Don't Cry Over Fish or Kiss Them

adventures with Nightrain Deaton and Robert Wingate

One time, Daddy, Ben Puckett, Rowan Taylor, and some others took some legislators on a fishing junket to Hackberry, Louisiana. For a while, that sort of thing became illegal. Since folks are handing out 747 airplanes, I have no idea what's legal or illegal now.

In our plane was Daddy, Rowan, Charlie Deaton, Robert Wingate, Bob Fortenberry, some members of the Senate Education Committee, including Chairman Dewisse, and me. My job was mainly to carry stuff and make drinks. I was trained as a child to do this. I'm not kidding. My father agreed to having a third boy if I could be trained to mix drinks.

Hackberry sits on the brackish waters of Lake Calcasieu in West Louisiana. It's known for duck hunting, fishing, and offshore oil exploration.

For our purposes, it was for fishing. Some Mississippi legislators are pretty good at fishing. Some aren't worth a damn, so we hired guides. The guides served multiple purposes. They drove the boat, they cleaned the fish, and the clients in the boat divided up the limit of their fishing license among them.

Mississippi had just changed over its powerful Lieutenant Governor position, and the New Lieutenant Governor was among us. His presence meant that Deposit Guarantee and Entergy wanted to join our party. They each had airplanes, too. Pretty soon, we were a pretty big fishing party.

Among the Mississippi Legislative crowd, Charlie Deaton had a reputation. The kind of reputation that men admire and women despise. When he finally retired, the Clarion Ledger wrote a quarter-page, top-of-fold article about him that spoke primarily of his “madinee idol good looks.” When I was in physical therapy, I showed some of the 27-year-old women working on my broken body a photograph from one of his gubernatorial campaigns. “I can see it.” They agreed.

Men called Deaton “Night Train” in the same sense that it’s used in a blues song. I dated a girl from Greenville who assured me his reputation was earned. When I asked if she had personal experience, she denied it.

I’ve spent a lot of time in bars. At that age, I was spending most of my free time in either bars or gyms. I saw Deaton out more than I saw most of my dad’s friends out and about in Jackson. I saw him out. I saw him drinking. I saw him smoking cigars that might have actually been illegal owing to the Cuban embargo, but I never saw him do anything that wasn’t gentlemanly and deserving of the sobriquet “night train.”

Daddy had friends who could be called Night Train. Brum Day was one. Sonny Montgomery, for all the things he did to help Mississippi and help American Veterans, had a visible reputation among the ladies, but from what I could see, Deaton did not.

He even told me one time, “Don’t tell your momma what you saw, now.”

“But, Mr. Deaton, we’re doing the exact same thing.”

“I know. Don’t tell her.”

Even before we left Jackson, some of the younger legislators were getting excited about spending a night on the town in Hackberry, Louisiana, with the legendary Night Train Deaton. I asked Robert Wingate, “Is there even anywhere to go in Hackberry?”

“They’ll find a place,” he said. And they did.

When night fell, the honky-tonk contention gathered. While I was pretty good at actual drinking, I was also really good at fake drinking. A Sprite with ice in a highball looks like Gin. Since the members of the Mississippi House of Representatives in our party were clearly intending to show out for each other, and because I was driving the station wagon we rented, I decided to fake it.

I don’t think Deaton actually wanted to go. There was only one woman in the entire establishment. She was attractive in a forty-two-year-old mom squeezed into size two jeans and a tube top sort of way. Every time she passed Deaton, our esteemed legislators made a noise, but he did not.

She was actually pretty attractive. I wasn’t popular enough to turn down a cougar when I saw one. She did that thing where she let her nails drag across my shoulders when she passed behind me. Women have a way of getting noticed.

“I’m ready when you are,” Deaton said.

One of the guys from Entergy drove with us so he could take the station wagon back and collect whatever legislators had stayed to drink. Deaton and I got out and went to our cabin.

“Did Boyd get arrested?” Wingate said, waking up as we entered. I loved my cousin Robert Wingate more than anybody. He didn’t let me get away with much. I made myself a real drink and smoked a cigarette on the stoop to our cabin. Daddy never woke up.

Deaton sprayed the lures he wanted to use and his reels with WD-40. Apparantly that’s what you do when you use your equipment in both salt and fresh water. He got undressed and ran an electric razor over his matinee idol chin, looking in the two-by-three mirror hanging on the wall.

“What if ‘Night Train’ was a name he earned in college and law school and just never lost?” I wondered. People talked about his reputation all the time, but I never saw him do anything, and in a place like Mississippi, if you’re gonna do stuff, people are gonna see it.

The next morning, we loaded the boats before the sun came up. Some of the younger legislators were drag-tailing it, but they didn’t want to miss the fishing. I asked Daddy if I should get in the boat with the new Speaker. Daddy said, “No, let’s leave them alone while they’re fishing. There will be time to talk business later.” In our boat were Daddy, Charlie Deaton, Rowan Taylor, and Robert Wingate. It was like I was eight years old again, only we didn’t get to do this sort of thing much when I actually was eight because Daddy was always in Washington. I’m pretty sure the time he dragged me along as an assistant when I was in my twenties was to make up for the times when he couldn’t be there when I was ten.

Bob Fortenberry was the Superintendent of Jackson Public Schools through some of its worst years. Dr. Kirby Walker (the father, not the dentist) saw JPS through Brown v. Board of Education, Singleton v. Jackson Public Schools, and Alexander v. Holmes County. A lot of men in Jackson became Republicans because Nixon promised to “get the boot of the federal courts off our neck,” but he did not. Part of the Alexander ruling was that Jackson Public Schools would be taken over by Nixon’s Department of Housing, Education, and Welfare.

In the early sixties, Walker’s leadership at Jackson Public Schools led it to be ranked as one of the best public school systems in America. He figured out ways to integrate all our schools without violence, but they weren’t integrated enough for the courts. To be honest, one black child in an all white school didn’t move the needle very far, but Walker felt like he’d accomplished something, and he did. Walker decided to retire rather than deal with HEW.

In the midst of the Public School panic, it was difficult to get and keep a superintendent for Jackson Public Schools. Rowan Taylor led the effort, but it was often frustrating. Finally, the job landed on Columbia, Mississippi native, Bob Fortenberry, who rescued Jackson Public Schools.

By the time of our adventures in Hackberry, Louisiana, Fortenberry had moved on to a privately funded group that focused on legislative and community solutions for education in all of Mississippi. Not just Jackson. Since one of the unstated purposes of this trip was a hoped-for education bill, similar to the Education Reform Act of 1982, Fortenberry was a welcome addition to the company.

In a boat with some Entergy guys, whatever Dr. Fortenberry’s contributions to education were or what his designs on new legislation might be, he was about to go fishing, and that took precedence.

Sciaenops ocellatus, also known as Red Drum, also known as Redfish is one of the most popular saltwater sports fishes in Mississippi and Louisiana. Paul Prudhomme, working at the Commander’s Palace, invented a dish called “Blackened Redfish” that became so popular worldwide that there had to be a moratorium placed on the commercial fishing of Red Fish for a while everywhere but Mississippi.

Like salmon, redfish are born in brackish water, travel out to sea to grow fat, and return to brackish water to spawn. If you could manage to time it right and pick the right location, redfish returning to spawn can be one of the most exciting fishing adventures you can have. Dr. Fortenberry and Charlie Deaton knew this secret, and this entire production was based on their knowledge of fishing.

All in all, we had about eleven boats in the water. Each of the guides drove the boats and had a radio. The radios allowed the guides to keep track of where the schools of redfish were. I’d been fishing for redfish before. I had no idea they were schooling fish.

The sun crept over the horizon, and our little boat was alone by an abandoned oil platform. Most of fishing is waiting, and we were waiting.

Deaton’s lure got a nibble, then a bite. Then Daddy got a bite, Wingate, Rowan, and me! “Fish on!” The guide shouted into his radio. Soon enough, all eleven boats were in the same spot.

A redfish the size of your forearm is a pretty good fighter. You can’t land them right away. As soon as we did land one, we’d get another one on the line, though. The guide started throwing back the fish we caught, which he didn’t think were big enough. “Hey, now!” Robert Wingate said. “Just wait, they’re getting bigger,” the guide said.

In every state, it’s legal to fish, and in every state where it’s legal, you have to buy a license. The license money goes to support the Department of Wildlife, including the wardens that come to check your boat to see if you caught too many fish and if you had the required number of personal flotation devices.

Even throwing back the little ones, and us using the fish on the guide’s license, we eventually caught our limit on every boat, but the fish were still biting. It was decided that we would continue fishing, but release our catch, as long as they were still biting.

Most of the fish we caught were as big as my forearm. More than enough food for two people. Catching them, Deaton gave advice on how to cook them.

The bites did slow down, but they didn’t stop. A fish the size of your forearm could put up a pretty big fight. Bob Fortenberry was a giant of a man, and spent his life hunting and fishing, but he hooked something that was making him struggle.

“It’s a turtle!” Robert Wingate shouted from our boat.

Since the bites had slowed, most of us reeled in our line to watch a man with a PHD in Education battle a fish for life and death. Ernest Hemingway would have been proud.

When the redfish surfaced, it was not only as big as Fortenberry’s forearm, but his entire arm, and part of his chest, too.

“Can I swap it out for one of the fish in the chest?” Dr. Fortenberry asked the guide.

“They’re mostly dead. It’s too late to throw them back now.” Said the guide.

Shouts of “Throw it back, Bob!” came from each boat as most of us had sat down with a ham sandwich and a sip of something.

“You gotta be kiddin’ me!” Dr. Fortenberry said, holding the massive fish over his head. “Look at the size of this fish!” and we did. And we laughed.

“Throw it back, Bob!”

Holding his prize like a wounded child, Dr. Fortenberry asked the guide to remove the hook. He expertly lowered the monster back into the muddy waters of Lake Calcasieu, but at the last moment, he pulled it back up to give it a solid kiss on the nose before releasing it into the fecund Louisiana lake.

“Did you see that fish?” he asked, with tears in his eyes, a beer in one hand and a ham sandwich in the other.

The guy who owned the fishing camp had a daughter my age. We’d been eyeing each other. She made the ham sandwiches. They were pretty good. Anything is good on decent po’boy bread.

“Did you get her number?” Deaton asked.

“There’s a girl in Memphis who would cut me in half if I did,” I said. “You’re a good man,” Deaton replied.

Truth be told, but I had a second choice girl in Jackson. I was twenty-three and she was nineteen, and a freshman at State, so it was a longshot, but I like longshots, and the Memphis deal was just about to drive me nuts.

The guides cleaned our fish and cut off the fillets. They put them in freezer zip-lock bags with some water and froze them solid. “That’s how you prevent freezer burn.” He said. We each went home with about twenty pounds of frozen redfish filets.

Using recipes from Deaton, I cooked some of mine for the Memphis contingent, both here and in Memphis. I gave the backpocket girl a bag with four filets for her to share with her mom. The Memphis contingent didn’t work out well at all, but the backpocket girl turned out to be one of Mississippi’s best artists. I’ve never been very good at picking which fork to take in the road.

This is one of those stories where most of the important people are gone now. I was probably the least important person there, but I’m still here. It doesn’t seem fair, does it?

A fish as big as your entire arm is a beautiful thing. Maybe it’s okay to cry a little and kiss it on the nose before letting it go back where it came.