Mike Driver

Dodsy and me love night fishing.

Don’t need no rods, nor hooks, nor bait, nor permit for that matter; but don’t tell the warden.

Dodsy showed me how to do it. Just shine a torch in their big ugly white faces and reach in with your hand. Light blinds em a little, then you lulls em in and grabs em out fast like and they’re yours, right there in the palm of your hand.

But you got to lie down low to the bank so they don’t get scared of your shadow.

Go on, grass aint that wet and you reach in, that’s it, just like you’re doing now.

Where’s Dodsy? Oh he’ll be along soon. Never misses a night.

 Dodsy’s been doing this for ever. Never misses, even that year the thaw came early. You remember that, maybe you’re too young. Anyway floodwaters rose and swept out the bridge. Bad for the town. Good for fishing. It was that night, when the water was deep and fast flowing, that Dodsy said he saw the mermaid.

 Water level was right up the bank, above where you are now, up around the trunk of that willow behind you. And suddenly Dodsy starts jumpin’ and hollerin’. “I seen her, I seen a mermaid!” he shouts.

 Dodsy likes a drink, little nip now and again of Navy Rum from that hip flask he carries. Says it wards off the cold and makes his fingers tingle. I said he should ease off but next thing I know he’s leaning right out with his hand on a bough of that willow tree yelling.

 “I see her, I see her, I can almost touch her!”

 “Can’t see nothing,” I says, but I was lying on the bank at the time with my sleeve rolled up and my arm in the freezing water up to my elbow. To me the water just looks like a shiny black road heading nowhere fast. But I see Dodsy’s leaning right over now and his hand is in the water and the current eddies around it, then I hears a loud crack followed by a splash and Dodsy is gone.

 Not the first time the old fool's fallen in. So I’m up on my legs runnin’ down the bank and callin’. But the water's fast and black and deep and the weir is only two hundred yards away and anyone hitting the weir when the river's up aint going to make it.

 Didn’t go fishing for two weeks after that, but I suppose it gets in your blood and before I know it I’m down here again, near the willow where Dodsy went in.

 What’s that, you seen some movement? Just take your time now. Patience that’s what this game is about.

 Anyway, then I see Dodsy, under the black water, like through a looking glass, but it’s him and his big white face swims a little closer.

 “Hello Marty,” he says, clear and bright as a bell to my ears. “How’s it going, catch any lately?”

 I’m taken aback and for a few minutes I can’t say anything but Dodsy is smiling like a Cheshire Cat, so I says, “Fine. How’s it with you?”

 Dodsy laughs, kinda watery and gurgling. “They fish down here too,” he says. “Caught me. Now they let me fish.”

 “Fish for what?” I asks, nervous like.

 “People,” says Dodsy, with a glint in his eye.

 I steps back at this. “You here to catch me?” I asks.

 “No,” says Dodsy. “I figure we're both night fishers. You catch what you need and I’ll catch what I need and I won’t try to pull you in if you don’t try to pull me out.”

 “Fine with me,” I says, relieved.

 “Just one thing,” he adds.

 “I need your help with something.”

 “What’s that?” I ask, cause we’ve been friends for a long time.

 “Bait,” he says.

 So here we are and I’m glad you’ve chosen to come fishing with me tonight. Because every time I bring a new fellah along they always catch something.

 Yes sir they always do.

 Or at least Dodsy does.

 What’s that? Something got you? Aint no cause to scream like a girl.

 Now you quit strugglin’. Dodsy’s a lot stronger than you are, young fellah. No I can’t help you. Dodsy is my friend. Besides, he’s more than generous with the fish he puts my way.

 That’s better.

 I can hear myself think now you’ve quit all that shoutin’ and splashin’.

 You know it’s funny, Dodsy and me been fishin’ this stretch for nigh on twenty years and there’s only ever been one thing we disagreed on; I always throw my catch back, Dodsy, he keeps his. But I guess you know that now.

Don’t you?