Ten-Pound Tale

By Nancy

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Thank you to Mr. Dortort who created these characters, with the exception of Angus McNally, and shared them. This story is purely for entertainment and is not intended to infringe on his rights or the rights of anyone else involved in this marvelous show.

Special thanks to Marion for the idea and the challenge.

There are some things that a man has to decide when to tell his sons. And there are some things that a man has to decide how to tell his sons. And then there are the things that a man has to decide whether to tell his sons.

I have found, in twenty-one years of fatherhood, that deciding whether to tell a son something is by far the hardest of the three decisions.

My most recent "whether" decision, which my longtime friend Angus so graciously helped me resolve, came about because of Joe's imagination. Well, I think it was Joe's imagination. Saints, I hope it was Joe's imagination.

Joe appeared over the rise this afternoon, kicking Paint into a dead run, with Smoke tearing along six feet behind. My youngest son was out of the saddle before Paint even missed him. And he barreled toward me as Angus and I paused by the corral. Joe's tongue hung from the side of his mouth, and his arms circled in the air as if he were swimming.

"Pa! Pa!"

I knew that run and I knew there was little chance he would stop in time. I spread my feet and braced for a collision. But he skidded to a halt no more than a half dozen inches from me and, just in case I hadn't heard him yelling before - or anyone had any doubt as to my identity - he shouted, "Pa!"

While Joe spread his hands on my stomach and leaned forward, catching his breath, Adam strolled around the side of the barn, wiping his hands on a cloth. Hoss paused by the wagon, the grease bucket swinging from his left hand, and his forehead wrinkled.

"What's this, d'ya think?" Angus asked.

"Pa," Joe gasped. "It was a monster!"

I think I slid my eyes shut. I know I sighed, "Joseph."

"No, Pa! It was!"

I opened my eyes and studied Joe's face; flushed, sweaty, covered with enough dirt that I couldn't see his freckles.

"What was it this time?" Adam sauntered to us. "A three-headed bear with a tail like an alligator?"

"Maybe it was a big old bird with horns and it blew fire from its mouth," Hoss suggested. He grinned and put down the bucket.

Joe turned from me, toward his brothers, and stuck out his chin. "It was a big hairy man kind of thing."

"A big hairy man kind of thing," Adam repeated with a healthy amount of skepticism and an indulgent smile he didn't try to hide.

Joe waved an arm toward Hoss, who was walking toward us. "It was bigger than Hoss. Way bigger." His excited eyes shot up to Angus. "It was even bigger than you, Mr. McNally."

"A monster was it?" Angus asked with far too much interest.

"Joseph," I said quickly. "Tend Paint, please, and we'll discuss your . . . monster . . . at supper."

"And bigger than me, ya say?" Angus continued.

It was too late to salvage the situation. Hoss was beside Angus, hands at his hips, leaning from the waist toward Joe exactly the way Angus was.

Adam looked at me and rolled his eyes. But he, too, put his hands at his hips and turned his attention to Joe.

"It was bigger than you," Joe said as he nodded. "And it had furry hair all over it." He bent his knees slightly and swung his arms at his side. "And it walked like this and it kept looking around like maybe something was following it." He stood straight and wrinkled his nose. "And it smelled something awful."

Hoss' eyes rounded and he leaned closer to Joe. "You mean ya were close enough to smell it?"

"It was awful." Joe looked around to be sure he had a full audience and he thoughtfully waited until Hop Sing joined us, having made his way from the garden. Joe raked his arm across his forehead, leaving behind a strip of less dirty face. "It was so big that Smoke didn't even go off after it. He just whimpered and sat there."

Angus and Hoss looked toward Smoke, who was drinking water from the trough as if he was afraid he'd never get another chance.

"Joseph," I said softly, "you need to tend Paint."

Adam, who seemed to have heard enough already, walked past me to Paint and led her to the corral. All the same, I noticed that he tied her nearby.

"And this monster ya saw, did it make a sound?" Angus tilted his head to one side as if he were comparing Joe's account to something he'd heard before.

Joe looked to the heavens a moment, which surprised me - usually a story bursts out of him without any discernable effort. "Nooo," he said slowly. "It sort of grunted and I could hear it breathing. Hard. Like a horse."

Adam was unsaddling Paint but that didn't keep him from remarking that it was probably another man in a costume, the way the Lake Monster had been.

I winced.

"Lake monster?" Angus stood straight. "Whereabouts would this lake monster be?"

"Well," Hoss shrugged and grinned. "It wasn't really a lake monster, Mr. McNally. It was this fella wearing an outfit and swimming underneath it. It showed up with a preacher who did healings."

"This wasn't any dressed up man!" Joe shouted in Adam's direction. "It was too big and it smelled awful."

But Angus' thoughts had turned to a different sort of creature. "I 'aven't heard of a water monster since the one we saw, Benjamin."

That was it. My sails ripped, I lost anchor, and my ship of logic went asunder thanks to Angus' inability to think his actions through.

Hop Sing gave me a sideways look. Hoss was the first of my sons to find voice. "A water monster, Pa?"

Joe stood gaping up at me. Adam was brushing down Paint, albeit distractedly.

"It wasn't a water monster, boys, it was-"

"'Twas a sea monster," Angus corrected. "Yer father and I saw it with our own eyes." He rubbed at his beard. "Let's see now, when would that've been, Benjamin?"

"Back in '21," I replied glumly. When we'd been fourteen and brainless.

Angus continued to rub at his beard. "Let's see now, 'twas the year they built the lighthouse there on Ten Pound Island, I recall that on account of it made the inner harbor there at Glou'ster a bit safer."

"It was back in '21," I said again, crossing my arms.

"And seems it was before the tornadoes tore through New Hampshire and Massachusetts."

"It was '21, Angus."

My seemingly deaf friend snapped his fingers. "'Twas back in '21, it was. Yer father and me'd just put in the day before. We stopped at a tavern for a meal and ya wouldn't believe who was there at table."

"Who?" Hoss asked as if Angus needed any encouragement.

"'Twas one of the men of the Concord."

Hoss and Joe looked to me for explanation. Paint nudged Adam and he returned to brushing her down.

"The Concord," I explained, "was a sloop. Her crew saw a sea creature off Cape Ann a few years before."

Hop Sing smiled ever so slightly at me and then ducked his head.

"What kinda . . . creature?" Hoss was almost breathless.

I shrugged. "I can't remember how he described it but-"

"Some of 'em that saw it said it had the head of a turtle," Angus took up the story in his best oratorical manner. "Others said it had the head of snake but as large as a dog, some said as large as a horse."

"Maybe it was two monsters!" Joe shouted.

Angus shook his head slowly. "No, I'm thinkin' it was a trick o' the light."

Thank heavens! Finally, after what had to be fast approaching twenty years, Angus had accepted - as I had - that we had seen waves, or a school of fish, or a mat of kelp or -

"But I know what we saw. It was dark like coffee with a spot o' cream, wouldn't ya say, Benjamin?"

I waved a hand his way in agreement. It wasn't going to matter what I said at this point, even if I did recall it being more the color of oak tree bark and about the same texture.

"And 'twas smooth as a worm," Angus continued. "There's some that say it had scales but I'm thinkin' that was kelp or such clingin' to it."

"Where'd you see it, Pa?"

Was that Adam asking the question? I looked his direction and he was leaning on the inside of the corral. To my astonishment there wasn't a scrap of supercilious air to him.

"Off Gloucester."

"On the east side," Angus reported. "Not far from the ledges where it'd been seen oftimes before. We waited there 'alf the night, we did." He spread his feet and crossed his arms.

Hoss frowned. "How come you never told us about this before, Pa?"

How come, indeed. Hoss had believed in every fantasy that anyone had shared with him in New Orleans - from the mythical gods of Greece to the leprechauns of Ireland. Joseph still thought there were pirates abounding in Utah Territory. "I never thought it was important," I answered. Nor prudent.

"Did anyone ever catch one?" Thankfully Adam was looking from the sides of his eyes, a sign of renewed skepticism.

"Not that I recall," Angus admitted. "There was a giant snake or such that washed up but it was nothin' like what we saw."

Angus looked to me for confirmation. I couldn't lie. I shook my head that no, it was nothing like what we thought we had seen.

"What we saw," Angus continued, "was more of a giant snake than a worm. It had its head above water a good thirty feet."

It had been more like twenty, actually.

"And the top of it was brown, like I said."

Darker.

"And smooth."

Rough.

"And when it raised its head we could see yellow under its throat and along its stomach."

That was one of the few things we had agreed on.

"And you saw all this by the light of the moon," Adam said after a smirk.

It was a brilliant, full moon.

"'Twas a full moon, Adam," Angus answered. "Glowin' as bright as a lantern and reflectin' off the waves as if they were mirrors. I coulda told you the color of Benjamin's eyes by that light."

Or even how rounded they had undoubtedly been.

"The odd thing about it all was that the creature moved so fast," Angus said. "Like it was under full sail."

"It moved up and down, not side to side like a fish," I added. "The wake it left spread in a V. Its eyes glinted. And it had a forked tongue like a snake's."

Adam shook his head and went back to taking care of Paint.

Angus nodded vigorously. "And it came straight for us, it did. 'Twas good for us that we hadn't gone out in the dinghy as Benjamin had wanted but we stayed on shore as I had insisted." He thrust out his chest.

I seemed to recall it the other way around.

"It came straight for us," I took up the story. "But we may as well have been nailed in place on that rocky ground. My heart slammed against my chest, my hands were cold, my throat was as dry as it ever was crossing the desert. My knees shook, my arms trembled, and still I couldn't move."

Hoss and Joe were right there with me in their imaginations. Judging by the way Angus' attention was bound to me, he was remembering the night as vividly as I was.

"There was a light breeze off the land and we could hear muffled sounds of town," I said. "The horses' hoofs clacking, the laughter and voices of people walking near the harbor, the slap of the water against ships' hulls, the moan of the wooden wharves as the waves splashed around them. There'd be the slamming of a door or the bark of a dog." I lowered my voice, causing them to lean near. "But all of that seemed another place and time. Our only world was the creature bearing down on us, its glassy eyes staring through us."

"And then," Angus spoke almost at a whisper, "the most amazin' thing happened."

I raised my left hand and angled it downward. "When the creature was no more than thirty yards from us-"

"Twenty," Angus corrected.

All right. We'd tell it his way just as we had for weeks afterward. "When the creature was no more than twenty yards from us, it snaked its head underwater."

"We thought it was gone of course, who wouldn't?"

"But it wasn't," I said.

I wondered when Hoss and Joe had last taken a breath.

"Where was it?" Hoss asked after a huge gulp.

"It came up right in front of us!" Angus exclaimed. "That head was no more distance from us than you are from Adam there."

And it smelled awful.

Hoss and Joe turned to look at their brother.

Adam was bent over, his shoulder into Paint, as he checked her hoofs for stones.

"I reckon that's about twenty feet or so," Hoss decided.

Joe nodded as if he had any sense of distance at all.

"What'd you do then, Mr. McNally?" Joe asked.

That's when Angus decided to change the story. "We stood firm and stared right back at it."

"Then it lowered its head and went under like a whale."

"But we watched that water for the longest time," Angus said. "And it never came up for air, never broke the surface."

Hoss waved a dismissive hand. "There ain't nothin' that can hold its breath like that." He shook his head and turned back to the wagon.

Hop Sing gave up on us, too, and spoke softly to himself on the way back to the garden.

"Where do ya think it went?" Joe asked.

Angus shifted. "Probably out of the harbor, for others saw it until autumn along the coast." He suddenly glanced up at the lowering sun. "Heaven's graces, I'd best be leavin'. I thank you for the loan of the tools, Benjamin."

We shook hands and I told him I would see him Saturday at the Town Council meeting. Joseph walked over to stand beside me. I put my right hand on my son's shoulder and gave a single wave of my left hand as Angus rode off across the meadow. How in Zeus was I going to convince Joe that the entire thing had been a fabrication without lying to him?

"Pa?" Joe squinted as he looked up at me.

"Umm?"

"That was a real good story that Mr. McNally and you told."

I grinned. "Thank you, son."

"But, Pa?"

"Umm?"

"What I saw was real."

The End