by Dave Shelton
“Shh!” said the bear, who had remained absolutely still (he hadn’t even blinked) the whole time. “You’ll scare the fish away.”
“What fish?” said the boy (but very quietly). “I don’t think there even are any.”
“Of course there are fish,” said the bear.
“Maybe our fly is no good after all,” whispered the boy.
“It’s a beautiful fly.”
The bear still kept his eyes locked on the bobbing yellow duck and his voice was quiet and steady.
“The more I think about it, though,” said the boy, “the more I think it didn’t look all that much like a fly at all.”
“Well, no,” said the bear, “maybe not. But it doesn’t need to look exactly like a fly.”
“It didn’t look anything like a fly.”
“Well, no, not much. But it looks like some kind of an insect or something. That’s good enough.”
“What kind of an insect?” said the boy.
“I don’t know,” said the bear, a little sharply. “Maybe a caterpillar or something? Yes. It looks like a caterpillar. A bit.”
“I suppose,” said the boy and watched the duck for a while. It wasn’t going anywhere.
“Do fish eat caterpillars?” said the boy.
“What?” said the bear.
“Do fish eat caterpillars?”
The bear thought about this.
“Yes. I think. Probably. Yes. Yes, I’m sure. Fish eat caterpillars. At least some kinds of fish eat caterpillars. At least some kinds of fish eat some kinds of caterpillars. Yes.”
“Mm,” said the boy.
A boringly gentle breeze thought about blowing, but decided in the end not to bother. That’s how still it was. The duck just sat there. The boy was thinking.
“Wouldn’t the fish that eat caterpillars,” said the boy, “be in rivers though?”
“Maybe,” said the bear, before, to be frank, he had given the matter any thought.
“Rather than out at sea,” said the boy, “where there aren’t any caterpillars.”
“Um, maybe,” said the bear. He stared out at the distant bobbing duck, floating on the water. A tiny bright spot on the vast dark sea. The boy stood beside him, facing the same way but not really looking at anything.
The boy gave the tiniest sniff.
“The fish out here probably never even see a single caterpillar in their lives,” he said.
“Well, that’s good isn’t it, because then they won’t know that ours isn’t a very good one, will they?” said the bear.
“I hadn’t thought of that.”
“And I don’t think they have very good eyesight anyway, fish. And they’re certainly not very clever.”
“Hmm.”
“And they probably get really bored of eating, um, whatever it is they usually eat. So if they see a caterpillar, even if they don’t know what it is, they’ll probably try eating it just for a change.”
“I suppose,” said the boy.
“So it’ll be fine,” said the bear. “At some point a shortsighted, stupid fish with a taste for adventure will come along and—”
The rod twitched. Their attention snapped to the duck just as it disappeared beneath the water. With a flick of the wrist the bear jerked the rod sharply up and back, instantly pulling up the line and propelling out of the water and into the air a very startled fish. It flew through the air and landed neatly at their feet, flapping and bucking and bouncing around on the bottom of the boat.
“There. What did I tell you?” said the bear, and the boy couldn’t help grinning with relief. He was almost laughing in fact. He felt a giggle rising inside him as he watched the bear take the hook from the fish’s mouth. It wasn’t a huge fish but it was big enough.
The boy wanted to dance with joy (but if he did then the boat would rock and he’d probably fall over, so he didn’t).
THWACK!
The bear whacked the fish’s head firmly against the side of the boat, just once, killing it instantly and knocking the boy’s delight out of him, leaving him silent and wide-eyed with shock. The bear looked, oddly, both comical and menacing, standing there tensed from the excitement and holding a limp fish in one paw. The boy looked at him and said nothing.
Then his stomach growled again.
“Well don’t just stand there,” said the boy. “We’ve got a fish to cook.”
Trading Up
The boy awoke and licked his lips. There was the slightest taste of yesterday’s fish still on them and even that faint trace was exquisite. The bear had fried the fish in a small pan on his tea-making stove (lit, as ever, at arm’s length and with comically extreme care) and they had eaten it with their fingers (and paws), the juices dripping messily down their faces, each of them rapturous at their release from hunger and at the glorious deliciousness of the fish. If their stomachs could have danced for joy they would have.
Then, for a little while, they had sat happily in the moonlight and talked and joked. The bear had even tried to teach the boy a sea shanty, but it seemed to the boy that the tune kept changing each time the bear sang it and then, when the boy finally thought he’d got a grip on the melody, the bear would lose his way on the ukulele or forget the words and bring the song to a stuttering halt for a while. Then he would begin again, in a different key, possibly on a different song entirely, it was hard to tell. It was an awful racket, to be honest, but their laughter sounded sweet enough in the pauses. And at some point the boy had fallen asleep and slept more deeply and dreamed more happily than ever he had since they had set off.
Now the taste of yesterday’s meal on his lips roused his hunger. His stomach grumbled. Yesterday’s fish had been amazingly tasty, but it hadn’t been so very big. And it had been yesterday. The boy’s stomach, having been reminded what it was there for, was keen to get back to work. The bear’s was clearly thinking along the same lines. It rumbled deeply. The boy’s tummy gurgled a harmony.
“You can take a turn with the fishing rod if you like,” said the bear. “See if you can catch us something. I’m going to keep rowing.”
The boy was quite excited at the prospect of fishing. He’d never really seen the appeal before when he’d seen grownups doing it for fun (how was it fun, sitting very still for a long while with nothing happening?), but now that it was a way of not starving to death he began to see the point of it.
His first attempts at casting the line didn’t go too well. With one try he managed to get the hook caught in his coat, which was scrunched up on his seat, and hurl it out into the water. Another time he tangled the line around one of the oars and set the bear growling at him for interfering with his rowing. Eventually, though, the boy realised that he could just lower the rubber duck into the water and then gradually unreel the line as the boat moved on. Once the duck was far enough away that he couldn’t easily see it, he would reel the line slowly back in and then start again. He did this again and again and, though he was disappointed each time he failed to catch anything, he found he was not especially frustrated. He was patient, more or less, and, though the bear had remained silent throughout, offering neither advice nor discouragement at any point, the boy sensed that he approved. The sky was as cloudless as ever, the sea was still and the only sounds were the splish, splish, splish of the oars and a pair of grumbling, rumbling stomachs, but the boy was not bored. He was doing a job to the best of his ability. The sun was warming, the breeze was fresh. He felt good. Very, very hungry, but good: peaceful, contented, calm.
And then the duck ducked.
“Oooooooh!” said the boy.
“Aaaaaaaah!” said the boy.
“Whuthurr-ab-ab-ab-ab-ah-fuuuuh!” said the boy to the bear as he pointed at the spot where the taut fishing line met the surface of the water, the bull’s-eye in a target of ripples.
The bear watched the boy with calm amusement, slowing the pace of his rowing but saying nothing. The boy turned his attention back to the fishing line, pulled back hard on the rod
and began winding the reel. It wasn’t easy. The tension in the line was tremendous. He sat down on the middle bench (squelching onto his coat that he’d laid out to dry there) and braced his feet against the rear seat. The rod bucked in his hands, as if trying to wrench itself free and leap into the sea, but the boy held it firmly, heaved back on it, saw it bend alarmingly above his head. He wondered if it might break in two, or else, surely, the line would snap.
“I think you’ve got something there,” said the bear, enjoying himself.
The boy ignored him. Another hard tug on the line kept his attention focused there. The pull on the line had dragged the angle of the rod back down, close to horizontal, and the handle of the reel had slipped from his hand. The reel span as line flew out of it and the boy’s unseen adversary raced away from the boat.
“Oh no you don’t.”
The boy grabbed at the handle, first slowing the turn of the reel and then stopping it. He jerked the rod back again, pulling the line tight, then lowered it back down while reeling in line to maintain the tension. He’d seen this done somewhere, he thought. He didn’t think he was doing it quite right, but he won back some of the lost line just the same. He did it again: pulled back; lowered; reeled in. It was smoother this time. As he pulled back a third time it was easier, the line was fighting him less, the rod bending more gently, as whatever he had caught grew tired. Soon he was able to reel the line in freely, turning the handle easily and quickly, grinning delightedly in anticipation. The angle of the line steepened as the catch was pulled closer and closer to the boat, the little yellow rubber duck speeding towards him across the water. Soon he would be lifting out his catch, triumphant. He realised that the boat was no longer moving and that the bear was standing behind him now, watching over his shoulder. The boy felt great. He wound and wound the reel, and watched as the fish finally emerged from the water and dangled, flipping and flapping in the air, at the end of the line.
It was tiny.
“Quite a fighter, that one, wasn’t he,” said the bear. But there was no mockery in his voice. He took the fish from the hook. It only took a small thwack to kill this one but the boy still winced a little.
“Well done,” said the bear. “He’s just the job.”
“Don’t be stupid,” said the boy, grumpily. “He’s much too small. Not much of a meal for either of us.”
“That’s true,” said the bear, rubbing a thoughtful claw beneath his snout. “But we’re not going to eat this one.”
Something about the bear’s tone was making the boy nervous. And there was a look in his eyes too: he was staring a little too intently, but not exactly at anything, as if slightly in a daze. And his stance was too tense, as if his muscles had all clenched or he was full of electricity, as if there was something inside him waiting to get out.
“I’ve had,” said the bear, “a brilliant idea.”
Oh no, thought the boy.
“Oh yes?” said the boy.
“This fish,” said the bear, lifting it delicately by its tail, “is too small for us to eat, but if we use it as bait …”
“Then we could catch a bigger one!” said the boy. He looked excited. Then he looked shocked. He stood very still with his eyes wide and his mouth hanging open, and neither moved nor spoke for quite some time.
“What is it?” said the bear, waving a paw in front of the boy’s staring eyes.
“That,” said the boy, in a dazed, bemused voice, “really is a brilliant idea.”
He turned his head to look up at the bear, addressing him directly.
“How did that happen?”
The bear made a show of taking offence at this, but only for a moment – he was too eager to put his plan into action to waste time on play-acting.
It took a bit of thinking (and then some doing) before they could start fishing again. The boy pointed out that to catch a bigger fish they would need a bigger hook, so the bear took a small nail (torn with his teeth from a wooden crate full of who knew what that he had stowed in the bows) and bent it into shape. Then he tied it to the line in place of the caterpillary-fly. Then he hooked it inside of the little fish and handed the rod back to the boy.
“I can’t stand round here all day,” he said. “I’ve got rowing to do. You can do the fishing again. You’re clearly a natural.”
The boy held back a proud grin as best he could and they resumed their positions. The bear rowed. The boy dropped the line into the water. He played out a little line.
The duck sank almost immediately.
The fish must have been as surprised as the boy was. It barely put up any kind of a fight and was much easier to land than the last one, despite being bigger. Much, much bigger. The boy heaved it aboard. The bear took it from him (which was a relief) and held it up. They both looked at it with admiration and hunger.
“It’s huge!” said the boy.
“Yes,” said the bear, “it’s a beauty.”
“Shall I get the stove and the pan out?” said the boy, scuttling off to the front of the boat.
“Well,” said the bear. THWACK! “We could cook this one. Or …”
The boy stopped in his tracks and felt the uneasy rocking of the boat beneath his feet as he looked back at the bear.
“Or what?” he said. “Were you thinking of having it stuffed and hung over your fireplace instead?”
“I don’t have a fireplace,” said the bear, missing the boy’s sarcasm. “But what I was thinking was: if using a little fish as bait caught us a big fish …”
The boy could see where this was going (which admittedly made a pleasant change from everything else recently) and he didn’t like it.
“Oh no,” he said.
“… then if we use a big fish as bait …” said the bear, carrying on regardless.
“No, no, no,” said the boy.
“… we could catch a really, really big fish which would keep us going for days,” said the bear.
“I don’t think the line could take the weight of anything much bigger, though,” said the boy. “Or the rod. Or my arms, for that matter.”
“Hmm,” said the bear. He put the big fish down and picked up the rod. He looked at the line. He looked at the rod, flexing it thoughtfully. He glanced briefly at the boy’s arms.
“You’re right,” he said at last.
The boy brightened.
“We can’t use the rod,” said the bear, “so we’ll need different tactics. Pass me the tool box, will you? The blue one, just by your foot there.”
The tool box wasn’t that easy to get at. Clearly it hadn’t seen much use recently as it was covered in, and surrounded by, all sorts of other odds and bobs and bits and ends. The boy dug his way in and extracted it and lifted it onto the centre seat. The bear opened it up. The boy peered in.
It was a big box with a large number of different-sized compartments that opened up and spread out as the box itself was opened. All of them were empty except for the biggest section at the very bottom in which was a large wooden mallet.
“Is that it?” said the boy.
“All the tools I’ve ever needed,” said the bear, contentedly, lifting the mallet from the box with one paw and tapping it heftily into the other, and gazing off into the distance and the past. “Used to work wonders on the engine.”
“Harriet used to have an engine?”
“Yes,” said the bear. “Briefly.” He looked thoughtfully down at the mallet.
“They don’t build them like they used to, you know. They really don’t.”
A moment passed.
“But what’s that got to do with fishing?” said the boy, pointing at the mallet.
“Well,” said the bear, “like you said, the rod and the line wouldn’t take the weight of the kind of fish we’re after now so …”
He stood at the back of the boat and held the fish out over the water in his left paw. In his right paw he gripped the mallet behind his back, poised and ready to swing.
“See?” said the
bear. “The really big fish jumps out of the water to eat the quite big fish and then … POW!”
He waggled the mallet.
“Pow?” said the boy.
“That’s right. POW! Then we’ll have food for a week at least, I reckon. Brilliant, isn’t it?”
The boy didn’t think it was brilliant. He told the bear this quite clearly and politely, and then not quite so politely, and then really very rudely. He strongly suggested that they cook and eat the fish they’d got right now. The bear was having none of it.
“It’s the captain’s decision to make,” he said, tapping his captain’s hat (not quite as lightly as he’d intended) with the mallet for emphasis. “Long-term planning, that’s the thing,” he huffed. “That’s what captaincy is all about. But I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”
The boy rolled his eyes, but decided not to argue any further. The bear could stand there holding a fish all day so far as he was concerned. And once the bear finally gave up, at least they could cook and eat the fish they’d already got. And teasing the bear about it all afterwards would provide entertainment for days. He just hoped the bear wouldn’t be too stubborn. Surely he would give up after an hour or two.
The boy made himself comfortable at the front of the boat. He started to read the comic again. He didn’t pay it much attention though. He knew it so well now that there were no surprises left in it for him. He looked up at the bear, standing there, tongue out in concentration, fish clasped in one paw, mallet in the other. No surprises there either. Then he looked just at the fish and his stomach rumbled.
“Shh!” said the bear, without looking round. “You’ll scare the fish away.”
Before the boy could reply he was interrupted by a much lower, louder rumble that made the whole boat shake.
“I’ll scare the fish away?” said the boy. “Your tummy’s much worse than mine.”
The bear looked puzzled.
“That wasn’t my tummy,” he said.
The rumble rumbled again. It was a terrible, low growling, even louder now, and the boat was pitching and rocking.