Blood or metal

The sun is high in the sky and the dry rocks of the creek bed flame and sparkle. We know that they are worth nothing but we recognize magic when we see it.

In the water our hands are covered with slimy green stuff. This happens a lot. There are also bugs. We try not to notice them but can’t help it. There are black bugs that look like beetles but swim and are known to bite. There are also skeeters – bugs that walk on water. There are fish trapped in small pools that are about to die. It is July and far enough into the summer that the river bed smells of hot, dried out plant and animal parts.

We are holding hands in the cool water, still sifting for gold when we hear a woop ,woop, splash, whew! Someone has jumped in, luckily clearing the rocks. After the yelling stops we go back to the water and eventually sit back on the dry rocks and turn them over and over, looking for gold on land this time. There is an orange piece of worn pottery next to our knees.The edges are round and soft like beach glass. 

We live in a small town. We know everyone, even the babies and old people. We all drive down the same street, park in the same parking lot and use the same shopping baskets. We know who your mom is, and not just because you share the same mouth. We know that you have an online gambling habit and that your dad likes cheap beer. Not because you have gone too far but because you are our son and we pay your bills and your dad is one of us, his beer cans piled high around the back side of our house. 

Our town borders a river.  Everything revolves around it  and yet we often forget that it is there. Sometimes it reminds us by creeping into our back yards and up our steps. It comes onto our porches and into our houses without so much as a knock on the door. 

When this happens we forget about yesterday and act as if this is new. Sure, the river has crossed us in the past. It has exposed us and pushed our boundaries. And yet, each time, we move on and are surprised when it happens again. Each time we think, oh no, the world is finally ending and all of our fears are now our fate.  

We panic and pray and the river recedes. We clean out the fine silt it leaves in our houses. We go back to work and we stare at our bedroom ceilings before bed. 

This morning the river came up the stilts of our neighbors wooden deck. We walk out on it and observe the water lapping up the edges of the fir planks. Our neighbor makes their living from the river and from this deck. They catch fish and store their yield in large white refrigerators. The fish in the river are so close today that I think they will knock down the refrigerators, bust out their dead friends, and my neighbor will lose everything. 

There is something new about the sound of the water. It drowns our thoughts. We notice that the rain has stopped and the pounding that we thought was coming down from the sky is coming from the river. Its persistence causes our hearts to race and we look at the water rising towards the refrigerators. We pace around on the deck, trying to be useful but mostly frozen.  

We have been through many floods. Our childhood memories are full of rising and falling waters. We remember the school bus driving through two feet of water all the way down the main road, the doors swinging open into brown pools in front of our houses. We remember the time that it came up so fast that our childhood homes were swallowed whole, our dolls and toys and clothes all washed away right after we were rescued. We remember our neighbors roof floating into our back yard and their cat jumping off onto our porch. 

When the sound of the water turns from pounding to a deep breath, in and ou,t we turn and run towards the house. It is too late. Our neighbor’s house has been picked up by the water and is now floating. The refrigerators on the deck are gone and I realize that we are no longer standing on planks but on the roof. Our legs give out and we sit. We see white metal bobbing a few yards away and notice that they are the open refrigerators. We see whole clay pots, upside down, floating past us. 

The sky is blue and the earth is still and the wind has gone to bed. Only the water is left. This time it is us that woop and yell. There is no other choice. We jump in and swim for our lives. We pray to grow fins and gills. The smell is wet and cold. We swim and sink and we swim again. The current is strong. It takes us all the way to the ocean, where we wash up next to the seals. They look at us and turn away. The sun goes down and, exhausted, we fall into darkness.