SWARM

Wendigos

Chapter 7

Isaac has a smoke fish family business aside from preaching, and his nephew named Raymond is a big part of running the family business. A large fish pond filled with channel catfish is not far from where they built their house of two floors, four bedrooms, and three baths. Next to the country house is a barn, then the barn is added with a tiny house, which previously belonged to Isaac's uncle and aunt. When they passed, Raymond was old enough to move into that same little house. The barn's attached home comes with a spacious kitchen big enough for socializing with visitors, one room with a king-sized bed, then one bathroom with an old tub, where Raymond added a shower-head.

Each morning after a cup of black coffee, Isaac loves going over the fish pond with a white bucket full of fish food and talking to his nephew, then they both toss fish food from the white bucket over the water. It has become a ritual, and when tiny pebbles of fish food are pouring to the edge of the lake, catfish will swarm towards it. The catfish wildly splashes like the sound of rainfall, and they slide on one another to get to the edge to feed and slide back out to the deeper waters. "Look how fast they've grown, Raymond. Glory hallelujah... thank you, Jesus," Isaac says. And he looks at his pond as a blessing from God.

The catfish are big enough for netting. Isaac and Raymond slipped on their waterfowls, got on the waters, and set the big net to harvest the fish. They then separate the once for fresh meat and the once for smoking. Now it's cutting time. Isaac puts on his butcher suit and prepares to work traditionally like the father before him. He is barefooted and wears no wet boots; a few times, he only wears underwear with one knife. "Life is simple," he said. But fever took a toll on him for the water he used to clean the messy butchery fires only cold water. Now, being barefooted at work is just an exception from his wife.

On his right side is a big bucket full of fish. On top is a faucet hanging down with a high water pressure shower head; the thick waterproof jacket he wears now protects him from the cold. There is a big bucket on the left with a garbage bag where he throws the bones and guts. The silver butcher table in front of him has no sink. The floor he stands on is cemented only five feet squares with a five by ten inches drain in the middle that shapes down three inches deep with five inches wide rectangular funnel. The waters flow to the sewer, and just a tiny sprinkler wetting the grass around the square floor. Isaac washes the big white plastic wooden butcher block on a silver table with silver metal legs; then he puts on a chain glove on his left hand; he sharpens his fillet knife, and a big wooden lamp stands at the left corner behind the butcher table is on. Isaac picks up his first fish from the big bucket, then begins to cut.

Raymond goes down and sets woods for the two wooden smoker ovens, and he uses alder woods in one of the smokers and maple woods in the other. What Isaac just cut, Raymond places them on a tray, and when the shelves are full, he fires the smokers. When the fish are smoked, Raymond lets them cool down inside the barn. There is a table inside the barn with a shrink wrap machine and foam boards; the prepping table is next to four wooden carts with five shelves reserved for filling wrapped fish ready to be delivered.

The other business that the family has is their Nursery Home. Mrs. Elk owns it for the elderly; the nursing home was once a house for her late parents. She's got six elderly patients at a time to care for, and she treats them like she did to her parents when they were old and still alive. The house has a Wurlitzer Spinet piano, one dog, two rabbits, and three cats. A large garden with two hummingbird feeders and one large butterfly home. Her sister-in-law Susan also works with her with two other staff as Nurse-Aids. One guy is a janitor, dishwasher, and laundryman. Susan does the cooking as well, and Raymond is a volunteer maintenance man. A white painted wood sign hangs on the front door and says, "American Robin's Tree House." It's not a treehouse, of course, but it's a double-deck Victorian Cottage. Although Mrs. Elk gets busy on her job, sometimes she gives space to help shrink wrap some fish for Raymond and Isaac and her sister Susan. After the packaging, the last step is placing labels on each tray that they take immense pride in, "The Red Sea - Isaac Fish Farm."