The Kavanagh Succession

Liam emerged from the tool shed with a simple pole and reel, holding a cup of worms which he handed down to Keegan Kavanagh, wee but proud of his six years.

The father walked his son downhill to the soft bank of the loch on the clearest and most beautiful of summer morns, settled the boy on a stump, and smiled as the lad giggled whilst putting the worm on the hook and lowering it into the shallows.

Liam trudged up the hill to the shed and repeatedly put a whetstone to the edge of the sickle as his father's father before him had taught him.

Keegan yelped and hollered as a catfish of at least 8 kilograms took the hook through the lower lip and oddly enough swam toward the boy, hovering not a meter away, and staring eyes-on-eyes with the lad whose cries were lost in the breeze and steel singing against stone across the distance.

Keegan and the great fish began to blink in synchronous rhythm, and the boy laid the pole to the ground, the large fish's mouth opened as the youngster removed the hook, informing that fish, “Be seein’ your likes again, I will.”

Some 22 years later, Keegan trudged uphill toward the shed when he heard little Seamus shriek at the loch’s edge, yelling he had a monster fish hooked and the father turned to see his son’s pole bent to the point of near breaking and glanced to his father's, Liam Kavanagh's grave on the far hill, and with a plough-worn weathered hand, wiped a tear from his cheek on what looked to be the clearest and most beautiful of summer morns.