After that, Peter lands a dozen more beauties in the skiff James takes his turn and irons ten more. He is on his way to break bis brother's record, but Peter, in his excitement over a big skate bis brother brings in with mouth turned down for woe and a hundred barbs bristling in flapping fins and tail, gets a cramp on his oar in the mud, tries to pull it out, and gets a cramp on the skiff, turns her suddenly short around, and dumps the poised young Neptune in blue overalls into the tide. James is back in the boat quick as an eel, for the water is ice-cold still. Me blows out bubbles and grown-up words that they never say when she-folks are around. He smacks his brother with the pole of his spear. Peter smacks him back with his oar. The light boat rocks under the embattled brothers. They get the heat our of them at last. and James has the last blow, as he should. And they turn to their fishing again.
James stands in the bow again. He sees the granddaddy of all the flounders sunning himself in the April sun on the mud. He lifts aloft his spear. But the hoy is all pimples for the cold clothes on him, and he is shaking so. his point wabbles. He lets go, but it is a miss, and the grandpa flounder bounces off over the flats to kingdom come. Peter jeers. James up and splashes half the Atlantic over him with a sideswipe of his heavy pole. One boy is as damp US the other now. And they both have pimples.
Peter takes the oars and Starrs rowing for home. They both are bitter that the biggest fish got away. James will never let his brother forget that it was all his fault, and Peter will always declare that James is wearing pants under false pretenses and should wear a skirt. James purposely drags his spear to make the rowing harder. But the two bitter fishermen finally reach home.
When the skiff's nose grates on the pebbles, Peter gets out indignantly and drags out the boat's painter by the killock and yanks the skiff up so hard, the standing James is almost knocked flat. James sits down suddenly on the boat's bow seat and says more of the forbidden words. The boys are even Stephen when they leave the boat. James strings the flounders through the mouth and gills on a stick, washes them in the water of the bay, and follows the shivering Peter, with his own teeth rattling in his jaws, up the steep path through the bayberry bushes to the farmhouse.
Mother scolds both boys for being boys, and she peels them out of their wet clothes like two young eels. She makes them stand back of the hot stove and warm up and make friends again as they use the hot towels she has brought them. But Peter snaps James with his new weapon, James snaps him back, and they coalesce into one wild double-backed thing. But mother steps in now. and with her bare hands she warms them both up as she separates them and banishes each to an opposite corner of the wide kitchen to dress and meditate on his sins.
The duty done, mother scrapes the scales off the boys' fish, the gray upper scales and the green bottom ones. She cuts off their triangular heads expertly, then uses her big shears on their fins and tails, cutting deep enough into their sides to get allthe vexing small flange bones out with their fins. She washes the flounders. With a sharp knife she makes slashes across their backs and bellies.
Meantime she has been getting her frying pan ready by frying pork scraps in it. She fills a platter with corn meal from the cupboard shelf. She salts the meal and rolls each big triangle of a flounder in the platter. She throws the still crinkling flounders into the hot fat. She fries them beautifully brown and crisp. The smell of the first flounders of the year goes out over the universe.
There are a few other occasions in life to match this of the first of the year's flounders. But not many. Not more than you can count on the fingers of one hand. The day a man falls in love. The day he gets married. The day that be holds his first son. Maybe one or two more. But that's the lot.
Nobody says much. The eaters can't. Their mouths are too busy, and their tongues are sorting the bones from the white flesh. Their hearts are too big. They scrape off the ivory flesh from the underside—these are New Englanders and so cat the thinner side of the flounder first—turn the plane tree of the skeleton over and burrow into the thicker upper side. The meat shows white through the yawning cross-hatchings in the brown skin. They rake off forkfuls and carry them to their mouths.
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