The Riverguard

He’s been here since I was a baby

The stream goes along from the park all the way to the connected waterway by the road, past the farms, the main street, the crossing, the graveyard, under the bridge, ever-moving,

But there’s always one constant.

He sits at the bank in his anorak, his aged jumper and fishing rod at the ready, he sews the patches on his boots, cooks on the old hotplate he owns, pets the dogs that walk by, speaks with their owners for a while then goes back to fishing.

He has another purpose there.

Often. Almost too often. Someone will come by maybe with a sack, maybe a plastic bag and they will be shielding it, trying to appear casual hoping you won’t notice the cries or the pressure frantic against the fabric.

The riverguard notices. He always notices.

The moment the bag is in the air he is diving in the water and lunging for the bag before it so much as skims the stream. A shelter is called. A fine must be paid. A life is saved.

He rescues those who fall, he retrieves those who are trapped,

Dogs, cats, children, those who may fall and hit their heads, he frees critters who are trapped and he pulls plastic from the stream, imploring us not to pollute.

He’ll accept food or clothes you offer him, he accepts books and fresh bait. my friend Emily’s mother would always take a hot meal to him whenever there was a storm, when it was hailing John Briggs’s dad would drive out and offer him shelter in his home. He’d always refuse. He can’t leave his post, he always insisted.

He nearly arrived too late one day, The Almer's pet cat had unexpectedly delivered five kittens, the riverman had finally been convinced to go down to the doctors for a check-up and the Almer’s father knew that. So he took a black rubbish bag with those five newborns intending to drown them, but someone must’ve tipped the riverguard off because within seconds of the disposal of those poor babies like trash, he charged quick as lightning at Mr. Almer, decking him in the jaw, leapt into the water and retrieved the bag before the current could take it, saving the five and resuscitating them all successfully.

The newly rehomed mother was reunited with her precious kittens while The Almers moved away not long after the charge of animal cruelty. The story is legend now.

Holding my father’s hand as a little girl, I’d see him at the bank tossing a ball or a stick to the dogs or listening to his old radio, he’d always wave to us and my father would say we must remember to greet him every time we passed through. He didn’t know why the riverguard did what he did though.

I got up the courage one day and bought some fresh pairs of socks, a packet of sandwiches, a bar of chocolate, a pair of waterproof trousers and a towel and went to join him on the bank. He was a gentle man even in one on one conversation albeit unwilling to talk about his life prior to his watch.

A lot of people dismiss what is unwanted by them he explained they see the stream as an easy way to dispose of their problems, that he wanted to make sure it stayed unpolluted, that another solution could be found, it was his way of giving,

He tried watching the road, he told me. He tried so hard but he wasn’t quick enough, people would target black cats specifically as a result of old superstition, their wheels proving faster than his legs, it broke his heart to see he nearly gave up altogether. I wonder if Mary the lollipop lady knew this. I’d seen her shooing cats of all kinds away from the road and shouting furiously at those she saw over the speed limit, had she been influenced by him? I wonder who else has been.

I see him on his rounds still, he’s older now, his weathered skin a clammy grey his hands marked by the fish hooks. he can’t leap up like he used to, he has a net that he uses to pull bags out of the water or to aid those critters in need of a hand, his shelter is far more dilapidated now and near useless against leaks but his attitude, his determination, that remains the same. People come and people go from this tiny town but no matter what.

The riverguard will still be on the lookout