A FISH STORY ANYWAY YOU LOOK AT IT*

 

By K.K. Shaulis

 

Prologue:   This is a story within a story in which help from an unexpected and unconventional source aids a writer in overcoming writer’s block. The Cartwrights try to help…but well…read on as the fictional writer begins her tale.  Of course, the real question here is which writer – the actual or the fictional - - had writer’s block? See answer below.

 

                 “I am so sleepy I can hardly keep my eyes open,” Katie Benson, heiress of the San Francisco McHaynes’ empire, yawned and leaned her head against Hoss Cartwright’s broad shoulder. 

                 He smiled down at the top of her blonde curls and placed his left arm around her pulling her close. “Just a little longer, sweetie,” he cast his line into the lake’s sparkling clear water.  “I am absolutely certain there’s a ten pound trout in here with my name on it.” 

                 “Hoss would sure be a funny name for a fish, even a ten pound one,” she yawned again and closed her eyes.

                 “Shhhhh,” the big man adjusted the length of his line, “You best be quiet or your name will be mud, little gal,” he was joking but tried to make it sound like a serious threat. He then chuckled and looked again at Katie.  She was sound asleep.   He frowned slightly and put his rod down on the bank beside him. Oh well, so much for getting any        courting time in, he sighed and gently rearranged her sleeping position so that her head           was resting on his left thigh.  He then took a look over at Jake the Horse who was tearing up the grass nearby to make sure he was all right, sank back against the tree, pulled his hat down over his eyes and drifted off himself.

 

     “That’s a pretty boring way to start off a story in my opinion,” Adam Cartwright observed.

     Josephine Cartwright looked at her eldest cousin who sat next to her on the blanket.  Since she began her stay with her uncle and cousins a few weeks ago, she had had little time to even start the story that she promised to ‘post to her Boston publisher as soon as she reached San Francisco.’ She was leaving in three days and still had not written a thing.  She finally managed to steal away to a fishing hole that she had frequented on one of her previous visits but not without enough provisions to feed an army courtesy of Hop Sing, her relatives’ Chinese cook.  The spot inspired her so she began to put pencil to paper. She was just beginning to get somewhere when Adam showed up.  You would have thought with over a 1000 square miles of Ponderosa to choose from, the odds against her know-it-all cousin intruding on her solitude would have been astronomical but somehow her lucky stars must have been out of whack.  “What would you suggest?” she sighed deeply, resigning herself to the reality that he was going to have his say no matter what.

     “How about a rousing barroom brawl or a showdown in the street in the noon day sun?” he offered rolling onto his back and searching the blue sky for clouds.

     “How many stories have you written in your life, Mr. Cartwright?”

     “Oh, I’ve penned a few,” he turned his head and smirked at the little redhead.

     “Sell any of those stories, Mr. Cartwright?”

     “No. but…” he yawned and stretched out to take up more of the blanket space with his six foot plus frame.

     “Enough said,” she interrupted him and began to write again.  

 

                 Jake just loved to watch butterflies. The dang little things were just so flimsy but had such pretty colors and, boy, could they move. He tried to place his muzzle as close as he could to the little yellow insect that was sitting on the rock next to the tall grass he was snacking on. They had to be the most graceful creatures in the whole world – well, after horses, of course. The big black gelding snorted blowing the filmy insect off all six of its legs and into the air.  It didn’t phase the little bug, however.  It just did a few loopty-loops       and landed back on the same spot on the rock.

 

     “Why are you talking about Jake for? Sure, he’s smart and all that but people aren’t going to believe he actually studies insects.  Anyway, isn’t Hoss the main character of this story?” Adam had managed to position himself so that he could read her writing while lying on his stomach next to her.        

     “Listen,” Josey put down her pencil. “You’re the way-too-serious engineer. I’m the light-hearted comedy writer,” she smiled patiently down at him. “I’ll get this figured out if you will just stop interrupting.”

     Jake, the black Percheron who had transported Josephine and the carriage to the fishing hole and the subject of the two’s discussion, was grazing nearby.  He perked up his ears.  “What was Adam talking about that I don’t study insects?” the big horse asked the ladybug who was perched in the middle of his back enjoying the spring sun.

     “He went to college,” she responded changing positions to more evenly warm herself.

 

                 Hmmm, Jake wondered if he could make the butterfly do that trick again.  Before he    could try, however, he caught sight of something moving haphazardly on the edge of the             lake out of the corner of his eye.  It looked like the thing that Hoss was holding onto literally jumping up and down on the ground beside the big man.

                 Never saw anything like that before, Jake thought swinging his big body around to take a good look at it when suddenly the thing took off in the direction opposite Hoss at top speed.  It’s escaping! he decided galloping after it. And I thought that little yellow varmint could move.  The big black horse pounced on the thing like a cat on a mouse,   trapping it under his left front hoof. And this thing only has one leg! Amazing! How does it do that?  he studied it critically with his right eye and then sniffed it for good measure.    Ah, well some things are not meant to be understood, he decided picking the fishing rod up in his teeth and prancing happily like a puppy dog retrieving a stick back to where Hoss was sleeping. He neglected to notice, however, that the line was still attached to the pole and something in the water was attached to the line.

                 Here you go, Hoss, Jake meant to drop the stick but unfortunately threw it so that it   struck the sleeping Hoss really hard on his ten gallon hat that covered his face.

                 “Dadburnit!!!” Needless to say, Hoss awoke with a start propelling the slumbering Katie’s head up off his thigh and back down again with a thud.

                 “What in blue blazes…!?!?!” Miss Benson yelled sitting up, rubbing the back of her neck.  She turned around just in time to see Jake yank a ‘pert near’ fourteen pound fish out of the water.

 

     “Oh, come on, Josey,” Adam was exasperated. “First he’s studying insects. Now he’s catching fish? How unbelievable is that?”           

     “Unbelievable?” Jake snorted indignantly.

     “Just let it go,” his lady friend advised.

     “Shhhhh,” Josey adjusted her position so Adam would stop reading over her shoulder.

     “Come on,” Jake strolled off toward the lake with the little insect coming along for the ride whether she wanted to or not. 

 

                 Hoss who still was recovering from the blow to his face from the pole watched in wide-eyed horror as Jake twisted his head and slammed the ‘what had to be’ nineteen pound trout head first into a particularly sensitive part of his lower anatomy.  He    bellowed like a wounded buffalo, clutched his nether regions, rolled to his side and let out a string of curse words that Katie had never heard put together in such a fashion and,        if the truth be told, even made her blush just a little.

           

     “Do I have to get injured there?” Hoss bent over to read the last paragraph.

     “What?”Josey turned to look up quizzically into her middle cousin’s blue eyes. Now how did he find out where she was?

     “Couldn’t the fish just finish what Jake started with the pole…like smacking me square in the head and knocking me out cold or something?”

     “You’d rather be rendered unconscious than be hit in…?’ she glanced at the big man’s crotch that just happened to be at her eye level at the moment.

     “Well, Dadburnit, Josey,” Hoss became flustered and blushed. “If I had a choice…”

     “So would I,” Adam opined, resting his chin on the heel of his right hand and smiling up at his cousin. “But, hey, you’re the light-hearted comedy writer.  I’m just a guy.”

     She studied the brothers for a few minutes, seriously considered injuring both of them but again the question came up as to which of the two areas was funnier. “Oh, well,” she sighed. “I’ll take it under advisement,” she shook her head and tried to pick up where she left off.

 

                 The ‘close to’ twenty-two pound fish wanting no parts of Hoss tried to get away again, flapping and flopping furiously on the ground. Thinking fast, Jake grabbed hold of the line with his teeth and, using his considerable strength, pulled the ‘no kidding’ twenty-six pound fish still dangling from the hook up in the air so it was in his line of vision on his         left side. The ‘cross my heart and hope to die’ twenty-nine pound trout was as surprised     as Jake was when the two looked at each other eyeball to eyeball.  The ‘swear to God, Pa’ thirty-three pound fish flipped and hit Jake right between the eyes momentarily stunning     him but he did not let go of the line.

 

     “Now what?” Josephine looked in exasperation at Adam who was shaking his head.

     “I don’t know, Josey,” he folded his arms across his chest.  “Wouldn’t it be better if the fish was thirty-three pounds from the very beginning?”

     “It’s funnier the way it is!” Hoss insisted reaching into the picnic basket to forage for one of Hop Sing’s chicken legs. “Kind of like what a fish does in a regular fish story. It gets bigger as it goes along. Right, Josey?”

     Josey nodded but kept right on writing. She did manage to reach down beside her and hand her middle cousin a white linen napkin to wipe his chin.  All she needed was chicken grease on her pages.

     “I still don’t think the fish should keep getting bigger,” Adam pouted.

     “Just leave me alone,” she turned her back on Adam and Hoss. “You’re ruining my concentration.”

 

                 “That sounds like a real whopper,” Ben Cartwright remarked wiping his lips with his white linen napkin and looking skeptically at his middle son.

                 Ben’s youngest son Joe softly giggled, his chin in his hand, and his oldest son Adam tried hard to keep a straight face as they both studied Hoss. Josey Cartwright looked at her biggest cousin sympathetically.          

                 “It sure was,” Hoss oblivious to his male family members’ scrutiny smiled broadly at Josephine and helped himself to the mashed potatoes. His left eye was beginning to swell slightly and there did appear to be a lump on his forehead where he could have been hit by a fishing pole but by Jake?

                 The others’ skepticism did not go unnoticed by the petite blonde who sat by Hoss’s side.  “But it’s true, Mr. Cartwright, sir,” Miss Benson piped up in his defense. “Every last bit of it.  And Jake really did catch the fish.”

                 “Oh, really?” Ben gave Katie a look guaranteed to make anybody on the receiving end of it admit to almost any wrongdoing including stretching the truth just a little.  “Young lady,” he cleared his throat, “I believe you less than I believe my son.”

           

     “I hate to criticize you, but your uncle doesn’t scare me, Josey,” Katie Benson, heiress and the latest damsel to be rescued by Hoss, said matter-of-factly biting into a sandwich.

     Josephine turned to look at the petite blonde who had joined the picnic. Where did she come from?

     “I’ll be sure to tell him that, little girl,” a voice boomed above her head.

     Katie gulped and looked up to find Ben, the patriarch of the Cartwright clan, towering over her, arms folded across his chest giving her one of his ‘sure to put the fear of God in you’ looks.

     Josey somehow ignored the exchange and continued.

 

                 “But, Pa…” Hoss protested as his brothers buried their faces in their hands and howled while Katie looked deeply offended by Ben’s remark.

                 “Listen,” Ben held up his hand to stop Hoss in mid-sentence and as a bonus quieted the laughter of his other sons.  “I can almost believe Jake hitting you with the pole and by some wild circumstance that Jake landed a fish but I can’t quite believe that any fish caught by a horse weighs thirty-three pounds!”

                 “But, Pa…” Hoss now was beginning to whine but was interrupted by a clatter of pans and a flurry of angry Cantonese from the kitchen.

                 The Chinese cook then appeared, placed a platter of pork chops on the table in front of Ben with a loud bang and glared at Hoss.  “Mistah Hoss, you have big trouble with Hop Sing.  Hop…”

                 Hoss sighed and shook his head. “I told you I’d get you the wash tub back as soon as we finish dinner.”

                 Ben wasn’t paying attention to the exchange between the two. Instead he was concentrating on the platter of pork chops.  He then raised his eyebrows and looked quizzically at his middle son. “I thought we were having a thirty-three pound fish for dinner, Hoss.  If my eyes are not deceiving me and granted, I could be wrong, but this doesn’t look like fish.”

                 “Well, um, sir, well…”

                 “Umm, what? You didn’t let this thirty-three pound monster fish get away, did you?”

                 Nah, Pa. It’s nothing like that.”

                “Well, then, what’s it like?”

                “Well, like I said, Jake caught the fish.”

                “So?”

                “Well, he and Jonah…”

                “…Jonah?”

 

     “What kind of name is that for a fish, anyway?” Joe Cartwright demanded looking over her shoulder.

     Josey gave up trying to figure out how all of her relatives had managed to track her down and kept writing.

     “Think Bible, baby brother,” Adam whispered and motioned with his head to their father who was still trying to intimidate Miss Benson.

     “Oh,” Joe nodded finally getting it and went back to his reading.

 

                 Hoss took a deep breath, “…Well, gee, Pa, you didn’t expect us to eat Jonah, did you?             After all, he’s Jake’s fish, not mine.”

                 Ben was so flabbergasted he couldn’t talk.  He just sat there with his mouth open, nothing coming out.

 

     “That’ll be the day,” Joe interjected.

     “That’ll be a miracle,” Adam mumbled.

     “What are you all talking about, anyway?” Ben stopped glaring at Katie and sat down on the blanket next to his niece. He began to glance over what the petite redhead had written.

     “We’re helping Josey with her story, Pa,” Hoss beamed up at his father, trying to divert his attention from his brothers’ comments.

     “I can just imagine,” Ben rolled his eyes, patted her sympathetically on the shoulder and kept reading. “Josephine, for the record, I know the difference between pork chops and fish.”

     “I should hope so,” Adam said sarcastically.

     “What, college boy?” Ben glared at him.

     “Of course you know,” Adam smiled innocently back at his father.

     “Ah-ha,” Ben wasn’t so sure that was his eldest’s original statement but he thought he’d let it slide. “Did you mention to her you’d sooner be hit in the head?” he poked his middle son in the ribs.

     Hoss nodded and picked up another chicken leg.  “Adam did too.”

     “And?”

     “She said she’d take it under advisement, Pa.

     Josey smiled weakly at her uncle but immediately knew she made the right decision and wasn’t changing the point of injury for love or money.

     Ben reached into the basket, pulled out an apple and began to peel it with his pocket knife.

           

                 “Anyway, it would deeply offend Jake to eat Jonah, him being a vegetarian and all, Pa,” Hoss picked up his fork and reached for the pork chop platter. 

                 “Oh, Jonah’s a vegetarian?” Adam asked innocently watching Hoss stab two big ones and place them on his plate.

                 “Of course not, you smart-aleck,” Hoss frowned at his older brother.

            “Jake’s a vegetarian.”

 

     “A what?” Hoss scratched his head.       

     Adam unsuccessfully stifled a laugh that earned him a glare from Hoss.

 

                 “I thought he was a horse,” Joe chimed in, trying not to laugh.

 

     “I wouldn’t say that!” Joe protested frowning at his cousin. “And I agree with Pa and Hoss and Adam about getting hit in the …”

     Josey rolled her eyes. What a family! She thought not listening to whatever else her youngest cousin was saying.

 

                 “Horses are vegetarians,” Hoss turned his frown toward his little brother this time.

 

     Oh, that’s right,” Hoss wiped his mouth with the napkin.

     Josey shook her head wearily and sighed.

           

                 “Show me this fish right this minute!”  Ben, his very limited patience at its end, bellowed causing all the other diners to jump in their chairs.  He tossed his napkin back on the table and got to his feet.

                 “But, Pa, what about dinner?” Hoss asked plaintively as his father grabbed him by the arm and hauled him out of his chair like he hadn’t done since Hoss was eight and on his way to the woodshed because of some sassy back-talk. If Ben had been dragging him by his right ear instead of his arm, the memory would have been complete.

 

     “I think that was Joe,” Ben munched on the apple loudly right in his niece’s ear.

     “Huh?” Josey looked at her uncle blankly.

     “I did that to Joe, not Hoss. Hoss wasn’t much for sassy back-talk.”

     Both Joe and Hoss looked confused by their father’s comment.           

     Adam chuckled since he knew it was him.

     Josey put her hand to her forehead.  “It’s Hoss now,” she told him emphatically.

     Ben shrugged and took another bite of the apple.          

 

                 Joe and Adam smirked identical smirks…

 

     “We do not!” Joe glared at his eldest brother and his cousin.

     “Never mind,” Josey said irritably.

 

                 … … and took Katie and Josey by the arms to follow their brother and father out the   front door.  The Chinese cook dutifully followed. There in the barn was Jake gazing intently at something inside Hop Sing’s wash tub that was now loaded on the buckboard.           The big horse’s head seemed to be following the movement of whatever was in the huge             metal container.

                 “Let’s get on with it,” Ben released Hoss and pushed him toward the big black gelding who swung around to face the six non-vegetarians.

                 “Now, Jake,” Hoss held up his hands to show the horse that he had no weapons.

 

     … Like a knife or fork or something like that, Josey thought to herself giggling. 

 

                 “We don’t want to hurt Jonah. Pa doesn’t believe you caught that big a fish," he nodded his head in his father’s direction.

                 Jake snorted at Ben looking at him in disgust and Ben crossed his arms over his chest and glared at the horse to little effect.

                 “Well, in Pa’s defense we ain’t never ever had a horse catch a fish before, Jake, and it is a trifle hard to believe so,” he  tried to ease himself around the big black gelding, “He     just wants to get a good look at him."

                 “I for one would like to get a good look at Jonah, too, if you don’t mind, Jake,” Joe moved forward also.

                 “We do, too, Jake,” Josey pulled Adam along after her …

 

     Thinking that somehow he might be able to say something intelligent at this point to help this story along.  Up to now, his showing had been less than brilliant, she scrawled.

     “Hey,” Adam read over his cousin’s shoulder. “I can be as smart and witty as the next guy if you let me be.”

     “You could have fooled me,” she jotted down his and her comments on the page.

     “And I’m right about getting hit in the head!” he insisted stubbornly.

 

                 The big gelding grudgingly moved aside but stuck to Ben like glue lest he try anything funny.

 

     Let’s hope so.  Anything funny would be welcome at this point, she wrote again.

     “Somehow I don’t think you’re properly concentrating on your writing today,” Adam perused the last couple lines and began to rummage through the basket himself.

 

                 All six of them looked into the tub at the same time, then looked at Jake, then back in the tub and then at Hoss…

           

     …then looked at everyone who was not invited but had showed up anyway to share her picnic lunch, she continued to scribble.  Why won’t these people leave me alone? Can’t they see I’m trying to work?  I don’t bother them when they’re trying to cut down a tree or dig a ditch or brand a calf or break a bronco. What do I have to do to make them get the message?

     “I still don’t believe a horse can catch a fish, even a smart one like Jake,” Adam threw a grape up in the air and caught it in his mouth. “You better think about a rewrite, sweetheart,” he caught another one and smirked at the petite redhead.

     Josey frowned at him especially for the use of the term of endearment.  She herself had a few hundred choice names that she would like to call him and her other male relatives for sabotaging her work. Of course, her other male relatives might not hear her since they along with Miss Benson had found comfortable spots close by and were catching up on their sleep. Too bad Adam hadn’t or maybe she wouldn’t still be suffering from writer’s block and feeling totally inadequate as an author right now.  She stood up to stretch but then managed to catch sight of Jake who was moving toward them at a terrific pace.  Josey shielded her eyes from the sun so she could get a better look.  He seemed to be carrying something in his mouth.  Good boy, Jake, she grinned recognizing even from a distance what he had and wisely moved out of the way to watch the show.

     “What the…?!?!?” Jake’s approach did not go totally unnoticed by Adam but unfortunately his reaction time was not what it should have been.

     “Here you go, college boy!” the big black gelding galloped up and heaved a ‘God must have been listening’ thirty-six pound fish at the eldest Cartwright son’s crotch area.

     Adam who was in mid swallow nearly choked on a grape and made a face that neither Josey nor any other female writer could accurately describe.  

     “Thanks, Jake,” she giggled as Adam swore in a voice much higher than his normal baritone and grabbed that portion of his anatomy where ‘he did not want to be hit in’ with the ‘I almost could have kissed him’ forty-one pound fish. “You’ll never know how many ways you’ve helped me out with that.”

     “You know, Josey, that is funnier,” Hoss agreed and patted Jake on the muzzle as Joe corralled the ‘you had to have been there’ forty-five pound trout, Katie howled and Ben tried to help his injured offspring.          

     “Told you,” Josey laughed and sat down to finish the rest of the story.

 

     “Did you have to get such a big fish?” the little insect returned and found a place to perch on Jake’s left ear.

     “Well, little lady,” Jake drawled watching Hoss and Ben pick up Adam and place him gingerly in the carriage. “In this case, size matters,” he smirked. “Anyway, Henry here owed me a favor,” he turned to retrieve the trout from the blanket where Joe had left him laying. “You okay, buddy?” he looked the piscine eyeball to eyeball.

     The big fish flapped its tail happily in response.

     “Do you think Adam’s eyes will ever uncross?” the ladybug looked concerned as Jake gently picked Henry up in his mouth again.

     “Serves him right,” the big horse mumbled, swung around and headed back for the lake.

 

     Epilogue: For the record, Henry weighs less than forty-five pounds but more than ten.  Also, Henry does not believe that Hoss is a ‘funny name for a fish.’  He himself has a cousin named ‘Hoss.’ Finally, the answer to the question in the prologue is both but the actual writer had it first.

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    *Many thanks to David Dortort for his creation of Bonanza in general and the Cartwrights, Hop Sing and the Ponderosa in particular. The author does not claim ownership of any of the aforementioned characters. This story is not intended to infringe on any known copyrights. Josephine Marie Cartwright © December, 2004, Susan Kathryn ‘Katie’ MacHaynes Benson © January, 2005, Jake the Horse © December, 2004, Little Lady the Ladybug © May, 2005, and Henry the Trout alias Jonah © May, 2005 are copyrighted characters belonging to the author. ALL INTERNATIONAL RIGHTS ARE RESERVED.

 

 

 

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