Reality TV show hits snag
It was nearly six in the evening when I placed the filet knife's buzzing, serrated edge just behind the fish's gills and angled downward and back toward the tail. I didn't really want to kill the fish, but the poor thing had swallowed a hook all the way into its gullet and was bleeding pretty badly.
"Excellent angle," the reality show's British director told me. "Now, look toward the camera for a bit and then resume cutting."
Killing a bass of five pounds or more usually takes the wind out of me. There's no mysticism toward bass as far as I'm concerned. I just like to catch big fish over and over, and if I put a five-pounder back into the water, it'll just be bigger the next time around.
The cameraman looked somewhat squeamish at the filleting process, so I played it up pretty big. When I felt the filet knife touch the bass' spine, I angled the blade to cut parallel to the backbone. The knife sawed through the thick ribs then settled down to slice cleanly toward the tail. Just before the knife broke through the scales near the tail, I stopped, flipped the slab skin side down and finished cutting out the filet.
"There's a nice thick filet," I said into the camera.
"More dialogue," the Director said.
"It's time for the other side," I said and turned the fish over, eyeing the blade and made a mental note to keep my fingers out of the way.
I cut behind the gills again, turned the blade to follow the backbone, and the fish slipped. I instinctively grabbed the slick body and quit cutting when I felt the knife hit the bone near the tip of the middle finger on my left hand. I knew the cut was deep, and with a crowd of people watching, I turned away, so they wouldn't see what I was convinced would be the stump of my middle finger.
"Mercy!" I shouted.
Everyone present, including the film crew, The Redhead, her boyfriend Jason, the War Department and the folks standing in the front yard of their house two miles away insist that my exclamation consisted of words much more unprofessional than "mercy."
"Cut!" the director shouted. "We can't air that dialogue. Can you do it again without the bad language?"
I elected not to answer.
"Is it bad?" the War Department asked, her eyes wide in shock.
Her question must have been rhetorical. I said "mercy" some more and peeked into my hand. Thankfully a somewhat intact middle finger was still there.
"Pretty bad," I said. "We need to go to the hospital."
"Can you finish filleting these fish before we go?" she asked. She's such a pro.
"Of course."
"I'm not sure we can use this footage," the director said just as the cameraman crashed to the ground like a felled tree. "I believe Charles has fainted."
Leaving them to sprinkle water on the crew member, we went inside the house to wash and examine the abused digit.
"Yep, needs stitches," Jason said. He's worked in emergency rooms and knows a good cut when he sees one. "Or if we had some Super Glue, we could just glue it back together."
Finding no Super Glue, the War Department and I piled into our truck and left quickly, hoping to outrun the film crew. Unfortunately, they loaded the retching, semiconscious cameraman into their Expedition and followed our dust cloud out to the highway.
It's common knowledge that no one goes to the hospital nearest the ranch, so we led our short convoy south, back into Texas, and that's when things got weird.
Our original destination was the emergency room in Sherman, but we saw the sign for a closer facility, so I pulled in there. We sauntered into the reception area, wrapped middle finger held aloft. The bleeding had stopped. There was no one at the check-in desk.
The crew followed us into the emergency room with a cacophony of noise as they set up lights and shouted directions at each other.
"Can you not hold your middle finger like that?" the director asked. "We can't air obscene signs. Now ... action!"
Ignoring the activity behind us, I found a small sign at a kiosk reading "Step One, fill out this form."
While the War Department wrote the appropriate numbers and information with her uninjured digits, I glanced around the virtually empty waiting room and saw only three people who looked as if they had the flu. Stitches should have been forthcoming.
We couldn't find a "Step Two" sign. A sickly woman lying across three chairs pointed weakly to a small window above her head. "Stick it in here," she said.
The little booth looked like a ticket window at the theater with the blinds down. The War Department carefully balanced the limp paper on what appeared to be nothing more than a narrow window sill.
"Now sit down," the sickly woman said, then laid her head down. "They'll call you for Step Three, and maybe if you're lucky, you'll get to Step Four."
"Which step are you on?" I asked.
"Three, I think. Don't point that finger, or that camera, at me." She puked into a trash can beside the chair. The cameraman joined her.
A nurse came roaring out of nowhere and demanded that the film crew leave. While they argued, the sick lady looked hopeful. "That's the first nurse I've seen since I got here."
I held my mangled middle finger somewhat lower, so it wouldn't be mistaken for a rude gesture. "How long have you been here?" I asked, thankful I wasn't bleeding badly.
"For over three hours," she said weakly and appeared to pass out.
Taking a seat a safe distance away, lest we contract her as yet undiagnosed disease, we waited for Step Three -- and tried not to get caught in the evolving docudrama with the film crew.
Wait'll you hear about that one.
• Reavis Wortham's e-mail address is r.wortham@tx.rr.com.
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