Billy Connolly's Route 66_ The Big Yin on the Ultimate American Road Trip - Billy Connolly [57]
When I’d finished firing arrows, Danny and his wife, Carolyn, invited the whole crew back to their house and gave us the best barbecue I’ve ever had. Standing on their raised deck in golden evening sunlight, looking out over the treetops in the valley below, they cooked the most tasty, juicy fish from the river, which they called suckers. We’d been joined by their son Laine, who did all the cooking, and Carolyn’s twin sister, Cheri. The twins were identical blondes and really stunning.
‘Did you have fun growing up identical?’ I said.
They both nodded.
‘I used to be in a band with a guy who had an identical twin,’ I said. ‘It was almost spooky.’
‘We had a lot of fun with it,’ said Carolyn.
‘Oh, I bet you did. Did you have fun with guys?’
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘We still mess with Danny. He’ll grab her ass’ – Carolyn gestured at Cheri – ‘and she’ll go along with it.’
She said that they often catch suckers, which look similar to trout, by spearing them in the river at night. The boat is fitted with a big light on the front to attract the fish. ‘It’s fun,’ she continued. ‘It’s just a big party. You light a big fire down there and you kill ’em and then you clean and you eat ’em right there on the river.’
‘That sounds amazing,’ I said. ‘God, what a lovely place.’
Below us, the woods seemed to be teeming with wildlife.
‘I was just watching a deer over here.’ Cheri pointed into the woods. ‘It’s gone now, but we see turkeys and deer and coyotes, all kinds of stuff out here.’
‘Most people don’t know the turkey’s an American animal,’ I said. ‘They nearly chose it to be the national bird. Somebody insisted on the bald eagle and they went for it, but it could have been a turkey. Of course, you never think of a turkey as being a beautiful thing because it’s got that kind of Christmassy, overfed look about it, but the wild one is a thing of beauty, isn’t it?’
‘Oh, it is,’ said Carolyn. ‘It’s nothing like the white, tame turkey. No, the wild ones, they’re pretty.’
‘And all the Christmas ones, they never have sex. They can’t; they’re the wrong shape. Fancy living without sex and then you die at Christmas. What a party.’
Carolyn and Cheri offered to take me out on a hunting trip the next morning. They pointed at a ridge where they said there were many wild turkeys. They’d been hunting since they were little girls, when their father had made them a turkey call – a piece of wood that they would strike to attract the birds.
‘I was with a woman, away up in the Arctic,’ I said, ‘and she was hunting for moose with a bow. The guy with her had a sort of megaphone and he would go whoaaa. And you could hear the moose answering, whoaaa. It was the most thrilling thing. It got nearer and the whoaaa got louder. But I won’t tell you how the story ends. It was a disaster. You would hate it.’
‘Did she get it?’ asked Cheri.
‘No, she didn’t. One of the crew did a terrible thing.’
‘Oh?’
‘The director farted … ’
‘What did you say when he did that?’
‘Well … there was no more whoaaa, you know.’
Danny, the twins, his son and all the crew cracked up with laughter.
‘But the hunter made a living from manipulating people’s bodies. She was a naturopath or something. And she cured the director. He had been sick for days, making these terrible noises and running to the bathroom every five minutes with that funny run. You know the one, with the knees together.’
‘Squeezing it in, yeah.’ Carolyn was giggling again.
‘She did all sorts of things with him. She knew things about the body I’d never seen in my life, you know? Asian opposition muscle stuff. And she messed around with him and made him better. She told him what not to eat, what definitely to eat, and what to eat