Chasing Popeye
written by: Antaeus
As I had done every day at dusk for the last five months, I drove the pickup down the hill toward the lake. Its bed contained everything I would need for the night’s work. The reflective tarp that covered everything doubled as a lean-to tent and hid what was under it from prying eyes.
Jasper Finnigan, the owner of the town’s only general store, stepped out onto the front porch and waved as I drove up. I hit the brakes, which caused the bobblehead statue of Jesus to do its thing. In a Christian community, a show of faith goes a long way. The Christian Women’s Club gave me the statue and an invitation to join their church the day after I moved here and married Roy.
“Evening, Missus Lancaster,” he called out as I navigated the wooden steps.
I smiled and nodded in acknowledgment as I surmounted the last step. “Evening, Mister Finnigan,” I said.
The shopkeeper opened the door for me, and the lone bell over the door tinkled its welcome. Once inside, I could hear the crackling of the fire inside the cast-iron stove as it consumed the wood. The heat it generated kept the store as warm as toast against the cold New England winter.
I wore three layers of thermal clothing and a lined trench coat that shed water like a duck. A dozen steps into the store, and I was sweating like a condemned woman standing on the gallows in the midsummer heat.
My perv radar went off, so I turned and caught the merchant staring at my butt. Pig. As if you could see anything under all these layers.
Caught with his mind in the gutter, Jasper, the old perv, blurted out, “The usual order, Missus Lancaster?”
I wanted to kick Jasper in the gonads, but instead, I smiled. I didn’t want to act out of character, not yet, anyway. “Like I said yesterday, Jasper, I think we’ve known each other long enough to where you can call me Elsa.”
The merchant turned a light shade of red. “Now, now, Missus Lancaster, that wouldn’t be right. In the eyes of the law, you’re still a married woman. Even if your husband has been missing for all these months, if a bachelor like me started to call you by your first name, people would talk.”
I held back my laughter. Yeah, you wish, old man.
Out loud, I said, “Yes, it’ll be the same as yesterday.” And the day before that, and for the last five months.
Jasper slipped behind the counter just as I stepped up to it. “I guess you’ll be wanting some hot coffee to fill your thermos with, right?”
No, you idiot, I’m here because I find you so attractive.
“Yup, pretty much,” I said instead.
Jasper removed a box from under the counter. “Here ya go, El— err, Missus Lancaster. I put it on your tab. There’s a bucket of fatheads, some lantern fuel, and a ham and cheese sandwich in there. The coffee is hot, and I made a fresh pot an hour ago. Go on over and fill your thermos. It’s on me.”
I filled my thermos bottle to the top with the dark but fragrant brew, then walked back to the counter.
Jasper leaned on his elbows and asked me the same question he’d been asking me for the last one hundred and forty-nine days. “Why are you doing this, Missus Lancaster? Is it for the reward money? Ain’t no one collected the $1,000 reward for old Popeye in ten years. They say ten men have gone out on the lake and tried, and he’s taken ten men down to the bottom of the lake with him.”
I gave him the same answer for the 149th time, “The insurance company won’t pay without a death certificate, and the coroner won’t write one without a body. So, if there isn’t a body, I’ll have to wait seven years before collecting the insurance money. Are you willing to extend me credit for the next seven years?”
“Umm, umm,” he said.
“I didn’t think so, Jasper. Besides, I gotta know for myself.”
Jasper just nodded his head like he understood. In the five months I’d been coming in here, he never once asked me what it was I needed to know.
I swear that man only has one oar in the water.
***
After putting the coffee and sandwich into my thermal case on the passenger seat, I tossed the box with the bait under the tarp. There’s no sense stinking up the cab, and the winter cold will keep it fresh. Unfortunately, a couple of the fatheads sloshed out and landed on Roy’s bible. I paid no mind to it, though, because I’ve never cracked one open, and Roy didn’t have a use for it anymore.
I stuck the chocolate bar Jasper always snuck in with the order into my pocket and climbed into the truck’s cab. There’s no way you’re getting into my pants for a bar of chocolate, Jasper Finnigan. Whaddya thinks this is, the Korean War, where a bar of chocolate will get you laid?
I’m what some people would call a petite woman, and my feet barely reach the truck’s pedals, even with the seat all the way forward. My husband of three years, Roy, was a tall man, and ever since he gave up preaching the gospel, he insisted on owning a big truck. I knew what the other woman said behind my back. “The bigger the truck, the smaller the man where it counted.” Yeah, well, he wore a size fourteen shoe, you bunch of old biddies. What do you think of that?
I loved Roy as much as I could any man. So, I don’t give a damn what those nosy, old women say. As far as I know, the only other woman who really knew what Roy had in his pants was his concubine, Rita Letch. You’d think the man would know better. Roy was thirty years older than I was, and Rita was five years younger than my thirty years. Men are always thinking with their peckers.
Roy and his lover didn’t realize it, but after Jerry, the motel owner, accidentally walked in on them, he ran right up to the house and told me about it. Jerry said they looked like two puppies fighting under a blanket. Of course, the damn bitch, Rita, made no secret of their affair, so the whole town knew about it. As for Roy, he was stupid enough to think I didn’t know.
Screw her and screw them. The Christian Women’s Club was just like a bunch of gossiping old biddies in a tearoom. What they think or say doesn’t matter one bit. I couldn’t care less if Roy was cheating on me. The only thing that mattered to me was finding Roy’s body so I could collect the insurance money.
Five months ago, Roy and two of his buddies had been fishing from the pier. They wanted to get some fishing in before the cold snap came and froze the lake. When it got dark, his buddies left, but Roy said he wanted to stay a while longer. He never came home. That night, a nor’easter hit, and the lake has been frozen solid ever since.
Some of the gossip said it was Old Popeye that had pulled Roy under. Old Popeye is a one-eyed catfish, supposedly twelve feet long. Others said Roy and Rita Letch ran off together because, coincidentally, she had disappeared that same night.
Let them talk. The old crones don’t know shit. What the old bitches think doesn’t count for nothing. The only thing that matters is what Sheriff Tomson believes, and he’s leaning toward the Popeye theory.
Most of the townsfolk thought I was an oddity— a woman who came into their community and married a man thirty years her senior. Then, a week after my Roy went missing, they pigeon-holed me as a woman in limbo, not single, not available for courting, and not legally a widow. Now, I was all that, plus a crazy woman on a mission to kill Popeye, gut him, find what was left of my husband, and collect both the reward and the insurance money.
***
I backed the truck into my usual spot about a mile downstream from the pier where Roy had gone missing. I’m not stupid. I’d spent my days during the winter months going over the current flow charts of the lake. At night, I’d cut a good-sized hole in the ice and fish where I thought my prize would show up. Now that the lake and the streams feeding it had thawed, the denizens of the deep would be waking up and moving this way.
Once I had set up camp, I cast my line and sat shivering in the cold night air. Distant voices caught my attention. I fished the binoculars from my backpack and looked across the lake. Two little boys at the edge of the lake were shouting and pointing. The sun was setting red.
Red sun in the morning, sailors take warning. The red sun at night is a sailor’s delight—another good omen. Tonight has to be the night. It’s the first night I don’t have to freeze my butt off fishing on the ice. I know I’ll catch him tonight for sure.
Oh, to be young again, like those boys. To start over and not make the same mistakes. To choose a different path, one that didn’t lead to sitting out here in the freezing cold like I’ve had to do all winter.
I shrugged and settled in for the long haul. My stepfather, like Roy, was a preacher. He used to say, “Elsa, there are consequences for everything you do in life. Some are worse than others, and you should always try to choose the lesser ones if you can.”
Then he’d make me choose the switch he was going to beat my bare butt with. Later that same night, after momma was asleep, he’d crawl into my bed and rub my backside to ‘make it better.’ That went on from the time I was seven until I was eleven. My mom died in a house fire a week after my eleventh birthday. My stepfather left town the next day, and I left Kentucky a week later. I’ve never looked back.
***
Settling in, I wrapped my long, sensitive fingers around the fishing pole. The special gloves I was wearing cost a small fortune, but they fit me like a second skin and kept my hands warm. They also allowed me to grip the rod tightly when I felt a tug on the line. Then, I’d set the large Treble Hooks fastened to the heavy-duty fishing line.
I watched the sky as the clouds and a north wind rolled in from the mountains. It looked like rain. Taking a sip of coffee from my thermos, I wrapped the trench coat tighter around my body. I set my jaw, determined to see this task through no matter what nature threw at me.
“Go ahead, do your worst. I can take whatever you’ve got!” I will endure. I must endure.
***
Around three in the morning, I was struggling to stay awake. One minute, my head was dipping up and down like the dashboard Jesus bobblehead doll—the next, I was wide awake. It was like someone had stuck my finger in an electric socket. Even half-asleep, I had felt the slight tug on the line, and I’d reflexively set the hooks. Finally!
I shook my head to clear the cobwebs, and the fight was on. Come on, come on, please let this be him. I need this to be him.
I yanked harder on the line and felt my catch pull back— hard. The current was strong, and so was whatever was at the other end. Maybe I’d hooked Old Popeye after all. My feet were slipping on the half-frozen muddy bank, and I was being pulled relentlessly toward the frigid water.
It’s only ten feet to the water. Now, it’s just eight feet. Come on, come on, dig in, girl, don’t let him pull you in.
I may be petite, but I’m strong, healthy, and determined. I dug my boot heels into the wet dirt and pulled back with all my strength. I started walking backward, and my catch began to move slowly toward the shore again.
Don’t give up now, Elsa. You’ve come too far and fought too hard for that. You keep on fighting, girl. That’s it, just a little bit further now. You’re gonna make it!
When I reached the trees, I wrapped the fishing line partly around a young sapling and pulled with all the strength that was left in me. It was a little easier now, and slowly, inch by inch, the black body emerged from the lake. Its carcass was long, maybe too long to be Roy. Damn, I hope I haven’t hooked old Popeye.
One more tug and the body popped out of the water, like a fish after a bug. Then, as I tugged on the line, it slowly slid along the pebbly shore.
Well, butter my butt and call me a biscuit. It’s not a giant catfish; it’s a six-foot-seven man. “Gotcha, Roy!”
The adrenaline rush provided me with renewed energy as I pulled Roy’s body further up the bank. When he was in far enough, I looked at him by lantern light. The fish has feasted on his flesh, and most of his face and neck were gone. Only his spinel bones and some leathery-looking tendons had kept his caved-in head attached to his body.
His fingers are gone, so they’ll want to identify him through his dental records. At first glance, the sheriff would probably say Roy died when his head hit the rocks at the bottom of the pier. Until the coroner found the piece of clawhammer embedded in his skull, that is.
The hunk of metal was still there, so I removed it and threw it into the truck. Then, I reached for the ice saw.
I’ve spent five months sitting out here on a frozen lake in the biting winter cold. Before that, it was weeks of gossipy women knocking on my door, bringing me soup and sympathy. All these consequences are caused by the jerk falling forward instead of backward.
Once I’d tucked Roy’s head safely under the tarp, I drove home. In the morning, someone walking their dog would find his body washed up on shore. Roy’s fishing license was still pinned to his vest, even after all those months in the water. That’ll tell them all they need to know. The fishhooks caught his jacket, but even if they noticed a few more holes, it would mean nothing.
When I reached the house, I dumped Roy’s head in the dried-up well behind the house. His concubine’s body was already there waiting for him. In a few weeks, I’ll have someone take down the sides and fill the hole with cement.
***
The following day, I sat at the kitchen window, coffee in hand, waiting for Sheriff Tomson’s call.
“I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Missus Lancaster, but we found Roy’s body this morning,” he’ll say.
There’ll be a closed-casket funeral in a few days, and I’ll act the part of the grieving widow. Then, in a month or so, it’ll all be over. My status will change from a woman in limbo to a thirty-year-old widow of means.
As I sipped my coffee, Jasper Finnigan was on my mind. He’s not a handsome man by any stretch, and he doesn’t know whether to scratch his watch or wind his butt, but he has money. I knew that from working as a teller at the bank. Best of all, he’s hot for me. The lecher didn’t realize it, but I could see by the reflection in the soda pop case that he checked out my bottom whenever I walked into his store.
Once I was officially declared a widow, I’d be free to marry whoever I wanted. It doesn’t take much to seduce guys like Jasper. Men are so easy. A touch here, a touch there, and an unspoken promise of more are all it takes.
We’ll be married in six months— the seventy-year-old bachelor and the widow, what a lovely couple. There wouldn’t be any children, and I’d be surprised if Jasper had another three or four years in him. These New England winters sucked the life out of people. Maybe he won’t even last that long. Sex can be hard on the heart, you know. Looking at the worst-case scenario, I’ll be thirty-five when he kicks the bucket, still young enough to enjoy life.
Of course, I’ll be devastated. Poor Elsa, people will say, losing two husbands in such a short time. Will it be more than her frail body can bear? Of course, I’ll have to sell everything—my house, Jasper’s house, and the store. I’ll move to another town and start over, but I won’t marry, though. I don’t need any man to support me. I’ve already got half a million in the bank courtesy of my three other husbands. So, between that and the money I inherited from Roy and Jasper, plus the sale of the properties, I’ll be set for life.
Five years isn’t such a long time to wait, and waiting doesn’t bother me at all. I had waited almost twenty years to find my stepfather and exact my revenge. Hell, I even married the bastard so no one would suspect. Once that was over, I could move on with my life and collect what men like my father owed me.
- Chasing Popeye - October 17, 2025
- Childhood’s Reawakening - April 6, 2024
