\u201cTake me down to the river\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
It was all he would say, laying there dying with a clear blue light in his eye.<\/p>\n
Some people never really seem to age. They hang on to youth involuntarily. Warriors especially, forever young from the flash frozen shock of battle.<\/p>\n
But what was to be seen at the river anymore? Most of the frontage had been bought up by baby boomers hungry for a view of the water, spending most of their time hollering at their kids to stay away from it. Don\u2019t mess with a river. Ask Mark Twain.<\/p>\n
The river deceived. In summer it hid its strongest currents. In winter it disguised its thinnest ice. I had been raised to believe there were more ways to die on it than could be counted\u2014like the guy who got trapped upside down in the kayak down the falls, the kid who swan dived thirty feet onto a rock that wasn\u2019t there the day before, the child swept away by a mysterious wave.<\/p>\n
If you were really exceptional at things like meditation and time travel, you could imagine quieter times\u2014an Indian village perhaps, carved out of the forest blanketing both sides of the shore. If you really knew your history, you would know those Indians were Iroquois \u2014the kind who liked to play football on Sundays with the heads of their enemies. Historic nostalgia is not always everything it\u2019s cracked up to be, nothing if not a double-edged sword\u2026 or multi-purpose tomahawk.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to walk the old path with Chester,\u201d said Uncle Tony. \u201cThe trail that runs through the woods and along the water.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chester was his dog, dead seventy years now, a Springer Spaniel by all accounts. One who couldn\u2019t bird hunt for a damn but made up for it in loyalty and companionship.<\/p>\n
Uncle Tony was a widower. We didn\u2019t know much about his deceased wife Amelia, dead almost as long as Chester the dog. She died only one month into their marriage, and a year before Tony went to war in Europe. An aneurism took her down in the middle of supper, face down smack on the table, my mother said.<\/p>\n
Uncle Tony didn\u2019t talk much about Amelia. He didn\u2019t talk about her at all, or his short married life. But we talked about it all the time, about how it had shaped him\u2014a man who never remarried but never complained or drank over his losses either. He lived with us for over thirty years in the back room off the kitchen. He insisted on doing the dishes, cooking a few times a week, even ironing in an apron. On Sundays he went to Mass across town at St. Barnabas; the old Latin Mass with incense, lots of candles on the Altar and an off-tune cantor in the loft.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need that old tuneless coot\u201d Uncle Tony would say. \u201cCan\u2019t have High Mass without the Chant.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some days he would simply disappear with the latest incarnation of our family dog. And\u2014yes\u2014we even lost one to the river when he swam too far out for a stick and was pulled under by the current. We found his bones and collar a year later hung up on a log on an offshoot of the river.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy mother used to give me tea and toast,\u201d said Uncle Tony. \u201cIt\u2019ll cure anything. Probably even cancer if you do it right.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMedicine has come a long way, Uncle Tony,\u201d I said. \u201cNobody writes prescriptions for tea and toast anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201c-And ginger ale! That was a great cure all. Ginger ale could raise the dead!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou want a ginger ale?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHate the stuff. Always did. I\u2019d rather die.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ll have to settle for these pills,\u201d I laid them out on the lap table next to him on the bed.<\/p>\n
\u201cSure. Two hundred dollars worth of pills. You croak. They make money.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou got time left, Tony.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLet\u2019s hope not.\u201d\u00a0 He chased the pills with water from a glass held in a blue veined hand and looked out the window toward the river again. I looked with him, or tried to. In the old days you could see the water. Now a scattered red wood blockade of ten-foot-high privacy fences masked the view.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust take me down to the river,\u201d he said again. \u201cI want to walk with Rhemus.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cRhemus is gone, Tony.\u201d\u00a0At least he hadn\u2019t asked for Chester. He was making an effort.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, you know, I mean what\u2019s his name\u2026 Callie.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cCallie is gone too. Two years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cCallie the Collie?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYep.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhose the new mutt? I forgot.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBeeswax. The Chocolate Lab.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBeeswax? Who the hell names a dog Beeswax?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYour great-grand niece.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWell\u2026 okay. That\u2019s okay. But chocolate? A chocolate dog?\u00a0You ever see a chocolate Sheep Dog?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey only come in vanilla, Tony. Get some sleep.\u201d<\/p>\n
I left him gazing out the window, trying to conjure the river. You couldn\u2019t see it but you could feel its presence; there past the short sloping yards, plastic swimming pools, wooden decks and gas grills. You could hear it if you listened hard enough. The river has a pervasive force that no amount of civilizing the shore can subdue. Especially at night, when you can almost hear the fish jump in the moon-spattered current.<\/p>\n
We were thankful that he could not simply get up and walk. The thought of my old Uncle Tony wandering the backyards of the river in his pajamas was too much; screaming children, barking dogs, SWAT teams\u2026the stuff of urban legend. The River Ghost roaming the land.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe wants something,\u201d my wife said at breakfast. \u201cBut nobody knows what it is.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think he will go in his sleep one night soon,\u201d I said. \u201cAt least that\u2019s the way it should be.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMy grandpa spent three years in bed, without hardly speaking a word.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was tough, I guess. Didn\u2019t want to let go.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSome people have things they want to settle with God,\u201d she said. \u201cEven if it is deep inside them, things nobody knows about. They lay there day after day and work it out in their souls,\u00a0and then they can leave.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSo I guess you\u2019re not the world\u2019s biggest fan of euthanasia.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNot as long as I still have things to figure out between me and the heaven I\u2019m trying to reach.\u201d<\/p>\n
My wife, the theologian.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnyway,\u201d she smiled, \u201cI\u2019d like to linger just to stick it to those thieving bastards from the insurance company.\u201d<\/p>\n
I take that back;\u00a0my wife, the Bonnie Parker of the hospice set.<\/p>\n
A few mornings later I checked on Uncle Tony to make sure he was okay. But I never found out.<\/p>\n
The bed was empty, made up army style. You could bounce a quarter off it. I was impressed.<\/p>\n
We never found him. A guy down the block with an open path to the water said he thought he saw someone pass by his window but couldn\u2019t be sure.<\/p>\n
The legend began. Some say the river took him. Some say you can see him on nights of a full moon, wandering the riverfront\u2026 in his pajamas.<\/p>\n
As for me, I still take the long walks by the river,\u00a0hugging the shore, stepping over lawn furniture and kiddie pools,\u00a0on the prowl with our Chihuahua mix, Bugsy\u2014whom we consoled ourselves with after Beeswax tried to play tug of war with a Water Moccasin.<\/p>\n
We head into the unimproved swampland, picking our way along faded paths and always looking for a sign. Whenever I come home without finding one, I always breathe a sigh of relief. Let him be where he has gone. Only the river knows. Only the river.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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