The Bass,the river and Sheila Mant
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The Bass, The river and Sheila Mant
There was a summer in my life when the only
creature that seemed lovelier to me
than a
largemouth bass was Sheila Mant. I was fourteen.
The Mants had rented the
cottage next to ours
on the rivers; with their parties, their frantic
games of softball,
their constant comings and
goings and goings, they appeared to me denizens of
a
brilliant existence.
given anything to be
invited to one of their parties, and when my
parents went to
bed I would sneak through the
woods to their hedge and stare enchanted at the
candlelit swirl of white dresses and bright,
paisley skirts.
Sheila was the middle daughter
---at seventeen, all but out of reach. She would
spend her days sunbathing on a float my Uncle
Sierbert had moored in their cove,
and before
July was over I had learned all her moods. If she
lay flat on the diving
board with her hand
trailing idly in the water, she was pensive, not
to be disturbed.
On her side, her head propped
up by her arm, she was observant, considering
those
around her with a look that seemed
queenly and severe. Sitting up, arms tucked
around her long, suntanned legs, she was
approachable, but barely, and it was only
in
those glorious moments when she stretched herself
prior to entering the water
that her various
suitors found the courage to come near.
These
were many. The Dartmouth heavy-weight crew would
scull by her house on
their way upriver, and I
think all eight of them must have been in love
with her at
various times during the summer;
the coxswain would curse at them through his
megaphone, but without effect---there was
always a pause in their pace when they
passed
Sheila's float. I suppose to these jaded twenty-
year-olds she seemed the
incarnation of
innocence and youth, while to me she appeared
unutterably suave,
the epitome of
sophistication. I was on the swim team at school,
and to win her
attention would do endless laps
between my house and the Vermont shore, hoping
she would notice the beauty of my flutter
kick, the power of my crawl. Finishing, I
would boost myself up onto our dock and glance
casually over toward her, but she
was never
watching, and the miraculous day she was, I
immediately climbed the
diving board and did
my best tuck and a half for her , and continued
diving until she
had left and the sun went
down and my longing was like a madness and I
couldn't
stop.
It was late August by the
time I got up the nerve to ask her out. The
tortured will-I's,
won't-I's, the agonized
indecision over what to say, the false starts
toward her house
and embarrassed retreats----
the details of these have been seared from my
memory,
and the only part I remember clearly
is emerging from the woods toward dusk while
they were playing softball on their lawn, as
bashful and frightened as a unicorn.
Sheila
was stationed halfway between first and second,
well outside the infield. She
didn't seem
surprised to see me--- as a matter of fact, she
didn't seem to see me at
all.
She
turned---I took the full brunt of her long red
hair and well-spaced freckles
tomorrow
night at nine. Want to go?
One of her brothers
sent the ball sailing over the leftfielder's head;
she stood and
watched it disappear toward the
river.
I played my master stroke.
I
spent all of the following day polishing it. I
turned it upside down on our lawn and
rubbed
every inch with Brillo, hosing off the dirt,
wiping it with chamois until it
gleamed
as bright as aluminum ever gleamed. About five, I
slid it into the water,
arranging cushions
near the bow so Sheila could lean on them if she
was in one of
her pensive moods, propping up
my father's transistor radio by the middle thwart
so
we could have music when we came back.
Automatically, without thinking about it, I
mounted my Mitchell reel on my Pfleuger
spinning rod and stuck it in the stern.
I say
automatically, because I never went anywhere that
summer without a fishing
rod. When I wasn't
swimming laps to impress Sheila, I was back in our
driveway
practicing casts, and when I wasn't
practicing casts, I was tying the line to Tosca,
our springer spaniel, to test the reel's drag,
and when I wasn't doing any of those
things, I
was fishing the river for bass.
Too nervous to
sit at home, I got in the canoe early and started
paddling in a huge
circle that would get me to
Sheila's dock around eight. As automatically as I
brought
along my rod, I tried on a big Rapala
plug, let it down into the water, let out some
line and immediately forgot all about it.
It was already dark by the time I glided up to
the Mants' dock. Even by day the river
was
quiet, most of the summer people preferring
Sunapee or one of the other
nearby lakes, and
at night it was a solitude difficult to believe, a
corridor of hidden
life that ran between banks
like a tunnel. Even the stars were part of it.
They weren't
as sharp anywhere else; they
seemed to have closen the river as a guide on
their
slow wheel toward morning, and in the
course of the summer's fishing, I had learned
all their names.
I was there ten minutes
before Sheila appeared. I heard the slam of their
screen
door first, then saw her in the
spotlight as she came slowly down the path. As
beautiful as she was on the float, she was
even lovelier now--- her white dress went
perfectly with her hair, and complimented her
figure even more than her swimsuit.
It was her
face that bothered me. It had on its delightful
fullness a very dubious
expression.
anything.
She let herself down
reluctantly into the bow. I was glad she wasn't
facing me.
When her eyes were on me, I felt
like diving in the river again from agony and joy.
I pried the canoe away from the dock and
started paddling upstream. There was an
extra
paddle in the bow, but Sheila made no move to pick
it up. She took her shoes
off, and dangled her
feet over the side.
Ten minutes went by.
things. Big
largemouths. Micropetrus salmonides,
Now I have
spent a great deal of time in the years since
wondering why Sheila Mant
should come down so
hard on fishing. Was her father a fisherman? Her
antipathy
toward fishing nothing more than
normal filial rebellion? Had she tried it once? A
messy encounter with worms? It doesn't matter.
What does is that at that fragile
moment in
time I would have given anything not to appear
dumb in Sheila's severe
and unforgiving eyes.
She hadn't seen my equipment yet. What
I should have done, of course, was push
the
canoe in closer to shore and carefully slide the
rod into some branches where I
could pick it
up again in the morning. Failing that, I could
have surreptitiously
dumped the whole outfit
overboard, written off the forty or so dollars as
love's
tribute. What I actually did do was
gently lean forward, and slowly, ever so slowly,
pushes the rod back through my legs toward the
stern where it would be less
conspicuous.
It must have been just exactly what the bass
was waiting for. Fish will trail a lure
sometimes, trying to make up their mind
whether or not to attack, and the slight
pause
in the plug's speed caused by my adjustment was
tantalizing enough to
overcome the bass's
inhibitions. My rod, safely out of sight at last,
bent double. The
line, tightly coiled, peeled
off the spool with the shrill, tearing zip of a
high-speed drill.
Four things occurred to me
at once. One, that it was a bass. Two, that it was
a big
bass. Three that it was the biggest bass
I had ever hooked. Four, that Sheila Mant
must
not know.
She shuddered,
quickly drew her feet back into the canoe. Every
instinct I had told
me to pick up the rod and
strike back at the bass, but there was no need to
--- it
was already solidly hooked. Downstream,
an awesome distance downstream, it
jumped
clear of the water, landing with a concussion
heavy enough to ripple the
entire river. For a
moment, I thought it was gone, but then the rod
was bending
again, the tip dancing into the
water. Slowly, not making any motion that might
alert
Sheila, I reached down to tighten the
drag.
While all this was going on, Sheila had
begun talking and it was a few minutes
before
I was able to catch up with her train of thought.
wanted.
I 'm thinking more of UVM or
Bennington. Somewhere I can ski.
The bass was
slanting toward the rocks on the New Hampshire
side by the ruins of
Donaldson's boathouse. It
had to be an old bass--- a young one probably
wouldn't
have known the rocks were there. I
brought the canoe back out into the middle of
the river, hoping to head it off.
mean, it might be a while before I get
started and all. I was thinking of getting my
hair styled, more swept back? I mean, Ann-
Margret? Like hers, only shorted.
She
hesitated.
We were. I had managed to keep the
bass in the middle of the river away from the
rocks, but it had plenty of room there, and
for the first time a chance to exert its full
strength. I quickly computed the weight
necessary to draw a fully loaded canoe
backwards----the thought of it made me feel
faint.
I dug in deeper with my paddle.
Reassured Sheila began talking about something
else, but all my attention was taken up now
with the fish. I could feel its desperation
as
the water grew shallower. I could sense the extra
strain on the line, the frantic
way it cut
back and forth in the water. I could visualize
what it looked like---- the
gape of its mouth,
the flared gills and thick, vertical tail. The
bass couldn't have
encountered many forces in
its long life that it wasn't capable of handling,
and the
unrelenting tug at its mouth
must have been a source of great puzzlement and
mounting panic.
Me, I had problems of my
own. To get to Dixford, I had to paddle up a
sluggish
stream that came into the river
beneath a covered bridge. There was a shallow
sandbar at the mouth of this stream---weeds on
one side, rocks on the other.
Without doubt,
this is where I would lose the fish.
if
it's even worth it. I wouldn't even do it
probably. I saw Jackie Kennedy in Boston
and
she wasn't tan at all.
Taking a deep breath, I
paddled as hard as I could for the middle, deepest
part of
the bar. I could have threaded the eye
of a needle with the canoe, but the pull on
the stern threw me off and I overcompensated
---the canoe veered left and scraped
bottom. I
pushed the paddle down and shoved. A moment of
hesitation... a moment
more.... The canoe shot
clear into the deeper water of the stream. I
immediately
looked down at the rod. It was
bent in the same, tight arc-miraculously, the bass
was still on.
The moon was out now. It was
low and full enough that its beam shone directly
on
Sheila there ahead of me in the canoe,
washing her in a creamy, luminous glow. I
could see the lithe, easy shape of her
shoulders, the proud, alert tilt of her head, and
all these things were as a tug on my heart.
Not just Sheila, but the aura she carried
about her of parties and casual touching and
grace. Behind me, I could feel the
strain of
the bass, steadier now, growing weaker, and this
was another tug on my
heart, not just the bass
but the beat of the river and the slant of the
stars and the
smell of the night, until
finally it seemed I would be tornapart between
longings, split
in half. Twenty yards ahead of
us was the road, and once I pulled the canoe up on
shore, the bass would be gone, irretrievably
gone. If instead I stood up, grabbed the
rod
and started pumping, I would have it---as tired as
the bass was, there was no
chance it could get
away. I reached down for the rod, hesitated,
looked up to where
Sheila was stretching
herself lazily toward the sky, her small breasts
rising beneath
the soft fabric of her dress,
and the tug was too much for me, and quicker than
I it
takes to write down, I pulled the
penknife from my pocket and cut the line in half.
With a sick, nauseous feeling in my stomach, I
saw the rod unbend.
Through a superhuman
effort of self-control, I was able to beach the
canoe and help
Sheila off. The rest of the
night is much foggier. We walked to the fair---
there was
the smell of popcorn, the sound of
guitars. I may have danced once or twice with
her, but all I really remember is her coming
over to me once the music was done to
explain
that she would be going home in Eric Caswell's
Corvette.
For the first time that night
she looked at me, really looked at me.
Funny. Different. Dreamy .Odd. How many
times was I to hear that in the years to
come,
all spoken with the same quizzical, half-
accusatory tone Sheila used then.
Poor Sheila!
Before the month was over, the spell she cast over
me was gone, but
the memory of that lose bass
haunted me all summer and haunts me still. There
would be other Sheila Mants in my life, other
fish, and though I came close once or
twice,
it was these secret, hidden tuggings in the night
that claimed me, and I never
made the same
mistake again.
The Theme of
“The Bass, the river and Sheila Mant”
Theme of
'The Bass, the River and Sheila MANT' shows the
narrator struggle
between his desire to catch
the biggest bass in his life and his desire to
impress
Sheila. He desperately tries to
conceal the rod with the big bass as Sheila
chatters away, having absolutely no idea what
is going. The narrator struggles
to ask Sheila
to the dance, whom he has intense feelings for.