“I don’t see it,” I said, using all my acting skills.
Phil and I turned around to see Greg and Dad had stolen our doughnuts.
“Hey!” Phil complained.
They made a big show of licking them.
“You two are just not right,” I complained.
The four of them must have worked it out beforehand because they each took a huge bite out of their doughnuts at the same time. The looks of pure joy on their faces slowly changed to ones of concern. Phil was terrible at pranks because he gave it away when he began to giggle. They all spit out their bites.
“What the hell did you put in them?” Greg asked.
“Mayonnaise. I called ahead and had them specially made. I told the baker we were from down south, and it was a special treat. It worked, I got him to make them just for you,” I said with a big smile.
I high-fived Phil. It felt good to finally turn the tables on my tormentors.
“This doesn’t bode well,” Uncle John said. “When did we become the target of pranks?”
“I kept warning everyone that someday, David would get even,” Greg noted.
“They had something different, so I thought we might try them,” Phil said as he got out another box of doughnuts. “Maple-bacon doughnuts.”
They had maple icing and bacon crumbles on top. We all agreed that it sounded weird, but Phil had picked out a winner. Only in Canada would they come up with such a combination.
◊◊◊
It was decided that we would go three to a boat. Paul said he should be in the same boat I was. I wasn’t quite sure what he would protect me from on the water, but I wasn’t about to point that out. Uncle John joined us.
The lake was massive. The area was called the Trout Lake Conservation Reserve and was a protected area in the Red Lake District. On the west coast of the lake was a Provincial Nature Preserve. The man that ran the resort told us that Trout Lake was a cold-water lake with a maximum depth of 150 feet. There were several types of fish: walleye, northern pike, lake trout, lake whitefish, white sucker, red sucker, and ling.
Over 500 islands dotted the lake and, according to the map, it joined up with a chain of other lakes and rivers.
I wanted to catch a few walleyes for eating. Northern pike was my second choice, for the sport. It turned out Paul was something of an expert. His family had regularly gone fishing in Canada as a family vacation while he was growing up. He pointed to a protected bay with a weed bed.
“Let’s have some fun and go after Northern Gators, or that’s what my dad calls them. All fish are predators, but pike are in a league of their own. It will only take a few casts before you find if there are any around. They’ll hit just about anything, but I’d suggest we try a few different lures and figure out what they want. We can then all switch to that,” Paul suggested.
Devin had sent us everything we needed, including two different rods for each of us. Paul had us use the heavier of the two. He showed us how to tie on a twelve-inch steel wire leader. Pike could bite through the fishing line without any trouble, so the wire leaders were pretty much required. Uncle John was given a spoon lure.
“Start by steadily and slowly reeling, just fast enough to keep the spoon wobbling. If that doesn’t produce, try a flutter retrieve. You do that by using a jigging motion as you reel,” Paul advised.
Paul handed me a white spinner lure. After tying it on, I stood up, and he pointed to what looked like a small log on the edge of the weed bed.
“Cast past that point, and when you get close, I want you to pause for a three count and then begin to reel in,” he advised.
Paul picked a big spinner for himself. On the first cast, Uncle John got a big hit, and his pole bent like he had a monster on it. While he fought it, Paul gave him tips.
“Keep your rod tip up; don’t let it drop, or it’ll give him enough slack to either shake off or snap the line. Let him tire out a little before you try to muscle him.”
When Uncle John got it near the boat, we could see it was a big fish.
“David, grab the net. If it were less than ten pounds, we could just grab him behind the head, but he’s too big. Let me take the lure out of his mouth so you can see how it’s done,” Paul said.
Uncle John fought the fish for a few minutes before he could get him close enough that I could use the net. I dipped the net in front of him and scooped the fish into the boat. Northern pike have a slimy, almost mucus-like coating. I got him out of the net and handed him to Uncle John. Paul used a jaw spreader and needle-nose pliers to get the lure out of the fish’s mouth. I’d packed Dad’s camera, the same one I’d taken to Cuba, so I could take photos. I grabbed the camera and took Uncle John’s picture with his catch. Paul weighed it, and it came in at sixteen pounds.
That set the tone for the morning. Paul would work us into a likely spot, we would each catch three or four fish and then move on. Paul had the biggest at twenty-two pounds, but we were consistently catching six- to twelve-pounders.
◊◊◊
We decided to go in for lunch and found that Dad had beaten us back. We hadn’t been able to contact Dad’s group because there was no cell service. Nor, for that matter, was there Internet service. It actually was kind of nice that we could be so out of touch with the rest of the world this week.
The resort office had a satellite phone you could use if you had to. But not being able to use our phones or have any Internet access was one of the big reasons Dad and Uncle John had picked this lake.
The resort also provided a free shore lunch. All you had to do was give them the fish, and they would fry it up for you. Paul went with Phil and Greg to show them how to clean the walleye they’d caught.
Talk about a perfect lunch. Freshly caught fish served with fried potatoes and onions. Of course, if you had this for any length of time, your arteries would clog up, but dump stuff into hot oil and get it crispy … yum.
I even joined everyone in drinking a beer.
◊◊◊
The wind picked up, so we took the afternoon off to kick back and relax, or that was what they told me. I suspected the others needed to sleep off their hangovers. I’d downloaded some e-books before leaving home, so I stepped out on the deck that overlooked the lake, found a chair, and sat down and read. After a while, there was movement inside; it was Uncle John. It looked like his nap was over.
I’d started to get antsy with the questions I had from last night, so I went to talk to him.
“Got a few minutes?”
“I wondered how long it was going to take you,” he said as he smiled up at me.
He followed me back out to the deck and sat beside me.
“I’ve been contemplating my circles of trust. You said that family was normally in the first circle, the one you trusted the most, but then again they may not be. I can see that, and for the most part, I agree that my family will be in my closest circle. What I was wondering was, does that trust have to be for everything, or is it situational?” I asked.
He got a smile on his face that was both thoughtful and sad. Somehow, I knew not to ask about it. So instead, I told him about Mom’s blind spot with Tami and how it affected me and how I felt about it. I also talked about when he wouldn’t keep Angie’s deliberately getting pregnant to himself, and the fallout from that revelation to the rest of the family. I had a real problem with trust, even with my own family, and I realized it bothered me a lot more than I’d ever consciously realized.
When I finished, Uncle John smiled gently.
“I’m not going to get into that situation specifically right now, but let me give you a few more factors to consider,” he said.
“First, everyone—everyone—finds at some point in time that people they trusted have let them down or betrayed them. Each time that happens, they’ll start to doubt their friends, and they’ll even begin to doubt themselves.
“You can’t go through life that way. When it happens, you have to recognize that they’re human, and they’ll make mistakes. When it happens, take a deep breath and decide if it was a mistake or if it was done deliberately to harm you. That’s when you have to evaluate what happened, learn from it, change your evaluation of the other person a bit, and move on.