Fats McCue and I were enjoying a humid late-June evening while tossing spoons for pike. We were lucky lads, growing up in our quiet, little town. It happened that a river ran through it.
We were fishing a small bay called “the Basin.” Encircled with a cement wall to create a harbour for small craft, it didn’t look like an ideal fishing spot, but it consistently gave up fat, sassy pike of three to five pounds — good enough for 12-year-olds — and it was a mere five minutes from my back door.
Irretrievable time
It had actually been nip and tuck as to whether we would fish that evening or skulk up to Fats’ attic to again fluster ourselves with his old man’s hidden stash of adult magazines.
We were on the cusp of the “dark time” in a boy’s life — the teen years — when so muddled by hormones you do no fishing at all.
But on this night our sirens still had gills.
The narrow mouth of the harbour was spanned by an aging, rusty train trestle. Beneath it was a big raft. I was on the raft, working a spanking new red and white banana-shaped plug along the edge of some weeds. That lure had set me back a buck-fifty at the corner hardware store. It had taken me weeks to save the money, what with the need to buy bubble cards and all. McCue was down the dock a piece, tossing his trusty five-of-diamonds spoon between moored boats.
Fishing rivalry
We had both caught a couple of hammer-handles of about 12 inches. This was more bothersome than normal, because two nights before our friend — and bitter fishing rival — Goon Farrell, had taken a 5-pounder from the harbour. Despite pinning him to the sidewalk and tickling him mercilessly, Goon had refused to reveal the lure he’d used. But he’d caught the fish alright, because he’d gone to both our front doors to show it off.
“Don’t you bring that icky thing in here,” had shouted my mom, who always wanted the outdoors kept there.
It was already dark out, but by the street light I could tell that it was a fine specimen. Any pike five pounds or over was a status fish for us.
“That’s not so big,” I lied, trying to look unimpressed. I took a quick glance at Goon’s rod, hoping the lure was still attached, but it wasn’t.
“You and I both know this is a five-pounder,” chuckled Goon, as he turned and started walking down the street. He was cackling at the prospect of tormenting Fats.
I slammed the door. One problem with living so near the communal fishing hole is that it’s easy for people to drop by your place to remind you how lousy a fisherman you are.
Plans for Friday night
A short time later, the phone rang: The tone sounded ticked off, so I knew it was Fats.
“We gotta get even with Goon,” he said. “Can you go fishing after school tomorrow?”
“Naw. Got piano lessons,” I groaned.
“Geessh. You still taking those sissy things?”
“Yeah,” I sighed weakly at this latest blow to my manhood. It had been one of the greatest blunders of my young life. My older sister had taken up piano lessons and, unable to stand the thought of her having something I didn’t, I whined and whimpered until my parents signed me up. My sister quit her lessons just two weeks later, but I was stuck with mine, because the teacher had told my mother that I had “natural talent.”
“Well, the day after tomorrow, then, Friday,” continued Fats. “Can you fish that night?”
“Sure. I can fish till dark on a Friday night.”
The next morning at school, we again put Goon on the sidewalk, and again he laughed and squirmed, saying nothing.
Bikes to the Basin
Anyway, the next day after school, Fats and I raced to the Basin on our bikes. Flush with optimism, we started casting. Despite the slow start with the hammerhandles, the sun was still high as we fished past suppertime. Our spirits remained buoyant.
“I got a good feeling about tonight,” trumpeted Fats.
“Gonna get a big one tooonight,” l hammed. As my precious new plug approached the dock, a big pike swirled in a near miss. “Whoya. Did you see that?”
But Fats didn’t answer.
“Five pounds if it was an ounce,” I continued.
Still, there was no response from my bespectacled friend. I looked his way and wondered what was the problem. I knew he couldn’t have a fish, because he’d be whooping it up. Then I saw the cause. He was looking across the harbour into the face of evil — my sister’s.
Sister scourge
Of all the curses of boyhood — mosquitoes, exams, rashes, bullies — there is none greater than having a sister. Another one of the problems with fishing near home was that it was easy for her to find me. Our enthusiasm sagged.
“Aww no,” Fats wailed, as my sister started to walk around the harbour toward us. “We gotta get rid of her. Throw rocks at her or sumpin.”
“We can’t do that,” I replied, less worried about hurting her than about having my parents hurt me.
“Well, what are we gonna do? She’ll ruin the fishing, sure as heck.”
“I dunno,” I said miserably. “You got a sister. You come up with something.”
“Uh, uh.” Fats folded his arms.
“Your sister, your problem. I’m going over there to fish. You keep her away from me.” He stomped off, passing my sister wordlessly as she approached.
“Can I try?”
“Hello, little brother,” she sang. “You fishing?”
“No. I’m milking cows,” I shot back.
“Don’t talk like that, little brother,” she chirped. “Can I try?”
For crying out loud. If ever there was a human being who knew nothing about fishing and had even less interest in it, it was my stupid sister. She was just doing this to bug me.
“Please,” she pleaded
“No!”
“Come on. Please.”
“You’ll break my rod.”
“No I won’t.”
“Pleeeeease,” she pressured. The annoyance level was getting to me.
“Oh, all right,” I conceded. “Five casts.”
“Ten.”
Ten casts
Ten casts. Ten minutes, I figured. Either that or argue all night. I held out the rod. “Here.”
“Thank you. Thank you,” she squealed, taking the rod. After studying it for a moment, she said “How do you shoot this?”
“You don’t shoot it,” I snapped. “You cast it.”
“How do you cast it, then?”
“Press this button,” I instructed, pointing to it on the spincast reel. “Then pull the rod back over your shoulder. As you bring the rod forward, let up on the button.”
“Sounds easy,” she said, carefully pressing the button with her right thumb. Over her shoulder the rod went, back it came, and into the river it splashed. If it was possible for an inanimate object to look shocked, my rod did as it sank into the weeds at the foot of the dock.
“Aaauuggghhhh,” I screamed. “How could you do that? I don’t believe this. You’re supposed to hang onto it, for Heaven’s sake. I want my rod back. Get it!”
“Don’t shout,” she said.
“Get it!” I wailed.
“I’m not going into those icky weeds,” she declared.
“Aaauuggghhhh,” I repeated in anguish.
Just a rod
“Calm down. It’s just a rod,” she said, in a condescending tone.
I think my life would have changed forever at that moment if Fats had not arrived. To this day I know that I would have drowned my sister and spent the rest of my life in prison. (“I sympathize. I have a sister, too,” the judge would have said. “But the law says I gotta put you away.”)
“What happened here?” Fats asked, like an arriving cop.
“She threw my rod in the water,” I squealed. “She just threw it in.”
“I didn’t throw it in,” she countered. “That makes it sound like I did it deliberately. I didn’t hold onto it tight enough.”
“What difference does it make? My beautiful rod is in the river. I want it back. I want it back!”
“Settle down, will ya,” interceded Fats the Cop. “I think I can snag the rod with my spoon and bring it in.”
“You shoulda thrown rocks at her,” he added, whispering in my ear.
About half a dozen attempts later, Fats hoisted my dripping rod onto the dock. My sister instantly grabbed it.
“Hey!” I shouted.
“I’ve still got nine casts to go,” she said.
For the second time, Fats saved her life.
Falling short
“Let her get the casts over with,” he said, the voice of reason.
With a smile, she lobbed the plug out over the water in a majestic arch — up, up, up, and down, down, down — and into a small wooden boat leaving the harbour. The lure rattled in the back of the boat, not getting the attention of the wizened, unshaven old man at the tiller.
“Oh, heck,” said my sister, this time recognizing that she had done something stupid. She reared back on the rod, not jerking the lure free, but setting the hooks in the transom.
We yelled at the old man, to no avail. He was either deaf or too crotchety to respond to a bunch of screaming kids. We even threw rocks at the boat, but each fell embarrassingly short.
Defeated, we stood silently on the dock, the rod doubling over gradually in my sister’s hands. The silence was broken by a pop and a crack. My buck-and-a-half plug was gone. Irretrievable. The rod stayed doubled over, snapped at mid-point. The top half dangled from a thin strand of fibreglass.
“They don’t make fishing rods very strong,” she said, as I flushed with anger. She handed me the ruined rod and, turning with a flourish, started down the dock.
“I must say that man was rather rude,” she added, looking over her shoulder at the departing boat. “See ya later, little brother.” Then she stopped short. “Oh,” she said, turning to face me.
An apology in the offing, I wondered? An offer to buy me a new rod?
“I’m having my friend Martha for a sleep over tonight, and I don’t want you bothering us,” she snapped.
And with that, she was gone.
An irretrievable youth
It’s amazing how sharp the memory of that evening remains, some 30 years later. One day recently, my sister and I were back at the Basin, sitting on a park bench and stuffing our faces with French fries, for which my sister has a decided weakness. We now live thousands of miles apart, but had returned to our hometown to spend time with our mother, just out of hospital.
The Basin was remarkably unchanged, although the train trestle was rustier and no longer in use, the raft was long gone, and the concrete was cracked and crumbled here and there. Wooden boats had passed into memory, replaced by modern fibreglass and aluminum ones. I’m told the fishing isn’t what it used to be.
Neither are we. My sister and I are a little slower of step, greyer of hair, and fuller of waist. We treasure our time together. Despite the miles that too often keep us apart, we are very close.
“Remember that time I broke your rod?,” she asked suddenly.
“Yeah.” I smiled. I was surprised she remembered.
“That was my best rod,” I said, trying to prompt a belated apology.
“Geesh,” she exclaimed. “You were horrible to Martha and me that night.”
In smiling silence, we looked across the Basin into our youth. Like that buck-and-a-half plug, it was irretrievable.
Originally published in the Winter 1996 issue of Ontario OUT of DOORS
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