Big Grandpa and the Mystery Bait

MYSTERYBAIT

THE KITTEN'S REAL NAME WAS SOMETHING PROSAIC: Boots or Stripey, or maybe Horatio. But on the day of the Mystery Bait, that little cat ate so many fried heads, tails, and fins that for the rest of his life he was known as Ol' Fishhead.

A YOUNG GIRL'S SPECIAL CONCOCTION YIELDS A STORIED WHITE MOUNTAIN TROUT AND EVERY BOY AT A SUMMER DANCE

It began on the kind of summer morning in the White Mountains when restless, eager trout begin to leap in Big Lake even before sunup. There was a war on, World War II to be exact, but Greer's dark green pines and clear sky helped us forget that for a little while.

At first light, my kitten pushed his nose into my cheek and clawed me delicately. I climbed out of bed to let him out, and then watched a girl named Janelle weeding the lettuce patch behind our cabin. Her parents owned the place and several others, including the one next door where my friend Helen Rice was vacation-ing with her parents and her cat. Janelle was the same age as Helen and I not quite 12 - but unlike us, she worked all day in the garden or cleaning vacated cabins or ironing her father's brown khaki work shirts.

"Get up," I whispered to what I thought was my father's body, after I let the kitten back in. "Let's go down to the lake."

"He's gone," my mother mumbled into her pillow, and I realized I'd been talking to a hump in the covers.

"Gone where?"

Mother never opened her eyes. "Out in the boat with Mr. Rice. Remember? They said they'd be gone all day." She turned toward the wall. "We'll go down to the lake later," she said, drifting back to sleep.

Great! For one thing, my mother didn't fish and hated to squish around the marshy banks, so she'd probably delay my daily fishing as long as possible (and I wasn't allowed to go out to Big Lake alone). For another, my father was luckyhe could have fished in a department store's drinking fountain and brought home a striped bass - and people who fished with him were lucky, too. I needed him to continue my vendetta with Big Grandpa, a legendary trout of mammoth proportions who had occupied that lake for maybe a thou-sand years, and who had leapt over my line twice, declining even to nibble my red worms.

I peered into the brown oak icebox, knowing the worst had happened. My father had done it: taken all the bait, forgetting to leave me some. I slammed the icebox door and grabbed a big spoon. I was going to have to dig.

TEXT BY KRISTEN JOHNSON INGRAM ILLUSTRATIONS BY BOB LEMLER

12 July 1995

I had been hard at it for half an hour when Mother stuck her head out. The hard dirt around the back door was cratered as if small bombs had fallen, but I'd collected only two spindly worms.

"Helen and her mother are here," she said. "They're ready to go to the lake."

I cast about wildly, looking for a cockroach, a praying mantis, even a housefly I could push onto a hook. Nothing. And my dad had not only taken the live bait, all the artificial lures were in his tackle box as well. I was doomed - unless I could find something in the house . . . .

It was at that very moment I conceived the recipe for Mystery Bait.

"I'll be there in a few minutes," I told Helen, furtively snatching a couple of packages from the kitchen and heading into the bathroom. Quietly, efficiently, I rolled up enough bait to catch my limit, and then a few extra, just to be safe our nonfishing mothers had licenses in case someone

AFTER A WHILE I REALIZED THE BOYS DIDN'T CARE IF I DANCED OR NOT. THEY JUST WANTED MY BAIT RECIPE.

wanted to catch a couple more than six or seven for a day the limit was eight per person. I would probably zero out.

I tucked my concoction into a Hills Brothers Coffee can and tied a damp washcloth over the top, just as I did when we took red worms, and we all headed for the lake.

The mothers set up their canvas chairs and put on hats and dark glasses. We thought we could see our fathers' boat, out on the other side, but it was one of several boats, and they were too far away to wave at.

Helen bit her lip, held her breath, and thrust a fat red worm onto her hook. Her father had left her seven of the creatures, and I thought briefly about swiping them - but then I'd have to give Helen the unmentionable substance I'd brought with me.

I waited until she was casting out into the water, sneaked out a soft cylinder of Mystery Bait, and soon had my own line in the water.

I had a strike in about two minutes, and another one as soon as I could get my line back in. Before the morning was over, I had caught my limit, my mother's limit, and Mrs. Rice's limit. By now I had an audience: men, boys, Janelle, and a few other tomboys, all asking what I was using for bait. I kept finding ways not to tell, but I knew someone would try to spy on me. I'd already had to go home twice to make more of the mystery material, saying I needed to go to the bathroom.

Helen had caught seven fish and offered to let me take one more on her license, so while she was adding her trout to the creel in the water at lake edge, I crushed my last hunk of Mystery Bait onto my hook and flung my line in.

I felt a nibble, so I yanked up to see the hook and almost went in headfirst. The biggest fish in the world was on my line, big as a shark or marlin; but since this was fresh water, it had to be Big Grandpa.

I played him for about 18 minutes; the onlookers weren't fishing anymore, just yelling, "There 'e goes!" and "Hang on, little girl, you've got him!" A few didn't speak, just glared at me when I finally reeled Grandpa in. He weighed 12 pounds. One man had tears in his eyes, and a heavybosomed woman with dyed black hair and thin pencilled lines for eyebrows grabbed my bait can and ran with it. Luckily I'd used every last smidge.

Helen and I were dividing up our fish my best friend was downright snippy for some reason, but I was too pumped to worry about it when a pair of gangly boys about 12 or 13 came up to us and asked if we were going to the dance that night.

"At the schoolhouse," one of the boys explained to my mother. "It's for grownups and kids both."

Helen and I rushed back to the cabin. We scrubbed ourselves almost raw trying to banish the smell of fish; we painted our fingernails and toenails with the Chen Yu samples we'd sent for, and decided we'd take our hair down from our regular pigtails.

"You have to eat dinner," our mothers said, frying up the trout we'd caught. My father was first crestfallen that he'd forgotten to leave me any bait, then curious as to what I'd used. I whispered it in his ear and swore him to secrecy. He nearly died laughing-literally, because he fell against the doorjamb, guffawing, and cut his forehead - but he promised never to tell anyone, so long as he lived.

Our mothers brought romaine out of the patch where Janelle worked so hard, and they made wilted lettuce and fried up some potatoes to accompany the trout. The two kittens sat under the table, spitting and snarling as they consumed the scraps.

After eating awhile, Helen's cat, Jubilo, stalked off and fell to licking his paws; but Ol' Fishhead consumed every morsel we set down for him. Finally he rolled onto his side and lay still, his eyes glazed, his belly rigid and rounded.

"The kitten! Something's wrong with him!" I yelled. "He's gone into protracted ecstasy," my father said. "He'll recover." I wasn't sure what that meant, but I brushed my hair and put on the one dress I'd brought (actually, my mother packed it; I'd sworn I wasn't going to wear anything but my Levi's for the whole vacation). Helen and I walked up the hill to the dance with our parents behind us, feeling beauBeautiful; and as we stepped inside, boys rushed at us from every direction. Janelle and the other girls sat on a bench and looked at us with intense hatred.

and bit the toes of our boots. He reared. He bucked. And on the day after the Mysery Bait incident, he pitched Helen off into the brush. "It's your fault!" she roared through her tears, brushing her backside. "Janelle probably put a burr under his saddle blanket or something to get even with us. You caught Big Grandpa and then at the dance . . . ." She broke into sobs and stalked off. We didn't speak till we were back at school in Superior. Fifty years later, I talked to Helen, who now lives in San Manuel. "I've got to confess," I told her, and I did.

At first I worked hard, remembering the waltzes and fox trots I'd learned at dancing school; but after a while I realized the boys didn't care if I danced or not. They just wanted my bait recipe. Boy after boy lined up - some at their father's behest - to dance with me; and as each of my partners stumbled and tripped and stepped on my toes, he'd say something like, "My name's Bill. I live in Hog Creek Canyon." (Nod, smile, stumble.) "I hear you got Big Grandpa out of the lake today . . . ." He would then look around the room and ask, with elaborate casualness, "Say, whadja use for bait? Salmon eggs?" Boy after boy asked me to dance; boy after boy who only want to know what you used for bait today!" she yelled. "Or their fathers want to know." "I can't tell you," I mumbled, weak with anxiety, and fled into the night, back to our cabin, where our cat had awakened and was beginning to twitch his tail a little. I wanted desperately to tell Helen my secret, but if she passed the story around I'd be the laughingstock of Greer, Arizona. Helen and I spent most of the next day riding the satanic Shetland pony we rented from Janelle's family. He was always awful. Again and again he returned unbidden to the barn. He gulped air when we saddled him so that as soon as we got on, he'd exhale and make the saddle slip. He turned The Great Mystery Bait, the recipe that caught me 25 fish in a little more than an hour, the bait that lured Big Grandpa out of the lake and made every boy in Greer trip over my ankles was simple: you roll a stick of cheddar cheese into a slice of marshmallow. And if that recipe doesn't snag a good dinner for your cat, it might at least make somebody dance with you.

Kristen Johnson Ingram, who was born and educated in Arizona, now fishes in the McKenzie River near her home in Springfield, Oregon. She and Helen Rice Blank, who lives in San Manuel, Arizona, recently attended a school reunion in Superior together. Both their cats have long since gone to their reward. Phoenix-based Bob Lemler has been fishing just a couple of times in his life, once in the White Mountains. And he didn't encounter Big Grandpa.