---

Monday, July 15--

4:37 p.m.-

EZ and I--naked but for swim trunks--are parked fifteen feet from shore at the inside point of an "S" curve far above Grand Sandbanks where we had a good swim. Some day, maybe tomorrow, I'll join EZ for a skinny dip, though keep an eye peeled for canoeists who sneak up.

It is eighty-eight in the shade, but I have no discomfort about that.

A low-riding red canoe carrying two guys in long sleeved shirts (one black) and wide-brimmed black hats and full flotation vests and a full load of camping gear stowed between them, passed a few minutes ago.

"Where did you put in?"

"Lac Vieux Desert."

It's near the source of the Wisconsin River. They couldn't start at the true source because it's a groundwater spring.

"Yeah. It was tough at first. Shallow and swampy with too much brush in our way. We had to portage our gear around rapids."

"How far you going?"

"Stevens Point, then through to the Mississippi. How far is Rhinelander?"

A tough question; it caught me off guard. I know exactly how far it is by motorized boat, but I certainly don't know the mileage. If a storm rises up I know how long it takes to be drenched by it before reaching protection under the bridge. I know every curve by heart, and that, from the summer office, it's about a half-hour. But "how far" uses my measuring stick of internal combustion range. Much different with two paddles and good current that dawdles and vanishes when the river slows into lake.

"Probably four miles." But as soon as they were out of sight I regretted saying so. Maybe it's eight or fourteen by paddle.

4:58-

I've just had to get out the fly swatter. Used it on two July flies--the kind just like houseflies, but with cow chips on their breath that silently land and bite.

EZ's lolling her Percoset head over the gunwale as though she's studying wind ripples on the water. But I think she's passed out.

Caleb met us at the landing after work last night, face beastly red from pushing home center shopping carts back and forth in a parking lot. During the hiring interview he was promised a cool inside job as a cashier.

Upriver we speeded, cutting through his secret channel where we attracted a riotous uprising of deerflies. Back into the main river and hit the gas to lose the enthusiastic bastards. A mile later I slowed and stopped for a dialogue with my son. But the deerflies, coasting inside our slipstream behind, seized their convenience and surged in to bite. So, back to full speed and disparage my favorite part of the river where trees lean over and there's lots of shade and the current runs deep in sweet-sweeping curves.

Pushed the boat up on Grand Sandbanks. EZ splashed immediately. We changed into swim shorts and dove together on "one, two, three!"

We floated and swam. Then upriver on sand I ran, dove back into the deep then drifted on my back and watched overhead clouds going the same speed as me. EZ and Cabe had a dogpaddle race. EZ won by a whisker.

I am an alcoholic. To deny it is to further cinch the suspicion as one in denial.

So I didn't. It's a paradoxical catch-22, akin to asking a man if he ever stopped beating his wife.

This subject reared up and piled out into the boat when, at 8:22, I poured a beer into my teacup. Caleb accepted one for himself.

I mentioned a discussion with Chelsea who said his uncle invited him to a beer on the deck while vacationing at his grandparent's home in Minnesota. His mother, priggishly hesitant about a seventeen-year old son ever drinking beer, finished her fourth daiquiri and lectured him not to drink more than half of the glass. He went back outside into the heat with the men and drank it all down. Then, when asked by a slurring Momma, said, "Uncle John drank the rest."

"The subject of alcoholism came up and we talked about ... it." Caleb, hesitant, didn't say more.

"Did I come up?"

"Well ... yeah."

I am flabbergasted. Someone the likes of me, divorced five years ago and away from the ex-wife's life for eight, need be a subject of gossip. We both have new lives, hers as a fireman wife and a new house in the country, central air-conditioning and community prominence. But, I am a convenient example, one that her parents suspected would finally come to nothing, as in-laws are inclined to predict.

"I defended you," Caleb says, which is gracious of him and I cherish that loyalty. But like an elephant's flea trying to weigh its host down, it's of little weight when it comes to denying what is so rock-solid plain to relatives who made their minds up about a man-loser long ago.

"What is an alcoholic? I ask.

"Someone who drinks a lot."

"What is a lot?"

"It's an addiction."

"What's the difference between habit and addiction?"

"Addiction is needing to do something. Habit is wanting to do it."

"What's the difference between need and want?"

This went on for a few minutes. Caleb is struggling with a big issue, to his credit, refusing to let popular opinion decide it for him.

"Alcoholics drink sometimes all day long. They have trouble holding a job, they make a mess of their life and everybody else's around them. They are miserable and abuse others and are out of control. Have I ever abused you, specifically when I'm drinking beer?"

"No."

"Have I ever scared you or hit you or made you feel uncomfortable, in any way, when we're together, when evening comes I drink beer?"

"No."

"Am I miserable and unhappy and making a mess of my life? Have I ever gone to work drunk, lost a job, been arrested, crashed a car, been violent? Have I ever degraded you or anyone else, or vomited booze down the front of your shirt?

"No."

"You'll have to decide if I'm alcoholic. It's an issue I've spent much emotional energy trying to decide. Beer at day's end is a fond habit, one without rude consequences for me or anyone else. Let me ask you, what would change from a minute ago, to a minute from now, if I was to accept the label alcoholic? Nothing would change. Other than a degrading disgrace attached to someone for the benefit of others who feel better about themselves by impugning others; proof that they are not so bad and more socially safe.

"I like my life very much. I love my work and do it well. I'm having a ball living a life suited to me after fifty years trying to live rightly in a bankrupt society. I like to drink beer; it's my friendly day-end habit.

"'Alcoholic' is a simplistic word, cavalierly stuck onto men behind their backs by people who should have no interest, but do by an appetite to elevate themselves as more upstanding.

"You decide for yourself. You will encounter alcohol abuse along life's way and may be dismayed to have heard what you've been told about me."

He's a thinking young man. He'll sort it out.

Today, 6:07-

We're still at the curve in the current. EZ has been snoozing but has now bounced to her feet and is searching for the genesis of splash she heard near the bank.

Back to last night--

We tried drifting. The flies liked it too much so downriver to Sandy Flats to anchor and sit still; they left us alone. A quarter crescent moon moved up to our port sky and brightened, along with a companion evening star. The air stilled, we chatted. EZ finally quit pestering for petting and slept. Caleb proofread aloud a chapter from our latest trip to The Woods, a book nearing completion. A faint mist began rising. Caleb pulled anchor. We drifted in the dusk and had another beer. I used the P-pipe and told of how the night before when I'd used it near town a woman--with binoculars--on shore shouted "Oh my God! Harry, I'm leaving," and started a boat motor fast. But I finished and got out of there before she could catch up.

"Oops. Wonder what time it is," I said. Then saw it was 9:51.

Caleb had asked earlier what time we'd be back. "Whenever you want."

"I mean, what time do you usually get back?"

"I just stay out until I'm ready to go. I don't have a schedule. I like it that way. Why? What time do you want to get back?"

"Mom said to be home by 10:00."

Arbitrary control.

Tonight, 6:45 p.m.-

Rounding the curve upstream of the bridge, I approach a crowd of teenagers standing or climbing to the top girder, preparing to jump. I grab out the camera and slam the motor into reverse far enough back to get it all in. I get a shot of five boys standing on top, to have at least something. The motor swings wildly and pulls us sideways in the stream. I pay it attention, reversing the stern into hard current, hastily trying to get ready. They jump before I am set. I got something, but memory of that "click" recalls a tilted frame a smidge out of focus.

I anchored, hoping for a mob leap, even suggested, "Everybody hold hands."

A girl in a bikini climbs halfway up. Two boys, entranced by her bosoms, tell her she's chicken and a whippersnap-pussy. Though not quite in those words.

I pull anchor and drift under the bridge. The ringleader, a chubby sport in a wet white undershirt and navy blue veins, consults quickly with three other boys and they head for the far side. I emerge the bow out from under the bridge. Two huge bodies, one with an undershirt, streak silently downward three feet from the gunwale and stir up a cannonball splash over EZ who thinks that's great fun. Another two boys leap a second later and splash down two feet away. But they're both slender and don't wet me at all.

Pink bikini girl leans over the rail.

"C'mon, jump!"

She ignores me and grabs a metal brace and swings out, "I'm fuckin' swingin' like a fuckin' monkey. I'm too drunk-fuckin' scared to fuckin' jump," is what she says.

I blush and give it the gas.

9:00-

We are motionless on the wide span of open lake just below where the river gives up its semblance of river. The sun sank fifteen minutes ago; the moon is nearly half, though still legally crescent. The sky is orange with benign striations of atmosphere mixed in. EZ is ignoring a dog barking on shore behind us.

It's a Monday so the lake is quiet. Momma marigold's orange blossom top looks Day-glow against the surrounding backdrop of Bar Harbor gray lake. A vivid torch on which we can center ourselves. The air is ambient; the red thermometer line reads 72. I don't know what to make of the humidity dial, and haven't for days. In the driveway at home it says "20" and an hour later on the water it reads 55. Now, later in the same day it's 93. But I don't feel different, so maybe it's unsure of itself too.