To be the eldest grandson is a hard thing. Whatever the grandfather loves, the grandson must endure.

Fishing, football, beer - all of these were pushed on the lad, even the last. This is not good for a toddler, or a seven-year-old.

There were parental objections, of course. Fishing and football were allowed to continue.

***

The boy on the small boat was bored. He was worried, too. There was not much land to be seen. The boat was perhaps too small for four people. The motor was small for the boat.

This trip was not what the boy enjoyed. The book with the coloured photos of fish was what he liked.

The book was at the beach house. It was in the window seat where the boy liked to sit and read.

Books were another world. Books did not have old men smoking, or fish pulled from hooks to bleed in a bucket.

Real fish had better colours than the book, but scaling and gutting the catch made the boy feel sick. Nobody had asked if he wanted to be there.

***

Football was not quite as bad. The matches he was taken to were at small, rural grounds. The boy could wander off and climb a tree nearby, or go to the car and fall asleep.

The grandfather did not stop trying to make the boy like football. After a few years, the boy's parents divorced.

***

There were some bad years. The kids were with the father. Then the mother remarried, and the kids went to a farm in another state. (This is not like the farm where dogs are sent.)

The grandson missed his grandmother. She had always been there, but the grandfather would take over the boy.

It was her who made the tea. She cooked the fish after those fishing trips. She was the one who helped the boy when he had trouble with fish bones in his throat.

The grandmother was strong in a quiet way. Sometimes the grandfather would hit her when nobody seemed to be looking.

The things that made her strong were things that also could bring hate. She kept quiet about being black, and maybe she had some knowledge that didn't get handed on.

Maybe there was nothing left to pass on. Even the original language was dead, and all she would tell us was to beware of duck-men, those hunters who would hide underwater, snorkeling through hollow reeds.

There was a natural wisdom in the grandmother. Her warnings were few, but sharply accurate.

***

Years had passed. The boy was now a young teen. In a few years, the grandfather would finally give up on the football and fishing, and place those burdens on the second grandson, who happened to like that stuff.

But that had not yet happened, and the grandparents came to visit. Leaving the younger kids on the farm, they took Eldest Grandson to the coast, and rented an onsite caravan.

Grandfather rented a motorboat, and said "We're going fishing."

The grandmother quietly went along with it. She didn't mind that much. The lad said nothing and went along: it was just this once, after all.

***

The boat was small, and the motor was powerful enough to move it along quickly.

In the bow, the boy sat, bored as usual. He trailed his fingers in the bow wave.

The grandmother's face became serious, and her voice had an edge which was not often used.

"Pull your hand in NOW. There will be a shark along in a few seconds."

With a voice and a look like that, there could be no hesitation. The hand was lifted immediately, and the boy sat with folded arms.

Not a word was said as the shark's open mouth suddenly broke through the bow wave.

***

There were things that wise woman took with her, and the world is poorer now she and her knowledge are gone.