spleen

Canoe

The father and son go fishing a final time. They have been doing this for too long, since the lake was a pond and the son a boy — now, the lake is nearly an ocean, the son is an old man, and the father, barely larger than a child, has hands thin and brittle as dry maple leaves. Into a rusted-out canoe, the two old men, the tackle and bait, knives to worry the gut and fin. Into the boat and away from the shore, to where the water is spangled clean by sunlight.

The son stands awkwardly and baits his hook. The father watches, stilling his breath. he is so still his body ticks. The son casts the line, reels in, casts again, and turns to say something like, "Hot day." He turns and find his father suddenly up and moving, brutish and impossibly immense. He is seized by his father and thrown overboard, and the water swallows him whole. The long tendrils of his arms wave like moss as he drops sleepily to the cold green silt.

And the ancient man grows young again. His hair is the color of crude oil, his arms pistons hard as sleet. Look at him casting his net into the lake, listen to old sea ballads rolling out of that barrel chest, wonder at the fish he draws in, mackerel the size of kites. Ospreys and gulls circle the boat. He sings and fingers his hair, touches his face, remembers the cold white rocks of sea foam, the brine-soaked dead. He casts the net again, letting it fall in a wide arc, letting it sift to the bottom. It moves through the water soft as hair, and catches on something large as the boat. He can't draw it in. It's too heavy, too much for those hard arms. He leans over, slips into the water, tugs and the net until his hands wither and his face caves in like an old house. His last strength is spent drawing up the net, which contains the son of course, who is sobbing like a child. The ancient father pushes the young son into the canoe and sinks to the coal-embossed bed, his eyelids flickering like Christmas lights, the breath rising from him like balloons.

And the son rows back, weeping in open-mouthed shudders of wonder. He pushes through the water, climbs the shore and runs home, dripping pale green strings of moss. He throws open the door, fumbles to his room and hides beneath the bed. He touches his face and finds the same scars, the same wet lines. He is in the dark of old age again. And there, in the wet black brambles of the body, he thinks of his children. And he vows to teach them how to swim.