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Tuesday, July 16--

12:50 p.m.-

Pulled up in the shade of the boat-landing ramp waiting for Caleb and his girlfriend Midge to arrive for an afternoon on the water. The boat is not spacious enough for EZ too, so she was left home with the promise that I would send a cab for her later.

A mother mallard with her brood of five is nibbling water morsels, bathing, shaking flightless tiny wings ten feet away in the swampy muck along shore. The children, already three-fourths Mom's size are now "cheeping" past five feet away.

Caleb had senior pictures taken this morning and invited EZ along for inclusion in one of the shots. Correct in assuming that that would be fine with her I did not ask her permission.

We showed up at the photographer's century-old house in the older part of town and she panted in back while waiting for action. (She'd had a pain pill and her mood was vivacious.)

I followed Caleb up to the studio and suggested that "doing her now" rather than last would be better, since sitting in an un-shaded hot car might corrupt her fresh curls. His mother was there of course, looking slutty in a short dress as has become her late middle-age style, making sure that everything was done according to expectation since she was suffering the expense.

I released EZ down by the river behind the eye clinic. She went wild for a few minutes, showing herself affectionate with new people to get petting from. Down to business. Caleb knelt beside EZ, who grinned at her audience, then licked Caleb's face and laid flat on her back and put her toes in the air in hopes of an unscheduled scratch.

"C'mere," Caleb pleaded, and she sat up, leaned back and gave his lips a lick. The woman I loved a long time and who once was my wife thinks it's cute, giggles and says, "oh how cute."

The photographer has not been trained to capture spontaneity but prefers portraying imitation life rather than real and woofs retarded dog noises behind his camera, expecting EZ to look around for a simpleton dog. Embarrassed she looks down at the ground. He waits while EZ and Son present a variety of great candid photo ops then, when they're both sitting sensibly and modeling professionally he flashes some shots. Though he accidentally snapped one or two good ones of an EZ grin when she suddenly got tired of holding a deadpan pose. The old wife laughs. EZ breaks her "stay," rushes up and buries her nose between old wife's legs, raising the tight red dress up to her crotch. Oldwife winks at the photographer.

EZ's session done, she runs down the riverbank and sinks into an eddy where many colors of storm-sewer runoff iridesce in the sun.

5:48 p.m.-

An hour ago while waiting at the landing for Caleb to deliver EZ from town two Jetskis veered upriver, racing each other through hard channel turns, full speed past a pontoon and a pair of fishing boats. I hate that. Seventy miles an hour is dangerous to others. I'd loathe Jetski pilots less if they'd do their thing out on the big lake and leave the river for contemplative-speeded craft like mine.

When EZ was delivered along with cold drink, we headed upriver, through the shortcut and out into the main channel where the idiotic Jetski pair blasted around a swampy meander after a half-hour at Backwoods Bar.

I snatched up the video camera and aimed it right at them--each machine shooting up ten-foot high fountains of water--which slowed remarkably when they caught sight of me with it. Two dudes, with swept back dark glasses kept to the far side, gave a cool flicky-wave. One was plainly alarmed about the camera recording their progress and kept looking back, then back at his buddy, and back at me. Then they were gone.

"Bastards."

Half a mile farther I came upon them stopped side-by-side sideways in the center of the river. They watched me advance and slow down. Tentative nods.

"You guys aren't supposed to be up here."

"Where. On the Wisconsin River?"

"Down in the lake part of the flowage is fine for Jetskis, but not here in the narrow part of the river. It's off-limits."

"We didn't know," they stare.

"Well, now you do."

We'll head back right away."

"Great."

A fishing boat is drifting toward us and an idling pontoon full of family appears around the near bend.

Moored on Sandy Flats, watching an anchored new Sun Tracker Party Barge-22 with a black Mercruiser inboard/outboard. On board, three twelve-year old boys. Two, up to their necks in the river are lugging a waterlogged tree trunk on their shoulders to add it, I suppose, to the other six propped up against the front lounge sofa inside the pontoon. They wave cheerily as I imagine Huck Finn and his friends might've.

Earlier--

My son and his girlfriend arrived just after 1:00. Cloudless sky, blasting hot sun, temperature 89. We swam and flipped a Frisbee at Grand Sandbanks. Headed further up, through shady passages and wide hot places where the water was wading shallow. Blew soap bubbles from an eighty-nine cent plastic wand.

6:30-

So now, parked in the shade of maples in the office, EZ is sleeping, thanks to a pill the kids gave her at home. Each day she is slightly less energetic, disinterested in fun. I see her decline. She trudges outside, then sits at the door, looking back in. She's been clingy, offering and taking more affection, as though she knows time is running out. I don't know how much she has left, a week, maybe two or four.

Caleb has agreed to help me bury her in the blueberry patch alongside My Summer Office.

8:10-

We've anchored in our favorite late-evening spot in the wide marshy grasslands where wild rice grows. At this stage of July the shallows are a thick carpet of green. Almost sturdy enough to walk through; there is no doubt about where to drive and where not. An eagle is flying low over the channel. They've become abundant, no longer such a big deal to spot. Earlier upriver we saw four leap from a tree. Another remained high in the white pine.

Blackbirds are "chipping" and beginning to flock. By late August when the grasses are taller they congregate by hundreds hidden, then explode in great hoards, soaring and swooping as one connected mass.

Saw the three pontoon boys in their boat again, just downriver from the bridge, which it appeared they'd tried to get under. The shade canopy frame was laid lower than earlier, and two tubular supports had acquired bends I don't think went along with the designer's intent. Neither did the watery dragging of one canvas tarp corner.

The pilot gave us a sober nod as the dray pounded past.

8:32-

Minding our own business, still anchored in the backwater unofficial channel surrounded by swaying wild rice, the sound of a jet boat snarls to life in the direction of Backwater bar. No big deal. I mustn't detest everything. It revs and loudens. It approaches the junction. Left is where EZ and I are stopped; right is where tactful jet boats should go.

It circles in confusion, or is rewinding its spring. Then three heads--one with a beehive hairdo and another with an Elvis Presley swoop of shiny black hair and a boy with a heinie--stare over and enter our space. EZ stands to salute our callers.

Jet boats are not fishing boats or dress well as duck hunting blinds. Nor are they intended for use by the elderly or groups of more than three. Like subcompact sports cars and jetskis, their entire utility is quick-witted fun for the mindless mischief of young-spirited trailer-house buffoons. They are unsinkable, unstoppable, and unthinkable, and keep bank repossesors busy every October.

What is the meaning of this? The river is empty enough so they could go around.

The twelve year-old boy is driving. Elvis is in the middle of the bench seat and beehive is tossing corn chips at ducks out of her port side. The wailing motor pushes them past as though they don't know we are six feet from their path and feigning civility for their sake. Boy points out scenic sights. Dad passes out. Mom throws the whole Fritos bag into a group of baby ducks. Boy spits out a stream of bronze tobacco juice and floors the gas.

9:52-

At home. EZ suddenly was at my side and under the desk. Highly unusual for her not to come over tentatively and first show herself in need of attention. I usually relent then, pet her neck, and she submerges under the desk as I scratch her back and side and butt and she reaches out with a tongue and licks my on hand. It's a routine of ours, has been for several years.

Just now she omitted the introductory foreplay and went straight for the goal. I stroked her, somewhat bewildered, but attributed this break from her usual political routine as drug-induced behavior. I backed up the chair and crumpled her ears in my hands, the ultimate love in her books, and mine.

Then I sent her away with, "okay."

She went away. Then came right back. Again stuck herself under my workspace like before. I reached out to scratch her butt again, then heard sickening convulsing, which always means she's eaten too much grass, or has dined on dead fish from the swampy river's smorgasbord. Or tonight has had too much narcotic, two pills in four hours.

So, she's outside fertilizing our lawn where I invited her with great haste a moment ago.

10:00-

The local NBC affiliate has just reported sketchy details of a developing news story: "Splintered Jet boat discovered crashed on shore. No survivors immediately detected."