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agita.
    And this Sunday morning was especially good. This Sunday morning Turtleback Lake had offered up its one true delicacy – a lovely, sixteen-inch lake trout. Trout were the only fish Bill kept. The rest – the large and small mouth basses, the perches and pickerels, the sunnies, blue gills, and pikes – all went back into the lake to catch again another day. But a trout like this one, silvery and speckled, with plump, delicate flesh, such a fish was meant to swim in a pan of melted, bubbling butter.
    Bill knew that when he got back to shore, his daughter Mimi and his granddaughter Lulu would be waiting for him. They always came for Sunday morning brunch. But the rolls and cold cuts Bill had bought for their visit would have to wait. Today, they’d all be having fresh-caught lake trout.
    For a moment, it actually felt good to be alive. Bill dipped his oars into the water. He couldn’t wait to get to shore and show his catch to his daughter.
    Then the oar in Bill’s right hand jerked. Something was tugging at the end of it. The oar slipped out of his hand, swung wildly and struck Bill in the mouth, splitting his lip. He grabbed the oar again with two hands and pushed down hard. Using the gunwale as a fulcrum, he attempted to leverage up whatever was at the other end. The glare on the lake’s surface was too bright for him to see what was beneath.
    “Damn!” he muttered.
    Whatever had hold of his oar was heavy.
    Bill stood up to get better leverage.
    Then he slipped and fell. The small wooden boat rocked violently. The back of Bill’s head slammed against the side. Now he’d have an egg-size lump to go with his fat lip. Bill was sprawled across the bottom of the boat when he noticed the end of the oar suspended in the air. The wood was splintered, as if it had been thrust into a wood chipper. For a brief moment, Bill’s mind flashed back to a night almost forty years earlier – the night he and his friend Oscar had tried paddling out to Turtleback Rock.
    Bill peered into the water. A large dark form seemed to pass beneath the boat, but he couldn’t be sure. It could’ve been the shadow of a cloud passing in front of the sun. All he knew for sure was that the oar in his hands was now useless.
    Rowing back to shore with one good oar would be no piece of cake.

    *

    “Honey – I’ve fished that lake for fifty years and I’ve never seen anything like it.”
    Bill had just walked into the kitchen carrying the mangled oar.
    “Whatever did this has gotta be one helluva of a snapper,” he said, showing the oar’s ravaged edge to his daughter.
    Mimi Lupo wasn’t particularly interested in the oar or her father’s musings. She had her own story to tell. Little Lulu’s tumble off the turtle in front of Druckers’ was big news in her life. In a private corner of her mind she was secretly pondering the possibility of a lawsuit. Now she was being pre-empted by a broken oar and a trout.
    “Clean this, will you, baby doll,” her dad asked, slapping the trout onto the kitchen counter.
    Mimi Lupo certainly didn’t have the smarts to be a doctor. High school had been the end of the line for her, but still, she could clean a fish with the efficiency of a surgeon.
    While little Lulu watched a DVD in the living room, and Bill sat puzzling over his oar, Mimi slit the ventral side of the trout from cloaca to gullet. The contents of its alimentary canal spilled out onto the cutting board.
    Through the translucent membrane of the trout’s distended belly, Mimi glimpsed something that looked vaguely human. She leaned in closer for a better look.
    “Oh my God, Daddy!”
    “What is it, baby?” said Bill, putting down the splintered oar and rising from his chair.
    Bill walked over to the kitchen counter. There – inside the belly of his beautiful trout – was Joanne Sully’s toe. The nail was painted pink.

    * * * *

    The Snappers were the pride of Turtleback Lake. Over the years, the team had won sixteen conference