The King of Goosey Lake (Part 1)

Tucked somewhere deep within the rolling foothills of rural Oregon, down gravel roads winding through dense forests of ponderosa pine, there was a village called Goosey Lake. It was a small hamlet and an obscure resort community that boasted a population of 500 people or so. 

It was a beautiful Saturday afternoon in late spring when the Goosey Lake Marina should have been bustling with life. The namesake 500-acre lake should have been speckled with boats as far as the eye could see. Klatches of idle talkers should have been walking the marina grounds, while those wishing to be alone should have been sitting by the shore reading and soaking in the sounds of the lake’s lapping water. Shrieking children should have been seen frolicking in the playground, while their parents should have been relaxing at the nearby shaded picnic tables. Local folk singers should have been strumming to bittersweet melodies at a small covered stage, while barking dogs should have been zipping around the grassy fields playing fetch amidst roving packs of children kicking around soccer balls. Yet others should have been satiating their appetites with a juicy burger, hot crispy fries and a creamy malted milkshake at the marina’s diner, which had been fashioned to look like a rustic log cabin.

However, this Saturday afternoon, not a soul was to be seen or heard anywhere on the lake or the grounds. The surface of the lake was left undisturbed, apart from tiny ripples that were driven from the howling winds and the occasional splash of a melonfish leaping out to catch a juicy bug. The swings at the playground made lonely clinking sounds as they emptily swayed. And the only conversations happening were between giant ponderosa pines as the wind bristled through their branches and produced deep creaky sounds at their trunks. Even that diner was dark and locked up.

But if you were to drive through the middle of town, past the Mini-Mart and the gas station, and then left onto Groddy Street, and then a little ways further, you'd pass the Sunset Hills Funeral Parlor. Not only was its parking lot jam packed, but cars were parked alongside that street for miles.

This was the day of Bob Hargrove’s funeral. 

Bob was a beloved fixture of Goosey Lake who died a few days ago unexpectedly of a heart attack. He was a chubby man with a bulbous nose and gravelly voice who was most often seen, at any given time, chuckling with a smoldering cigar propped out the corner of his mouth. Bob was a native to the town—he was born, according to himself, in his granddaddy's barn next to a horse named Jedidiah. But he was also a former two-term mayor, lead trumpeter of the Goosey Lake Jazz Band, and a volunteer firefighter.

But what he was most known for about town was his uncanny fishing abilities. It seemed that fish would clamor over one another just for the chance to hook themselves on his line. Sometimes all it would take was a few seconds with his lure dipped in the water, and he’d reel it back in with a wriggling fish. 

Skills like that were handy when it came time for the town’s annual melonfish tournament. Not a year would go by when Bob didn't win its top prize, which included getting his picture in the local weekly newspaper, the Goosey Lake Gazette. But best of all, he’d win a trophy that stood an impressive two feet tall. 

That statuette was a wonderful thing. It was made of brass and consisted of two side-by-side Roman columns that were topped with a wonderfully detailed depiction of a melonfish leaping majestically out of water. Bob had so many of those trophies that he’d sometimes joke to his out-of-town guests that he manufactured them in his garage. That trophy was indeed something to envy—at least according to the man who often came in second.

That man’s name was Den Whitaker. 

Den was a slender 62-year-old man who had arrived to the funeral clad in a flannel shirt and blue jeans that were slightly worn at the knees. He had a long pointy nose and thick-lensed glasses that were a tad too large for his already larger-than-usual head. His thinning hair sprouted up haphazardly like wild grass.

Bob’s open casket was on full display at the Sunset Hills viewing room with lavish displays of white carnations on either side of him. 

Den stood at the back of that room taking in the scene.

He kept his eyes fixed on the casket as he slowly walked down the room’s peach-colored carpet—passing by a dozen rows of black-clad mourners who whispered amongst themselves as they shifted around the creaky, wooden pews. Caramel notes from an electric organ played a somber melody through the speaker system. 

Before Den knew it, he was right there at the casket. He rested his hands on its smooth, cherrywood lid as he looked down at that dead man who had his arms folded across his chest.

There he was. Bob Hargrove. Dead.

For a corpse, Bob looked great. His graying skin was artfully painted with funeral make-up. There was even a little pink on the cheeks and nose, as though he'd just come in from a nippy morning fishing. He was also dressed dapperly in a suit and tie, the likes of which Den had never known Bob to wear or even consider wearing ever in his life. But in death, Den figured Bob didn’t mind it. After all, the tie could no longer cut off circulation to his head, because he didn't have circulation anymore.

Den took a deep breath. Instinctually, he expected to smell stale cigar smoke but instead got a whiff of formaldehyde intermixed with flowery perfume. 

Den sighed. It wasn't a sad sigh, however—it was more of a wistful one.

He then let out a crooked-toothed smile that was so wide that it seemed to overcrowd the rest of his face. He brought his hands underneath his chin and clasped them tightly together and let his watery eyes drift up to the room’s high vaulted ceilings. 

Then, with the voice of a low, fluttering bassoon, Den yelled out: “Hot-cha-cha!”

The whispering throughout the room suddenly ceased, and the electric organ played a false note.

 

~*~

 

Den left the funeral just as he had arrived to it: Alone.

He popped open the creaky, rusted out screen door of his one-bedroom cottage, stuck his head through, and said for the second time that day: “Hot-cha-cha!”

He clasped and rubbed his hands together as he walked to the mantle place in his living room—every square inch of which was filled with stumpy, second place melonfish tournament trophies. They didn't even have a depiction of a melonfish on them. They were simply 3D brass statuettes of the number “2.” They didn’t seem so much an achievement but a stark reminder that someone else kept beating him every year. With one swift sweep of his arm, he wiped that mantle place clean of those pathetic things. He then imagined how beautiful a two-foot-high statuette would look there.

He giggled giddily.

When he walked into his kitchen, he immediately directed his attention to a ceramic bullfrog that was placed on the windowsill above his sink. The statuette was about as big as a fist and had bulbous, far apart eyes and puckered lips that were curled into a mischievous grin. Fastened to its head was a red, polka-dotted bow, and at its webbed feet were small flowerpots that had tulips sprouting out of them. Leaning against one of the flowerpots was a trowel.

For reasons that Den had forgotten or didn't care to think about, he was under the impression that this ceramic bullfrog contained the spirit of his dead wife, Petunia, who'd passed away nearly five years ago.

Perhaps its apparent depiction of an amphibious tulip gardener was key to Den’s otherworldly association with the object. Tulips were the only remnant left of the once lavish and brilliantly maintained flower garden that Petunia used to keep up in the front of their cottage. That garden, once Petunia’s pride and joy, was now overgrown with crabgrass, sticker bushes and moss. But somehow every spring, her old perennials would manage to creep their way through all that tangled mess and bloom. Albeit their stalks would get shorter and the pedals less colorful with every passing year.

Den beamed at Petunia as he let out one of his large, crooked toothed grin. 

“He’s really dead, Petunia,” Den said. “I saw the body with my very eyes!”

The ceramic frog didn't say anything back to him, except for casting him a blank and frozen glare that Den was all too familiar with.

“You know what this calls for?” Den said. “A celebration!

He went into the garage to a chest freezer that he had sitting in an obscure corner. He opened it, and his face was immediately greeted with an arctic blast of cold, sour air. When he wiped the condensation away from his eyeglasses with the sleeve of his flannel shirt, he saw one lone package of melonfish sitting in the corner.

He picked it up, and said: “This is the last of last year’s catch! By this time next week, this freezer is going to be filled to the brim with the fresh article!” 

Now might be a good time to talk more about the melonfish. It was a subspecies of sunfish that had copper colored scales and yellow striations. It came in abundance in Goosey Lake and no place else. It was a delectable fish, especially if you cooked it the way Den did. He would fry it up just right in olive oil with a little bit of salt and pepper and a dash of paprika. Den would swear it tasted a lot like nectarines.

He grinned blissfully as the melonfish filet steamed and sizzled on his frying pan. He then turned down the heat and tipped over the skillet to scoop up its juices with a spoon to pour it back over the fish. He then tossed in a handful of green beans and let them simmer for a while.

He looked over at Petunia who was still staring out blankly from the window sill and said: “Supper’s almost ready, darling.”

He brought Petunia over to the dining room table and placed her in front of a small dish. With a swift motion of his spatula, he cut out a ceramic-bullfrog-sized portion of the melonfish from his skillet and plopped it on her plate. He then added a few green beans on the side.

“Bon appétit, mon sweet,” he said to her with a hammy French accent.

Petunia continued to glare on blankly, even when she swiftly popped open her frog mouth, snatched that melonfish and green beans with her sticky tongue and downed it with one gulp.

“Good, huh?” Den said as he plopped a morsel of his own portion of melonfish into his mouth.

Petunia let out a single ribbit in appreciation and continued to stare on.

 

Den, happily chewing on his tender morsels of melonfish gazed dreamily into nothing. He imagined what finally winning that fishing contest might feel like.

 

~*~

 

As soon as the dawn sky turned pink the morning of the tournament, Den had already parked his 1986 Ford Ranger at Goosey Lake Marina. He had his lucky fishing pole flung over his shoulder, clutched his steel tackle box and held a brown paper grocery bag underneath his arm—the contents of which he would reveal to no one.

He was the first person there, apart from Belinda Davis who owned and operated the marina diner. She stood on an aluminum ladder that she had propped against the diner’s log cabin exterior. She was in the middle of hanging up a nylon banner. The banner was white with simple black lettering that spelled out “Registration.” She was a plump woman of 56 who had small brown eyes that always seemed to shine with enthusiasm. She was clad in tightly fitting blue jeans and a mauve sweatshirt that said “Mackinac” on it. Belinda was born deaf, but she could hear perfectly well thanks to cochlear implants and hearing aids, which had stuck out prominently over her ears.

As Den walked past Belinda, he yelled out: “Hi-ya!”

Belinda, steady on the ladder but furiously tying a knot, looked behind her and said: “Bright ‘n’ early, eh Den Whitaker?”

She had a sharp voice that could cut through the air like a duck’s quack.

Suddenly a gust of wind picked up, and the top part of that nylon banner became unraveled and draped over Belinda’s head.

“Dagnabit!” she cursed.

“You want help with that?” Den asked.

“No!” she barked back as she started to re-string the rope that had become unraveled. “Now bug off, old man, and don't come back till registration opens in an hour!”

Den saluted and headed off to the docks. But before he did so, he caught a glimpse of a brown cardboard box that was sitting on the registration table. Peaking over the edge of that box he could see that wonderfully detailed statuette of a melonfish jumping out of the water. Den’s heart skipped a beat, and his eyes started to dilate.

Den quickly shook himself out of his daze and continued his journey towards the docks. He walked across the wobbly gangway that floated over the lake water, which would eventually take him to Slip No. 9. That was where he moored Seabreeze—his 1982 Bayliner. In its day, it was a state of the art motorboat with cushion seating, acrylic windshields, and a controls panel that was built into a faux-wood casing. Today, much of the boat was held together with duct tape, but it was nonetheless a reliable vessel. 

He carefully stepped into Seabreeze and laid down his fishing pole and tackle box. He squatted beside the passenger’s seat where he kept a bright, orange cooler. He opened it to reveal that it was empty. 

Then, he looked behind both shoulders to make sure that no one was watching. He stuck his hand inside the paper bag and pulled out Petunia, his beloved ceramic bullfrog. He carefully placed her on top of the faux-wood controls panel beneath the acrylic windshield. Then, he looked behind both shoulders again, this time much more carefully, before he took out two packages of Pillow Puff mini-marshmallows.

That was an off-brand of marshmallow that Den had purchased from the nearby Mini-Mart. If you were to try to eat one, it would be so sweet that it would almost sting your tongue, and it would leave you with a chemical aftertaste reminiscent of cavity filling material that you get from the dentist. It was also known to coat your teeth with an unpleasant chalk-like powder. 

Good thing Den didn't dare eat the stuff. Those marshmallows and nothing else would be his bait. The only other fisherman who knew that the melonfish went gaga over that particular brand of marshmallow was Bob. And Bob was dead.

Den giggled to himself as he stuffed the marshmallows into his orange cooler and shut the lid tight.

Link to Part 2