South of the Pumphouse. Les Claypool
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I’m out.”
Ed leaned forward to give her a half hug and peck on the cheek.
“Bye. Have fun,” she said, smiling.
She had one of the best smiles in Berkeley, thought Ed. “Yep, it’s all about fun.”
“Tell Tasha I said hi.”
“Bye bye, girly girl,” he said as he turned and walked away. Terry watched him stroll down the sidewalk—imagining what he would look like nude.
Ed dug through his ashtray as he drove down the boulevard and pulled out a fat roach. Looking at himself in the rearview mirror, he lit it and took a hit, then popped in a cassette. “Armageddon Time” by The Clash blared out of the speakers as he headed down University Avenue.
Ed loved Berkeley, but he rarely got to see it in the early light. The oldest house in the neighborhood where he grew up was built in the ’50s. He marveled at the range and diversity of Berkeley’s architecture. Pulling onto the freeway, Ed headed northbound on Interstate 80 toward Sacramento.
The passing of his father had led Ed to reflect for the past few weeks on people, places, and events that he hadn’t thought of in a long time. The funeral itself was a nonstop cavalcade of faces from his childhood. Everyone there had asked him how he was and what he was up to. Everyone was as gracious as could be, but the sight of Ed’s dark-skinned wife and child made for a few awkward moments.
Ed’s relatives were as white as they come. His paternal grandparents had migrated from Missouri during the Depression. His grandfather eventually went to work in Richmond for Standard Oil. His mom’s father was a second-generation Italian who ran a service station with his brothers on Twenty-Third Avenue in the same city. Besides one rogue uncle on his mother’s side who had a passion for Latina wives—he was on his third—no one from the family had ever brought anyone of color into the fold.
For the most part, everyone thought Tasha was charming, and she was treated with respect and interest. Ed’s grandmother was particularly affectionate. She wasn’t his real grandmother, however. His grandfather had remarried long ago to a woman fifteen years his junior, causing quite a commotion at the time. She was a short, busty lady who, though she was a Catholic, liked to speak with a Jewish-grandmother accent that she had acquired from years of watching Joan Rivers. The family called her Nana, and she was one of the most loving people Ed had ever met. Upon meeting Tasha, Nana threw her arms around her and gave her a big kiss on the lips. She insisted that Tasha sit next to her the entire ceremony while their little son Walty sat on Nana’s lap.
As Ed rolled down the freeway toward his brother’s place, he thought of the recent past and the day ahead. Seeing his brother Earl at the funeral had felt a bit stiff at first. Earl had been there with his father during his illness. He had watched a mountain of a man whither away to frailty and die. At the funeral, Ed could see the pain in his brother’s face but could also sense his relief.
Earl, on the other hand, knew that his younger brother couldn’t have endured the drawn-out and painful process of their father’s death, and he held no contempt for his absence. He could see the feeling of guilt in Ed’s eyes, and he did his best to ease his little brother’s conscience. They spoke of grand old times and common experiences, eventually agreeing to plan a fishing trip together.
It had been a long time since Ed had even thought about fishing, and as he drove onward, he was beginning to get excited. When they were boys, fishing had been a family passion, and sturgeon fishing was the ultimate experience. Ed remembered the buzz around the neighborhood when he returned home with his father, brother, and a family friend after landing his first “keeper” sturgeon. He could still see it in his mind, like some old super-8 movie footage from the ’70s.
C’mon, Eddie boy! Lift her on up! Ha, ha!” Ed’s father boomed proudly. Ed’s mother loved photo ops, as she called them. Over the years, she must have owned and eventually worn out every kind of cheap portable camera on the market. That day, she had out her slim-line Kodak 110 with disposable flash cubes.
“Hell, that fish is bigger than he’ll ever be!” said Daryl, Dad’s favorite fishing buddy.
“C’mon, Earl. Help yer brother,” said Mom, waving her camera toward the fish.
Happy to be of service, Earl jumped in. Together, the boys lifted the biggest of the three fish.
“Aww. Isn’t that sweet?” said Mom, snapping away like mad.
The cleaning—or butchering—of these massive fish was always quite an ordeal. Ed’s father would take two sawhorses from the garage and, by placing a four-by-eight sheet of three-quarter-inch plywood across them, create a cleaning station. Many a time had Ed seen his father elbow deep in the guts of one of those “hogs,” blood washing down the driveway by the constant short flow of the garden hose. Whenever they returned from one of these trips, a handful of neighbors, mainly kids, would come by to admire the catch and watch the subsequent cleaning. Butchering a sturgeon was an art to Ed’s father, and he welcomed an audience when working the Ol’ Russell, as he affectionately dubbed his favorite filet knife.
Cleaning a sturgeon is no easy task. It all starts with the bleeding, which involves lopping off the tail and letting the fish drain. As with salmon cleaning, the next step involves cutting just behind the gill plate. With a sturgeon, however, the entire circumference of the fish is sliced down to the spinal column. The sturgeon is a boneless fish with a hard cartilage head and a cartilage channel that runs the length of its body, enclosing a spinal cord. Once the circumference cut is made, the butcher grabs the head and spins it, breaking it free from the spinal column. The head is then removed, pulling the cord from the spinal column and the entrails from the belly. What’s left can be quartered into loins. The leathery hide of the sturgeon is dotted with hard diamond-shaped studs, hence the nickname “diamondback.” These, along with the skin, can be removed either with pliers or by being sliced off with a good knife.
“C’mon, boys! If you’re gonna catch ’em, ya gotta learn to clean ’em!” their father shouted as they watched earnestly.
“Elch. That’s disgusting,” muttered Mom.
“C’mon, hon, it’s just some guts. Ha,” he laughed, holding out his bloody hand and a random piece of meat.
Daryl chimed in, “Hell, Penny, you’ve had to look at Bill’s horrible purple knob now for near ten years. A little sturgeon gut shouldn’t bother ya. Ha, ha!”
Daryl was a funny guy who fished often with the boys’ father. He could always get the boys to laugh, usually at their dad’s expense.
“Sheee-it. You’re one to talk, Daryl. Beth said your peter’s so small she thought it was a hair till it pissed.” Dad could get a good one in every now and again, thought Ed.
He was a happy sort of man, and his jolliness amplified when he was cleaning fish. The fishing weekends were quite cheerful, but there was a noticeable gloom to the general atmosphere whenever the family came home empty-handed. The boys’ father worked hard all week, and the majority of his weekends were spent fixing the house or helping Daryl or some other friend with a project. They only got to chase fish a few days out of the month at most, and their dad enjoyed the catching part of the game more than the fishing. Being somewhat self-employed—he was a partner in a local auto parts store—he would occasionally take a day off work if the fishing was hot and heavy. But because of their school schedule,