The Shortest Summer

“Look at the teeth on that sucker,” he said, and passed his phone around to those of us sitting at the two small tables we’d pushed together in the middle of the dining area at a Firehouse Subs near DFW Airport on a smoldering late July Sunday afternoon. It was another of those infamous summer days in Texas — days filled with the repressive heat that makes asphalt bubble and suffocates all blue from the sky. Everything is grey and hazy and sweaty and mean, and every new day is virtually indistinguishable from the last. The uniqueness of the conversation over sandwiches, and the unlikely pairing of the two men having it, is one reason why that afternoon stands out.

The man showing us pictures on his phone of an unusually large alligator gar that he’d caught, was — and still is — one of the world’s most decorated cowboys. Fred Whitfield has won more than $3 million and eight world championships as a tie-down calf roper. But on that Sunday, in that fast food sandwich shop, his prized possession was a hellish fish he’d caught not fit to eat.

“Hell yes you can eat that!” argued another man at our table. “We used to eat ’em all the time in Alice,” he said without taking his eyes off his sandwich. Whitfield’s delicacy critic that day was wearing his customary uniform — black baseball cap, wire rimmed glasses, white polo, faded Levis, sneakers and a weathered black belt presumably rescued…