Free Past the Shallows by Favel Parrett

and say
     it again.
    George stood up and climbed back onto the jetty. He started unloading his lines and tackle box and buckets from the dinghy.
     Jake jumped out too.
    ‘Aren’t you going now?
    George shrugged his shoulders and smiled. He sat down on the end of the jetty with Jake beside him.
    Harry took a step onto the grey creaky boards. Then another. When he got to the end he sat near George.
    ‘Sorry,’ he said.
    But George was occupied. He was screwing one of the rods together, fixing the line. He opened his tackle box and got out a
     brightly coloured yellow and orange plastic lure and a shiny silver hook.
    ‘Flathead,’ he said, and he handed the rod to Harry.
    ‘I can’t … I don’t know what to do.’
    George grabbed the rod, cast out quickly with a flick of his wrist, and handed it back to Harry.
    Harry didn’t want to lose George’s rod, or break it or do anything embarrassing, so he grasped the handle tightly in his hands
     and shoved the base between his legs for backup. No one had ever taken him fishing. Not even Granddad or Joe or anyone. He’d
     seen people fishing – kids off the pier at Dover and Southport, men beach fishing in the surf atRoaring at dawn and at dusk – but he couldn’t do it. He knew he wouldn’t be able to do it. And George was just humming, getting
     another line together. It was a low hum, a kind of song like singing with no words.
    Maybe nothing would bite on that hook at the end of his line and he could just sit here and pretend to be fishing. That would
     be the best thing that could happen. And he said the words silently in his head: please fish just keep away. All you fish
     just keep away from my lure and that little silver hook.
    Jake pushed his head between the two of them, put his cold wet nose on Harry’s cheek, snorted and took a look around. Then
     he was off again, sniffing something in the river weeds. Harry knew that Jake could keep himself amused all day as long as
     George was somewhere nearby. He could be free if George was there watching over things.
    George settled in beside him with his line cast out and he was still humming, just softly, and the clouds were moving in the
     sky. The breeze was just onshore, but not cold. Not wispy. Harry let his back curve down, relax, and his hands were steady
     now, not clasped so tight. And he thought, OK. This is OK.
    And he nearly jumped right out of his skin. His reel began to spin, the line running in a blurand the rod slipped right through his hands. But George’s hands were fast, ready, and he grabbed on. He jammed the reel. The
     line slowed, the rod bowed right down to the water. And Harry found that one of his hands was on the reel again, right over
     George’s hand, and then he was holding the handle of the reel all on his own, gripping on. He was doing it, slowly moving
     the line back turn by turn. And that fish must be big because it tugged so hard.
    Jake was back, his eyes keen on the water just waiting for that fish to rise. He was whining, ready to bark, ready to leap
     into the water.
    One wind, two winds, three, and there it was: speckled slime brown, the colour of mud with bulging eyes too wide apart for
     its body. Huge fanning monster fins on either side of its cheeks. George scooped the fish up into a net and flopped it into
     a bucket of water. It lay on the bottom against the yellow plastic, gills opening – gills closing. It was disgusting.
    ‘Flathead,’ George said.
    Harry didn’t catch any more fish, but George did. Four. Harry was happy to hold onto his rod and look out at everything and
     listen to the songs George hummed. And he thought that maybe he even liked fishing. This kind, sitting on the land kind of
     fishing. Maybe this was why Joe and Milesliked it so much. And he knew that Granddad would have taken him. It was just that he was too little, too small to go when
     Granddad had been alive. And if Granddad hadn’t died then he definitely would have taken Harry fishing,