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Thursday, July 4--

3:27 p.m.-

      At Grand Sandbanks. Three minutes ago five canoes floated past carrying women and children and shirtless red men. Empress damselflies are flitting and setting down to catch some sun. Temperature 81, humidity 44.

      Coming up we overtook a boat with a monolithic black motor and a "250" decal on its backside. Shot past it like it was standing still, which it was.

      EZ is sitting in the water in the shade of a giant white pine watching life flutter-buzz by; grackles and mosquitoes and swift river current rumoring sudden slurpy gurgles. The white pine sighs a sound unique to itself, faraway yearnings known but mysterious. A bug of some kind is chasing another sort on the steep sandy slope.

      The bank seems motionless until I watch it. Inexplicable tiny avalanches. A pencil-sized hole six feet high is spitting sand, errantly, like a bilge pump discharging water and gusts of air. A grasshopper is clicking itself into the air leaving a cascade of sand and lands back where it'd been.

      A few feet to the left a ridge shows layers of compressed sand with excavations in its cliffs and outcropping pillars. A miniature ten-inch tall replica of Arizona cliff-dweller abodes.

      Across the river a mature turtle suns on a floating log. A small turtle is trying to climb up there too but having a hell of a time trying. Its head on its neck strains far out, front legs push a high angle, tottering, teetering, it topples back with a splash. Then returns. Head, front legs, shell, appear on the other side of the log, tail swishing the water. It moves to a branch. No success, so it rotates back to the first trunk, strains its head far out of the shell, tendons and veins straining tight like weight-lifters appear, scratches loose bark and sinks down out of sight. Small turtle swims to the near side of the log. Large sunning turtle watches the intruder from three feet away. Small turtle clambers up at a forty-five degree angle, pushing hard, slipping, rising again. Too high, it pitches forward over the log, headfirst back into the swamp.

3:46-

      "Are those springs back there?" asks a man boating by.

      He refers to heavy surgings in the river at the lower end of the Sandbank stream. They've been a mystery to me too but, rather than springs--which would be of keen interest to hydrologists, I think there are large boulders or logs in the deep seven feet down.

3:51-

      I hear a boat motor. Just visible above the grass through the meander a woman is standing on the front deck of a large boat stating, "Uh, I don't know Chad. It looks like a Goddamned mine-field up ahead."

      Male voice, "Yeah, I think we've gone as far as we can."

4:24-

      Nearing Sandy Flats. The first hint of revelry ahead is a volleyball net rising high in the middle of the river spanning two aluminum standards, and spent fireworks smoke blowing sideways. Six big pontoons and four heavy speedboats are moored in the shallow water with Mickey Mouse and Sponge Bob towels drying over canopies. Children shoot pretend AK-47 squirt guns at other children. Teenaged boys and girls shout "Fuck you," and "fuck that," and "fuckin'-A-I'm-all-fucked-up," from lips clenching soggy cigars and girls blowing snot on the river. Nobody is over thirty, except the local shoe store owner and his third-grade school-teacher wife, who, while hunting birdseed at True Value, told me she lost eighty pounds over the winter so she could "look better in a bikini on the 4th of July."

      Dopey young men in sport shades, nurturing corpulent doughy flesh strut--with beer--through knee-deep water. A gas grill sears animal parts in the sun. A drunken boy loses his meal when the paper plate crumples and cascades it into the water. Disengaged breasts, piss wetting the river. Red coolers and green lawn chairs, blue spandex skins and deep-purple pointlessness, but for now. How does the world survive with nobody in charge and Gomorrah still charging interest?

6:10-

      Waiting at the uptown boat landing for 13-year-old daughter Chelsea. The lake is turmoiled and keeps me backing-and-forthing to avoid crashing the rocky shore until she arrives. EZ enjoys the ride, up-and-down rocking, watching the action on shore. A teenaged girl, waiting forlornly for her date, stands looking out to sea, one hand shielding the sun from her eyes, as women always fidget on rocky shores.

      I try lowering the anchor. But twenty-feet from shore the bottom is fifteen feet deep, too far for the river-only reach of the rope. Let the waves move us closer, the anchor touches. Good. But a minute later I realize the swells lifting the bow have been re-setting the anchor ever shallower, moving us silently toward a hard rocky dashing.

6:30-

      Rocking-and-rolling I motor near the pier where Chelsea is standing with an armload of gear. A pontoon is docking on the other side and a speedboat is preparing to launch on my right. Breakers push my boat toward the concrete down-ramp. Chelsea decides, without warning, to step across two feet of lake into the bow. She gets halfway out, then changes her mind and--against physical principle--somehow goes back.

      "When you decide to do something, like entering a bucking boat, never change course halfway through," I lecture.

      The man tending his pontoon dithers inane comments and giggles annoyingly at EZ who's grinning and sneezing back.

      Chelsea manages to get in and we back out of there, heading through violent rollers and the water-ski show boat towing six skiers through a slalom course of underway pontoons, to the other side of the lake.

9:15-

      Motoring slowly toward town after sundown's half-light.... We'd driven to town for more gas and a pain-pill recharge for EZ to help her enjoy the fireworks show.

      Chelsea wants a taste of my beer. I hand over the lidded mug. She peers into the slot at the top, suspicious, cautious, doubting that this taste test will be rewarding. An ugly intolerant leer distorts her lips as she holds the cup ten inches from her mouth. She stares into heaven and moves the drink near, going cross-eyed as the brim touches her lips. She tips the cup one degree higher, hesitates, sips, then lowers it down with a right hand up-turned, smacking her lips.

      "Sick. It's like, sour. Why would you want ... it's like, nothing," she scoffs.

      "Of course it's like nothing. You got only foam."

      She tips the mug up again, slightly higher, then away, leaving a luster of wet on her lips.

      "It's so gross! How can anybody--" Arms and head convulse in reflexive revulsion, hand up palm out like victims do to fend off attack. Face contorting in scandalous disgust, body reacting to spontaneous violent shivers, she hands my beer back, wracked by fierce spasms and hideous grimaces she slaps her hands together like ridding them of dog feces. "Uuugh!"

      "I don't like it either."

      She stops squirming and gives me a scornful stare of ridicule, hand on her throat. "Oh, I'm sure you don't."

      "I don't."

      "Then why do you drink it?"

      "For the alcohol. And mostly habit. I don't think about the taste. But when I do, I don't like it."

      "Then why don't you get like, wine cooler?"

      "Too sweet."

      Chelsea's trying to resume snacking on an oversized bag of Nacho Cheesier Doritos, but having a bad time of it. The bad taste of beer on her tongue, tainted by maternal propaganda is repelling the savory twang of synthesized Mexican flavors.

      Upriver, going down, the river becomes lake about two miles above town. Widening for a mile, then narrowing with perilous acreage's of stumpage lurking in the east. There are turns and bay inlets and bleach bottle buoys to signal stumps off to the sides, put there by residents to ward off hull dents.

      Boat lights move away from shore toward the deep, most are pontoons advancing sedately. Other vessels join the Pied Piper of Hamlin Town scene. Laughter and flat chatter soothe across smooth water. Two speedboats zip by to secure good seats and send us swaying for a moment or two. Round a slow point. The water tower rises out of the trees, blinking its red season.

9:35-

      We pass around the last bend and into the main lake. Hundreds of red and green and white lights inert on the water. Consumer-grade fireworks shoot up from shore where waterfront neighbors show us their stuff, illuminating white faces and blue lawns through showers of cordite and magnesium and flashy chemical colors.

      We idle forward with everybody else; reverently it seems, toward a throne of divinity. Solemn, worshipful, hushed, awaiting the aspect of great majesty. Toward the front, boats become closer, anchored in their pews. On shore in a whole other world, thousands of revelers carpet the half-mile park.

      I see a nice opening and meander there. OOPS, a mistake, quite obvious why there's a wide margin of empty lake. Four pontoons are lashed together into one floating bog. Fifty young persons on it are having a wonderful time shouting streams of loose language and tossing empty beer cups, and discharging urine into the lake. One of the four floats is approximately underwater.

9:50-

      BOOM! The whole scene lights up a colorful flash. Acres and acres of tiny faces all turned up at Christ's coming. A good show, interesting new designs, even a couple of red hearts and white stars. For twenty-five minutes, patrons yelled appreciative quips like, "there goes the golf course." Then, my God, the finale. A two-minute barrage of lightning and booming and streaming white washes and spiraling curlicues drew tears to my eyes and induced ecstatic cheering applause from thousands of spectators. (The excellence of the show was the talk of the town for days. I heard only praise and very impressed comments. A new troupe of experts was hired this year; never have we been given such a remarkable display.)

      I got the motor started and headed for relative safety near shore where we could avoid getting run over in the post-spectacle rush. Chelsea, lying up front under a blanket with EZ, watched the bedlam with her hand in the water, "Warm as a bath."

      When it was safe we idled through high waves and aimed upriver, dreading when the lake narrowed to river and bright yard lights dimmed my night vision, obscuring where to go to a guess.

 

Friday July 5--

10:00 a.m.-

      EZ is lying in the back of the car. Ready to go.

      I left the boat attached last night. This morning I unhitched it, opened the hatch to put the wiring harness inside and left it open, then went about other tasks. Didn't see EZ; she usually follows me around outside like a bonded baby chick. Then I saw her sitting in the back of the car, watching me from the place most likely to result in good fun.