kid, he said. Youre alright. It ain't broken, just a little tore up. You wanna go again?
Jesus no, I dont want to go again. That thing almost ripped my hand off. My voice was shaky and I could feel my pulse beating in my injured wrist.
Aw youre full of prunes. This was another one of Pops expressions. I was never sure what being packed with dried fruit had to do with anything. Come on. Almost dinner time anyway.
I waded back to shore and took a seat on a jetty as Pop backed his pickup to the waters edge and pulled the boat from the river. With my good hand wrapped around my aching wrist, I watched the water drip from the hull and pour from the crevices of the trailer as he pulled it around to the boathouse. I kept waiting for Pop to ask for my help, but he never did.
My wrist swelled to the size of a softball that night but Pop was right, it wasnt broken. Mom told me later that he felt terrible about what happened, like it was somehow his fault. If that was true though, youd have never known. Pop carried on just as he always had, never saying anything more to me about it.
That was nearly thirty years ago. If you look closely, you can still see the halo of a scar around my left wrist. I havent skied since.
?
My hands shake as I go through the pictures. My parents on their wedding day. Pop seated on his tractor back home, me on his lap. Pop and me building a deck for a neighbor. The three of us huddled together in winter coats just after sunrise on Easter morning. Campbell sitting in the setting sunlight, looking down at a newborn Ty in her arms.
Ive never seen most of these, Campbell says over my shoulder.
Been years since I have, I say. I knew they were here but I could never find them. Even tried looking last year. They were right here, Ty?
Yep. I tripped on this one. Right there.
I figured Mom must have tucked them away, but I just didnt know where. I could have sworn I dug through this bureau three or four times. I must have been looking right at them and never knew it.
I hunker down on a chunk of wet two-by-four with my wife and son and begin passing around these pictures I had been sure were lost. Each one has a story to go along with it, each one its own unique history.
?
Nights at the river always seemed carefree and endless, with a crisp breeze that blew from the bay to drain away the heat that had built up during the afternoon. Pop and I spent many of those nights together on the end of the pier, fishing pole or crab line in hand. Often, we sat in the thick darkness without saying a word to each other. Often, but not always.
One night in particular stands out in my head.
It was late in the season, when the days are steeped with humidity and the nights are often even worse. Pop and I walked together along the beach toward the pier. He carried a wicker bushel basket and a net tethered to an eight foot wooden pole. I held an old camping lantern that doused us both in an eerie yellow glow. The sand, like the surface of a frying pan hours ago, now chilled my feet as it filtered between my toes.
We walked along the pier in silence. At the end, I set the lantern on a bench, sat, and tilted my neck to stare up at the stars. The darkness of the night was so dense that it made them appear to be more than single points of light against a black sky, but instead a smear of brightness that stretched from one horizon to another in a sweeping arc. As I stared upward, a streak of light, as if someone had taken a pen and slashed a line across the sky in fading ink, shot across the heavens.
Pop! Shooting star!
Pop dropped the bushel basket to the deck and tossed the net beside it. Yeah?
Right over our heads!
He took a cursory glance up at the stars. Meteor showers all week. Read about it in the paper.
Pop grabbed the lantern, knelt, and held it just above the water. The halo of light shimmered atop the waves, giving the river a green, hazy shine. It was an easy way to catch a few dozen crabs back then. Theyd see the light from the bottom and swim upward toward the surface.
Pop waited. After a moment, a crab appeared, followed by another. In one smooth motion, Pop scooped them both into his net, turned, and flipped them over his shoulder into the bushel basket. They settled there with the scuttle of claws and shell.
Couple of nice ones.
Yeah, I said, my head still tilted toward the sky. Just then, another stripe of light shot through the blackness, using the smear of stars as a backdrop. Theres another one!
Pop kept his eyes on the greenish water. Your Moms gonna be pissed unless I come back with at least a couple of dozen. Whats been with her lately? Shes been biting my head off left and right.
I dunno, Pop. I had only heard half of what hed said. My attention remained on the meteor shower.
Its like I cant do anything right. Goddamn! Missed him. He was silent a moment, then: You think shes worried about you going away to college?
Little early to be thinking about that.
Zip went Pops net into the river as he brought up another. He flipped it into the basket with the others. Not really.
Feels a long ways off to me. Two years. Thats like forever.
You get a little older youll realize two years aint nothing, kid. He speared the net into the water again, pulling up a monster that spanned six inches tip to tip. He turned to flip the crab into the basket but instead of dropping in with the others, it held onto the cotton net just long enough to throw off Pops timing. The crab bounced on the edge and dropped to the dock in a flutter of flippers and legs. Goddamn, said, getting up.
The crab scurried sideways toward the shadows of the piers edge. Pop stepped on the crown of its shell, pinning it down, and grabbed it behind the flipper. The crustacean froze in Pops grip, claws outstretched and bubbles spilling from its alien-looking mouth.
Cant get you when you grab em back there, he said, tossing the crab into the basket.
So you think shes worried, huh? The sky above me was alive with streaks of light now, one every five seconds or so. I couldnt take my eyes off of them.
Probably. Told her she shouldnt be though.
Whys that?
Pop tossed the net onto the dock where it dropped with a wooden clatter. He sat down beside me and looked upward at the stars. I could smell stale cigarette smoke on him. Just¬hing to worry about, he said after a moment. Told her weve got a good kid here.
I let a smile leak out to the corners of my lips. It may not seem like much, but that was high praise from my Pop. The two of us sat on that bench, the humid air rippling our hair, for nearly an hour that night, keeping our eyes to the sky as it came alive in front of us. Neither of us said another word.
Its been fifteen years since the heart attack took him. Sometimes I still find myself staring up at the stars thinking about him, hoping Ill see a streak of light slice through the sky like we saw together that night. I wonder if hes up there somewhere, still keeping an eye on things. I wonder what he thinks of me.
I wonder what hed say to me now if he could.
?
I bundle the pictures together, wrap them in an old blanket, and lay them in the backseat of the car. I dont even hear Ty as he comes up behind me.
We taking those? he asks.
I think we should.
Nothing else?
I look out across the debris. For a moment I wonder what Pop would do if he were here. I shake the thought away and smile at my son. Nope, I think this is it, kid, I say.
The river is as calm as a sheet of glass as Campbell, Ty, and I pile into the car. As we pull away, the sun sets in our rearview mirror, sending streaks of orange, red, and purple across the sky. The colors reflect atop the waters surface like a mirror, making the sunset feel as though it stretches off toward infinity, as if the horizon is not the divider of water and sky, but instead a place where memories and dreams come together.
A place where they can live forever.
? Josh Covington 2009
www.JoshCovington.com
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