Cutchburger: a story

                                            Cutchburger

That summer I was 26, I ate plenty of them . Dreamed up by a coastal migratory cook, a sea faring grill-hump’s invention, the sandwich marked my days. My husband would procure the styrofoam box after tending at the Pier Bar, eagerly, I’d drop my eyes to the sight of kitchen sharpie scrawl on the box lid before meeting his.  Between chewy white folds of grease soaked bun nestled a thick slab of Cajun grilled tuna, seared in Cajun spice, Swiss cheese melting into a spackle of slick sautéed mushrooms tossed with bacon. The side would slide around in the styrofoam of the to- go container if it was long beans dripping in Swirl ( a butter flavoured substitute). All the restaurants on the island , at the time, kept a plastic gallon sized container by the grill to give that frisson of butter) the potato salad was red skinned and and a little sloppy looking, which meant it was homemade as hell. That was Fishounds; peeled, chopped, mixed by hand, slapped around a little, good honest fare . Sometimes the cook would write a few words on the top of the box ' w/ govt/ cheese' 'what u wearin'  'u sur r hungry'  . That last statement was very true, as it came to be known ( by me personally) The Summer of Cutchburger.

      Back before I understood that the notion of bumpstocks was part some sort of belief system, before social media brought collective hysteria to the forefront of everyone’s vision, there was an ability to sink into a place and get lost in its ways. There still is, yet abseiling through every experience persists that humming ribbon of internet. Even when perched at the hinterlands of the pink toned Gobsmacking Himalayas, the thought exists: ‘I can post this’. There was a time when this was not the reality. Years ago, I was watching a program with Anthony Bourdain, dwelling, at the time, deep in the depths of the world I was in , listening to the constant strain of construction workers cussing the Spanish speaking workers as they were in the very act of hiring them , giving them the worse jobs. I remember one year, one died when the underpinning of a shoddily constructed hotel house collapsed on his head. Another winter, a Mexican worker was hit while working on the one highway that runs the length of the Island, and I heard hardly a mention. If there’d been the internet, I’m sure I would have watched for signs of people’s opinions to guide my thinking , ( whose fault was it, who was he) but in general, I listened to rough speak on the construction sites I worked on, leaning too heavily on the information from the main person I interacted with; my xenophobic, extraordinarily racist boss. She did not believe that rape existed, and was often preoccupied with women she believed to be whores. One of her targets, Barbara-Sue Stump, was one of the most doe eyed, molasses tongued mundane talkers I’d ever encountered. When Barbara caught me at the post office, I would stammer out agreement or encouragement to her stories that went on a little too long, and ended nowhere exciting. I never knew what to say to any of the Island women, unable to manufacture interest in kitchen appliances or light gossip. Generally, I was not addressed directly, left out of conversation as a weird ( bless her heart) Canadian who had nothing to contribute. Conversation wafted around me, like the ever present wind that rocked our houses.  Anthony Bourdain on the travel channel immediately became my link to a bigger world, and it was on his culinary trip to Cuba, upon feasting on three-day simmered beans with his guide, where the Cuban man told him: ‘ I have learned to separate the person from their policies’. I have never forgotten that advice. 

  In this world which teetered between isolation and overcrowding I expanded and shrunk, immune to technological advances which had yet to occur. The winters were sparse and windswept, and gave one a sense of time-lapse, a touchstone to history. Women met for occasional card games and pampered chef parties. The wind whistled around each house, or trailer, cutting each other off from our private assumptions. One spring, FishHounds did not open back up, stranding me with memories of an era. When the tourists flood the beaches, their voices would bounce between the dunes and the large weather-grey shingled houses, trapping their sounds to echo throughout winter. There is a saying; you don’t know what you don’t know, and none holds truer for me. The last summer of FishHounds, which ran as a small un-air conditioned shack of an eatery built on a bulkhead of a Soundside inlet, a mere two hundred yards from our apartment; I knew the pools I cleaned with my husband, ghost crabs softly bleaching in their depths. I knew the ocean nearby, purple-indigo on the deep days of summer, friendly as a child’s story book. I knew the mattress upon which I lay, at night and as escape from high sun, the tourist cast off novels I’d read on it. I knew at night I’d feast, and let my thighs and waist grow, young but invisible to the surfers whose sunshaded gaze riveted to more specified dimensions. 

   It was the last marvellously ignorant summer I could have. 

   …to be continued