Story-A-Day #107: Old Elmer

OLD ELMER

It was cool, not cold. A wet wind blew in across the open expanse of the ice-covered lake, buffeting the tree limbs gently in its wake.

He took a pull ion his cigarette and flipped the butt out through the air. It landed in an explosion of orange sparks, and slowly slid to a stop next to the half buried boardwalk.

He pulled his jacket in tighter and slid another smoke from the cardboard box. He tucked the cigarette between his and lit it with a disposable lighter. He exhaled a blast of blue grey smoke and surveyed the lake. A small village of huts, trailers, cars, trucks, and snowmobiles had formed about a kilometer out from the shoreline.

It was the big fishing derby, an annual event that drew in crowds from miles around. It was a bit of a joke locally, hinging as it did on landing the big one. Old Elmer was a local myth, a sturgeon reported to measure nearly three metres in length and weighing nearly a full ton.

How did people know how much Elmer weighed if he had never been caught? How did people know how long he measured? Elmer was an amalgamation of dozens of reports, but like most urban legends, it was impossible to substantiate something based solely on the eyewitness accounts of those who had “nearly landed the big one”.

The fact that there was no way you could pull a sturgeon that was purported to be that large through your typical ice fishing hole seemed to escape most people. He realized that the town officials were just using the legend to create more interest and build up the economy, but that’s what bugged him the most.

Elmer wasn’t just a legend. Elmer wasn’t a sturgeon either, but he was out there. Elmer had taken his father nearly 20 years before, and the man had seen him several times over the years.

Elmer was out there, and the man would one day prove it. The dead of winter was not the time, but one day, possibly this summer even, he would prove it. He threw his cigarette butt down next to the previous one and walked back into the bar.