Blood-Dark Track by Joseph O'Neill

the Rock Pool, the Flat of Kilcascan – and the fords and the dangerous currents. He learned from his father, who acquired the knowledge and the poaching knowhow from his own father.
    The three poachers stealthily went about their work. The river was unquiet, haunted by sounds and movements that made everybody jumpy. The wind stirred a roar in the riverbank trees, somewhere waterhens chirped, downriver a startled heron flapped up; and, of course, the water itself, dark and restless shapes of trees reflected monstrously in its sheen, was always rustling. Rain snapped in the trees.
    My grandfather was not out on the river at midnight, chilled and soaked and running the risk of catastrophe, for the fun of it. He was there because Jim and Brendan had their confirmations coming up and another son, Padraig, his communion, and the boys hadn’t a stitch to wear.
    As the nets came together, salmon could be felt tugging in the meshes. Eventually the nets were dragged out. ‘Jesus, they’re heavy,’ my grandfather said. And they were, because they were crammed. A rogue shaft of moonlight shone on the netted fish. ‘Look at that,’ my grandfather said, ‘a rosary.’
    On they went, to another pool further down the river, and then another. Each time the fishing was good. By the time the catch was totally landed, thirty-three salmon were tallied. It was a record-breaking haul.
    My grandfather made a sack from his herringbone overcoat and filled it with fish. Afterwards, their smell would not leave his jacket. My grandmother would say that the cats of Cork followed him around for a month.
    ‘What happens if the bailiffs come?’ Brendan asked his father.
    My grandfather pulled out a revolver. ‘’Twould be a poor night for any bailiff that walks here tonight.’
    Although on this occasion two nets were being used, usually just the one sufficed: the poachers would suspend the net in the middle of the pool for about half an hour, waiting for the salmon toentangle themselves on the principle that salmon are never still. (It was not unknown for a dog to be thrown into the river to frighten the fish towards the net.) Sometimes a guest poacher would accompany the O’Neills and the outing would take on a social dimension. Tomás MacCurtain Junior, the IRA man and son of the Lord Mayor of Cork shot dead by the British, went poaching with my grandfather, as did Brendan’s brother-in-law, Seán O’Callaghan, after his release from seven years’ imprisonment.
    Poaching was not restricted to the Bandon. In August and September my grandfather fished for blackberries, as the late season fish were called, at Skibbereen. There, the river Ilen is tidal and the channel forty-five yards across, and two nets had to be tied end to end to cover it. The channel could not be forded: my grandfather had to swim naked with the jackline in his hand. Still naked, he would pull the nets over with the jackline and remain on the far bank for half an hour of fishing; then he’d swim back.
    The thirty-three salmon were taken to the fishmongers, who would pay anything from £2 to £5 for each fish. That was a lot of money.
    A fishmonger once tried to cross Jim O’Neill. Jim sent Brendan to Mortell’s (‘If It Swims, We Have It’) with three salmon. Mortell only paid for two, asserting that the third was a slat – a dud fish. My grandfather took issue with this and returned to Mortell’s on two or three occasions, claiming payment or the return of the salmon. ‘It’ll cost you a lot more than one salmon,’ he finally warned Mortell. Mortell shrugged and continued serving his customers. After all, what remedy did Jim, as a thief of the fish, have? But Mortell miscalculated. There and then, in a full shop, my grandfather toppled a skyscraper of egg-crates and the shop was flooded in a lake of yolk. ‘Now,’ my grandfather said, ‘you can keep your salmon.’
    But there was no problem selling the thirty-three salmon. The O’Neill boys made their