The Bass, the River, and Sheila Mant

W. D. Wetherell’s semi-autobiographical account of a youthful summertime crush illustrates how the painful yearnings of young love can veer disastrously and hilariously off course. The story pits a young teen’s twin dreams of romantic infatuation against recreational ambition to force the protagonist to make a bad decision that will echo through his later years. The story balances many elements and even genres, including a reflective description of youthful erotic infatuation, an evocation of the silent beauty of nature, a comical encounter with a fish, and a philosophical moral about failure that brings wisdom.

There is evidence in the story and in author W. D. Wetherell’s biography that its events take place in 1963, the year when Wetherell was 14. Sheila mentions wanting to get a hair style like Ann-Margret, whose 1963 film Bye Bye Birdie made her a newly glamorous Hollywood starlet. The Corvette mentioned in the story is likely a Stingray, one of the most desirable sports cars in the US; Corvettes were featured in the popular 1960s TV show Route 66.

The narrator’s twin summer goals involve the classic fishing boast—“The one that got away was this big!”—a regret that in this case applies literally to the large bass the narrator lets loose and more figuratively to the desirable young woman who is out of his romantic league. Eager to catch both, he ends up giving up the fish, which was potentially catchable, for Sheila, who decidedly never was.

The narrator’s love for fishing transcends the process of merely catching the creatures and includes joy: the “the beat of the river and the slant of the stars and the smell of the night” (53). Fishing answers a deep, atavistic call from the wilderness that invites the narrator to participate, and perhaps become one with, nature.

While this nature-based sublimity is available to the narrator, his other preoccupation, Sheila Mant, daughter of a socially prominent family and three years his senior, is definitely not. Still, he cannot help buying into the male gaze narrative that surrounds Sheila, a running commentary that equates romantic or sexual pursuit of her to hunting or fishing. This perspective objectifies and belittles its object, fixating on Sheila’s physical beauty without any curiosity about the person inside her body. Even though the narrator believes that by watching her sunbathe from afar he can interpret her moods, this is naïve thinking at best.

The story portrays Sheila as a shallow young woman who fills the canoe trip with nonstop chatter about herself—her future plans, her model’s body, her encounters with famous people. From the narrator’s point of view, this self-centered monologue prevents Sheila from realizing just perceptive and introspective the narrator is. But of course, readers understand that Sheila sees the narrator as a young, awkward chauffeur—she feels no need to be charming because he is simply not important enough to warrant her charm, unlike the guy she’s actually interested in, Dartmouth student Eric Caswell. The narrator cannot imagine that Sheila would have her own inner life—an inner life that rejects fishing as boring and pointless rather than imbued with spiritual connection to nature, and one that has its romantic sights set elsewhere. The narrator’s shock that Sheila dismisses fishing is meant to show readers just how self-focused he actually is, as is typical of young teens.

The narrator judges Sheila for maintaining her self-involved conversation in the boat. We never know whether she buys the narrator’s weak explanation that the squeak of the fishing line is bats or that she does not sense the strange movement of the boat as the bass is pulling it, but either way, she chooses to mostly ignore the narrator. However, what the narrator doesn’t realize but readers do is that he is equally emotionally removed from the “date,” completely wrapped up in his struggle with the hooked fish, his actual passion. He cares just as little about Sheila’s interests as she does about his.

When Sheila unceremoniously decamps for Eric, the narrator’s crush evaporates quickly, as he gets his first inkling that there’s more to love than outward appearance. In later years, he describes being much more concerned with the minds of the women he dates. The narrator thus gains a good deal more than he loses during that canoe ride. He decides that people’s deepest, most profound dreams and longings come before love—without a self fully engaged with challenging pursuits, there isn’t much to bring to a relationship. It’s better, the narrator concludes, to put his calling first and then find the people with whom he can share himself.

The mood of the story, despite its comic centerpiece, is wistful and pensive, as the narrator shakes his head with a sad smile at his youthful foolishness.