See Introduction: Roscoe Fish Stories, January 2024
- Episode 1: Roscoe Fish Goes "Boying"! January 2024
- Episode 2: How Roscoe Fish Got His Name, February 2024
- Episode 3: The Journey Downriver, March 2024
- Episode 4: The Perilous Escape, March 2024
- Episode 5: Boying, The Lost Bait Can
- Episode 6: BoyingPosts - Of Storms and Shoals
- Episode 7: The Fish Grove, Part 1
- Episode 7: The Fish Grove, Part 2
- Episode 7: The Fish Grove, Part 3
- Episode 8: The Invasion of the River Rats
The Hole in the Floor
On an island without electricity, the day’s activities are book-ended by the light, from dawn to dusk. Late on a fall afternoon, as long shadows began to creep across the dock, the boys came upstairs shivering, with wet gear, wet towels, and wet hair, but no fish. The mother prepared a supper of baked tongue and canned peas. “We could have had fish and chips if we had kept one,” one boy grumbled. “What are we going to do?” Christopher sighed.
They played Monopoly after supper, but Christopher could not concentrate. He was thinking about how to solve the fishing problem. At last, when the game was over and he was bankrupt, an idea came to him. “I know a secret about my room,” he whispered to the other boys, as “Time for bed” was announced. As the nights cooled in the fall, the children slept in rooms down the long hallway in the upstairs of the boathouse. “Come over after dark. But be quiet.”
The two boys in the front room twin beds each jumped under the covers and pretended to fall asleep. They both squinted towards the window, waiting what seemed like an eternity for darkness. When all was quiet, they pulled on their socks and slid through the pitch-black hallway to the center bedroom. With his door ajar, keeping close watch on the hall, Christopher waved them inside. He aimed the beam of a small flashlight at a fishing line with a tiny hook onto which he had threaded a wiggly worm.
“Look,” he pointed down. “Look here.”
Underneath the bed was a small round hole cut all the way through the floor. “You can see down to the water,” he said. Christopher handed over the flashlight and carefully threaded the line with its hook and worm through the hole, down and down, until it plopped into the still, dark, water of the slip below. “Maybe we could catch a pike or a pickerel,” he whispered.
In the late evening, Roscoe often enjoyed a leisurely swim around Pine Island. Sometimes he would pop in on a friend who lived in the underwater ledges of Zavikon, a neighboring island that straddled the border between New York state and Ontario. This evening, glancing in the boathouse slip on his way home, he noticed a familiar worm dangling very close to the water’s surface.
How odd, he thought. It was almost dark and the worm was too high in the water for pike to be interested. Most surprisingly, there were no noises above, so he sensed that the boys were nowhere around. Out of the corner of his eye, Roscoe saw one of the pretty iridescent Sunfish who lived under the dock approaching the worm. Suddenly, she leaned forward and took a nibble. Right before his eyes, the little Sunny flew into the air towards the ceiling of the boathouse, her tiny orange fins flailing and beads of water dripping off her tail.
Upstairs, the gleeful boys had forgotten one thing –- even the little Sunny was too big to fit through the small hole in the floor. There she swung helplessly, while muffled sounds came from above, as the boys tried to figure out what to do.
Roscoe tread water below and waited. Finally, the Sunny slowly descended back down towards the water. Roscoe was ready. He angled his body directly underneath her. So, rather than hitting the water as she came down, she landed softly on his back. The line above went slack. At that moment, Roscoe flipped the Sunny off his back and the hook fell out of her mouth. She flopped into the water, free of the worm. Dazed, but unharmed, she scurried away, turning back towards Roscoe with a grateful wave of her fin. Her mouth was so sore that she couldn’t bubble out a thank you. Roscoe watched the worm slowly rise towards the ceiling, sighed at the absurdity of boying, and swam off towards home.
Epilogue: Roscoe Gets Carried Away
Later that fall, just as the sun was setting and soft hues cloaked the rocks around the island paradise in pink veils, Roscoe finished his supper at the Frost Diner and beat it back to take his usual lap around Pine Island before dark.
As he rounded the foot of the island, where a shallow shoal jutted out beside the boathouse, he noticed a bright red dragonfly dancing on top of the water. Roscoe’s mouth watered at the thought of the appetizing insect. Maybe he was dreaming or maybe it was a mirage. The insect rested on the water, like a bright red strawberry on top of luscious whipped-cream short cake. Without thinking, Roscoe closed his eyes and opened his mouth to let the succulent morsel float in.
In the twilight, the father was rocking idly on the upstairs porch after supper, watching Christopher fish off the boathouse dock. He was casting with a colorful dry surface fly. Evening was the best time to catch fish who were making their way home to their caves and might like a bedtime nibble.
Suddenly, Christopher’s back became taut, and the tip of his rod bent towards the water’s surface. He was struggling to reel in a good-sized fish. The fish took a deep dive beyond the shoal, and Christopher played it by letting out more line, while holding the rod’s tip high to keep the tension tight. After a long fight, the fish finally began to tire, but just as it neared the surface by the shoal, it took one last leap, and the line shirred out. Even from the porch, the father could see the long, narrow stripe and bright white spots on its tail. A jolt went through him. He took off for the boathouse, racing through the yellow living room and down the long, dark hallway, slamming the screen door as he thundered down the outer stairs.
“Hey, look,” Christopher had reeled it in all the way and already was holding up the fish by its lower lip. “A smallie -– a nice fat one! These are great eating! I’ll clean it now, and we can have it with scrambled eggs for breakfast.”
Imagine Roscoe’s surprise. Not only was he totally immersed in air and finding it hard to breath, but also this boy Christopher knew his nickname -– his familiar family name from childhood -– Smallie!
But Roscoe hardly had time to think about this, as, in that instant, his whole body shook as the father lunged for him. He gripped the rod that Christopher had tucked under his arm, and at the same time reached out to keep the boy from plunging off the dock into the water.
Roscoe felt a firm hand grasp his body, and then he was falling. He hadn’t swallowed the tempting insect after all; it had turned over on his tongue and flown out of his mouth.
As Roscoe landed, the seaweed-covered shoal cushioned him, and he plopped back into the water. His gills filled up with cool liquid, and he gulped with relief. Instinctively, he flashed around and darted away towards the welcome entrance to his cave.
“Well, what did you do that for,” Christopher asked, as he watched the fish swim off. “It got away!” He noticed a relieved expression on his father’s face. “I had to save him,” the father explained. “I know that fish. That was Roscoe.”
“So now you know,” the father said, steering Christopher down the dock and up the boathouse stairs. “That is how you can always tell it’s Roscoe -– he is the small-mouth bass with the white dots that look like little islands in a green river on the tip of his tail.” Christopher sighed. Next summer, he vowed he was going to look for Roscoe while snorkelling around the island.
At bedtime, when the father turned down the kerosene lantern outside the children’s rooms, the boathouse once again was suspended at the center of the slowly circling galaxies.
The End
Acknowledgments
The first person to acknowledge is my uncle John Keats (JK) who invented the Roscoe Fish Stories as bedtime entertainment for us kids. For JK, the Roscoe Fish Stories were purely spoken improvisations and never typed up. (His evocative and poetic journal about life on an island in the Thousand Islands – Of Time and an Island – was published by Charterhouse in 1974 and reprinted in paperback in 1987 by Syracuse University Press.) Some half-century later, not one cousin could remember an entire Roscoe Fish Story. So, I set out to recreate them from childhood memories on both my cousins’ island, and on our great grandfather’s property on the Canadian mainland, where I spent the summers with my family.
An early reader of the first draft of these Roscoe Fish Stories was JK’s daughter Victoria Keats Frost, who offered encouragement and remembrances, as well as pointers about the vocabulary of island life. Her son Peter liked the idea of reinventing his grandfather’s stories, which he also loved as a child.
Victoria’s daughter Alison enthusiastically remembered Roscoe. In fact, it was for her son Fisher’s first birthday that I thought of passing the stories along to the next generation of Pine Islanders. Alison’s husband Marcio Paes Barretto came up with the inspired idea of pickerels getting piercings. He also recommended that a sturgeon be included, a rare fish found in the St Lawrence River, a place that he grew to love as a member of the Keats/Frost family.
Other early readers of these stories were Tara Christie Kinsey and her children. Although not acquainted with the St Lawrence River, they loved the idea of an underwater diner for fish.
Eric Stark gave a number of close readings as the manuscript progressed and asked vital questions concerning direction and purpose.
Christopher Keats, the boy in the story, now older than his father was when the family spent entire summers on Pine Island, read the manuscript in its final stages with an endearing sense of childlike awe and provided some useful fact-checking.
Elise Wright waved to “those people” on the dock on Pine Island that summer day, who turned out to be cousins and wonderful friends.
Enormous thanks go to Susan Smith, Editor of TI Life, for her instant enthusiasm for Roscoe and his friends. I am very pleased that these stories have reached a larger audience through her brilliant work and dedication to this publication. Thanks also to Elspeth Naismith for her sensitive editing and care about the importance of suspense. They both have been a pleasure to work with for their deep understanding and appreciation of Roscoe’s world.
I have recreated these stories to memorialize those magical summers in the Thousand Islands. My cousins continue to visit Pine Island and introduce their children and grandchildren to the world of fish and fishing, boats and swimming, discovery and wonder. These Roscoe Fish Stories aim once again to become an integral part of island lore.
By Sarah Bodine
Sarah Bodine is a writer, editor, designer and book artist. She spent the summers of her childhood at her great-grandfather’s house, known as Cliff Cottage, on the Ontario side of the St Lawrence River near Rockport. The three Keats children were her cousins, and she often ran an outboard across the Canadian channel to spend the night on Pine Island. John Keats, fondly known as JK, made Roscoe Fish the main character in his bedtime stories, which were loved by all the children. To this day, the next island generation is forever looking for Roscoe under the boats in the slip.
Editor's Note: How often is an editor fortunate enough to open an email and being a eight-month journey of delight. I hope readers, young and old, will take the time to enjoy meeting Roscoe and his fish friends. As I travel back and forth to town in my boat I have to admit I wonder if there is a Frost Diner deep below filled with fish friends, all watching the screen with the latest sports events. I no longer need to wonder, I know there is and they are. Thanks Sarah and all the cousins!
Posted in: Volume 19, Issue 8, August 2024, Fiction
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