The Catfish Off Grandpa’s Old Dock

Kevin crouched down next to him on the bank and told him what Lou used to tell him: the fish do not care how bad you want them.

“Your grandpa’s rule,” Kevin said. “Sit still. Have patience. Leave the bait alone. If you keep jerking it around, nothing wants it.”

So Mason sat still. I put a chicken liver on for him at a quarter past nine, and he made a face at the smell, and then he laughed at himself for making the face, and cast it right back out by the tree.

At nine-forty, that old Zebco started clicking.

It was the same sound as Thursday at the dock, but louder, and faster, and longer. The line was going out toward the middle of the lake like something meant to take it to Kentucky.

“Rod tip up!” I said, and Kevin said it at the same time, and we looked at each other and almost laughed.

Mason hung on. His little arms were shaking. The rod was bent over in a curve I had only ever seen in Lou’s hands.

Kevin got right down beside him, and his hand hovered behind Mason’s hands on that rod the whole time, and never once touched it.

“It’s your fish, bud,” Kevin kept saying. “It’s yours. You got him. Easy. Let him run. Now reel. Now reel.”

People started noticing. Kids came down the bank to watch. Two old men who had been sitting on a cooler by the ramp got up and walked over slow, the way old men walk over to see a big fish, like it is no big thing and it is the biggest thing.

It went on six minutes, Kevin said later. He timed it on his watch. It felt like an hour to me. I was on my feet, and I did not remember standing up.

Then the fish came up in the shallows by the fallen tree and rolled, and the whole bank made a sound.

It was a channel cat, and it was bigger than the one at the dock by a long way.

Kevin waded in to his knees in his work boots without a second thought and got it by the lower lip and brought it up on the bank.

Mason dropped the rod and just stood there staring with his mouth open.

One of the old men stepped forward. He was in his eighties at least, with a cap from the seed corn company and hands like old leather.

He said his name was Delbert, and he asked Mason if he wanted to learn to hold that fish so it would not stick him.

“My grandma showed me,” Mason said. “Behind the fins.”

“Well, let’s see if she showed you right,” Delbert said, and he winked at me.

Mason crouched down and slid his hand in behind the side fins, careful as anything, just how I had shown him on the dock.

Delbert nodded. “Other hand under the belly, son. Hold him like you love him. There you go.”

The other old man, who said his name was Earl, clapped Mason on the shoulder. “That’s how you hold a fish,” Earl said. “Most men my age still don’t do it right.”

Mason carried that catfish up the bank to the weigh-in table with both hands, and he walked like he was carrying something in church.

Kevin walked beside him with a hand under the fish in case. Half the kids on the bank followed them.

Mack put it on the scale. He read it out to himself, then read it again, then wrote it down.