THE NORTH RIDING PROJECT

The trout hung, delicate and motionless among the wavering shadows.  Three boys with fishing poles came onto the bridge and we leaned on the rail and looked down at the trout.  They knew the fish.  He was a neighbourhood character.

‘They’ve been trying to catch that trout for twenty-five years.  There’s a store in Boston offers a twenty-five dollar fishing rod to anybody that can catch him.’

*

They leaned on the rail, motionless, identical, their poles slanting slenderly in the sunlight, also identical.  The trout rose without haste, a shadow in faint wavering increase; again the little vortex faded slowly downstream.  ‘Gee,’ the first one murmured.  

‘We don’t try to catch him any more,’ he said.  ‘We just watch Boston folks that come out and try.’

Faulkner/Vintage, 1995

Kola was always first to scale the barbed-wire fence and fling a line out into the blackness. She could reel them in faster than any of the lads.  She thought nothing of slapping their brains out on a nearby rock, or riving their heads off and clawing the guts out with her bare hands.  Once they’d scored a plaggy bag-full they would head back into the forest and cook up a feast.  Once, she won a bet to down a whole one raw, bones and guts and all.  She flung back her head and dropped the whole thing straight down her throat.  I swear it passed her lips still wriggling.

Sweet Tooth/unpub