Happy Birthday, Mom

The tow-headed young boy rolled over in bed as his mind struggled to find the reason for having left the much more comfortable world of sleep. The only light he could see was that of his closet, as it always was, the door left open a crack to allow just a sliver of light to fall upon the carpet. The night light in the hallway was still glowing too, more evidence that it was not time to get up yet. His eyes were not able to focus yet…that tiny night light in the hallway looked as big as a lantern. He rubbed his eyes again and suddenly a strange thought crept through his mind, a thought that made perfect sense to a 10 year old, even if the answer did not.

“Why am I awake?” the voice in his head whispered, as if the voice itself knew everyone else in the house was asleep. He often heard stories of people hearing voices, most often in the context that they were “crazy.” He heard voices all the time…well, ‘a’ voice…it was always his own. Tonight was no different. He often wondered what he would do if he started hearing voices other than his own. He shut all these thoughts out, and went back to the original question.

“Maybe I have to pee,” he thought. A small pause. Guess that’s not it. The dog wasn’t barking, nor could he hear Spunky moving around at all. Sometimes he got riled up and wanted out from his utility room prison at odd hours during the night. But this usually entailed a whining or scratching, neither of which he could recall hearing, nor could he hear now.

A very subtle creaking noise from the kitchen suddenly possessed his entire being. Had he not been already awake, the noise was not such that it along would have awakened him. But now that he was already awake, slight as the noise was, it might as well have been a firecracker. The scary part was he knew that sound. He knew that squeak. That one spot next to the sliding glass door, where the linoleum was beginning to crack…that was it. Somebody is in the kitchen! “Get a grip,” the voice said. “Spunky would bark like there was no tomorrow if someone was in the house. And sometimes, even if there wasn’t someone in the house.

For what seemed like hours, but in reality was only seconds, he lay as still as he could, even holding his breath, daring not to move. His bed, complete with the antique box springs, made noise on their own, even when he wasn’t in it. He wanted to be able to hear anything else. He let out his breath slowly, tugged the covers under his chin and drew another breath and held it. Nothing. “You are such a pussy,” the voice said. “Shut up,” he told himself. Sometimes he argued with the voice. How he wished his Dad would hear the noise. Sometimes his dad would get up in the middle of the night and make his way to the bathroom and back. He wouldn’t be so scared then. He would get up and meet his Dad in the hallway. His Dad wasn’t scared of anything. He would walk right in the kitchen and in a huff of middle-of-the-night crankiness, bad breath and the slurred speech of someone not wearing his false teeth, would yell at the intruder and they would just fall to the ground in fear and die, right there on the spot.

“There’s no one in the house, goofy, and even if there was, Dad’s not up so just go back to sleep,” He didn’t like the way the voice intoned the word “Dad,” but he was too tired for an argument, even if it WAS with himself. And the going to sleep part sounded like a good idea. At the moment of decision, a zzzzip came from the kitchen. And of course, there was no doubt in his mind what it was. The curtains covering the glass door being moved. This sound, too, he knew intimately, if for no other reason than this was his home…a boy is supposed to be intimately familiar with every possible sound. Hearing no more lip from the voice in his head, he threw back the covers and rolled off the bed onto the floor, conscious of the explosion of noise that his bed made. In the instant that he had made the decision to get up, he had also made the decision to burst into the kitchen.

“Whoooa, boy. What if there really IS someone in the kitchen,” the voice prattled back at him. And it was enough to stop him in his tracks. So much for bravery. His eyes had been open long enough now that the sleep has all but left them. His closet light didn’t look so bright anymore, and the night light in the hall was back to normal size. He took slow steps at first…away from his bed. Dodging school books and dirty clothes, he entered the hallway. He glanced back at his bed…it looked miles away from where he was standing, even though this was the very spot from where he launched himself from the floor every day upon his return from school, just to see how high he could get before he landed on it. Funny thing to be thinking about at a time like this.

He began his trek down the hallway and just as he reached the light switch, he had second thoughts. “Maybe you shouldn’t turn the hall light on,” the voice caught him just as his hand has crept up the wall in search of the switchplate. For once he listened…the hall light would wake mom and dad up…his room was directly across from theirs, and the hall light was on the ceiling just between the two rooms. He squinted his eyes to look into his mom and dad’s room to see if one of them might be up and pilfering around, but it was just too dark to tell. His hand fell away from the switch and he continued his creeping toward the kitchen. He could see the living room from here, even in the darkness, and the bar that separated the living room from the kitchen. Neither light was on, so he knew that his parents would both be in bed. The big question now was, “Who was in the kitchen?” If mom and dad were in bed, and he was standing in the hallway like an idiot, there was no one left for it to be…well, no one left that would make it acceptable for there to be people-noises to be coming from the kitchen. Suddenly the voice made its presence known again, “Whoever it is will see you in your underwear. Better hope you don’t have a hard-on.” One of the major fears of his life was a two-parter. Being seen in his underwear would have made him immediately dead. Being seen in underwear and sporting wood would have killed him, and then made him explode. There was a split-second war that happened inside him…between checking for an erection and realizing that it didn’t matter, and the fact that there could be somebody standing in his kitchen made both suddenly irrelevant. He continued to the very edge of the hallway and put his face up against the cold paneling, just far enough that he could see around the corner with one eye. Nothing. Nothing but darkness. His hand moved up toward the light, and he paused for advice from his own voice, but there was nothing. He was going to have to be able to see in the kitchen before he made his next critical move, which he already knew would be to scream and to do it loudly.

He hand hit the switch and he flipped it quickly, his mind already filled with images of a large man in a toboggan with pantyhose over his face and a sack hanging from his waist to shove all the valuables in. As he prepared himself to scream, it was choked off by confusion from what he was seeing and his heart beating so loudly in his head with the realization that he was not going to die, at least not tonight…at least not at this very moment. What he found himself looking at was at the same time comforting (at least compared to his expectations) and bewildering.

“Mom?” he said. “Mom are you OK?” He knew two things immediately. This was his mother and something was definitely not right. The first was what kept the primal scream from erupting violently out of his throat. The second thing was more troublesome. Just seeing his mother looking out the glass door should not have been shocking. He glanced at the clock. 3:20, it said. He should just be getting off the bus about now and walking up the driveway, Mom would be waiting to take his backpack from him…he would find his basketball and…he shook this craziness from his head…this was definitely the wrong 3:20. Everyone should be in bed. At the very least, Mom should have been getting a drink. Or sitting at the table. She was looking out the glass door. Which was what he kept trying to rationalize to himself, maybe even looking at her reflection. But she couldn’t see any of that in the dark anyway. As all this input keep rolling and wrestling in his brain, what he noticed at that moment was that she wasn’t even really looking out the door, but rather staring at the telephone on the wall beside the sliding door. Seeing his mother while expecting a burglar was comforting. But on the other hand, seeing her from behind, and seeing her staring out the door, no…weirder…staring at a yellow telephone was very disconcerting.

He heard his own voice squeak, almost as if he was hearing someone else speak.

“Mom, are you OK?” The answer, of course, could not be yes. And it wasn’t.

“Hmmmm…,” she said. OK…that didn’t even qualify as a valid answer. He made his way to her, forgetting the fact that she had been in the kitchen, staring at nothing, well the phone, but she couldn’t have been looking at that in the darkness.

“What’s wrong,” he said, more assertively this time. She turned toward him and he put his hands on her shoulders. He noticed her eyes first. They were not his mother’s eyes. They were not focusing on anything, really. They were just staring…glazed, dilated, and the word “wild’ came immediately to his mind. He noticed her nose and upper lip next, almost as if trained to look for signs of some sort. She was sweating…so much, in fact, that it was starting to run down over her lips. He refocused his own eyes to look at her entire face…she was sweating all over.

“Are you having a spell?” he asked, shakily now.

“I’m fine, really, I’m fine,” the words themselves spoke one message, but the fact that he hardly could make them out told another. He guided her to a chair at the table, the one closest to the sink. There was no doubt about things now. He opened his mouth to yell out for his father, and then thought better of it. He rushed from the kitchen and down the hallway and into his parent’s room. Turning on the light without breaking stride, the confusion had left him. With the bright light glaring now, it immediately made his father stir. He didn’t wait any longer.

“Mom’s having a spell,” he was almost breathless.

“What…huh?” Groggy and squinting as he raised his head. Only moments before, he had been the same.

“Mom’s having a spell,” he repeated, with more urgency, more impatience. He left his father to rustle his way out of bed as he rushed back down the hallway to his mother whom although he had left alone only seconds ago, that now seemed like eternity. She was still sitting there, thank God for that. Eyes open and staring, her head propped up on one arm and smiling. By that time, his father was there.

“Sue, what’s the matter…are you having a spell?” He wanted to scream at his father at this point, but wisely kept quiet. He motioned to his son and said, “Find the orange juice.”

He practically ripped the cabinet door off its hinges and at first glance saw nothing but canned corn and green beans. Hundreds of cans of corn and beans. He reached in a little deeper, and begin slinging cans until he found what he was looking for. His father was waiting with the sugar and a spoon as he stood up, already tearing the aluminum wrapper from the top of the orange juice can. He shoved him the glass, already filled with sugar, along the cabinet and he poured the juice in, stirring before the can was even emptied. Stirring so hard it seemed like the glass would break, the sound of the spoon upon the side of the glass was so out of place.

He passed the glass on to his father who knelt in front of his wife and placed the glass in her hand.

“Drink this, Sue. Drink it all.” She held the glass in her hand and made a slow, almost careful move toward her mouth. A small swallow. Too small.

“You’ve got to get more than that in there or it won’t do you any good,” his voice boomed. He always seemed so rough with her at times. There really was no other choice now, however. The son remained quiet. She kept the glass close to her mouth and brought it up for another swallow.

“You’ve got to drink it all, Mom,” her son pleaded. He found himself watching like it was almost a game to be played with a three year old.

She smiled, which should normally be a good sign, then opened her mouth to speak, but nothing but a gurgle came out as the juice slid from her mouth onto her night gown. It splashed down her chin, rivulets making their way down her throat. Most of it landed in her lap. She seemed almost pleased about this. She had placed the glass down on the table, and his father picked it up and pressed it to her lips again. The smile faded this time as came around with her hand and knocked the glass from his hands. The glass hit the floor and shattered. She was screaming something, but father nor son could make it out.

Then, more clearly this time, “I don’t want it.” Angry. Very angry. The boy had heard this voice before, but never at a time like this. This was the voice reserved for times when he had done something wrong, or time when she was upset with his father. He was scared; confused and scared. Scared because this wasn’t his mother. The body was the same, but it wasn’t her at all. The eyes, that look…never had he seen her speak and act like she was at this very moment. There wasn’t time to ponder all of these things right now. Before his father had to tell him, he flew back to the cabinet, slipping on the mess of broken glass and juice on the floor, throwing cans again, silently praying there would be another can somewhere among all the vegetables. When he found it, he tore the silver tab with his teeth, reaching for the sugar at the same time, mixing it all together hoping it was good enough. The spoon on the glass was even louder this time, but he didn’t notice. Neither did he notice the tears rolling down his face.

“Mom, please drink this…please, please, please drink it all…” he stammered. He braced himself for the shock of another refusal, but none came this time. That smile came back as she reached for the glass, but her hand fell missed its mark and her head hit the table with a sickening thud.

“Dad, dad, dad, dad,” he was trying to scream but the words came out barely above a whisper.

“Grab that side and help me. Gotta get her on the couch.” They carried her together through the kitchen and made their way to the living room. It couldn’t have been more than 10 steps, but it seemed to take forever. They placed her half sitting, half lying. He was winded…it was like carrying a rag doll, so limp yet so heavy. She couldn’t be over 120 pounds, but it was like it really took both of them to negotiate the distance.

He was about to ask what to do next…he had never seen anything like this, and his father was so quiet.

“Please God,” he prayed, “let Dad know what to do next.” Before his father could give him any direction at all, his mother’s body began shaking. He was sitting next to her, still holding on to her hand, but he saw the tremors begin before he felt them. He thought she might simply be cold, but the tremors got worse. He could hardly hold on to her hand anymore, in the next instant, it felt like her hand had been ripped from his own. He didn’t really remember when he blinked and missed it, but when he cut his eyes back to her, she was in the floor, still shaking violently. Her head would rise what looked to be a foot off the carpet and come back down with an even duller thud than it had been the first time at the kitchen table. He was in the floor with her without remembering going there. His father put his hands under her head, although it didn’t seem to do much good other than to keep it from hitting the floor so hard. For the third time that night, he experienced this strange expansion of time. Although it couldn’t have lasted more than a few seconds, holding his mother while she seized. The family dog had somehow extricated himself from his room and was bouncing around his mother. He ran a couple if circles around her and jumped excitedly right on top of her back.

“Get off, Spunky…get down!” he yelled, even as he backhanded the dog from his mother’s back. “We’re not playing with you.” She kept shaking and the dog kept orbiting, but kept what seemed to him a safe distance from the boy’s rough hand. He thought to himself, “this is like holding a flopping fish,” then wondering where that thought even came from and immediately felt guilty for even thinking of his mother and fish in the same thought.

The tremors stopped and he realized he was holding his mother by himself. He hadn’t even noticed his father being gone. As he turned around to look, his father was suddenly there again, this time squeezing a packet of honey onto his first finger. He even noticed that the packet of honey was from Kentucky Fried Chicken…his father loved chicken livers drenched in honey and that was what he always ordered, and was always ordering extra…he gritted his teeth and willed his mind to rid itself of these senseless, random thoughts.

He watched as his father brought his honey covered finger over her lips and heard his father speak to him.

“You’ll have to hold her mouth open,” he ordered. He didn’t move a muscle. “Just do it!” he said. “Put one hand here,” he said, as he pointed with his other hand, “and put the other one here and pull. Just be careful. Keep her from biting me if she starts shaking again”

He hesitated another moment and did as he was told. He pulled her jaws apart in what felt to him like would be enough force to break them, but they barely opened.

“Little more,” his father said. “That’s enough…hold ‘em right there.”

He slid his honey covered finger past her lips and began to smear the honey over her gums. Before he was done with that one, he had another packet torn open and was doing it again, this time with his other hand. He finished and wiped his hands on the carpet.

“I’m going to start the truck. Stay with her,” his father said, more calmly this time. His father’s calm wasn’t affecting him much. He felt numb all over, and wanted to scream and cry and laugh all at the same time, but could find no emotion to do any of those things.

Another time-lapse. His father came back in the house and directed him to put some clothes on. He scrambled to his room where he grabbed the first shirt, the first pair of jeans, and the first pair of shoes he saw. He ran back to where his mother still lay motionless in the floor. He wanted to ask his father if she was still breathing, but he couldn’t find the words, or perhaps couldn’t face what he knew the answer might be. Instead, he grabbed a leg and an arm as did his father, and they carried her through the kitchen, through the utility room, and out the front door. Down the steps, he and his father matched steps perfectly as they made their way to the passenger side of his truck. His father had already opened the door and they lifted her carefully, at least as carefully as one could be with a wet rag doll, into the truck. He slid in beside her and tried to straighten her head. Her neck was limp and didn’t resist his effort at all, which he was thankful for. His father jumped in behind the wheel, carefully putting the vehicle in reverse, and made a quick U and pointed the truck down the gravel driveway. The boy glanced in his mirror to the right and for a second caught his breath. The house looked almost as if it was on fire. All the lights were on, and the front door was standing wide open. For a split second, he worried he would get in trouble for leaving so many lights on and then realized that he had never left the house with the door standing wide open before. He refused to even think about it. How silly those lights seemed now.

The three miles to the city hospital seemed to take forever. He didn’t remember there being this many curves on the road that he could almost drive himself blindfolded. He stopped thinking about the road as his mother began to tremor again. A small tremor this time and a cough. Another cough. A gagging sound, as his dad screamed, “Put her head down or she’ll choke.” The truck never slowed as his mother vomited a thick pink liquid over the dash and on her lap. A curve in the road, and the truck crossed the yellow line to keep its purchase and his mother slid toward him. Another cough, another spasm and more pink stuff all over him this time. His father reached behind the seat for a towel and threw it at him, offering no instructions. The boy took the towel, sensing his mother was done, and wiped off her chin and throat, patting her nightgown where it had pooled. A gag arose in his own throat, and he swallowed hard once, twice and took deep breaths through his mouth to avoid the smell. Time was once again acting funny, because the truck shivered to a stop and has he looked up through the windshield, he could see the Emergency room entrance. His father had already jumped from the truck and was standing at the door about to push the intercom button when the door slammed open and what looked like a small army of men and women came rushing out. He felt two hands pull him not so gently from the truck as they took over. Before he could mind could even fathom what was happening, he saw his mother strapped to a funny looking bed on wheels. He watched her disappear through the shiny metal door at which his father had been standing.

They walked back to the truck, which was still running, got in and shut the doors. His father pulled into a parking space in the nearly empty hospital lot and they got out again.

“Let’s go see her, son,” he said. He opened the door for both of them and took his son’s hand in his own. He felt somehow childish to be holding his father’s hand, being led around a maze of corridors—around first one corner, then the next. He sensed somehow that perhaps it was he who was leading his father, even though he had no idea where he was going.

After countless corners, fish aquariums, and an ungodly number of green, plastic plants, he heard voices. It sounded like everyone was talking at the same time

“What are they saying?” he thought. “Are they talking about mom? Is she in there? Is that her?” He could see a rolling bed very similar to the one that carried her in, but under the bright lights, he couldn’t really see anything. The harsh glare made it difficult to make out much. His father stood silently by the door, and he peeked from behind. It was his mother…at least he thought so. His father must have gotten some sort of signal from one of the voices from within, because he walked slowly towards the rolling bed, pulling the boy behind him.

He took a position on the same side as his father. He stared at his mother under the harsh lights and watched her chest. When he saw it gently rise, he realized he had been holding his breath. He let it all out slowly and begin to breathe normally again. He looked at her face and for some reason couldn’t keep his eyes focused. He blinked hard against the glare and when he opened his eyes again, she was still there, but the blur caused by his tears made her seem almost a hallucination rather than his mother. He blinked again so he could see better. Her skin was so pale, and it looked like she had been drooling. Her mouth was partly open, and he could see that familiar chip from her left eyetooth, the one they had always laughed about together. It was a validation of sorts, neither positive nor negative, that this pitiful, wasted soul laying here was not some stranger…there was no doubt it was his mother. Images of the evening begin rushing through his head even as he tried to shut them out. She was here. He was looking at him. She had to be OK. She was in the hospital. People didn’t die in hospitals.

The voice inside his head that had been silent for so long now suddenly reared its head.

“If she knew her hair looked like that, she’d kill both of us.” He almost laughed but sucked in a mouthful of stale hospital air.

“Little bit more pressure, Dr. Lane,” he heard someone say. It startled him a little…for a few seconds, there was no one else that existed on the planet besides he and his mother.

He looked down at what others in the room was looking at, a foot-long syringe in her arm that was full of a clear, thick liquid. He had always been interested in “doctory” kinds of things and among the many words on the side of the syringe, he craned his head until he could make out the word GLUCOSE in big, bold, black letters. Must be a gallon of stuff in there, he thought. To him, the thing looked as big around as a baseball bat. Surely they don’t have to give her all of that. His eyes went back to her face and he found he couldn’t take them off of her. He didn’t know how long he stared, not blinking, until he heard a voice say, “OK…that’s good” and some more words that he didn’t understand. He glanced down at the syringe and saw that it was empty. It was pulled away and a cotton swab was held over the crook in her elbow where the needle had been.

He looked over at his father, who was still looking at her face just as he had been only moments ago. They looked at each other, and then back at the woman on the rolling bed. They stood unmoving, bolted in place. He began to grow tired of standing in the same spot, but was afraid to move…either afraid of leaving his mother behind or afraid of what his father would thing, or maybe both. His father made the first move. Away from the bed, and toward the door, he carried his large frame with a weight only he seemed able to carry.

“Come on, son,” he said. The quietest perhaps he had ever been. He was about to move from her side, but noticed a flutter of his mother’s eyes.

“Wait a sec, Dad.” Any movement, at this point and time, could only be a good thing. She opened her eyes, unseeingly at first and tried to focus them on the small, scared boy at her side. She squeezed his hand very slightly, which frightened him at first. He had forgotten he was still holding on to her fingers.

A word came from her mouth, garbled and thick, as she tried to speak and smile at the same time, but was unsuccessful at both.

“Love you,” she said. Or maybe it was “Thirsty” and his mind just heard otherwise. Her eyes closed again and she made an almost imperceptible move with her head, maybe to get more comfortable. The paper-covered table rattled slightly.

Then from his father, “Clint, come on…let’s wait out here…let her rest.” He squeezed her fingers as slightly as she has squeezed his.

“I love you too, mom,” he whispered. He took another look at her face under the harsh lights of the emergency room, then turned and saw his dad waiting. He walked slowly to his father and reached out his hand again. Together, they turned the corner, and matching step for step, started down the hallway.

In Orbit

            The young man sat quietly Indian style in the floor of the hallway of the old building.  There were others talking and carrying on conversations, friends and strangers alike.  College kids need no impetus to carry on small talk.  It’s not the same as adult talk.  Weather very rarely gets mentioned, as does politics.  Music, the latest frat party, the goings on in the student union among the few students who really did live on campus.  Anything was fair game among college kids waiting for a crusty college professor to come sauntering in and unlock the door.  First days were always like this, and as usual, he was the first one in the hallway.  Students begin filing past him to pull up their own piece of the concrete floor, the first ones taking their positions quite far from him.  He figured that the least likely place for people to sit would be right by the door to go in and he was right.  The hallway became quite crowded before anyone even came close to his position.  He still didn’t see anyone he knew.  That seemed to be a requisite for conversation these days.  He never was much good at chatting it up with strangers.  Not since he left his hometown.  It was just different in the city.  People had different expectations here.  Different agendas.  There was so much to do, and yet he still found himself in his dorm room alone every weekend.  Didn’t seem strange to him, but it did to a lot of others.  He didn’t mind though.  He had been called lots of different things in his short life.  He just kept to himself and let the rest of world sort of roll off of him.  Like water off a duck, his dad always said.  Like goose shit out of a goose, his buddies rephrased it.

            He saw the first familiar face as it peeked over the top of the stair well.  The bouncing red hair was the first thing he noticed and couldn’t seem to take his eyes from it.  The he got a closer look at her eyes and realized it was someone he knew.  He willed her to look at him, more because by now, he was the only one in this dreary hallway that wasn’t talking with someone else.  That and the fact that there was some unused concrete almost directly across from him.  He needed some conversation, and he knew her, so what the hell.  He tried to bend his mind around hers to make him see him, and he felt like he could move mountains when that look passed across her face, spreading downward from her eyes.   He was surprised when her eyes did indeed meet his and she smiled briefly in slight recognition.  Heavy emphasis on the word slight, but it was there all the same.  The kind where you recognize someone even if you don’t know exactly who they are.  He would take whatever he could get. 

            “Hey,” she said, in the universal language of recognition all over the world.

            “Hey,” he said back to her.  At least they were speaking the same language.  She tossed her books on the floor near the empty spot, crossed her legs and sat down.  She was still smiling.  He racked his brain for her name, but it just wouldn’t come.  The least he could hope for was that she knew his, but reality told him her brain was crunching waves in a similar manner for the same reason.  At least they were thinking alike.  He was always the optimist. 

            He opened his mouth so more of that common language could emerge.

            “What’s up,” he found himself saying.  And immediately regretted it.  There were so many things on his mind to talk about.

            “Not much…you?”  They were talking.

            “You got this lab, too, huh?”  Man, he was full of this brilliance today.  Inwardly, he groaned to himself.

            “Yep.  Wanted this one.  Only meets once a week.  This way, we don’t have to come over here twice a week.”

            “Noon to three seems like a long time,” he said. 

            “Shit happens,” she said.  “At least we’ll get it over with on Monday.”

            “True enough,” he said.  He was really slaying ‘em with this banter.  He was taken with her  eyes, even though the only time he had really seen there were as she was coming up the stairs.  He forced himself to look at her eyes.  They were staring at some imaginary stain on her backpack, but the instant he looked at them, they locked on his.  She began to speak but he didn’t hear anything.  What happened in his chest completely caught him off guard.  He felt like he was at the top of a ferris wheel and it had stopped moving.  It seemed like all the kinetic energy in the world no longer existed and were resting somewhere between his heart and his stomach.  The moment faded quickly as he realized he might be staring and with the connection between their eyes broken, so did the world begin to move for him again.  That was really weird, he thought.  He began to make out her words again.

            “So who do you have for the class?”

            More brilliance emerged from between his lips. 

            “Lewis.  Who do you have?”

            “Waldecott,” she said, as his heart sank a little.  Why do I even care, he thought.  He couldn’t shake that feeling from only 20 seconds ago.  His brain still hadn’t deciphered it yet.  But he didn’t have time for that just now.  There were still idiot noises coming from the Idiot Alien living somewhere in his body between his vocal cords and his mouth.

            “It won’t be so bad,” she said.  I’m just a little scared.  I never was much good at this stuff in high school.”

            “It’ll be OK.  There’s so many of us, maybe it won’t be too hard.”

            “I hope you’re right,” I managed to spit out, over a tongue the size of a small Eastern state.

            Minutes stretched into longer minutes, as they both waited for someone to unlock the door to let us flock in like a bunch of cattle.  She fiddled with something inside her backpack as sat and fought the internal battle of awkward silence or sounding like an idiot.  Seemingly against his wishes, the latter was winning. He caught a glimpse of some CD’s in a zippered pocket.  She noticed his noticing.  To his surprise, she spoke first.

            “You like Smashing Pumpkins,” He had no earthly idea what she was talking about.  All that was going through his mind was images of Gallagher from videos he had watched ages ago with his sledgehammer and various kinds of fruit.  He had no idea he had a band.

            “Yeah, he’s pretty cool,” he said.  She laughed for some reason.  He knew he had said something stupid but he had no idea exactly what it was.

            Before this moment, he could have sat in this hallway until the class was supposed to end.  Now he was begging for someone to come unlock the door and let them in, anything to give him something else to talk about, or at least put an end to this sad excuse for conversation.  He felt awkward in a way he never had before, and there was really no reason for it, but it was there all the same. 

            A single door slammed on the far end of the hallway, and footsteps began their way toward him and toward the door he was in front of.  Students begin standing up as the man passed, stretching out and picking up bags and binders.  The door was rattled open, and moved in.  There were no chairs in the lab area, so they were all expected to stand.  This being the first day, maybe he wouldn’t keep them long.

            He took a spot and left his bag on the floor by his feet.  He turned around and found that the girl from the hallway had found a spot beside him.  Her bag was in the floor, too, and she was looking toward the front where the old man was fidgeting around with some papers.  He caught her attention over the noise and bustle of all the student still moving in and cast her a goofy grin, but she either missed it or chose to ignore it.  He was glad, because he wasn’t sure what her seeing it would have conveyed.  The people finally stopped filing in and he could barely hear as the old man began calling names.  Name after name was called as smart-alec boys said “yo” and “what’s up” and laughed like they had just heard the funniest joke they had ever heard.  Even though he thought he knew the answer, he often wondered if he was as immature as they were.  He didn’t feel like it most of the time, but he sure could make some bad decisions at times.  His parents were constantly telling him, “You never think before you do something,” and “You’ve got a head so use it.”  He never purposely made bad decisions, he just found himself on the back end of a bad decision before he knew it.

            The names kept rolling off, but he was listening only with half his brain.  He cut his eyes toward her and she was standing there.  Somehow a piece of gum had materialized in her mouth and she was chewing.  He thought to himself that it was a graceful chewing, more of a caress of the gum with her teeth rather than a rude chomp. 

            While she was paying attention to the professor still calling out names like Ben Stein on Ferris Bueller, he looked at her more closely.  She was close to his height, which was not tall, but more of what he liked to think of as average, even though in reality it was just a tad under the line.  Not many things in his life was average, and if he could get by with calling something average, then he was going to do it.  Her dark hair fell just about her shoulders and was straight with just that little curl at the end.  She was smiling at something else now…not at him, but something happening elsewhere in the lab room.  He could see the corner of her mouth turned up just a little more than normal, but it seemed to him that her smile was always there, just under the surface and so easily given.  A smattering of light-colored freckles dotted across her nose, although he couldn’t see them very well from here.  He remembered them more clearly from the hallway. 

            The names kept coming, although he noticed that the end of the alphabet was coming.  He leaned over to put his elbow on the lab table, growing tired of just standing there.  A look around the room and similar postures by most of the others told him he wasn’t the only one.  He cut his eyes sideways again to try and see what direction she might be looking so he could look at her again.  She had her hands on her hips and one black-and-white sneaker propped up on the other one.  Before he realized it, he was staring again.  She turned her head in his direction and caught him offguard.  He suddenly became amazed with the workings of the sink and how the water spigot was made.  Amazing how these stainless steel faucets got all the way over here from Taiwan.  He stared at the faucet like he was the one that invented it and was about to make major changes in its design.  He waited a few minutes and cut his eyes back toward her.  She wasn’t looking in his direction anymore.  He stopped inspecting the faucet and stood up straight.

            What was his deal?  What was he scared of?  She was just a normal person just like he was.  If he wanted to look her way, it’s a free country, right?  Why did just looking at her make him feel funny inside?  That moment in the hallway was still on his mind.  He couldn’t stop thinking about it.  He wanted to look her in the eyes again just to see if he would feel that rush again.  It was the strangest thing he had ever felt in his life.  All at the same time he felt guilty for trying to look at her, but there was something inside him that told him he could not go on living if he couldn’t find a way to look in her eyes just one more time.  His strengthened his resolve, or at least he strengthened what he thought might meet a weak definition of resolve and looked at her again, willing her with his mind to catch his stare again.  Seconds passed.  Seconds turned in a time lapse, where one seconds turned into two seconds.  She seemed to sense she was being looked at, and turned her head to catch his eyes.  Here it comes, he thought.

            In that moment between conscious thought and the brain’s control over the muscles, he found himself head straight down staring intently at a row of beakers placed neatly toward the back of his own lab table.  100% pure glass.  Interesting.  Wonder what glass that isn’t pure is like?  Good grief what was wrong with him?  He couldn’t even bring himself to meet her stare.  Now he was beginning to feel goofy, all hunched over reading the fine print on scientific equipment.

            The name calling stopped and the professor was mumbling some basic instructions about first one thing, then another.  Two lab assistants began handing out papers and he vaguely heard the words, “In todays lab folks…”  Oh brother, he thought.  This means we’re not getting out early.  Great.  In here till three.  This time he looked at her and she was looking back at him and rolled her eyes.  He smiled back at her like she was a headline act at the Comedy Club.  He still felt goofy, but she smiled back and he felt his face getting warm.  The lab assistants and the ensuing paperwork begin making their way toward them.  He took the required amount and passed the stack on down the line.  He nearly dropped the papers as he saw her smile at the lab assistant that was making his way down her line.  What?  She can’t do that!  That smile was supposed to be mine. 

            His brain stopped all logical reasoning as he slammed on the cognitive brakes.  Reality began to set in.  He barely even knew this girl.  And what was that small pain he felt somewhere in his throat as he saw her smile at someone else.  He began to argue with himself why he felt this way.  For some reason, when she was smiling at him, everything seemed right as rain.  It felt natural, like the world was spinning in the proper direction.  Still, it wasn’t right for him to feel was it?  For the first time in a long time, he began to realize there had been a shift in his world.  The problem was he had no facts to go on.  He was a pretty scientific person by nature, and in his world, there was a logical reason for everything.  Had to be, or it was part of a fantasy world where anything could happen.  This wasn’t fantasy; his feelings were real.  The problem began when he tried to decide what those feelings were.

            He realized that he was still looking at her and she seemed to be busy and he wondered what she was doing.  “This is a class,” his brain screamed at him.  Whatever she’s doing you probably need to be doing, too.”

            He finally looked down at the papers in his hand.  Inventory.  First thing was to find all the appropriate equipment had been laid out for them.  His table looked like something from a science fiction movie with all the flasks and beakers spread out.  He began to read the names of some of the items on his sheet and realized that he had no idea what some of the parts were at all.  Erlenmeyer?  Mortar and pestle?  What the hell was this and what language was it?  He searched through the parts he could recognize and begin to slowly check them off, even checking some of the stuff that he had no idea if such equipment even existed.  To him, it looked like some of these names had been invented only minutes ago. 

            A tap on the shoulder.  He turned and it was her.  Time stopped and he begged his brain to make him at least sound like he could speak.

            “What’s an Erlenmeyer flask,” she said.  “How are we supposed to know if we got one if we don’t know what it is.”  She sounded exasperated. 

            “Oh that,” he replied, trying to sound bored.  “That’s one of these.”  He held one of smaller ones up.

“Says here you should have a couple of each size.”  He tried to sound as if he was born with an Erlenmeyer flask in his hand, rather than the truth of the matter being that he had seen those exact words written on the bottom of one of those ugly glass things.

            “Wow.  Thanks…I guess I do have a couple of those.”  Score one for literacy and quick thinking.  He wanted there to be some awe in her voice, but the more he thought about it, who would be impressed that he knew what an Erlenmeyer flask was?  His high school chemistry teacher?  No one cares about that.  Not a very marketable skill.  Still, he played her comment over again in his head, and tried to pull out every inflection for some trace of her being impressed.  He told himself it was there, but he could talk himself into believing just about anything.  He decided to ignore it.

            The lab continued; he worked himself into mediocrity checking first one piece than another, moving more slowly than he normally would.  He would look down and see his paper full of checks to show that he had all this critical pieces the year, but he couldn’t remember filling them out.  He was going through the motions, hindered by his own emotions.

            People began to finish with the initial inventory and one of the lab assistants took over.  He began to speak and gave instructions that were written on one of the sheets that all the students already had.  He did make a mental note that the assistant that was doing the talking was not the one that “she” smiled at, so he didn’t have any problems listening to what he was saying. 

            “Atomic number blah blah this,” he said, and “ten to the negative 8 power mols of this substance.”  He was speaking, but Martin wasn’t really listening.  He swept his blonde hair out of his eyes, naturally taking stock of how his gel was holding up.  Stiff but not too stiff. 

            “I don’t normally even care about my hair,” he thought to himself.  “Why the change now?”  He knew the answer and suddenly felt very self conscious.  He knew he was carrying a few extra pounds, but never till that moment did he feel like one of those people you see on TV…the ones they have to remove the roof from their house and lift them out with a helicopter.  He looked down at his grimy boots and wished that he hadn’t worn them.  He had worn them every day now since he had college…they had been with him for a couple of years now, but as he looked down at them, they seemed to be screaming the word “slob.”  Even the Wranglers he was wearing today was not the good kind with the plastic tab on the back right pocket.  These were the Rustler model straight from the high-class shelf at Wal-Mart. He had just left work and hadn’t bothered changing.  Never before had he put much thought into what he wore.  If it fit and didn’t smell too bad, it was good enough for him.  The washing machines were up 3 flights of stairs in the dormitory where he spent most of his days (and nights) and often neglected his laundry until the last possible minute.  He found himself wearing his cleanest dirty shirt more times than not. 

            He noticed that the lab assistant was through talking and people were moving and milling around him.  He thumbed through his lab manual to read the instructions that he had missed and tried to work up enough motivation to get started.  He wanted to look at her to she what she was doing, but in his mind, she was mulling over the same negative thoughts that he had been and he felt very dirty and more than a little bit disgusted by himself.  For the first time that day, he repressed the desire to even peek at her.  He sorted through the instructions and tried to decipher what he was supposed to be doing.

            A few minutes passed and he hadn’t done much of anything except try to find out what the word “assay” mean and tried to turn off his inner gigglebox at the word “stopcock” that was being used so many times in the lab manual.  He began to separate out the parts he thought he needed from the ones he had no use for.  He glanced down at his watch and inwardly sighed as he realized he had 2 more hours left.

            He began to work on his own, moving from station to station as everyone was doing, weighing this, squirting this, tweaking that.  It was enough to make him feel like a robot.

“Hey, how much reagent did you at,” a voice spoke from behind him, a voice that had a great affect on both his stopcocks.  Her voice. 

“6 milliliters,” he said.  That’s what the instructions said, so that’s what he did…just like a good robot would do.

“Damn it!” she spat. “Why in the hell did I add 12?”

“Well, the other 6 goes in right at the end,” I told her. 

“Shit,” she was still spitting.  “Shit, shit, shit.  Now what am I going to do?  And where does it say you add the six at the end.  He pointed to the spot in the manual.  Hated to be the bearer of bad news, but he pointed just the same.  He was such a perfectionist and had such an obsession with telling others the correct way to do things, he hadn’t even realized that she was looking over his shoulder at his manual to the place he was pointing.  Her face was only inches from his and suddenly, a chill came over him.  He went from being a confident student to a shaking adolescent in 3 seconds flat.  He was suddenly uncomfortable with this invasion of his space, but at the same time wildly confused by his body’s response.  He swallowed hard to try and shove down a wave of self-consciousness.  He wished he had remembered to brush his teeth.  He had never brushed his teeth at 1 in the afternoon, but as long as he was wishing…

She was staring intently at the manual, her head still close.  She began shaking her head slowly and then put it down on my table.  Her hair brushed his cheek on the way down to the cold, hard surface.  Another chill rippled up and down his arms.

“Damn it all to hell,” she said, more loudly this time.  “Now what do I do.  I don’t want to have to start over.”

His brain began to fly, first one place, then another.  Come on, he thought.  Think of something. 

“Wait a minute,” he said.  “If your solution is twice what it should be and mine is still normal, you could just cut yours with what I have left of mine.”  She sighed aloud.  A long, heavy sigh.

“How would that work?  Wouldn’t that screw yours up?”

“Not if we were careful, I don’t think.” I told her.

“I hope you know how to do this, cause I don’t have a clue.  I screwed up the first time.”

“Well,” he said, as he noticed she was looking into his eyes this time.  He stopped for a minute and stared.  Her eyes were a deep green with little flecks of brown in them.  He had never thought of even trying to describe a pair of eyes as perfect, but these were beautiful.  But it was more than that…they were looking through him instead of at him.  They were paying attention to him.  That was unusual in itself.  Ok, sure, he was trying to get her out of a jam, but she was still looking at him.

“If you trust me, I’ll try it,” he said.

“Why not,” she said, with that same smile he had elicited in the hallway.  “Let’s try it.”

Never before in his life had Martin wanted something to work out.  The bad part was this was his first time in a lab, and he knew close to nothing about these funny-smelling chemicals and the word assay was only funny because it began with the word “ass.” 

He begain playing with his own mix.  He actually hadn’t added anything to it yet, so with one hand he began adding drops and with the other hand he fingered his lab manual looking ahead for a clue as to what the desired outcome might possibly be.  When he found what he was looking for, he close the manual and began swirling it around. 
            “Hand me your flask,” he asked her.  Trying to be polite while at the same time trying not to panic.  She responded with a look on her face that made him wilt.  A look that said “there is no possible way this could work.”  Maybe he was reading way too much into it.  He didn’t have time to analyze anything that emotional, at least not yet.

He found a funnel from the back of the table and poured the liquid from his flask into hers.  He opened the manual again and began to scan the instructions.

“Ok,” he told her. “now hand me that red stuff in that squeeze bottle from your stash,” he pointed to a spot on the lab sheet that called for the red stuff.  She did as he asked and he began to swirl the liquid around, but nothing happened.

“Shouldn’t it be turning blue,” she asked him.  “That’s what it says in the last step.”

“It’s supposed to,” he told her.  “Swirl it around.”  The blue color was not the bright cobalt blue it should have been.  Instead it was more of a dull pond-scum green with some red drops mixed in.

“Oh well, you tried,” she said, and seemed to genuinely mean it.  He was heartbroken.  She was looking into his eyes again and he felt that far-away feeling began creeping up his spine.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and he really meant it.  But it was her project, not his, that was screwed up. 

“Look at it, look at it now,” he whispered loudly to her as he pointed to the flask she had pretty much thrown down back on her table.  Some of the pond-scum green was changing into a color that could actually be called blue.

“Holy shit,” she said.  “Did it work after all?”  For a split second, he was disappointed in her lack of confidence in his abilities.  That didn’t last very long.  It began to fade very quickly when she hugged him.  The chill in his spine spread to his whole body and he almost began to shake.  He thought that might be a little awkward, so he put all that energy into smiling like an idiot.

“I can’t believe it worked,” she said.

“I can’t believe you doubted me,” he shot back.  More confident now, but that was more of a smart-alec comment that he would have made to pretty much anybody else in the lab, especially another guy.  He bit his tongue so hard he thought it would bleed, and wished that remark would crawl back into his gut where it came from.  She didn’t seem to have noticed.

“Now what about yours,” she said, as the color in her flask became a brilliant blue the more she swirled it around.  They glanced in unison at his own flask.  It was evident that there were no miracles about to take place anytime soon.

“Um…I think it will work out.”  He had been so determined to make hers work that maybe he had added a bit more to her flask than he had meant to.  The wrong coloring didn’t bother him so much as the fact that it was obvious that his flask was about a quart low.  The lab assistant’s booming voice came over the miscellaneous noise of the lab.

“Start wrapping things up.  We’ll be coming around to check the coloration of your solution as soon as everyone returns to their stations.”  He took his position in the front and the other lab ass moved to the back, toward where they were.  Not only was he going to have no color, but it appeared that he wouldn’t even have the right amount of fluid.  This was not a good start.  He might as well not have even tried to read the instructions in the lab manual.

He looked around, first one way, then the other.  Everyone was back to where they were supposed to be and there was no time to go all the way to the front to get more solution. 

“Another great decision, Martin,” he thought to himself.  He continued to look around until his eyes met the sink.  The lab ass was getting close, so he put his flask under the spigot of the sink and filled it to the appropriate level with the most scientific fluid of all…pure D water.

“What are you doing,” she said.  The look on her face was quite stunning.  “That will never work.

“I know that,” he said.  At this point and time it didn’t matter, and the lab ass was already to her station, so that conversation was officially over.  He overheard the lab ass telling her she had a good coloration, Lynn, is that the name?  He heard her say that it was.  No shit, he thought.  Much more confident on the inside.  Always had been.  He turned his back to the lab assistant and suddenly felt a pang of jealousy hit him right in the heart.  He knew it wasn’t right, but that was the same lab ass that she had smiled at when they first got in the lab.  He wasn’t happy with that little fact that brain kept bringing up.  With his back turned, the lab jerk couldn’t see him lift his flask out of the sink.  He sat it down as quietly as he could on the table so no one would notice.  Two winks later, the lab ass was at his own table. 

“No color I see.  Wonder what part of these instructions you missed,” he said. 

“I think I added to much mumblecolormumble and didn’t assay the mumblemumbleliquid,” he stammered.  It didn’t make much sense to him either. 

“You’ll find yourself much more successful if you’ll read all the instructions and make an effort to follow them next time,” he said, as the words dripped from his ugly Roman nose.

“Yes, sir” he replied dutifully.  “I didn’t do it right at all,” He smiled all-knowingly and moved on.  Martin finally took a breath, one that he didn’t realized he even needed until that very moment.

            He looked over at Lynn across the aisle.  She was looking at him expectantly.

            “Well, what did he say,” she questioned.

            “Aw, nothing.  Said I could have done better.  That’s ‘bout it.”

            “I don’t know what to say…I appreciate you helping me.  I had know idea you knew what you were doing,” she said.

            “I’ve messed around with some stuff, not much,” he said, as he tried to take himself back in his life to a time when he had done things like this.  He hadn’t.  Ever.

            “Well, I’m glad you had.  You saved me today.”  More chills.  Could you get the flu in hot weather?

            “Let’s clean this mess up and get out of here,” he said.  She was smiling even bigger at him now.  It made his skin crawl, but in no way did he consider this to be a bad thing.  She turned back to her table, but he kept looking at her.  He breathed out and began to clean his own.

            He was almost done 10 minutes later when she appeared in front of him with her backpack over his shoulder. 

            “Hey, it’s a little early for supper, but we could go hang out in the caf and see if we couldn’t get next week’s lab work out.  It looks harder than this one.” She was laughing when she said the last part.  He could think of no reason to deny the request, and every reason to say yes.  But nothing came out of his mouth so he just nodded.

            He followed her of the room and was right behind her down the stairs.  He caught up to her side as the left the dark, dank halls of the Science building and squinted against the afternoon sun. 

            “One lab down, 15 more to go,” he said.  He had no idea where that came from, but he kind of liked it.  The first intelligible thing he had said to her all day.

            “Thank goodness,” she said back to him.  Still smiling.  The smile that he felt was reserved just for him.  Or if it wasn’t, the one that made him a little weak in the knees.

            Then began their trek across campus to the cafeteria, although he didn’t feel his feet hitting the ground with each step.  He had read about this happening, but he was experiencing something he had never felt before.  He still didn’t know exactly what it was, but he was pretty sure it was a good thing.  When he thought about the trip across campus, he was usually wishing it was closer.  He found himself wishing for the first time in his memory that it was 20  miles away.  He made small talk, and she talked back the entire way, with the sun on their back, a lab class behind them, and who knew what ahead of them.  To him, though, the future didn’t matter.  He had another minute of his life, content to just to walk by her side.  

El Bayou is Spanish for.....The Bayou

 We did it.  Finally.  Just being there is often enough to classify such an excursion as a success.  Next time, a chainsaw will be aboard.

Late-Night Rescue Mission

Full moon over the White River at Batesville

It all started with a phone call.  My buddy had gone out after work to fish a nearby bayou.  There's this mysterious "pipe" you see that we have actually been OVER in a boat...but it still retains its mystery and we talk about getting "over" it like an inmate would talk of escape.  He tried to go "over" it today...and was not quite successful.  

As I said...it all started with a phone call.

“Be on standby, dude, “ I heard him say.  “You may have to come get me.” I knew who it was before I answered, but I never expected it to be those words.  This is the guy who was born with a piece of rope in his hands, already tied into a neatly configured bowline knot before he exited the womb.  One of THOSE guys.  Lifelong Boy scout.  Eagle Scout nonetheless.  On one particular trip together, in my boat at the time, he single-handedly rescued a boat full of crazed drunken people with nothing but half an anchor rope and a Zippo lighter.  He IS the real-life Macgyver.  I would rather be stranded in a nuclear holocaust with no other person.  So...to hear the words, “You may have to come get me” from him was a bit strange.  But it got stranger still.

“The current is pulling me, and I still have my trolling motor, but I don’t have enough battery.  Not to mention it’s getting dark.”

“What’s wrong with your Merc?, “ I asked him.  He was also known to be meticulous with anything motorized.  He was also a walking Auto-Parts-Store mechanic.

“It just won’t start.  I took up up and down the river a few times before I hit the bayou...it started a bit funky, but leveled right on out.  But it won’t crank at all.  I’m gonna give it another shot, but I don’t wanna ruin my battery--I’ll have to use it to get her on the trailer”

“No problem, man...I’ll be right here, “ I ended the call and immediately began finding something warm to wear.  Now would be a good time to introduce some facts about this newly-developing situation.  The ramp is located about 100 yards upstream from the dam.  Not a Hoover Dam type dam...not even Greers Ferry or Norfork...this is a White River dam and the water pretty much just flows right on over.  Of course, especially at the level it’s at now, there would be no surviving if one’s boat happened to be sent spiraling over it.  This was a point of concern at the moment, because he had no motor.  He was going to depend on his trolling motor (so small in stature next to that monstrous 90 horsepower sitting like a lump of jet black coal on the back of his aluminum tub.  It would be up to me  and a 45 pound thrust MotorGuide to keep his boat from one last joyride--over the dam.

By the time, he called back, I had already found and donned my coveralls, coat, boots, and thrown together some flashlights and duct tape.  Let me add here that I don’t function well in emergencies.  I make a GREAT assistant.  As the second-in-command, I take orders, I listen, and I follow instructions.  And I do those things very well.  So what good would duct tape do me?  I don’t know...but it’s a pattern in my life.  When I’m summoned to help someone in need...be it on the water, in the woods, or on the interstate, I usually grab most things that would come in handy.  But there’s always one thing that I see...like an impulse purchase in the checkout line...that I put in my pocket on the way out the door.  And that object never has any relevance to the task at hand.  None whatsoever.  Tonight it was a roll of duct tape.  In the past, it’s been a deck of cards, or a dull knife.  When rolling out the door once to help a friend on the side of the road with a flat tire, I grabbed a baseball bat.  When I stepped out of the truck wielding a Louisville Slugger, my friend asked me, “What in the name of all things holy did you bring a bat for?”

“It just seemed appropriate.  I’ll be over here with my flashlight and bat if you need anything”

So tonight was no different.  With boat in tow, lights on the ready, and duct tape, I made my way to the ramp.  

I hate this ramp with everything in me.  It’s steep and hard to navigate--there are tire-destroying creatures (scientific name: BigRockius Sharpius) on both sides of the concrete slabs and a whirling slough of muddy water to sink your trailer into.  When you finally do deposit your craft safely, the whole chute is lined with prop-eating, fiberglass-chewing boulders lining both sides.  

Trailer in...boat off...motor started...boat onto ramp...truck parked...boat in reverse....pulling out of the chute....boat spinning.....I drive terribly in reverse...turn in 7 circles trying to get out into the channel while not destroying boat.

Escape.  River.  Current.  Dam.  Damn!  Start motor, make way to bayou.

Now it’s easy.  Driving, cool air.  Feels like an adventure.  It’s almost twilight out, but there are no bugs.  It’s beautiful.  I think of a newly-discovered individual that works professionally in just such environments as a guide, and how much he would like the air, the water, and the feeling.  Of course, he’s seen sunrise and sunset in Alaska.  Still...I think they are all special...we only get the opportunity to see so many.  They are a finite resource in our lives.  

I make my way into the bayou, around corners, skimming over brushpiles and dodging overhangs until I can make out his boat in the waning light.  It’s only a silhouette--I see a shape of a boat rather than the boat, then I slowly make out his almost 7’ tall frame arise from the boat that’s drifting on the bayou current as it takes the water out to the river proper.

“Hello buddy,” I call out to him with a smile.  He’s smiling back, which is good news.  This individual, when angry, is not a force to be reckoned with.  I’m glad he’s happy, even though I know he’s pissed.  If he’s smiling, then I am pretty sure that we are going to make out alive.

I tossed him the rope and he did his magical Eagle Scout knotology on it, and connected him bow to my stern.  We sat and talked for a few minutes--and it’s during those small moments that life-changing things happen.  I’m not saying my life changed--it’s just at that very moment, I was there because he needed me...it was still and quiet on the water, a slight breeze was coming in over the river, settling into what would eventually become a fog.  I’m glad he didn’t ask to stay out there...I would have stayed in a heartbeat.  It was so peaceful, and even though my sole purpose there was to tow him back in, it just felt like the whole universe was aligned the right way for a change.  His bad luck for his motor evil behavior, sure...but sometimes things are as we make them.  And in that very moment...things really weren’t all that bad.

I cranked up and made a looping circle across the width of the bayou and he followed me.    I could barely hear anything over my outboard, but he would shout directions from time to time, like “Keep ‘er straight,” or “Pull it like it’s your boat trailer.”  He knew what I knew and didn’t know, and he also knows (whether he admits it or not) that if he had told me to jump and swim back to his boat, I would have done so, and wouldn’t have given it a second thought.  I trust him.  So he knew what things to tell me to make this whole thing end peacefully

By the time we made it to back to the river channel, the full moon was showing herself quite nicely (as you can probably tell by the pictures...even though pictures cannot capture accurately what the scene really felt like).  She was riding low in the sky tonight, and her light was a firm yet pale yellow that bathed the traffic from the bridge and the park beyond.  It wasn’t far back to the ramp, but I sure felt at that moment that I could have stared at the scene for an eternity.  

We made it safely back into the chute and between the two of us, trailered both boats and parked them side-by-side in the parking lot and between strapping, checking, and wrapping them up for the drive home, we talked of fishing past and future...fish caught and those that got away.  We talked about the moon and about being out again soon.  Eventually, both boats were tucked in tightly and in a eons-old ritual of two men talking while leaning on either side of a boat, we talked for a few more moments.  We work together, so there was no great need or desire to linger, and with a “See you in the morning, “ we circled the empty parking lot that looked out over a city park bathed in moonlight.  Usually on warm nights, you can see people coming and going, but this night was a more bare park crowd.  Only in the distance could you see a handful of smaller children with neon-glow hula hoops spinning magical circles around their waists.  Even they disappeared into the darkness as two trailers left two paths of river water dripping from them--in my side mirror, I could see the moonlight as it washed over the parking lot, and I could those two trails as the water glowed almost golden in the moon.

What? In? The? World? is? That?

Well, it's been a while since I've caught a new species, but actually, this was actually rather exciting for me. According to my expert, this is a Chain Pickerel. Who knew these things were prowling around in the Little Red? I know about them now--they are in trouble!

Old Friend

Couple days of tough fishing, but here's the stuff that makes it all worthwhile

Houston

What a cool town. Water is important, it seems. Few minutes to the gulf...few minutes from "InsertNameHere" Bay...maybe it's too warm there in the dead of summer. Maybe never seeing snow would become wearisome. Maybe I'll never know the answer to these questions, but I'll tell you this much--this weekend, it was perfect. The perfect place, the perfect release, the perfect place to unwind. I believe there are several "perfect"-places. But I also believe there's a fourth dimension of perfection that can exist anywhere--but what actually happens is that all the stars align and every proton of your being is balanced with what you need--and you come away deeply satisfied. That's what Houston was to me. Perfection in a city that I had missed. I also met some really interesting dudes. I've been on such a roller-coaster lately that I'm not sure which way is the sky and which is the ground, but suffice it to say that my path...my course....my...trail...has been jarred from its original path. How do I know this, I hear you ask...oh, I hear you. And I understand your question. I felt the path move. I felt my entire life squeak as it shifted slightly. Sometimes, life does that to us.

Sometimes we don't live life....life lives US.