Pure Water

A lonely man takes escape from a failing marriage, only to realise he needs something to cling on to.

All his items jostled in the back of the boat, roughly and clumsily. Upon each stroke to the right, they fell to the left, and on each stroke to the left, the opposite again. The canteen was the worst. Upon each interruption, it struck the side of the boat through the bag with an irritating clang, and would often spook a bird on a branch, or a school of fish streamlined against the canoe’s nose. He had tried to fix the bag under the seat behind him, only to have it slip away and empty its contents loudly enough to spook a whole nest. He had tried to manipulate his oar stroke to accommodate the bag, only to row too fast or too slow, or unevenly, and drift near a mountain face.

The water was thin, and pure, but he had a hard time gathering enough force to push his oar through it. Occasionally he misaligned the oar and would swerve headlong into an anomaly of seaweed. Jesus, he thought, how high is my debt?

Hard luck. It must have been. That’s all it could be.                            

 Hard luck.

 

It was an early hour, and fog was still settling low on the water face. The call of a finch or a hawk would project and ricochet of each mountain surface, and dissipate into silence. The peaks of the encircling mountains were rounded and snow-capped, and chunks of snow were often displaced and rolled down the slope of the mountain without haste or rapid disintegration. He had hoped such a trip would be cathartic, almost euphoric, but the constant irritation of his gear was a severe annoyance, perhaps more so than it should have been, and he could not focus on anything above or before him. He wanted a rest and a bag that was at least dormant.

Everything was a distraction now. He was at the age where his rude awakening to the hardships of life had come and gone, and had left him disoriented; his ability to stop everything and anything, and appreciate what he was still holding onto, was impaired. What were previously little joys and experiences were now chores or inconveniences, and almost seemed to get in the way. The majesty of an eagle’s spread wings was now replaced with the fear of it dropping something on his head. The effortless wilting of leaves into the water was now the worry of how many would find their way into his canoe. Everything was fear, worry or distraction. And it burdened him to have to come to terms with it.

 

He had settled into a pace that was both comfortable and smooth enough to obstruct any worry about bags, or birds, or leaves, or snow. He had rounded a bend by a careening bluff, and another marked by a rough outcrop of trees, an eagle perched upon the top, a rugged sentinel. He skimmed a patch of widow’s-thrill, and thought of his wife. Widow’s-thrill was her flower; her one and only. She most likely still kept a vase of them, on whatever windowsill of whatever home she was in. She had cleared out of his. And had made it known. She did not take the widow’s-thrill she had with her. But it was her flower.

He maintained them. He liked to watch her stare at them, and smile at how they made something as menial as unpacking the dishwasher, or microwaving a soup, so delightful. How the vase caught the light through the thatched kitchen window. He picked a small handful and thrust them in his pocket.

 

The sun was descending onto the peaks. He guessed eleven in the morning. Perhaps encroaching on twelve. He had maneuvered through two adjacent cliffs, which faced each other with a sense of complacency. They squeezed a small canal in the water, before widening out into what looked like an asymmetrical funnel, which then widened out further into a small lake, a subsidiary of the ocean beyond the small cliffs that rimmed it. The lake had a waterfall feeding into it that tumbled down into the water with tranquil sensitivity. Leaves fell with the rush of the water, and he didn’t entirely mind it. It was beauty undeniable.

 

She got up from her uncomfortable position on the sofa and tended to the boiling pot on the stove. Widow’s-thrill steam-flushed on the window sill. She stayed silent for a good while, stirring long, stringy pasta with a weathered and homely wooden spoon. It wasn’t the time for any more words. He didn’t need to be told twice.

He sat on the bed, angry and irritable. Marital problems were in the fine-print, he was sure. You get what you pay for.

He had an untidy stack of pamphlets on his desk advertising development projects or adventure holidays or drugs in trial phase. A laptop sat in the centre, in the midst of papery chaos. Yes, they were still married. Yes, they would keep the baby. But, yes, she did hate him, and yes, he wasn’t too fond of her either. It pained him to imagine this was anything more than a spat.

It was the middle of winter, and nearing the middle of the night. He hadn’t showered, and stale clothes clung to him like a bad smell. She was scooping carbonara into a bowl with a ladle.

‘Yours is on the stove.’

He clung to a piece of paper, a newspaper clipping with smudged ink and ragged edges. He threw it on the table before her bowl.

‘Milford Sound? In New Zealand?’

He nodded.

‘Time apart.’ He said.

She nodded. Didn’t rebut. He did not expect her to. Steam rose from her bowl and distressed her hair. She twirled a rotund amount of pasta with her fork. Silent. It wasn’t time for any more words.

He skulked back to the bed. A branch rapped at the door with tenacity, yet detachment. The house was warm from the fireplace stoked in the living room. Words often did not need to be spoken between the two to communicate what they wanted. And now, at a time when neither had words for the other, words were what he felt they needed most.

 

 

The waterfall churned a lovely pattern at its exit point. The water flowed clockwise around the lake, depositing some of itself at a tributary across from his docked canoe. The tributary jostled small rocks encased in algae, and a small turtle could be seen carrying itself along with the current. Such is life, he thought.

He chewed at a sandwich he had packed, and took a swill of his canteen, and stared up at the small cliffs at the end of the lake. They dwindled the further north he went along, and yet retained their beauty. A hawk, perhaps the very same hawk he had once spotted, flew above him and into the fog. The waterfall continued to rush, and to soothe. His canoe rocked gently, obsequiously, with the rushing.

Perhaps he was too selfish. He was at the age. Nothing was beautiful anymore. Nothing was easy. Perhaps this was his midlife crisis. Perhaps upon his return, his wife wouldn’t want him back. And rightly so.

He fingered the widow’s-thrill in his shirt pocket. He thought he might just keep it to himself. From a life he had thrown away, another life was soon to come, and he had to be ready. He had to be there.

He tossed his crust into the pure water, listlessly. As he stared into the mellow and whitening sky, everything he never said weighed on him, and was all the more important than anything he ever did say.