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Blood Brothers
Grandad taught me how to set nets under the ice. Showed me how the ice jigger worked. He was an expert with it. He reckoned it to be one of man’s great inventions. And, I guess it was, but I never appreciated the fact. Because of the jigger, we fished through winter. But worse, I had to work with my idiot brother. The jigger needs two men.
I uncased our new chainsaw and handed it to Boogie. I had drubbed him plenty that chainsaws was dangerous, but you never knew with him. His left eye wandered steady, his mind too. I buzzed the head off a froze-dead wolf once, to show him the danger. Easier than a whetted blade through fish liver, and just as fast. Boogie liked his wolves. Maybe it was mean, sure, but he got the message.
“Right here. Cut the hole here,” I told him. He squinted as the ice chips flew, and turned his head. When the chain bit deep enough, a sluice of water pissed up his leg. Boogie never flinched. He loved that saw and the racket it made. He cut a four foot hole in the first winter ice.
“Must have been figured by a Maritimer, sure,” Grandad said. “They know their fish and blades and such.”
“Maybe it was some old Indian from hereabouts,” I offered.
“Nope. They never seen skates. A Maritimer, sure. Genius.”
Grandad came from Cape Breton.
I’d no real care for my brother. Days I wished he’d never been. Mom died on his account. I was eleven years old when she went into the nursing station, all big and sweaty, her hair matted and lips thinner than snare wire–ready with Boogie. Second baby–be no problem. And she said it was a luxury to have a nurse and a clean bed for the birthing. Her own mother did it squatting–in the trapline cabin or summer fishing tent–wherever she happened to be. The Indian way. But even with a nurse and a clean bed, it was only Boogie left that station a week later. They wouldn’t let us bury mom beside her folks on the reserve, my dad being white. So we used the tiny half-breed cemetery on the island. That’s one reason I turned against Boogie. Not for the cemetery. For no mom.
Boogie hitched the 300-foot rope to his waist. “Ok. Walk toward that jackpine point,” I told him, pointing. We were setting the net cross the mouth of a big bay. We hadn’t fished this bay before, but there would be fish, sure. There were fish everywhere on Pink Sucker Lake. Boogie shuffled off in the general direction, rope trailing. I had to shout to him a couple of times to keep him on course. He was an idiot, see. That’s what Dad called him.
When Boogie had walked as far as the rope let him, he turned and waved. He liked that part. I waved back, and he sat down in the snow.
Now, the thing about fishing under ice is, how in hell do you string your net? Well? How do you? You got one hole here–where Boogie cut it–and you got him sitting out there in the snow, 300 feet away. That’s where our net wants to go. But how? The jigger, that’s how. Like Grandad said, genius.
This was our first set. The fish company down south in Winnipeg wanted whitefish–as much as we could catch. And catch we could. We proved that the past three years. They sent the plane in to our camp every two days, knowing we’d have our tubs full. Other lakes saw a plane only once a week. Maybe other crews were lazy. Maybe Pink Sucker was a good lake. I don’t know. They sent the plane every two days because our fish would arrive in Winnipeg fresh. We packed them in ice shavings, and they didn’t freeze. The restaurants in Chicago wanted our whitefish fresh, and Boogie and I delivered.
Anyway, I’ll tell you how to set a net under the ice. You skid this wooden jigger over to the hole, and tie on your line. Then you lift the tail of the jigger. The rig is six feet long, with iron fittings, and it’s a heavy bitch to flip. That’s the hard part. I broke a lever learning that. When she’s flipped, the four skate blades are facing up. You plunge that jigger into the hole, being full careful it don’t roll. The skates have to float up against the ice belly. You aim it at your idiot brother and give it a shove. It won’t go far–maybe four feet or so. Then pull it back gently, to make sure the skates are running free. You’re all set. Now you jig.
We were lucky to have a grandfather. When mom died, Dad took to the juice, hard like. Bean juice. His friends on the reserve showed him how to make it. Dad always had white scud at the corner of his mouth smelling like an open can of peaches. That was just the froth of the bean juice. He and his friends never let it stew long enough. Grandad said it hardened up his liver, and his liver killed him. I don’t know about that. But he sure looked poorly when the plane took him to Norway House hospital. Then he came back, dust in a jar. Boogie blamed me for that, and he wept for days. He decided airplanes were evil, and he didn’t think much of me. But it wasn’t the plane that killed dad, it was his liver, and I was stuck with Boogie.
Grandad showed me how to tickle the jigger line. It wants a light hand. This gives the spring-lever a hold in the mushy underwater ice. Tickle it four or five times, then give a good yank. If you’ve done it right, the lever hooks this ice and the jigger shoots forward. Then you just have to keep flicking your line to keep the momentum, and the jigger will scoot along, floating up against the ice. Gliding away, invisible.
Boogie and I had our system. Boogie was out there at the end of his 300 foot tether, all happy and sitting in the snow like a pot-licking mutt. I had my 300 feet of jigger line too, coiled in the snow at my feet. When I’d flicked to the limit of my line, that jigger had to be out there, somewhere. About as far as Boogie. Then came the tricky part. Lucky for me, even though Boogie was an idiot, he could hear. Not as well as me, but ok. I’d wave to him and he’d stand up.
It was Dad told me that Boogie was an idiot, but I didn’t catch the meaning. I wasn’t one for school, regular, because I got beat up a lot, being half-breed. But sometimes I went, and I asked the teacher, Mr. Watcher, about idiots. He knew why I was asking. Idiot was used for name calling, he told me. Or, an idiot is someone who is born so, short of wits. I knew then that Boogie was the born idiot. He was six years old before he spoke any real words. The Indians were going to pick on him, sure, and that made me mad. Mad at them, mad at Boogie. I was going to get beat up plenty just having an idiot brother. Course, Boogie got it worse.
We always set at daybreak, in the dead still. We couldn’t have no wind. Boogie had only one ear that worked. One eye and one ear. So, with the jigger out there far as she’d go, I’d start tapping with the lever. Tap-tap-tap. Boogie would scuffle about until he stood over the tapping. First of the season you might see the jigger, but usually there was snow cover and you had to listen. When Boogie was sure, he’d wave, and I’d stop tapping. With the chainsaw he’d tear another hole in the ice–always a big one. I let him do all this. Then he used our gaff hook to reach under the ice and snag the jigger. Wrestle that wet and heavy jigger out of the hole, and there you have it! A line under the ice, 300 feet long. Same length as our nets. We could string our net and fish there as long as we liked. That Maritimer was a genius, sure. We always had three nets on the go.
I hated fish. The smell of fish, the slime of fish, and the forever cold hands of fishing. Sure, I wanted to fly. To be a pilot like the men who picked up our tubs of whitefish every two days. They didn’t sleep in no shack on the ice, and folks took notice when a plane was in camp. So I kept fishing. One more season, and I’d have money enough for lessons in Winnipeg. Be rid of Boogie and the cold hands in one go.
The whitefish were in the bay. We hauled net every morning, reset, and dressed out our catch. We used a snow windbreak a ways from our shack, with a slab of plywood for the cleaning. The guts we scraped into a five gallon pail. Boogie took care of the rest. He spread the mess carefully, so he could see from the shack. The wolves came every night, and Boogie got up in the night to watch. He loved watching wolves snarl and yip over our guts. Don’t ask me why.
Turns out I made an error with # 2 net. My fault, sure. I did check the depth with a lead-line, as always. There was 30 feet, easy. Our nets dropped only 10. But the bay must have shoaled quick, and our net brushed bottom. We were asking for trouble, and we found it.
“Boogie, come’ere!” I yelled. My arm was underwater at the ice hole and held god-awful tight. I was hauling in net when it snagged. That’s usually because of the rough ice around the chainsaw hole, so I reached under to work it free. The net took a spin, wrapped up my arm and almost drug me under. Yelling was it for me. Nothing else I could do. Now, Boogie lived in his own world. He did strange things, like tramping around alone with his snowshoes. Gigantic patterns, could only be seen from the air, I expect. He didn’t always listen to me, seeing as I shouted at him steady for doing such dumb-ass things. But he heard me this time. He heard the wild tremble in me, and he came quick.
“I’m caught fast! Tangled!”
“Why?” he asked.
“Jesus, Boogie.” My head was still above the water, but the tightening net had drug me further, and my bare neck was jammed up tight to the ice. The ice was sharp and rough. It hurt like hell. Almost as bad as my arm. I was up to my shoulder in the icy water and my parka sleeve spread the cold. “Pull my legs! Pull me out of here!”
Boogie was strong enough, I suppose, but he couldn’t budge me. The net surged again, twisting hard. “Tie my legs to the shack!” If my head went under I was gone, sure. I was losing the sense in my arm–the cold, I guess–until a fierce stab of pain lit up my elbow. Something had buckled, with pain like that. Was it the current that caught the net? Couldn’t be. Pink Sucker had no current.
“Gimme your knife!” Boogie handed me his filleting knife, bloody with fish guts, but I couldn’t reach the net. The caught arm was too far under, my neck being crook and all. The knife slipped from my hand, with the cold and slime.
“Cut the net!” I should have told him that first.
Boogie stripped down to his undershirt and drew his skinning knife. He reached under the ice, straining and sweeping with the blade. Our heads were an inch apart. His flushed face was hot with fear. Just like mine. His bad eye stared at me, wide and fixed. He jerked his arm clear of the hole and flopped on his back, shaking his head. He started to cry.
“Goddamn, Boogie. Help me here!” My neck was going to give. The pull on my arm was terrible.
He tried again, at full stretch. Even put his head under, but that was hopeless. Boogie couldn’t swim and he never put his head under the water. I was cold now, and the pain in my arm and neck eased. I remember that. But Boogie had to tell me the rest, seeing as I passed clean out.
He said he went for the chainsaw to cut a bigger hole. That’s when my neck bent and I slipped under the water. Lucky my feet were tied. Boogie jammed the chain blade as far under the ice as he could without drowning the engine, and let rip. The chain tangled quick in the net and bucked the saw from his grip. The motor stalled as she sank. He pulled me free.
When I came to in the shack, I was covered in blankets except for my left side. My shoulder and ragged shirt sleeve were sunk in a tub of ice shavings, along with a couple of whitefish and a lot of pain. The shavings were red. I knew there wasn’t much in the sleeve.
The plane took us out next day, with our half-load of fish. It was Boogie’s first plane ride and he never took his eyes off the floor. I sat in the back with my tub and the other whitefish.
In Winnipeg, Boogie never left my side. The hospital folks let him sleep in the room on a chair. He was laid real low. Didn’t matter what I said, either.
Flying’s out for me now, which pleases Boogie considerably. I could maybe learn with one arm, but I’d never be able to huck fish tubs into the back of a plane. I can still fish.
I showed Boogie how to handle the jigger. All summer he practised. He broke a lot of levers, but he learned. We took a run up Pink Sucker to haul our nets, too. The Fish Service didn’t want any scrap nets fouling the lake.
The sturgeon weighed over 300 pounds. They figured his age at 75 years, or near enough. He was just cruising the bottom, sucking up what he found when he tangled our net. Wrapped like in a cocoon, he was, twisting for his life. Suffocated, Grandad said. Boogie got his saw back. We never found my arm.
Boogie does most of the work now. I tie the rope and walk out the 300 feet. I dress fish and do some cooking. We get along better.
For a cripple and an idiot we do ok.
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