It was an act of violence rougher than anything Hemingway ever wrote about – the blood-curdling screams made me sick to my stomach. But about that time I hooked a monster bluegill…

A Southern Tall Tale

Excuse me, gents. Jimmy Shakes here, nice to meet ya. I couldn’t help but overhear your debate about the most dangerous fighting fish. Yeah, I know, black marlins, great whites and piranha are pretty rough characters. But if you ask me, pound for pound, the bluegill bream is most the lethal fish in the water. If it wasn’t for the bluegill, my little brother Corky would still be alive today.

What’s so funny? You don’t believe me? Buy me a beer and I’ll tell you all about it. Aw, thanks, man that’s good and cold.

Anyhow, it wasn’t really just one bream. It was more like a whole mess of ‘em. And they had a little help from Momma. And that gator. But I’ll get to that in a minute.

Do you know Momma? Oh, sure you do. Or at least you know a Momma like her. Hardworking. Tough. Wears an apron everywhere, garden or grocery store. Can hug you to death or beat you to death, depending on what would do you the most good. Momma don’t tolerate no foolishness, like laziness, drunkenness and adulterizing.

If the Good Lord made a better Southern cook He kept her upstairs for Himself. She will cook anything you can catch and or shoot. Cooked an armadillo one time. I ate the whole thing and drank the gravy out the shell, I ain’t gone lie!

Only mistake Momma ever made was having kids. Sure, I turned out alright. I ain’t in the Fortune 400, but I get by. The baby brother, Corky? Well, even Momma says he come up from the bottom of the gene pool. And he came floating up cigar and beer first. Corky ain’t but about five-foot nothing in his cowboy boots, lost all his teeth, married to a real sweet woman. But Corky ain’t done right by her since day one, if you know what I mean.

About the only thing Corky and I have in common is fishing. We can’t get enough. And it was bluegill fishing that got Corky kilt. See, we were fishing at Uncle Earl’s Pond and me, Corky and two of our cousins were all fishing and having a grand time. Man, the bream were on fire, and the ice cold Buds were going down smooth.

You ever just lay back on a dock, pants rolled up, feet in the water, cold one in hand and just let the sun warm your skin and the fish take the bait? That’s the greatest feeling in the world, ain’t it? Mr. Hemingway should have written about that instead of chasing after them swordfish!

Then all of a sudden we ran out of smokes. That’s when the trouble started.

Sure, I’ll take another cold one. You’re a good man. Anyway, I tried to talk them out of it.

“Boys, you have been drinking,” I said. “You ain’t got no business in town!” But they wouldn’t listen. Corky decided that since his license was already suspended he had the least to lose, and he was going to the truck-stop Piggly Wiggly in Swampton. You know, the only one in town that sells fish bait, fried chicken and diesel fuel. So I figured the safest thing to do was ride with him, try to keep him out of trouble. We took up a collection – ten bucks was all the cousins and I had on us – and me and Corky took off.

We almost made it back without trouble, too. Got some cigars, both nightcrawlers and crickets, and two more cases of Buds. Forgot the cooler, so I asked the gal in the meat market for an empty chicken box and some ice, and we dumped them in there. Grabbed some Slim Jims and Lotto scratch-offs at the checkout, and was loading up in the truck when here they came. The Lot Lizards.

What, you don’t know about lizards? Momma calls them “tawdry trollops” and “floozies,” among other things. Here they came, wearing sundresses and too much makeup to be walking around with no shoes. I try not to judge people, though, and there is something to be said about a lady in a sundress and dirty feet, but I digress.

“Hey, where y’all going with all that beer?” they hollered at us from a Ford pickup. A whole truck full of them. No license plate on the truck.

“Don’t answer that, Corky!” I warned. I knew what my wife, Momma Shakes, would do if she caught me talking to some Lot Lizards.

“Oh, we going fishing!” Corky said cheerfully, with his toothless grin that certain women somehow found cute and charming.

“We love to fish! Can we come?”

“Why, heck, yeah!”

What, you ain’t never picked up a wild woman in a Piggly Wiggly parking lot? I bet you’ve never fallen in love with a Huddle House waitress coming off the night shift, either, have you? Look here, Mister Holy Britches, don’t judge us, we just a different kind of fisherman down South than you are, but you ain’t no better than us!

Okay, apology accepted. Anyway, Corky was about to get us in trouble.

“Corky, I got a bad feeling,” I told him. “Maybe you better send those ladies on somewhere else.”

“Nah, it’ll be fine,” Corky grinned. “What are you, chicken?”

Well that did it. Ain’t nobody gonna accuse me of fowl play. Get it? Whatever.

So there we were, cruising down the dirt road back toward Uncle Earl’s pond. I’ve got a bad feeling, Corky’s got a cold Bud between his knees, a cigar in his mouth, scratching off a Lotto ticket as he’s driving and there’s a truckload of women trailing behind us and kicking up dust, a country caravan of trouble.

“It’s gonna be my lucky day!” he hooped at me. Corky, it turned out, was no prophet.

We rounded the corner at the fish pond there, saw the cousins steady catching all the fish, and then we saw something else, something that almost made my heart slam to a stop and made my blood run cold as those Buds in that chicken box!

Maybe it was a sixth sense. Maybe it was Mother’s Intuition. Or maybe it was that phone call I made while Corky was talking to the lizards, but there stood Momma! Still wearing her dirty garden frock, right there at the bank of the pond, arms crossed, waiting on Corky with a tree limb in each hand! We screeched to a stop, and the women – who obviously didn’t know the world of hurt we were about to be in – came piling out of that Ford ready to party and catch a mess of bluegills.

What, you ain’t never ratted out your brother? Look here, Mr. High Horse, bluegill fishing is all about sabotaging your partner. It’s a cut-throat business, brother against brother! Okay? You better buy us another beer before I get offended and don’t tell you the end of this story! That’s what I thought.

So anyway, you ever hear a grown man scream? And then squeal like a piglet? Oh, Corky was always a crybaby – man, sometimes we would start crying before Momma even whipped him, just to get some pity – but this time was different.

“Boy, you got a wife at home!” our sweet, red-faced Momma yelled, leveling down on Corky with both of those tree limbs in rhythm like she was beating a drum. “You out here drinking and fishing,” Momma ranted, breaking one stick over Corky’s rear end, “and gallivanting with strange women,” then breaking the second stick, “and you got a wife at home!”

Mister, I’ve seen a lot of horrible things in my time. I’ve worked in a slaughterhouse. I’ve worked in a school house. But I’m here to tell you that this was the worst act of violence I have even seen. Rougher than anything Hemingway ever wrote about. It was all I could do to bait my hook and start fishing. But it didn’t take but one cast to tell they were still biting!

Momma tried to slap the cigar out of Corky’s mouth, proceeded to beat that little fella until both sticks broke, then picked up a cane pole – my dang pole, might I add, and I’m still pretty upset about it! – then broke off about a four-foot section of it over her knee and beat him with that for a while.

Me? What was I doing? Well, I was minding my own business, that’s what! The cousins and the lizards had done jumped in the truck together and escaped, so I sat there fishing in Corky’s favorite spot, just pulling in those bluegills and minding my own business. I was pulling them in as fast as I could re-bait the hook!

I’m sorry, I know it ain’t funny, but I can’t stop laughing when I think about this part. So he tries to run away, right? Well Momma jumps on his back. She done beat the back side of him black and blue, so now there she is, a big woman to start with – still wearing her kitchen apron, I might add – and now she’s riding on that boy’s back and beating the front side of him with that cane pole of mine. There’s still a little bit of 20-pound test line hanging off the end of it, so it snaps like a whip every time she swings it, breaking the sound barrier like you hear one of them lion tamers do at the circus.

Whip! “Awww!” Whip-snap! “Awww! Momma, please stop!” Whip! “Ohh, you killing me!”

That went on for a while, and the blood-curdling screams made me sick to my stomach. But about that time I hooked a monster bluegill. Huge! Had my pole bent over and that line was singing louder than Momma’s whip! But anyway, Corky shakes her off his back like a hound shaking off an angry Bo Coon that’s done jumped him, and dives into the pond to swim to safety.

Lucky for him, Momma can’t swim, what with her bad legs and all. Can’t get the bandages or the diabetic shoes wet. But them gators sure can. A small one – I reckon he was just a teenage juvenile, about a five-footer or so – latched on to one of Corky’s short little legs. It tried to do a death roll, but Corky whipped it around and came back on shore, dragging that pond lizard, and Momma started beating him again. Momma wouldn’t turn loose and the gator wouldn’t turn loose, either! She beat Corky for a while, then she beat that gator for a while. Man, that sure was a time! I laughed and laughed at them tussling around, and just kept pulling in one bluegill after another.

So Corky decided it was best to take his chances with the gator. He jumped back in the water and it was tooth and claw for a while, both of them clawing and gnawing at each other. Corky and the gator were about the same size and it would have been a fair fight, too, if Corky would have still had teeth and hadn’t been toothless and all. Momma told him to brush his teeth when he was little, but did he listen? Noooo….there’s a lesson for you there, fellas, always mind your mammy.

What do you mean, why didn’t I jump in and save him? I done told you, the bream were biting! I was busy! And if Corky would have just set that beer down for one second he could have fought that gator off better, but that’s Corky for ya. Didn’t want to spill a drop. And it probably didn’t help that he was trying to hold his cigar out the water so it wouldn’t get wet!”

I’m swear I’m telling the God’s-honest truth! You know what Momma would do to me if she caught me in a lie? Wait a minute, where are you fellas going? I’m not done with the story.

Do you guys like big game hunting stories better? Wanna hear about the time I was attacked by a killer buck rabbit and a vampire squirrel?

Okay, well thanks for the beer!