RayAnne dutifully watched on her laptop the night before, taking notes, then dragging the scenes along into her sleep. Thankfully, the storm woke her just as the senior prom in her dream was about to commence, and a flash of lightning illuminated the interior of the motor home, alerting her to the presence of not one but two silently frantic bats that had somehow squeezed inside to avoid the deluge. Had anyone been around in the predawn, they’d have been in for some cheap entertainment watching RayAnne dodge and flounder with every light blazing, casting her beach towel like a salmon net, determined to capture and liberate the bats and redeem at least part of her choppy night. If she hadn’t been on edge already, the searing lightning and ripping bursts of thunder set the perfect stage for thoughts of pimply murderers lurking among the pines with cleavers. RayAnne didn’t normally mind storms, but the RV was a large metal object smack in the middle of majestically tall pines, each a potential conduit for bolts of death.
Once the bats were finally trapped and ushered out, she’d crawled back under the covers—only to hear her phone alarm begin beeping and vibrating itself across her nightstand, landing on the carpet with a thud.
Though it’s not yet five a.m., the sky is light—July in the north, with their latitude not so far from the border and the tundra beyond—the subarctic midnight sun only a few hundred miles away. RayAnne bangs and stubs her way from bed to the little bathroom, then to the little kitchen to make coffee, yawning nonstop. After the high ceilings of her townhouse, she feels large and unwieldy in the RV, as if she’s suddenly grown extra elbows and knees. But she’s getting used to it, and after a week with the windows wide, the toxic new-carpet smell is fading under a mix of campfire smoke, the aerosol sting of OFF!, pine chaff, and fresh air shearing down from Canada. So much daylight.
Carrying her coffee and a towel down to Penelope, she’s anxious to see what the rain might have wrought on the docks and her boat. Hurrying, she stumbles on a tree root, coffee trickling down the knee of her chinos.
“Tarnation!” Curses and oaths still sometimes erupt in the crotchety voice of Jack Crabb. RayAnne once read that Dustin Hoffman prepared to play the part of one-hundred-fifteen-year-old Jack by screaming in his dressing room beforehand for a solid hour—something she could easily manage herself some days. In more contemplative moments, she might hear the voice of Old Lodge Skins in her head. When feeling particularly coquettish (which admittedly was not often) thoughts come in the lisp of Little Horse, the gay Human Being who offers to become Little Big Man’s wife.
At the dock, RayAnne stops in her tracks. To her dismay, someone has not only unsnapped Penelope’s vinyl cover but has eased her from the slip—the same someone who’s now standing at the helm with his back to RayAnne, wiping spots from Penelope’s windscreen.
By the end of the first season, the crew had come to treat RayAnne less like a Mandy and more like one of them—mainly because she’d gotten to know them and earned some respect by taking time to learn each crew member’s duties, the basics of their equipment, and how this relates to that. They’re in this together, after all, isolated as they are up in BumFuck. While she’s still a little freaked by the amount of electrical cables lying coiled like cobras over the docks so near water, she’s learned what powers what, how the monitors and generators and lights work, and where most of the breakers are. She’s careful to step out of the way of the crew’s choreographed routines—she does her part; they do theirs.
All she has asked of them is that they leave Penelope exclusively in her care. The boat is her responsibility, her domain. And now some interloper has not only powered up Penelope, he’s all over her, rubbing at her dashboard like he owns her.
Most of the crew have heard the condensed version of how RayAnne found Penelope, then towed the wreck fifteen hundred miles to Ogunquit, Maine, where a reclusive restorer took nearly two years to bring her back from the brink, necessitating a hefty loan she reckons will be paid off sometime between clearing up her student loans and becoming eligible for Medicare.
RayAnne juts her chin at the trespasser’s back.
“Excuse me?” She’s barely able to keep the growl from her voice. “You’re in my boat, mister.” She sounds comically like Caroline Crabb, Jack’s gun-slinging sister.
The man turns, startled. Once recovered, he says, “Oh, hey. Hi.”
The guy from the parking lot—the Rod & Gun Expo guy. Again. His name wells up from nowhere, RayAnne thinking, Sure, now I remember. She’s able to make his name sound like an accusation: “Hal? It is Hal, right?”
The chamois in his hand drops to his side. He seems as surprised as she is and obviously unaware he’s breached some protocol. “Ah. Yes. Yeah. RayAnne, am I . . . ?”
“In my boat? Yes.”
“Oh.” He folds the chamois and lays it on the seat exactly as RayAnne had left it. “Sorry. It was quite a downpour last night and I wanted to check everything was okay.” When he hops up to the dock, RayAnne sees he’s barefoot, having left his wet sneakers on the dock. At least he’s a courteous trespasser.
The carrying case for whatever instrument he plays is next to his feet. Now that they are face to face, the same befuddlement that visited her during their previous encounters roils up a
gain. “Hang on. I’m a bit confused here. You’re not freelance, or crew, yet you were at the Expo . . .” She scans his casual posture and bare feet. “And I know you’re not management.”
He laughs. “None of the above.” In explanation, he picks up his case and clicks the hasp. Inside, nested in compartments, are arrays of fishing lures and jars of the new artificial bait everyone is talking about. The Lefty’s logo is stamped inside the lid.
“Oh.” Bits and pieces rattling in RayAnne’s head fall roughly into place. “You work for Lefty’s?”
Lefty’s is their biggest underwriter, a growing chain of fishing gear and bait outlets known for its line of quality products and for sourcing them all from Minnesota, their slogan being “Bait Locally.”
“You could say that.” He grins.
“Right.” Sales rep, of course, she thinks. “So, you’re here about the PETA complaint.”
“Uh-huh.” He snails his eyebrows into a scowl and does a dead-on imitation of Robert, the stuffy guy from legal. “In an effort to, ahem, make the show more, ahem, humane and utterly sanitized, you will from this day forward use only fake-live bait instead of live, living bait.”
RayAnne laughs, her annoyance draining to make room for something smoother. It is a lovely morning, after all; the storm has pummeled the pine chaff and other allergens to the ground. The air is good.
He cocks his head. “Sorry. No one told you I was coming?”
“They did, but I didn’t expect you-you.”
“Well, here I-I am, along with my wares. So, no more chopping live night crawlers in half with your thumbnail?”
“That got edited out!”
“Not before a test audience saw the dailies.” He’s able to make the shake of his head seem beguiling. “Fortunately I’m the only one who saw yesterday’s footage with Missy Fox. Writhing leeches?” Hal affects Robert’s voice again: “Simply won’t do.” He holds up the lure case as if proffering jewels. “So. Might I interest madam in some biodegradable vegan chum? Perhaps some gluten-free latex minnow-ettes? A completely bloodless rice-mochi leech?”
“Well,” she mimics him, “perhaps madam should try a few out first?”
“Now?”
“Sure.”
When they pull away from the dock, RayAnne at the helm, her hair flying, the bats and broken sleep and pimpled teenage killers are utterly forgotten.
Once they’ve baited their lines and have settled in to fish, Hal pulls out a foil packet tucked in his windbreaker. “How do you feel about cold pancakes?”
Suddenly ravenous, she feels great about them. He opens the packet between them to reveal a half dozen rolled frilly-edged pancakes filled with something creamy. He refreshes her coffee with his own thermos.
“Cheers.” She tentatively holds her mug to meet the edge of his.
“Till din Halsa. Dig in, before they get warm.”
“Is that Norwegian?”
He shakes his head. “Swedish. My grandmother taught me a few words, and how to make these.”
“My grandmother taught me that carrying bacon bits in your pockets attracts men.” As soon as she says it she feels like an idiot and plugs her mouth with a pancake. The edges are crisp, and the moist centers are slightly sweet, with a hint of something.
“What’s that filling?”
“The secret ingredient. Mashed potatoes with maple syrup.”
“So good.” RayAnne chews, closing her eyes. Things you would never think to put together. She murmurs around the mouthful, “Boy howdy.”
Hal laughs and raises his thermos a second time. “Here’s to grandmothers.”
She suddenly regrets snapping at Hal. “Sorry about back on the dock. I can get . . . I don’t usually let just anyone in my boat.”
“Well, Penelope isn’t just any boat, right?”
He’s the first person to call her by name. RayAnne smiles. “No, she is not.”
“If boats could talk, right? How’d you find her?”
“Oh, long story.”
“Yeah?” He leans back and tucks his pole under one arm as if he has all day.
She chews down her last bite. “I wasn’t even shopping for a boat. In fact, I was looking for the Porta-Potty in a marina in Michigan. Just behind it was this graveyard of Chris-Crafts and old Crestliners—the sort of place you go to scavenge for parts. Anyway, I only saw the shape of her under a tarp but thought, you know, here’s something different. When I saw the fish-scale finish I decided right there. But what a wreck. Carburetor gone, what finish wasn’t worn off was gouged, half the decking rotted, no windscreen. Her hull was cracked.”
“None of that stopped you?”
“The opposite.” RayAnne shakes her head at the memory. “I decided on the spot I wasn’t just going to save her, but improve her.”
“Like a missionary?”
“More like the Six Million Dollar Man.” RayAnne reaches under the console to unlock a compartment. It’s not as though Penelope has an astonishing story—it’s just that until now no one’s been curious enough to ask. She pulls out a waterproof zip folder thick with papers: log books, slip rental contracts, fuel receipts, license stickers. Penelope’s provenance. She rummages through.
“Here. Here she is, the original Penelope.”
It’s a faded color photo with ruffle-cut edges. A woman waterskiing, wearing the sort of shirred swimsuit that looks like there could be a girdle involved. The bottom of the snapshot shows the bench seat in the foreground, the little flags flying straight with speed. The white wake looks like a road of ploughed water. Even in the grainy photo the woman is quite beautiful—arched brows, bright teeth, and a figure like Marilyn’s. The camera angle is straight on.
“Look at her.” Hal holds up the snapshot to align the back end of the boat with that in the photograph. “Like seeing a ghost.” He nods to the log book. “This was in there?”
“Yes, it belonged to the original buyer, the real Penelope’s husband, Mr. Lancaster, so I looked him up. The boat had been his wedding present to her. Sweet old guy.”
“What did he say?”
“Not much on our first phone call. Just that they had the boat maybe thirty years then sold her. His wife had just died that week, but I didn’t know that then. Only that he was sad.”
“He didn’t want this photo back?”
“Said to keep it, that he had others. I sent him before-and-after pictures of the restoration. He sent a long letter back, wrote out the whole story of how they met.” She eases the photo gently from Hal’s bad hand. As her palm brushes his, she can’t help but wonder if it has much feeling. It seems to function well enough, the fingers bend and move in a “talk-to-the-hand” sort of motion. Would his fingertips experience sensation? If he skimmed them across the downy hairs on her forearm would he feel the goose bumps? Impulsively she wants to pick up this hand and run her teeth over the knuckles.
“Sounds like a nice old guy.”
“What?” RayAnne straightens. “Yeah. Really sweet. We write now and then. I even thought about hooking him up with my Gran, since she’s forever trying to hook me up on blind dates.”
“Will you?”
She shakes her head. “Gran’s still grieving. Dead Ted—that was my grandfather—seems to be a chapter Gran’s still living thirty years later.”
“I’d hate to think of someone mourning me for that long.”
“Well, I’d hate to think of someone not mourning me.” RayAnne laughs, but a small part of her means it. “Anyway, Mr. Lancaster watches the show all the time now, says it does him good to see Penelope out on the water—it reminds him of old times. And he seems to think she’s famous just cuz she’s on TV.”
Hal just grins. “Imagine that.”
They are silent a moment, both looking out over the lake. He elbows her softly. “This show . . . not such a bad p
lace to punch the clock, is it?”
“Nope.”
“These women you find, you really get them to . . . they talk, and it’s not phony. How do you do it?”
Do? She doesn’t really do anything beyond asking the questions she senses they most want to answer—or maybe need to answer.
She shakes her head. “I dunno. If I think about that too long, I’ll start to wonder myself.”
Guests do seem to open up, like strangers do when time is finite and has a scheduled end, like during a flight to somewhere, or a visit to the hair salon, a drink at the bar in a town you’re just passing through. The plane will land, the hair gets swept up, the tab paid—you have only so long to tell your story. On Fishing, the boat will dock. RayAnne reckons it must seem a safe place to spill.
“They only say the things they’re thinking.”
She’d like to ask Hal questions but is unsure where to start. Her gaze wanders again to land on his hand.
He leans in, his tone matter of fact. “You can ask me about it.” He wriggles his fingers.
“What?” Heat blooms across her face, and she begins to stammer. “I didn’t . . .”
Just then Hal gets such a firm tug on his line the pole nearly leaves his hand. While he starts reeling, she scrambles to get the net, thinking, Thank you, fish.
Saved by a fat bass. Hal expertly lands it, unhooks it. It’s sturdy and handsome with a clear stripe. They admire it a moment before he releases it. He leans far over the gunnel, allowing the fish to slip from his hands like an offering.
More fish start biting then, so there’s not much chance for real talk. The weights and numbers of their catches even impress the local game warden, who motors over to see what they’re up to, with questions about the filming location and the show, and to check permits.
Motoring back later, RayAnne asks, “You don’t suppose Fishing could actually get real traction, like a commercial show?”
“Like Fin or Dock Watson?” Hal smiles. “I’d wager it could.”
