Saturday, June 22--
7:27 p.m.-
Anchored at goal.
Got off work late afternoon wanting action and life and cut-loose connection.
Got what I wanted, then appalled over it all. I like going to town via water,
a moth drawn to flame. EZ spent much of her time in the bow standing splay-legged
not to fall over when we confronted big wakes.
We headed downstream, somewhat wild at first, as measured by nature's
rules. A few fishing boats in the shallows, a pontoon or two, and two Jetskis
launched just before us, driven by novices, and that was just fine.
(As I write I keep looking over my shoulder at the darkening west.)
The river reeds have grown up nicely and show clearly where shallows
and deep water are. We enter the main lake, everything is going fine, but
paying attention to the course is a thorough exercise around EZ, who keeps
pacing and blocking my view. Houses become side-by-side castles; we verge
toward a notorious marina where boating citizenry refills gas tanks and beer
coolers and gets to be seen by peers on the pier.
(Frogs chugging in stereo off the port bow and right, sound like decrepit
old men: "Fred. Who? NO! Huh?" Sometimes the croaks are so close
together they sound like a summer multi-syllabic version of a barking dog
Christmas carol. "Ci-gars-don't-hurt-WHAT-SMOke-putt-j-oke-bas-turd-choked-cow-you-bloke."
And, "shut-up Moe." Or something like that.)
So I slowed the motor and tip-toed through a cavalcade of performance:
weeping children on pontoons throwing furniture and tantrums, jet boats throwing
up geysers, and stately fiberglass cutters slicing circles with bustle-bound
ladies screaming at cell phones. One sky-blue cruiser fluttered a skull-and-crossbones
flag from a mast. My two Jetski comrades had learned what to do and flew through
the scene and squealed on two wheels around the far point.
We got through and continued toward town.
I still carry paradigms of watercraft speed from the sixties. Not only
my boat, which, if I over-throw EZ to lighten the load, reaches a maximum
fast 22 mph. But I rarely toss her out unless the boat hits submerged obstacles,
but then I'm too busy slowing and turning around to read the GPS screen. Fast
over water still impresses me at 32 or 35 mph, but my God in the late sixties
when Glastron inboard/outboards pushed neighborhood rich kids past 45, I gawked
from the dock and wetted my pants. But these days hydrological engineers have
broken through barriers and fiddled with hydro-drag. Cubic inch architects
have opened up venturi ports and bored out the carbs. Personal watercraft,
boasts Bombardier, routinely produce 152 horsepower, "For personal use
only." On other vessels high-rising black motors affixed to rear transoms
reach elevations of six or eight feet, and send smooth missile hulls barely
touching the water at 80.
8:32-
Back at the upper end of the summer office channel, I realized EZ has
been confined to the boat since we got out here shortly before five. I nudge
the bow into waist high shore grass and say "okay."
She asks, "Where, through that tightly packed wall?"
She looks at me, then back at the wall, then, resigned to my stupidity,
parted her nose through the four-foot high weeds and disappeared. I stood
up to see where she'd gone. No doggy body inside down there. Grasses waved
a circuitous path. Then stopped. Then swayed another telltale trail thirty
feet to the right. Then stopped. Then switched back and forth wildly in a
single spot for a few seconds until I caught on to her purpose, and yelled
"NO!"
She came contritely right back and stood on her deck with four mucky
black forelegs, stinking of dead fish and smeared with horrible rotted rot.
Come to think of it, she stays alone for eight hours without potty
breaks while I'm at work.