Ever since I was a kid I’d wanted to shoot me a big fat smug whale. It was a big fat smug whale that killed my entire family so now it was pay back. This is the shit movies should be made about. Maybe there have been, I don’t know. I do not watch television and have not been to the picture show since a big fat smug whale killed my entire family.
It was a wedding that brought me to Percé but it was fate that brought me far out into the Gulf of St Lawrence on the Felix Martin - a big fat smug whale spotting ship with a skipper named Jacques.
“Are you Ahab?” I asked as I stepped down from the dock into his metal trawler.
“Ahab?”
“Oui. Are you Ahab?”
“Moi?”
“Yes.”
“Non. Mon nom est Jacques. You know that already you damn English fool. Now, please, fait attention
avec ton gun. Depeche!”
I met Jacques a few days earlier in a bar. First impressions being what they are I knew this Frenchman was not just any heavy drinking Frenchman. He was my heavy drinking Frenchman. He just looked like the type of guy that would take me out to the open waters to shoot me a big fat smug whale. But I still initially broached the subject with caution - dancing around the idea - just to get a clear sense for the guy. After a
few pleasantries and one serious misunderstanding, a deal was struck and a few days later we were off barreling out past Le Roche Percé and Lil de Bonaventure.
The Felix Martin belched out purple clouds of exhaust. Empty liquor bottles clanked around my feet. I sat beside Jacques and slapped him on the back.
“Let’s go shoot us a big fat smug whale,” I said. We motored for about half an hour. No land in sight. Then a
great puff of water just off starboard.
“Over there, monsieur,” Jacques says pointing. “La balaine”.
“What?”
“Whale! Whale!”
“Quick Get up on it, Jacques you crazy French bastard.”
The drive back to Ontario with a whale’s head strapped to the roof of my VW got me some nasty glares but for me it’s all about closure. That big fat smug whale killed my entire family. Well, maybe not that particular whale, but if it wasn’t that one, he probably put the killer whale up to it. All big fat smug whales look the same to me.
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