Quack

    She sat on the bank of the moving river, the waves of its quiet motion propelling it and permeating the atmosphere with its perpetual rhythm. The rocks were base and jagged where her body rested on them but the wine on her lips numbed her senses and warmed her bones; with every drink she became more of an object of permanence in this environment rather than an interloper. The early August evening was heavy, the air thick and slow as molasses. The sun lingered on the horizon, holding the coming night in thrall, as though time would stop and it could stay there on the edge, between silence and solitude and seeing and knowing, for all eternity. The voices and instruments of bullfrogs, crickets, and other noisome creatures of the night rose to a crescendo, as if this moment were the climactic turning point of some unseen drama.

    She added her voice to the concerto of nature that was buzzing and sawing around her, singing a song with no words or method, the notes written by wisdom on her soul and by mystery in the spaces between the stars winking mutely above her. As the sun finally settled itself into its inevitable, purple shroud, the music dispersed into random croaks and scratches as though it had never been. She took another drink of the wine and looked at the shiny black shoebox sitting cockeyed on the stones at her feet.

    She thought of a time long past, then, when she was but a small child, a time before sisters and brothers. It was Easter and her mother had bought her a little blue duckling. She gazed at the wonderful creature and pondered a great many things--why was it blue and fuzzy? (She thought ducks had feathers.) Did it have a name given by its mother or, perhaps, by God? She decided to call him Duck and since she feared he would run off, she made a little cage for him out of leftover chicken wire and sat him on the front porch. For three days she played before him, talking to him as she would one of her cousins. On the last day, just before rain, her mother called her into the house. The next day Duck was gone, eaten by the cat. The child was devastated. She thought of the duck often throughout the years, the precious gift from her largely ignorant mother; she thought of her failure in the care of that animal, a creature she had wished to never part ways with. She blinked back a tear and took another drink of the wine.

    She looked again to the shoebox, the bejeweled heavens reflected imperfectly and in a crooked, surreal way on its slick surface, and she mused over how difficult the end must be to start preparing for it from the very beginning. Here at her feet were the remains of her mother reduced to ashes that betrayed none of the life they had once contained. What was once was no more; who once was now was nothing, gone, a wisp of electrical impulses circuiting throughout her brain; nothing physical or tangent, as if her mother had been no more than a happy, sad, wonderful, boisterous, beautiful dream. She grasped the shoebox with one hand and the bottle of wine with the other and rose to complete her task. She stepped gingerly across the stones in her bare feet, bearing the burden of her mother easily in her hand, though within herself she felt so laden and breathless that she could scarcely move. She glided so silently toward the water that it seemed she must have been born of this place, some sort of river dweller that was part of the water and its life as much as it was a part of her. When she was ankle deep in the water, she said aloud, "Good night, mom". She took a final drink of the wine before emptying the rest into the river, diluting the water with the wine, making it more of herself and herself less of it. She closed her eyes and emptied the shoebox into the water; her vision was filled with the image of a brilliant, sunlit summer day, the river busy with swimmers, fishermen, and canoes drifting lazily toward unhurried and unknown destinations. The river sounded musically, echoing  off the rocks and trees in its gentle voice, coaxing her into its arms and soothing her being with its familiar language. She sat on the bank, eating a bologna and cheese sandwich beside her mother, hearing nothing but river speech despite the people around them.

    "This is my favorite spot on this river", her mother said, taking a long draw off of a cigarette while she unwrapped a sandwich.

    "I know. I wouldn't mind having a house right there", she pointed to a clearing above the bank on the opposite side of the river, "and setting out on the porch at night, listening to the river".

    "Yeah, that would be nice", her mother said.

    She opened her eyes and saw that the night had completely overtaken the landscape, gently holding the earth in its calming hands and fingers while it marked the passing of another day. She fumbled her way back up the bank, still holding the shoebox and the wine bottle, not nearly so graceful in the blackness as she was in the twilight. She stopped on the rocky bank just before it met the weeds and scanned the sky in search of the moon; not seeing its pale loveliness, she continued on through the weeds to her car. Before she opened the door to leave this scene to itself, she looked back over her shoulder to the place from where she had just come. She could not see the river through the darkness, lying low in its bed that it had made for itself over and over again, but she could yet hear its sighs and complaints as it rolled and swirled through the moonless night, carrying all of time within it toward some place she had never seen. She listened there, alone in the darkness, to the river song that had no name and no beginning or end, and she knew that she would never be able to explain anything again because the river held its secrets tightly and to know even one of those would be to know them all.