Catch and Release

The red and white fish, carved out of balsa wood, two treble hooks protruding from its belly, whizzed through the air, leaving behind a trail of invisible nylon thread. It plopped down in a cluster of lily pads, jerked onto the water’s surface, and wiggled back to the boat.

“You sure know how to show a girl a good time,” Regan said sarcastically, watching Mary Hayes crank the reel, inspect her lure for weeds, and cast it back into the aquatic flora.

“Glad you’re having fun,” Mary laughed, tugging her line out of the weed bed. “Why don’t you give it a try? I’ve got a line made up for you right there.” She pointed.

“I think I’ll pass.” Regan scanned the glassy surface of the lake, the brushy swaying treetops, the cloud-dabbled sky. But nature’s beauty was lost on her. She finally found something to her liking: “Hey! What’s in that cooler? Please tell me that you are capable of mercy and you loaded that thing up with enough liquor to make me forget where I am.”

“Sure did.”

Regan unlatched the cooler with her big toe and kicked open the lid. She didn’t appear pleased. “We got anything a little stronger?”

“Nope.” Mary beckoned a loose cigar from her jean pocket. Regan was wearing a skirt and high heels.

“And why is that?”

“Someone once said that there is not a man or woman on this earth who can hope for a better day than one spent on the lake with a case of beer.”

“And who the hell said that?”

“I just did,” grinned Mary, puffing her cigar as a match’s flame reddened the tip.

“Well, aren’t you a little poet?”

“Crack one open. I think you’ll like it. Cold, bitter, and full of yeast. Just like someone I know. ”

Regan ignored the jab, picking up a bottle and observing it like an unwanted birthday gift. “What is this? Founders Red’s Rye P.A.”

“That would be beer.”

“Thank you. It any good?”

“Only one way to find out,” Mary replied, tossing a bottle opener without interrupting her routine.

Regan trapped the metal contraption against her chest. It took her a few tries to wedge the metal lever under the ridged cap, but once she did, she popped the top with confidence, a cool white mist rising from the bottle’s lips. She tipped the longneck in Mary’s direction and consumed.

“Woo, that’s got some character,” winced Regan.

“I thought you’d like it.”

“I never said I liked it.”

“I could tell.”

“Well, it’s a helluva lot better than those piss-water light beers,” Regan said, stealing another sip.

“Preaching to the choir, sister.”

“How many calories does it have?”

Mary let a smoke stream run off her tongue, paused in her pursuit of a fat bass. “When you drink beer,” she sighed, “your primary focus should be relaxing. Now, counting calories is not relaxing. Alcohol is a vice. That’s why it’s so damned relaxing. Look at me and cigars. In all likelihood, the little buggers are going to give me throat cancer. But do you see me sweating it? No. So, enjoy yourself and drink the hell up.”

“Well, when you put it that way…” Regan trailed off. “How many calories?”

“What do I look like? A dietician? Read the damn label.”

Regan scanned the fine print, moving her lips while she read each word. “Doesn’t say. How many you think it’ll take to get me buzzed?”

“Well, for a beer, this is some pretty filthy shit. I’ll say your head starts spinning after two.”

“Almost done with one and don’t feel a thang. I believe I’ll set my limit at five.”

“I know some seasoned beer-drinkers who would find that a bit lofty.”

“Most beer-drinkers are pussies,” chimed Regan, polishing off the rye-based concoction. She belched and grabbed another beer from the ice chest. “Round two. You ready?”

“Toss it over.” Regan underhanded the perspiring glass and Mary plucked it out of the sky with her free hand. When offered the bottle opener Mary shook her head. She tucked the corked pole handle under her armpit, lined the bottle top up with the boat’s edge, and whacked its crown with her palm. The cap popped off with a ‘Sss’ and flipped into the lake.

Regan shrugged, said “Hm,” considered mimicking the de-capping method, and ultimately decided to use the bottle opener. She sipped the malted hops, watching Mary cast, tug, and reel. Cast, tug, and reel. “Do you actually enjoy that?” she blurted.

“Of course I do,” Mary murmured through her cigar.

“Why?”

“For one, it’s relaxing.”

“That? That’s relaxing?”

“I believe that’s what I just said.”

“Holding onto a giant stick, heaving a little plastic toy with hooks attached to it, and reeling it back in over and over and over until you can’t feel your arms. Mmm-mmm-mmm. Now that’s how I like to kick back.”

Mary set her cigar on the depth finder. “Could I share something with you about fishing?”

Regan, disinterested: “The floor is yours.”

The hand-crafted lure whizzed into the muck. “Fishing isn’t about sitting on the lake, having a few drinks, conversing with friends, getting a tan, forgetting your worries. It’s not about any of that shit. It’s not now and it never has been. At its soul, fishing is about satiating blood thirst. It’s about outwitting a living creature, overpowering it, and watching it flop around helplessly. It’s about dangling a mirage in front of a fish’s face, hence the word ‘bait’. It’s about dragging it out of its world and into yours, hence the word ‘lure’. It’s not healthy to find someone on the street, stick a hook through their mouth, drag them home, and carve them up. But a fish? Who gives a damn? They’re lower than us.”

Just then a green head leapt above the water’s surface and snapped at the artificial floating fish.

Mary set the hook violently and the large-mouthed fiend tugged back, bending the carbon rod like a weeping willow branch. Mary clenched her jaw, exposing her bottom row of teeth like a rabid wolf. The water was calm on the surface, mayhem beneath. The leviathan thrashed its head from side to side, desperate to remove the barbed treble hooks from its thin, plate-like jaws. The reel handle rotated clockwise in the slow and methodical fashion of a clock’s second hand but the transparent fishing line still spewed out into the watery abyss. Mary stopped reeling, allowing the beast to tire itself out; however, once it started for the weeds, she tightened the drag and gave hell, refusing to lose her catch in a cluster of green. The battle was over.

“That’s gotta be a six-pounder. Not bad,” Mary beamed.

Regan, who had watched the entire struggle without moving, spoke softly, “You going to kill it?”

Mary removed the hook and ladled her catch back into its home. It dove like a torpedo, vanishing into the foggy green depths. “I don’t kill for sport.”

Regan swallowed the warm beer that had been sloshing in her mouth since Mary first hooked the largemouth bass. “You think I should give it a try?”

“Of course. Just grab a pole. God knows you’ve done that before."

“Ha-ha. Just let me finish this beer and I’ll show you how it’s done.” Her speech was vaguely slurred.

“Lookin’ a little tipsy, my friend,” Mary said, inserting the cigar back into her jaws.

“I’m just getting started.”

The next twenty minutes comprised of no more than two spoken words. Beer rolled down their throats, the women swaying as the dwarfish waves undulated beneath the boat. They soaked in the water and the trees and the sky, watching everything but each other, murder on their minds.

Regan tracked Mary's progress, making certain that their alcoholic beverages emptied at the exact same moment. Two more gulps apiece.

The pale ales were polished off simultaneously. Regan beheaded two more bottles, slipping a plastic capsule, a cyanide pill, into one of them. She leaned toward Mary, offering the toxic brew. Mary took it without hesitation, though she had seen the sleight of hand and, even if she hadn’t, Regan’s eyes said it all: “Drop us a letter from Hell, Mary Louise Hayes.”

Mary raised the malt and the hops and the rye and the potassium cyanide but didn’t take a sip. Instead, she set the bottle on the edge of the boat and grinned.

Regan chugged four ounces of liquid and breathed heavily when she pulled the bottle away from her face, foam dribbling down her chin. She swiped at it with the back of her hand and smiled at Mary. “There’s something we should talk about,” she said.

“Oh?” humored Mary, her eyebrows arched.

“That thing on the golf course. You know I was just kidding. Yeah, that little red-haired bitch can get on my nerves, but you know it was all in good fun. Sometimes I just go a little too far. At least that’s what my therapist tells me.”

“Well, you were pretty convincing. Convinced me.”

“No? Out of everyone? You?” giggled the inebriated wench. “Mary Hayes? You took that seriously? You’re fuckin’ with me. I know you are.”

“You gave me a lot of money.”

“Commitment, my dear. You were really going to do it?”

“Had my gun picked out and everything.”

“You were going to off your friend? For a few thousand dollars? Because I told you to?”

Regan was laughing now. Mary wasn’t.

“I’m a businesswoman first.”

Regan screeched like a howler monkey. “You are a piece of work, Mary. You really are. You kill me. Where’s the pole? Where’s my line? Where’s my beer? Let’s do this. Let’s fish!”

“There she is,” Mary motioned with her head.

Regan inspected the rod, even her feeble angling mind aware that something was missing. “Where’s the, uh, the little fish hook?”

“Oh, yeah. Sorry about that. Knew I forgot something. Check my tackle box.”

Regan pried open the plastic chest and gazed inside.

A roll of hundred dollar bills stared back at her.

“What’s this?”

“That’s your money,” replied Mary, pulling a pistol.

A stray dog, smelling fish, had made his way to the edge of the lake. He watched the two woman converse, one woman eventually pointing a metal object at the other, producing a spark and a deafening boom. The dog yipped and leapt back. He regained his composure, watching one woman fall and dark grey liquid pour out of her. The other woman tugged a rope near the motor, pushed a lever forward, and raced out of view. An oblong glass container fell overboard when she hit the gas. The dog barked but she didn’t hear. He watched the thin cloud of smoke dissolve where the boat had been.

There was a squad car waiting at the public landing when Mary pulled up to the shore with a blood-spattered body. An officer stood beside his vehicle, arms crossed.

Mary killed the engine and the boat came to rest, cradled by the debris bed of plant life and garbage.

The officer, a longtime friend of Mary Hayes, tipped his cap. She was the godmother to his firstborn son, the oatmeal chocolate chip cookie provider of his bake sales, the only reason he had this job. He spoke: “Where do you want me to dump this thing?”

The next morning a man named Cristobal Columbus unlocked the Basswood Country Club gates. He hopped on the cart labeled “Maintenance” and began his a.m. routine of raking the bunkers, changing the pin locations. But something made him stop:

There was a woman propped up against an oak tree, a bullet hole in her head. Twenty pound test fishing line, lassoed around her calves, her waist, her chest, and her forehead held her firm to the tree. Her arm was wrapped around a broken four iron. Her mouth was packed like a stuffed pig’s with hundred dollar bills.