The River Wide and Steady

Afternoon gray cloud light. Dark blue river, broad, calm.

A grandson with a fatal wish. A failed wish.

The worst kind.

Grandson has a name. Kyle. He sits alone on a concrete abutment. Barges roll past on their way to Portland. The river, wide and steady.

Barges don’t roll, says Kyle to the river, but the origami folds of his mind don’t give a damn. His incurable wish never rinsed itself in the rain.

And the clouds, though expectant, withhold their blessing.

An old man walks down the slight slope to the abutment where Kyle sits, but everybody is old when you’re a grandson of nineteen and the twists in your being refuse to unknot.

Kyle, says the old man. Grandpa, says Kyle. The river, wide and steady.

They sit together. Afternoon pushes the unrained clouds upriver where canyons cradle the river as a parent guards a son.

A grandfather doesn’t guard. Only guides. Tries to steer a ship he lost in a storm of years.

I’m fine, says Kyle.

I’m fine too, says the old man.

Then why are you naked and afraid?

But nobody speaks these words. They drift as invisible spores of thought between the young and the old on the abutment, each swarm directed at the other, and each unsure of their meaning or why such a thought surfaced.

Kyle shuffles his throat. I wanted to do it alone, he says.

The old man knows. The grandfather already knew. It’s why he came to the abutment, to sit with a grandson, one last time, the river wide and steady.

It’s on the radio, Kyle.

Kyle pulls a stick of gum from his shirt, puts it between his lips. It dangles unopened.

I didn’t do it, he says. He puts the gum back in shirt pocket, takes it out again.

We saw you.

It wasn’t me.

The old man, a grandfather of a grandson who once danced in the light, stays silent.

I can’t go back to that place, says Kyle.

A breeze ruffles the water, a cormorant splashes.

It’s too late, says the old man, a grandfather who was forced from the womb just like a grandson, stripped of comfort and in pain, filled with a blinding light, red faced and angry.

Yeah, says Kyle.

They’ll be here soon, says the old man.

Kyle nods, lowers his eyes to his hands. He bites his lip, a last supper. I know, he says.

The old man touches his grandson’s shoulder. The afternoon lowers its arms.

The barges roll past.

The river, wide and steady.