The Bass, the River, and Sheila Mant

W. D. Wetherell’s short story “The Bass, the River, and Sheila Mant,” first published in 1983 and later anthologized in 1985’s The Man Who Loved Levittown, has been popular ever since for its gently humorous depiction of youthful infatuations. Wetherell reaches into his own past to present a tale that’s both lyrically beautiful and achingly funny. In the story, a 14-year-old boy gets a crush on an older girl and must make a painful decision when their first date is interrupted by a giant fish. The story highlights the awkward conflicts that confront young people as they grow up.

The work won the PEN fiction award and has been republished many times. Wetherell, author of more than 20 books and a contributor to major newspapers and magazines, has received over a dozen awards and fellowships and has lectured at the US Library of Congress and Italy’s Bellagio Center. He lives in New England, where he pursues his twin passions of writing and bass fishing. Please note that this guide uses an online version of the story, so citations will reference paragraph numbers.

The story’s narrator is spending the summer at a cottage on a river in New England, where he swims and fishes. Next door lives 17-year-old Sheila Mant, who incites in the narrator a great longing. For weeks, he watches as she moves about her cottage, plays baseball, throws parties, and sunbathes on the dock. He soon can read her moods simply by the way she reclines.

Other boys and young men also are smitten, and a few work up the nerve to talk to her. The narrator is a member of his school’s swim team; when Sheila is around, he makes a point of doing laps and diving expertly, but she ignores him. He also spends hours each day fishing and practicing casting.

One evening, he works up his courage and walks over to her cottage, where she’s playing baseball. He chats with her and invites her to a dance in a nearby town the following night. When she asks how they’ll get there, he replies, “We’ll go by canoe” (Paragraph 12). She accepts. The next day he cleans his canoe, places cushions in its bow, adds a radio for music, and, out of habit, stows his fishing gear.

Nervous about the date, the narrator sets out early in the canoe; to kill time, he paddles in a large, slow circle. Idly, he drops a fishing line in the water and forgets about it. Finally, Sheila appears on the dock in a white dress that sets off her long, red hair. She’s skeptical of the canoe, but he assures her that it’s safe.

Carefully, she lowers herself into the bow and faces forward. Behind her, sculling, the narrator feels nervous and ecstatic. As he paddles, she asks about a nearby sound, and he answers that it’s bass splashing as they search for food. She opines that fishing is stupid. Stunned, the narrator realizes he should try to hide his fishing gear.

At that moment, a huge bass bites down on his forgotten lure and the reel spins. When Sheila asks what that sound is, the narrator tells her that it must be bats. The enormous hooked bass swims downriver, jumps skyward, and falls back with a splash. While Sheila talks idly about her plans for the future—should she go to college or be a model first?—the narrator tries to deal with the bass, guiding the boat at different angles to counter the big fish’s moves. All the while, he replies politely to her chatter.

The bass swims into the middle of the river and pulls hard; the canoe begins to move backward, and Sheila notices it. However, the narrator sculls harder and regains the advantage, so she returns to her monolog about herself. While battling the fish, the narrator guides the canoe toward a small side stream where they can disembark, but he realizes that he’ll lose the fish in the shallows unless he stands up and forcibly reels it in. Not wanting Sheila to realize he’s fishing, the narrator makes the difficult decision to cut the line with a knife, letting the fish go free.

That evening, after the narrator and Sheila dance once or twice, she informs him “that she would be going home in Eric Caswell’s Corvette,” and adds that the narrator is “a funny kid” (Paragraph 56). By summer’s end, the narrator’s crush on Sheila is long gone, but he always regrets letting that big bass go free. He will never again give up a great catch for anything else.