Gather at the River. David Joy
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I could feel the steel staples in my foot, aching in the bone. The mouth-shaped wound in my heel, where they pulled out the steel pin, howled. But the pain was different now. A choice I had made. I could limp with pride.
Then we reached the tidal cut. The stream, ankle-deep on the hike out, had swelled with the incoming tide. It was as wide as a small river now, dark with depth. Who knew how deep. The surface was wind-riffled, sliding between the banks like the scaled skin of a snake. That fast.
I looked at Lee.
“You think we can cross okay?”
Lee looked back at the crashing line of surf, so much closer now.
“I don’t think we have a choice.”
He hefted the five-gallon bucket of tackle onto his head and stepped into the shallows.
“Wade with your feet wide,” he said. “Straddle-legged.”
I nodded, followed. The current tugged at our ankles, our calves, our knees. The tide seemed to have fingers. They curled around our legs, drawing us toward the sucking mouth of the inlet. We waded deeper, deeper, descending toward the middle of the stream.
When the water reached our waists, I started thinking about sharks again. We grew up knowing they were around, but I could feel their proximity now, as if I were still wired to that blacktip. Sharks were no longer abstractions. They were throbbing through the darkness, fierce and strong. They were here. I sensed my power sinking with every step, every inch of depth. In two feet of water, I was a king. In four feet, meat.
At midstream, the tide reached our chests. We held our gear over our heads. The current bumped and eddied at our throats, threatening to topple us. We could be sucked out into the deep black water of the inlet, drowned, or my blacktip shark could come for revenge, tearing into our bellies or underparts. Or both. The water brushed my chin.
Then we were rising again, climbing the far bank, the bottom ridged beneath us like steps. We emerged onto the soft sand of the upper beach, man-tall, breathing hard. The sunbathers were all but gone, fled from the lengthening shadows. We made for the boardwalk, the sand squeaking beneath our feet.
Soon we were standing at the Jeep, looking back at the sandbar. It was nearly gone, a spit of sand at the mouth of the inlet. An island barely escaped. The tide was moving fast like a river, flooding the place. I thought of the living weapon we had pulled from the dark country of that water, then put back.
That day, we were kings.
If I die before you wake, there is something I must tell you. As your mother, I must.
Like you, little men, I was a child once. We lived in a house, but we grew up in the South Georgia woods, acres and acres of it. It’s where I smoked my first pine straw, stepped on my first nail, and examined my first Playboy. It’s the place that made me wild.
Behind our old house is a dirt road. You know the one. It’s a mile long and cuts through endless games of hide-and-go-seek and tall green soldiers of pine. The dogwoods you see lining the road were planted over half a century ago by Mema and Granny Sills. She’s Mema to me, great-grandma Rubye to you. She was born with a veil over her face. The midwife said it was a sign of supernatural power. Mema could make warts disappear with a penny and a piece of Scotch tape and her magic touch kept a thousand dogwood seedlings alive through a terrible drought. Her trees are still there, and their offspring run wild all over the woods like little miracles. Mema had vision, gave up a dream house to buy this land.
I’ve been carried down this road. I’ve crawled down this road, walked it and run it. I’ve barefooted it and punched its spine with stiletto heels. I’ve tricycled it, bicycled it, and ridden it bareback on a jackass named Hokey. I’ve Honda 50’d it, Yamaha 8o’d it, Kawasaki 250’d it, and my brother, Hec, and I have scarred it with fishtails, pretending we were Bo and Luke Duke and that Mama’s bombed-out Chrysler was The General Lee.
Not much has changed about this road. You’ll still see tortoises and wild hare, swallowtails, and great spangled fritillaries. You’ll still see fox and flying squirrels, turkeys, and coveys of quail. Although they’re here, you won’t see deer on the road. They’re smarter than most deer, a result of the pressure my Daddy put on them for years and whose memory is whispered to their young, knowing it helps keep them alive.
The only thing that’s different is there’s no field at the curve. The gas tank for Carlton’s tractor is gone. And so is he. He and his wife, Claudine, gone in an instant.
At the end of the road is the clubhouse. It’s exclusive in every sense of the word, and you’re lucky you’re part of the club. It’s an old World War II barracks, modified with a front porch with cypress tree pillars and cypress tree rails you can’t trust. There are no lace curtains or lightning rods, and the only reason it has a bathroom is because in 1955 somebody invited the governor. He needed some rest and relaxation and, apparently, a respectable place to piss.
Some of it has changed since I was a child. The floor is spongier and slopes a little more. Some of the things in it are mine now. Daddy’s deer and arrowheads, the rattlesnake skin, the saber-tooth cat mount, and the whale vertebra pierced with a megalodon’s tooth. There’s an additional bathroom now and a special place where you can bunk. The towels are arranged by color in the drawer, and the hallway is decorated with photographs of all your kin. That’s your Gaga’s touch. It belongs to her now. She, too, has vision. You’ll still find rats in the traps, maybe a snake, but you won’t find a cup of worms in the fridge or a box of crickets chirping on the screened-in porch.
Down the hill from the clubhouse is the pond, twenty-five acres of wet black mirror. The water smells the same way it’s always smelled, a smell I can’t bottle, like childhood. The cypress in front of the dock has rotted, but its stump is still there decorated with somebody’s fishing line and faded red floater. The sand Mema hauled in once lightened the bank. It’s where we built sand castles and let minnows nibble our toes. Grass now grows in that little spot, but in the shallows, you can still see minnows and evidence of that stark white sand.
This is Reedy Creek. We call it Reedy for short. Mema named it that because the creek that feeds the pond is reedy. It’s a place we come to escape. It’s a place we come to fish. It’s a place we come to gather.
I don’t remember catching my first fish. Nobody does. Like you, little man, I was the second child. But everybody remembers Hec’s. He was three. He pulled in a bluegill off the dock, took one look at it fighting on the line, and said, “Damn.”
I’ve caught my fair share of fish. Red and yellow breasts, catfish, bluegills, and bass, and I’ve caught my fair share of weeds, logs, beer cans, and sunglasses manufactured in the fifties.
I’ve used all kinds of bait. Red wrigglers, nightcrawlers, and spitballs of Sunbeam White. I’ve lured my line with Beetle Spins, glitter worms, and crickets, of which I went through a spell of sampling myself.
“You better stop eating those crickets. They’ll snatch out your voice and you won’t be able to talk,” Mema told me as I snuck one head-first in my mouth. That was the end of that.
I’ve fished with cane poles, rods and reels, sticks, buckets, and my pinkie toe when I had nothing else.
But what I remember most about fishing was what happened after the fish were caught, on the screened-in porch with the drainboard sink and the two wooden tables that stretch twenty feet long. After sunset, they’d bring in the stringers, garlands upon garlands of kaleidoscopic fish. They’d bring in the Styrofoam and red Igloo coolers full of flopping loot. The men would