Fishbone's Song Read Free Page B

of the clear, rippling water, and putting my hand in and seeing the way it wiggled my fingers, made them look all wavy.
    Everything else disappeared. Just gone, clean and gone like there was never anything else. Just the woods. From that day on every chance I got—and that was all the time—I went into the trees. I’d take just one step in, move to the left and then right around a tree, and I was there: Home. Moving quiet, like a knife through water. Warm, green, leafy light all around me, sounds of birds all before and after me, in the woods. In the woods . . .
    First just to look. But by the time I was six, I started in to hunting with Fishbone rules. Fishbone had a way to do everything, all things—way to think, way to cook, way to see, way to live, way to be.
    And his hunting rules were simple.
    If you killed it, you had to eat it. You could eat it raw or you could eat it cold or you could eat it cooked, but if you killed something, you had to use it for food.
    I learned that when I started. I made a small spear out of cane, sharpened it to a needle point with the kitchen knife, and worked down the creek bank looking for anything that moved. I was thinking of crayfish but couldn’t find any, so I tried spearing some chubs flashing in the shallows, but they were too fast for me. Downstream a little more I found and speared a frog. Not a big bullfrog like we later got out of the swamp one hill over. You could fry the legs, big as chicken drumsticks almost, wrapped in flour or cracker crumbs, legs jumping and twitching in the pan as they fried, and tasting good, completely good, when they were done and crisp, sprinkled with salt.
    This first frog was small. Come shooting off thebank like he was shot from a spring, went underwater and stopped. Just stopped in clear water wasn’t four inches deep. I poked the cane spear down and got him, pinned him to the bottom, killed him. Then I reached down and grabbed him with my free hand, and took him back up to the cabin to show Fishbone.
    Good, he nodded. Now eat him.
    The frog, I asked.
    Yes, boy, he said. You killed it, you eat it.
    The whole frog, I asked, thinking I don’t believe I can get the whole frog down and hold it, guts and skin and all. Thought of the tongue, sticky and kind of long, and it almost made me puke but he shook his head.
    On frogs just the back legs, he said, cut them off and wash them in the creek and bring them in and fry them in a little bacon grease until they crackle, then eat them.
    But I said there aren’t two bites. No meat at all.
    Then you shouldn’t have killed it.
    Lessons learned. Don’t pee into the wind, don’t get worms in your butt, and if you kill something, you had to eat it. I had to cut the legs off the body of the frog. Bright green and shiny skin with black spots, cut them off just where they joined the little body, then wash them clean and dust them with flour, same as with a big frog.
    Looked so small. Little spindly legs hardly big enough to see sitting in the pan. Then scoop bacon grease out of the can by the sink where we pour it after we cook bacon. Solid and gray-brown, two spoons tastes all salty and bacony.
    Then outside to pick up the axe and split wood for the cook stove. Big axe, double-bladed Collins almost impossible for a six-year-old to pick up, and then worse to have to swing it, again and again, to split enough wood for a hot fire; then carry it in, light the fire, get the stove hot, put the pan with grease and tiny frog legs over the hottest part, andfry them until they stop jumping and jerking and twitching, until they crackle.
    Then eat them. One bite. And all the time thinking you’d done something wrong. Bad wrong.
    By killing one small frog.
    And then back to the woods.
    Only knowing more now, this time, knowing that hunting is not just to kill. Hunting is watching. Watching to know. Watching to learn to see and know and learn. A way to get food, but more,