Monthly Story (October '24): The Wild Geese

fiction

Late afternoon of the third day the sky cleared. A blue heron on the western shore darted its bill into the shallows and came up with a silver flicker in the sunlight. It threw its head back and worked the catch down its neck in three business-like jerks as a young man and woman in a canoe paddled by. Then, from the front of the canoe, the woman pointed to a lump of island downriver. The man stowed his paddle and let them drift as she twisted in her seat and said that it might be just the place to camp their last night.

“But we have at least another good hour of light,” he said.

 “And set up camp in the dark again?” she answered. “Why do you always want to push on to the very last, teeny bit of daylight?”

He didn’t bother saying what he felt, that he loved being on the water, loved feeling the currents, loved the wildness of that, wanted it to go on forever. “You know how it is,” he tried, “when you have a good head of steam going. It’s hard to stop.” A weak excuse. But she had a point, now that he looked closer at the island. It was a good place to stop, high enough not to flood if they got another burst of rain.

They both dug in with their paddles. She called over her shoulder, cheerily now, what was he going to tell them about the fishing? They both knew they’d tease him about coming home emptyhanded. “You should have put a line out at least once,” she said. “No Fish Freddy, they’ll call you. Mr. Schoolbooks.”

He focused harder on the paddle. They could make up a story, he told her after a bit. Ate their catch at every meal. His brothers—his father, too—wouldn’t believe it, but it would get a good laugh. Huntin’ and fishin’ she always said about his family. Salt of the Earth. “Work boots and guns,” she said. “You must have been switched at birth.” She always said that, as if he didn’t have any working class in him, like it was a complement he wasn’t like them. Then she added the part about how proud they all were of him, how proud everybody was, which it went without saying, she said, included her. “Yup,” he said to put a stop to it, “we’ll spin them a good fish yarn.”

At the island, they guided the canoe to the downstream end, where it sloped to the water like a wheelchair ramp. She passed the rope back to him, and he stepped into the water and let the current dangle the canoe at the end of the rope. Hand over hand, he pulled it close so she could step onto dry ground, then he pulled the canoe three quarters ashore and wrapped the rope around a tree trunk. The island was mostly hemlock and steepsided everywhere but where they’d landed.

They set up his tent, tossed in the sleeping bags, looked for dry wood, arranged rocks into a circle, and unfolded the cheap camp stool she insisted on buying. He found a good sized flat stone among boulders on the eastern edge of the island and rolled it over to a maple next to the campsite. She shook her head at that, told him, not for the first time, she could have bought a stool for him, too. He didn’t have to play mountain man. But lugging that flat stone felt good, like the pleasant ache in his shoulders from paddling all day. He didn’t say this, though, just walked further into the trees and peed on a mossy rock.

She watched from her stool as he boiled noodles, added the pesto he’d made for this trip. He served it to her on a Boy Scout mess kit and tore off pieces of baguette, poured wine into plastic wine glasses. She toasted him. To her brand new attorney. To his making partner before thirty. She knew he would. They were going to have the most elegant dinner parties of all their friends, she told him. He nodded, staring off at nothing in particular. Musing. We are built on expectations. You are this. He is that. And we oblige, become what others expect us to become. Nobody wants to disappoint. Like his cousin. Dropped out. Never finished anything. Ran off with an older woman nobody liked.

He chewed his dinner sitting on his flat stone, leaning into the maple, breathing in the hemlock scent. She tried her best to get them talking, but he didn’t help her. When she gave up, he soaked in the night sounds coming on. An owl across the water. The wind shifting and rising in the treetops. The watery ga-loop of a fish taking an insect. This was what he loved.

In time, they crawled into the tent. He burrowed into his bag and dozed off, didn’t pay attention when she said, as she had each night, “We should have gotten those air mattresses.” At some point, he couldn’t tell when, he woke to the sound of millions of tiny pebbles pelting the Earth—sheets of rain sweeping back and forth across the river and the island. Rivulets gurgled along the edges of the tent. The world would be mud in the morning, but his body had found its groove on the uneven ground, and he snuggled deeper. He had nothing to do but this, nothing he could do but sleep or not sleep. He knew she couldn’t possibly be comfortable. Well, he’d been unfair. Dismissive, really. She wasn’t to blame for how he felt.

The morning light came with scratching outside the tent. A racoon? A bird maybe? Could have been a bear, for all he knew. He waited it out patiently, glad she slept, stayed put until an undefined guilt and the need to urinate forced him to quietly unzip the tent and go find his mossy rock. His untied boots slipped and sank here and there in the mud. Chilly and damp from the dripping leaves, he found his heavy flannel shirt and a watch cap, then brewed coffee.  

He took his coffee to the boulders on the eastern edge of the island and sat on one. Thick fog hung over the river upstream. Where he sat, wisps of whirling cloud slow-motion jumped and somersaulted, opening glimpses of the far shore. He wrapped his fingers around the hot mug and hung his nose over the rim, trying to enjoy the aroma. But what would he do when he got home? What would he say? Not about fishing, for goodness sake. They knew he never cared about that. But her. And the offered job. Nothing bigger than life itself. That’s all.

And then, from upriver—something. A familiar noise he couldn’t immediately place, but as it came closer, he knew. Canada geese. They weren’t high overhead as we’re used to seeing them. These were low along the river, obviously close to the water. Unseen, their harsh and urgent cacophony shouted everything else out.

He turned his face in time to see them emerge into the wisps, three feet above the river in a perfect V formation, madly honking and flapping. He could smell their beaten air as they passed.

She’d come out of the tent, sleepily finding her way in the mud, hugging a green cardigan around her middle. “What is that?” she said.

But he kept his face on the wild geese, rising now with them, as they rose, unapologetically claiming their place in the world, just as he could, if he were brave enough.