A Summer Wind
By Josh Covington
www.joshcovington.com
A SUMMER WIND. Copyright ?2009 by Josh Covington. All rights reserved. United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
A Summer Wind
If I didnt know better, Id say a bomb went off here. Bits of trash and scraps of wood lay scattered. A remote control from a television long gone lies cast off to the side, now no more than a battered chunk of plastic. A toilet ripped from the floor lies on its end. A mattress sits upended against the lone standing wall. A piece of our neighbors front porch, twisted and broken, leans against a pile of what is now junk. Nails wrenched from their boards are scattered along the sandy ground like chickenfeed.
You see that? my wife asks, pointing.
I look. Our neighbors home has been pulled from its foundation by the tide, spun, and dropped. It now sits in the gravel road, nearly intact, an incongruous remnant of what was just two days ago.
I lower my head against the wind and begin to sift through the rubble.
?
My parents bought our summer house on the Rappahannock River in the summer of 1970. I was eight years old.
I dont remember much from that summer, just the feeling of walking through that house for the first time, how it was cool and damp inside and smelled of mildew and dirty concrete. I remember my mother cleaning, pulling down the cobwebs that seemed to fill every corner and stretch across the ceiling, scrubbing the floors with Pine Sol until the whole place stunk of disinfectant. I remember my father, sweat streaming down his face as he lay upside down under the kitchen sink, trying to get a monkey wrench around those old pipes. I remember the sound of the water licking up along the beach and crashing into the pylons of the pier. I remember the silky feeling of the sand beneath my feet.
Pop worked two jobs when I was a kid to buy the place, filling candy bar vending machines across town at dawn every morning, carrying mail until dark. Hed come home in the evenings gruff and drained, his sandy blonde hair sagging down across his eyes, a limp in his step, toss his coat onto the rack and settle down at the table with a long, hard sigh. Dinner would be there waiting for him. Wed sit and eat, waiting for Pop to break the silence. If he said nothing then nothing was said. There was no speaking unless spoken to.
He seemed taller then, before the arthritis began to eat away at his joints, with strong slim shoulders and skin baked a deep bronze from the sun. A Pall Mall always rested between his fingers or his lips. His hazel eyes, nearly glowing against his dark skin, seemed to forever hold a fuzzy, tired look. The only time I ever saw that look brighten was when he looked out over that water. It was as if the peacefulness of the tiny waves reflected back into his eyes.
But what I remember most about Pop was the feeling of safety that he brought to a room, like nothing bad could ever happen, that there was nothing to worry about when he was there. Its hard to describe now but yet at the time, it was undeniable.
?
The high whine of a chainsaw drones on in the distance, slicing through the eerie silence of the afternoon. I stand on the beach, looking out toward the far shore that sits a mile in the distance. The air is thick and humid, like a wool blanket that drapes over us, blurring the distant tree line, turning it to a smudge of green and yellow. To my right, the mouth of the river opens wide where it dumps into the Chesapeake Bay.
Ty, come down from there, I turn and call to my son. He has climbed atop the pile of rubble. Im afraid there will be an avalanche of waterlogged timber and glass. Ty! I yell louder this time.
Dont make me come up there and get you, Ty, Campbell shouts from my side. The wind whips her chestnut hair across her face and makes her eyes water.
Campbell and I both know its an empty threat, that neither of us has the strength to drag him down. Ty listens nonetheless and staggers down toward us, nearly tripping over a television antenna that now rests splayed across the ground.
Upriver, the sun hangs in the distance, high above the horizon. The water, now smooth and serene, laps up along the beach in insignificant ripples, as if to mock me.
?
Our first boat was a flat bottomed john with two bench seats and a rusty ten horsepower motor. A chunk of plywood covered a two inch hole in the stern where water would seep through, slowly filling the back end and pulling the belly of the boat lower and lower into the river. It always got us home, though. Except for the one time it almost didnt.
It was a warm day that second summer. Mom and Pop sat on opposite ends of the boat, fishing off to the East, their backs to the setting sun. I rested on the cold steel of the boats bottom, bailing away the trickling flow of water with an old Cool Whip container. The boat rocked and dipped in time to the waves, making my head bob with it and chaffing my neck where the canvas of my life preserver met bare skin.
Was thinking Id fry up some chicken for dinner, Mom said as she fished. Use up that bird Mrs. Garrett sent us with.
Having fish, said Pop.
Honey we havent caught a thing. And look, your son is starting to burn. I looked down at my arms. Theyd begun to take on a light pink hue I hadnt noticed moments ago.
Were having fish, damn it. He took a drag from his cigarette and flipped it into the river. It sizzled a moment and began to drift away.
We fished on through the afternoon as my skin baked from light pink to red. I started to doze. Suddenly, after how long I have no idea, Pop yanked back on his pole hard enough to rock the boat nearly to the waters edge, startling me awake.
Damn catfish, he said, beginning to bring it in. To Pop, every fish was a damn something. Damn trout. Damn bluefish. Goddamn stiff-backed perch. A runner though.
I watched as Pop let the catfish take his line up and down the river, letting out a bit of line when the drag started to sing, winding it back in when the fish charged toward him. I got the feeling Pop was playing it up a little, making the fish out to be more than it was, just for show. He feigned struggle a moment or two more then, with a last spin of the reel and one hard yank, Pop flipped the fish from the water. He spun on his seat, whipping the pole around and slapping me in the side of the face with the slimy, writhing gray thing.
Take him off for me, kid.
I stared at the fish in its glassy eye, watching its mouth gulp at the air. It flipped once on the line and dropped from the hook, splashing into the inch of water that rested in the boats bottom.
Just then, thunder clapped above our heads like a cannon.
Forgetting the catfish a moment, I looked up to see a sky dark and sinister. A storm had slid down from behind us, sneaking up from the western horizon as we faced the opposite way. It was only then that I noticed the wind had stiffened and the usually calm surf had begun to roll and break, forming whitecaps across the surface.
Mom poked Pop in the knee with the tip of her pole. Better head back, she said.
Pop squinted up at the clouds and flipped his line back into the water. Got time.
We sat there a few moments more as the storm bore down on us, bobbing atop the growing waves, the sky darkening to a deep, penetrating gray that seemed to stretch all the way to the bay. Then a second burst of thunder, heavy and steadfast, exploded above our heads.
Lloyd. Now, she said.
So Pop reeled in, started the boat, and pointed us toward land. That ten horsepower motor chugged through the chop, pushing us toward the beach, inching us closer and closer toward shore. Above us, a bolt of lightning crisscrossed the blackened heavens, stretching across the clouds like jagged glass.
Pop glanced upward and as we plodded al
ong, pushing the motor to the limit, weaving between the wooden posts that peppered the shore side. Back then, the river was full of those posts, none thicker than the handle of a baseball bat, markers for crab pots, oyster beds, and fishing holes. Looking out across the horizon was like watching a flooded and far off game of pick-up sticks.
Then, just when it seemed wed beat the storm to shore after all, the boat lurched and the motor sputtered. We stopped.
Stopped dead.
Goddamn! Pop yelled above the wail of the wind. He grabbed the motor and tilted it toward him, pulling the propeller out of the water. Hit one of those damn stobs. Water was so high I didnt see it. He looked closer. Goddamn pins sheered clean off. Come here and hold this for me, kid.
I scrambled toward him and grabbed the head of the motor, leaning back against it with all of my weight to keep it at a 45 degree angle. The river was raging by then, tossing us up and down on swells that seemed to crest above my head.
Hold her steady. Pop bent at the waist, dangling upside-down over the stern to put himself eye-level with the propeller. A wave came down across the back of his head, drenching him. Goddamn, I heard him whisper.
Can you fix it? I yelled.
Just hold her steady, kid. Dont let it slip and smash my fingers.
Pop always had a knack for fixing what was broken but to this day, I dont know what he did to that motor as he