The Fish We Eat in Dreams (Patreon)

I drew a little comic, inspired by an adventure I took this past weekend. My boyfriend John has a family lake house in the catskills and we took a weekend trip up there with his friends, Joe and Sylvia.

After brunch, our self appointed activities director, Joe, marshalled us into a lovely little antique store/artist consignment shop manned by two chatty older ladies who were crafting things to sell as they took turns on the register.

As Joe bought something, he asked if they'd heard of an old smokehouse called Delaware Delicacies. The woman behind the register said that she did and made some favorable remarks about it before recounting a series of instructions that sounded more like an incantation than directions to an actual place.

"You go to the turn off to New York, but you don't take it. Take the other turn. Go past the junk yard. Go past the quarry. Take the unmarked dirt road. It won't look like the right road, but it is. You'll pass a sign, but you might miss it. Drive till you see a house. It won't look like the right place, but it is. If it's open, a man will come out. If not, you're out of luck and you'll have to go back later. You can call to see if he's open, but he never answers the phone. He's usually open though. Now, he's a bit of an eccentric, but he's a nice man once you get to know him."

I was immediately interested.

She told us other things, like the fact that he was featured in national geographic twice, and he was the only person in the state licensed to fish for eels in the old, native american, way, and that people flew in from scotland and japan *just* to buy his smoked fish because he never answered the phone and refused to have anything to do with the internet.

This lady pitched him well. Was she in his employ? Was she in his thrall? Was this simply hometown pride for a local legend? No way to know for sure. But I was already sold. I was fully prepared to buy smoked eels from some kind of forest fae. Do I like smoked eels? I have no idea but that was FULLY beside the point.

We followed the directions and, shockingly, did not get lost and end up in an enchanted glade owned by the local Erlking. I was only mildly disappointed though because it wasn't long before we ended up here.

On one side, an adorable hobbit-y type house. Just yards away, a foreboding shack

Was someone about to come out and warn us away from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre? Or were we about to meet Tom Bombadil? For a few minutes we were left in the driveway wondering which it would be. 

Instead a gruff old man with a bizarre hat, a covid mask on his face, and some kind of net surrounding his very long wizard beard, came out and pointed at each of us in turn.
"Vaccinated?" he barked with each point. We assured him that we were.

"Good," he said. "put on your mask and go to the sink. You're gonna use the hand sanitizer first and then wash your hands thoroughly from the spout on the left. Then you're going to enter through this door."
He walked decisively to the shack, then stopped and turned to shout "OR DON'T!" Then he went inside.

I was NOT disappointed.

Inside his small storeshack was not just smoked fish but an array of unique honeys and preserves made by the nearby pennsylvania dutch community. There was summer honey and fall flower honey, pumpkin butter and brandied peaches. He had information about all of them and some strongly worded advice/instructions for their use. There was no eel that day, it sold out fast, and trout wouldn't be done till tomorrow. But he had imported salmon and a few other fish that he'd smoked himself and had just finished up some gouda.

"I'll check out some gouda," John said, noncommittally. The old man chose to ignore the non part of that sentence and came back from the smoke room holding a two foot wheel in one hand and a three pound wedge in the other.

"This or this?" he asked, pumping each option aloft.

"Um! The small one!" John answered quickly, for fear that he might just end up with the wheel if he didn't speak fast enough. The man wrapped it up for him, taping it closed with a branded sticker.
"There's some propaganda for you," he said as he slapped it on.

"Thank you Sir," John said.

"Call me Ray," the man corrected him. "I never made officer."

Sylvia asked him a bit about some of his photos on the wall

"Is that you with an owl?"

"Yep. Someone found it hurt by the side of the road, knew I'd do right by it."
"And is that a bald eagle?"

"Mmhm. The local rangers know I'm a pretty good sherpa around these parts. Sometimes they let me meet the pretty birdies."

I could have listened to this guy talk for HOURS.

To my disbelief, no one was showing the slightest intention to buy any fish, which seemed insane to me. So I stepped up, already clutching a jar of brandied peaches. I could buy a whole salmon or a half salmon. I didn't know how much it would cost but at this point it kind of didn't matter.

"Um, do you take credit cards?" I asked, half afraid I would get a blunt 'no' and a lecture on the evils of plastic, as a currency or just in general. Instead he looked me dead in the eyes and said, without a hint of irony

"It is my final sin."

My salmon came with a lecture on how to store the salmon in order to avoid botulism.

"What temperature is your refrigerator?" He quizzed me.

"I have no idea," I answered, honestly.

"That's the right answer, grasshopper," he said before launching into a lesson on how to find and maintain the correct temperature of my refrigerator using a meat thermometer. "You can get it from walmart or someplace fancy, it don't matter to the trees."

I left reluctantly, wishing I could ask him a million questions; Where did he come from? How did he get here? How did he make enough money to not give a single fuck about anyone's opinion of him? How did he do it with no advertising, no internet, and a seeming unwillingness to even *try* to sell his wares? And, seriously, what was up with the hat?

But I didn't want to bother him and my friends were not half as charmed by him as I was.They thought he was kind of an asshole and I can't really say they're wrong. But that didn't matter in the slightest bit to Ray. Another car load of tourists was driving up as we left the place.

We returned to our cabin on the same day. So this encounter may not have taken place in the fae realm, but I wouldn't swear to it. The food we brought back was the kind that would haunt our dreams. The fall flower honey is thick with a dark sweetness. The salmon tastes like the best possible version of eating a campfire. And that three pound wedge of gouda is almost gone, just four days later.