As He Lay Dying-3

Pickerel served as a sort of siren call of the New Jersey Pine Barrens for Dave and me, ensconced as those bullet-shaped fish were in the tea-like cedar water of the former cranberry bogs. New Jersey ranks somewhere in the top five of cranberry-producing states, after Wisconsin and Massachusetts, according to the Census Bureau. And sometimes we drank a little cranberry juice with our liquor. Mainly, though, cranberries were of tangential interest to us because of the fish habitat provided by their former harvest areas.
Our most productive trip to our favorite bog came as we fished yet again on a college spring break. Between us we caught more than 50 pickerel that blustery March day, the peculiar beauty of the dark-green chain link patterns on their sides contrasting with their paler bodies, their ample dentition ensuring that we didn't grow careless when removing hooks. Joe and Brett went to the go-go bar that day, and when we got back to the house, they told us they encountered far fewer teeth in that not-so-upscale gentlemen's establishment On that trip, Joe walked into the roof rack on the side of my '68 Dart and wound up with a rectangular indentation in his forehead that seemed to last for years.
Dave, we also took your brother Jeff there, on another occasion, and he reminded me recently of how he threw up intermittently on the car ride there and how that angered you. That's what he got for visiting his big brother in college and drinking with us.On one of those occasions, he offered this maxim:

     Liquor then beer, nothing to fear.
     Beer and then liquor, never been sicker.

Those Pine Barrens also allegedly housed the Jersey Devil, and didn't we end up going to our share of New Jersey Devils games? Maybe we did drink a bit more than we should have that one particular night. Just that once.
Back to the pickerel, though, and how some years after that we spent some gray March days in a different environment. You and Kim, and Joe and Jeff, were among those there for me when I had my hospital and ECT stint. Kim and I not too long ago tried to remember the year you guys got married; the cancellation of the World Series served as her reference point, and it occurred the same year I was in the hospital. I suppose when we took to the hunt for pickerel I didn't suspect what would befall me, and I regret that you guys felt like I didn't pay as much attention to our relationship following the hospital stay. I certainly didn't feel cured, only that I perhaps had gotten a reprieve, and my perceived aloofness really amounted to me withdrawing into a shell and tending only to the details necessary for survival. Not what I would call the best of times, and shame sometimes enveloped me. Shame over a marital dissolution and shame over my inability to meet the expectations laid out for me.
Had I the chance I would change some of that. I don't believe those people who say they wouldn't change any of it, that it all somehow contributed to the people they became, and that's good. I'm not entirely satisfied with who I've become, and maybe a little less adversity or a little more of a proactive approach would have meant a positive difference. Fewer terror-filled nights and fewer fruitless sessions with out-of-touch psychiatrists might have served me well.
I wouldn't change our time together, though. When we hung out at the house on Whitehorse and you watched the TV so fixedly that I couldn't get your attention, much as it drove me crazy. Those Sunday nights getting Chinese food from the Panda. The time in the bar next door, of course. The parties outside and the quoits, and you picking me up--this time in joy, not anger--when I won that game on our last shot as the yellow-tinged parking-lot light offered barely enough to see by just this side of midnight.
You and Jeff on one of those trips mocked me over toilet-paper technique, you advocates of the upswipe. You relented some years later when Howard Stern, that renowned wiping guru, recommended the downswipe. Some motherfucking nerve, you students of scatology. We also stopped off after one of our pickerel trips at the school over which your father presided as principal. We arrived just in time for the assembly at which animals took center stage. That is, until you and I saw the kid trying to pick up the lop-eared bunny by those very ears. Another incident stuck in the scrapbook of my mind, a building block that helped to construct the compartment in which reside the accumulation of snapshots providing testament to a friendship.