A great plume of chalky smoke enshrouded the old school bus as it shuttered to a halt on the remnants of an old gravel road. “Here we are!” the driver shouted over the sputtering engine before shifting to neutral and killing it. He twisted his skinny frame around and lifted his sunglasses to look down the corrugated runway and found the last person left onboard.
“Well,” he said, scratching his scruff. “Just you then huh, brother?”
The man looked around and then up at the driver. “Yeah, guess so,” he said.
“Right on,” said the driver, “you got a long day of paddlin’ ahead of you.”
“Yeah, guess so. It’s thirteen miles to camp, right?” he asked, already knowing the answer. He stood up and swung his pack onto his shoulder.
“Yep, that’s right.” The driver spun around and started jostling the dirty silver bar to open the door, and with a few curse words he managed to succeed. “Woooeeee it’s gon be a hot one today!” he hollered as he landed with a crunch on the sunbaked gravel. The man onboard slid out from between the cracked green seats and followed the driver out into the sunshine.
It was a beautiful summer day. The sky was a deep blue with cotton puffs of white clouds floating along at their lazy leisure. The man blinked hard and pulled the brim of his baseball cap down to shield his eyes from the brightness. Gently flowing water caressed a rocky bank a few dozen yards away, its surface danced with short lengths of glittering ribbons, a happy refusal of the copious sunshine that rained down everywhere as if the river had had its fill and could swallow no more.
The bus driver had walked to the metal carriage that was towed behind the bus and pulled down the last canoe which he was now dragging towards the water. He stopped in the shade of a great birch tree that sat between the bus and the river.
“Aight lemme give you some talk right quick, brother,” and he waved to the man to come closer.
“First of all, my name’s Curtis, and I’m s’posed to make sure yer gonna be safe out there on the water. Y’ever canoe before?” he asked as the man approached. “I sure hope so since yer out her by yaself.”
“Oh yeah I’ve done plenty. I was in the scouts when I was a boy.”
Curtis sniffed and then lifted his hat off to wipe his sweaty brow, revealing a balding dome at the precipice of shoulder length hair.
“Okay, good. I’ll just tell ya that the front desk at camp closes up at dark, so ya gotta get back down there b’fore then. If yer not back, that means I gotta come n’ find ya.” He spit on the ground. “I don’t wanna drag my ass out of camp and up the river in the dark my friend.” He paused, looked the man over, and leaned forward to look him in the eyes. ”Thirteen miles’s pretty far.”
“Yeah it’s no problem. I’ll be back before dark, I promise.”
“Okay, good,” he said, and he leaned back again. “Ya got enough water and supplies?”
“Yeah I’m all stocked up,” and he gestured to the back of the bus where his cooler remained.
“Okay then. Yer paddle and life vest’s sittin’ there in the canoe. Y’aint gotta wear the jacket, but I have to give it to ya.”
“Yeah, I understand. I’m not gonna need it, though.”
“Rock on, brother. Well, I’ll grab yer cooler for ya.”
“Thanks.”
Curtis turned with a clap of the hands and headed towards the rear of the bus. The man threw his bag into the empty canoe and walked down to the bank to let the water wash over his sandaled feet. The water was cool and clear, and he could see the bright spill of smoothed river rocks carpeting the bottom. A few small fish gathered in a pool nearby, black raindrops endlessly falling into the river flow. He closed his eyes and felt the gentle sensations of the current sweep over his feet.
“Alright brother!” Curtis shouted as he dropped the cooler heavily to the ground behind the canoe. The man snapped out of his reverie and walked back to the shade of the birch tree. “You be safe now, ya hear? I’ll see you back at camp ‘fore dark.” He leaned back to squint up at the sky and then looked back down at the man. He paused. “Make the most of yer day out here, brother. It’s hot out, but I’ll be damned if it ain’t a beauty.” The man nodded in agreement and flashed him a smile. “Truly.” The short silence between them swelled with the music of the southern Missouri wilderness: the low buzz of flying insects, gently trickling water, songbirds in nearby trees. Curtis returned his nod, turned, and began strutting back towards the bus.
“By the way, do you have the time?”
Curtis didn’t seem to hear his question, and soon he was pulling the door closed behind him after he had climbed the narrow staircase up to his seat. After a few labored attempts the bus’s engine kicked to life and was brought around to face back the way they had come. Curtis gave the man one last parting nod as the dirty yellow block lurched forward down the gravel drive and out of sight, leaving a smoky white haze in its wake. “Finally,” said the man, and he walked back down to the shore where he had stood in the water.
It was still early, but Curtis was right, thirteen miles would take quite a while. The man wondered how much time he could spend out of his canoe for the day, but a few seconds after the mental math started he gave up the effort and decided to move at his own pace. He pulled off his sun shirt, sat in the canoe beneath the birch tree, and began rifling through his pack: a water bottle, sunglasses, a rain jacket, a waterproof bag with his phone, wallet, and keys, a first aid kit, and sunscreen. He pulled out the sunscreen and thoroughly lathered his pale skin, dolloping an extra bit along the bridge of his nose. He remembered to apply some to his feet, having learned the hard way how painful sunburns on the tops of feet could be. He balled up his sunshirt and stuffed it along with the sunscreen back into the pack. Then he dug out the water bottle and took a swig. The flowing river beckoned him into its cool embrace. It was still early, but it was already sweltering in the late July heat, and the humidity was suffocating.
“I better hang out for a few minutes before shoving off so I can let the sunscreen absorb,” he thought to himself, and he reclined back in the canoe using his pack as a pillow and closed his eyes. “Why rush? I’m out here to savor this.” The cicada’s loud song filled the air. He listened to their rhythmic chirping swell and abate like the rise and fall of great lungs. A fly whirled around his face and he lazily whisked it away. “Good lord I’m already so sweaty,” he thought. He packed a thermos of iced coffee in his cooler, and he smiled at the imagined moment of its first sip. He thought of all the time he spent in collared shirts staring into a computer screen with a cup of burnt coffee on his desk. That world seemed so far away and absurd out here, filled with clocks and meetings, square-edged surfaces and square-edged people. The treetops began rustling, and a gentle breeze carrying the round vegetable smell of the river water washed over him, cooling his sweaty skin, and dissolving any remaining thoughts of that far off gray office. “Ohhh yeah, that is gooood,” he whispered to himself, and he sank a little deeper into the canoe.
A short time later he awoke to the sound of birds chirping loudly in the branches overhead. “Guess I dozed off,” he muttered. He sprang up out of the canoe and did some jumping jacks to shake out the grogginess that weighed down his limbs. It was time to get moving. He placed the cooler in the center of the craft with his pack behind it so it would be within reach from his seat in the stern. He used the life jacket as a cushion for the metal bench, which served the dual purpose of softening the seat and preventing it from becoming molten in the sun’s relentless shine. “My ass will be soooo grateful for this,” he smirked inwardly. Lastly he slanted the paddle across the bench and slid it securely down into the nook between the cooler and the hull. With that, he dragged the bow of the vessel through the reedy bank and into the water before jumping in and setting off downriver.
The sun sailed slowly towards its peak in the azure sky as he paddled along. The water wound its way through thick woodlands that occasionally broke on either side with rocky beaches and sandbars. Willow trees draped over deep pools where rafts of tiny bubbles formed from hidden fish that would swim up from the depths to snag unsuspecting insects resting on the surface. Occasionally he would encounter obstacles on the river: big rocks jutting up from the surface, an old rotted oak tree pulled down by use of a rope swing, now just frayed tatters twirling aimlessly in the current.
Every once in a while the canoe would grind to a halt in the shallowest parts of the river and he would step out into the water to grab the bow of the craft and drag it over the pebbles and river rocks. On one of these occasions at a particularly sunny stretch of shallow river, he looked down to see a glinting orb partly buried among the rocks between his feet. He paused, and with one hand still clutching the boat, he reached into the water, plucked the object, and lifted it close to his face for examination. It was an old pocket watch. He turned the watch over in his hands a few times and measured its weight with a few bounces of the wrist. The stem was crooked and the gold-plated case had scratches all over it, but it shone brilliantly golden in the sun. On the back there was an engraving in elegant script that was mostly worn away. All he could make out was what looked to be two words: wasted time. He blinked, and then scrutinized the inscription for a few more moments. “Hm,” he grunted. He released the clasp and popped open the cover to reveal smashed glass, waterlogged and dirt ridden. The spiderweb fractures obscured the face completely, and he couldn’t tell what time the watch had stopped or even whether the hands remained inside at all. A smile slowly crept across his face, and he felt a sense of joy for his good fortune at finding such an interesting thing in the river. He cradled the watch in his fingers for a moment before flicking the cover closed and slipping it into his pocket. Then he continued his scraping march through the shallows.
A short time later he ran the canoe aground on a large sandy bank that had ample shade and a few overturned logs: a perfect place to stop for lunch. He dragged the vessel up onto the beach and then moved his cooler and pack over into a shady depression with a nice smooth log to sit on. He ate a turkey sandwich for lunch with some tortilla chips and an apple. He washed down the lunch with a long swig from a sweaty bottle of gatorade that still held a trace of coolness from his refrigerator where he took it from that morning. Finally, he took out the thermos of iced coffee, and as he enjoyed the longed-for sip he had imagined that morning he retrieved the pocket watch from his pocket and turned it over in his hand several times, impressed with the strange artifact. He studied the inscription more carefully this time, but all he could make out were the same words as before: wasted time.
The heat was blistering as sweat from his brow dripped down his nose and onto the watch he held in his hands. He wiped his forehead and slipped the watch back into his pocket. He was happy to be out of the craft and in the shade. How far had he come? Maybe five miles or so? Regardless of the exact answer, he had a long way to go, and it was time to press on. He had yet to see anybody else on the river today, and he hoped that it would stay that way.
A couple hours later he came by a couple enjoying a picnic on a sandbar. They had spread an old gingham blanket over a patch of shady sand and had a small speaker playing some generic country music. The large man laid like a beached walrus sprawled out on his back with his round hairy stomach glistening in the heat, a fishing hat pulled down to cover his face. A tall beer can rested between his arm and torso. The woman with him was only slightly less large than he was. She was propped up on an elbow next to him with half a cigarette burning between her lips. She was scrolling through her phone when she noticed the man on the river.
“Hiiiii!” she cried out to him in a high, sweet voice. Her companion did not stir.
The man in the canoe returned her wave and gave her a big smile, hoping that she wouldn’t try to strike up a conversation. She stuck the cigarette’s lit end into the sand, heaved herself up, and then walked barefoot to the water’s edge.
“Aren’t choo hot out there?” she asked as he floated closer. He dipped the oar to the starboard side and ran the canoe into the sand, his midwestern sensibilities preventing him from being even a little rude to a stranger.
“Yeah, it’s hot, but I’m doin’ okay,” he said with a smile.
“Where’d you get in?”
“Hmm. Not sure exactly. Maybe seven or eight miles back?”
“Ooohhh,” she squealed, “so you’re doin’ the whole thing, huh?”
“Guess so. I just did the longest float that they offered.”
“Oh, you’re with that camp down there then?”
“Yeah.”
“So not the whole thing,” she said, a little disappointment in her voice.
“Guess not,” he paused.
A short silence passed between them before she spoke again. “Where are my manners? My name is Betty and that man over there is my husband, Alex.” She glanced back towards the sleeping man. “Alex over there, he loves this river. He and his friends floated the whole thing a bunch of times. They’ve done it on kayaks, on rafts, on canoes, and one time they even did it with just some floaties on their arms! They put the beer cooler in its own tube that time, too,” she said with a laugh. “I used to worry ‘bout his antics, but I just pray to the lord and he always comes back to me okay.”
“Wow, that’s great,” and he paid her a smile.
“He works so hard these days though,” she said, her tone falling. “Work ain’t easy to come by round here. Nowadays when we come down to the water we like to just lay around and rest. Usually we bring the dogs and the kids, but it’s nice to have some privacy just for the two of us this time. It can be pretty romantic by the water, don’t ya think?”
“Yeah, I guess so,” replied the man, and he looked over at the sleeping man.
“You out here by yourself, hon?” she asked.
“Oh yeah, I enjoy the solitude out here.”
“Well maybe next time you can bring a girlfriend, if you have one that is.”
“Yeah, maybe,” he replied, a little annoyed. “By the way, do you have the time?”
Betty scrunched her face and held a stubby finger to her chin. “Hmm, I’m not too sure. Reckon it’s round three thirty now. Maybe four. Alex finished his shift at three and we came down here not too long after. Could be four thirty. Maybe even five. I can get my phone and check if ya want.”
“Nah that’s okay, it doesn’t really matter,” he paused. “I better keep moving, though.” He stuck the oar into the bank to push himself back into the water. “It was nice meeting you, Betty. Hope you two enjoy the evening,” he said, and he meant it. With a strong push the bow released from the bank and he righted the vessel to face downstream where it could resume its ride on the current.
“Okay, hon, you be safe out there now,” she sang, eyes squinting with a big toothy smile. She turned and walked back to her motionless husband. She knelt behind him and emerged with another cigarette which she lipped and lit in one fluid motion. Then she layed back down on her elbow and resumed scrolling her phone exactly as she had been before.
Sweat dripped from the curls of the man’s hair onto his pink shoulders and thighs as he paddled the canoe in the late afternoon sun. Sometimes he would reach into the river and splash water onto himself to drench and cool his body for a few moments before the sun’s angry rays evaporated the relief. The sun had begun its descent past its precipice, but the heat was still punishing. The surface of the water was spotted with patches of leafy shade from the canopy of trees that hugged the western banks, so the man steered his craft into these shady spots as much as he could, seeking any reprieve he could find.
His life back home felt very far away out here, and he began to think of it as a strange, almost alien lifestyle. His days started with a digital song blared out from a little glass rectangle on a plastic table beside his bed. He’d drag himself out of the warm, synthetic cocoon of sheets and into the bathroom where water of all temperatures would shoot out of metal tubes hidden behind walls made of a mysterious chalky substance. Breakfast was made of food he’d bought at a big store around the corner, shipped in boxes from unknown places. He’d get into a metal, wheeled box and drive to a big, box-shaped building, the inside of which was subdivided into further boxes of various sizes, the bigger ones reserved for those who had shown the most skill at navigating this box-world. Then he’d sit in his personal work box, stare into an electrified panel, and he would think very carefully about the special selection of conceptual boxes he was paid to think about. Each night, he’d return home by the same means he used to leave it, and he’d choose one of several electrified panels (this time for entertainment) to stare at until it was time to crawl back into bed.
He knew he was being unfair to his life back home. His job served a purpose, and he was good at it. Plus, he liked his life most days. He tried to balance out the dark picture he had painted in his head with a few brighter strokes, but to no avail. The more he thought about his life back home the more absurd it seemed to him, and it began to seem like his day-to-day life kept him more complacent than satisfied. He began to wonder what sort of lifestyle Curtis the bus driver led out here working on a little river in rural Missouri. He couldn’t be earning very much money, and there was no way the camp was employing him beyond the summer months. Maybe he had a second job, or maybe he moved around between the seasons.
Just then, the man was captured by a glimpse of himself driving an old bus down a gravel road; he was poorly shaven, his hair was long and unkempt, and he had a little smirking grin on his face, as if he had just gotten away with cheating on an unfairly difficult math test. He worked along the river all day, and the next morning he drove his truck back to his little place tucked at the end of a long dirt driveway in the woods. It wasn’t big, but big enough to be comfortable for himself and maybe another should that day ever come. He opened the door, greeted his dog, and walked to the fridge to crack open a cold one. Then he’d decide what to do next. Maybe he’d go sit on the porch with a book or guitar and he’d waste the day away. Maybe he’d head into town and play pool with some buddies. Whatever he’d decide to do, no clock would be making the decision for him.
The canoe suddenly ground to a halt, shaking him out of his reverie. He was back on the river, run aground on another stretch of shallows. The music of nature returned to his ears: the running water, the rustling of treetops, and the humming sound of insects punctuated by the chirping of birds. He exhaled and closed his eyes; then he reached into his pocket and held the pocket watch. He sat in silence for some time as the river parted and curled around the sleek body of the canoe beneath him. Finally, after a few minutes, he opened his eyes, stepped out of the canoe, and began dragging it along through the shallows.
The sky had turned to an ombre of pink and pale blue as the sun fell towards the horizon in the western sky. The heat had finally abated and the man in the canoe had pulled his sun shirt back over his body to shield himself from the hordes of mosquitoes that had come out with the cooling temperatures. Though plenty of time remained before darkness, the water had turned opaque and the bottom could no longer be seen through the thick maple depths.
“I’ve gotta be getting close now,” he thought to himself. Beneath his sunshirt was a lather of sweat, sunscreen, and sand, which irritated his sunburned shoulders. The muscles in his arms and back were tired from paddling all day, and the chafing in his swim trunks was getting hot. He was already fantasizing about the shower and clean change of clothes waiting for him back at camp, but first, he had to get out of this canoe.
As he came around a sharp bend in the river he was greeted suddenly by the full force of the setting sun. He pulled the brim of his hat down to shield his eyes as the violent echo of the incandescent gaze remained stubbornly in the center of his vision. The disco surface of the water was inscrutable as the neon ribbons of watery sunshine danced everywhere. He dipped the oar starboard to bring the canoe into a nearby bank when he felt the bow strike and catch something firm. The stern whipped around its new fulcrum and hammered into a jutting stump, capsizing and spilling its innards into the flow. The man surfaced a short time later, violently coughing water out of his lungs.
He scrambled to pull his cooler and backpack to the nearby bank, coughing all the while, and he thanked himself for buying the waterproof bag to protect his phone. The oar had gotten stuck in a tangle of driftwood a few yards from the wreck, and he trudged into the water to wrestle it. With a lot of effort he dragged the mostly-submerged canoe ashore and tipped it over to return its contents back to the river. He looked around for the life jacket, but couldn’t find it, and after a while he gave it up and accepted that he’d owe the camp a few extra dollars. It was an unfortunate consequence of his unfortunate mistake.
Having rescued what he could from the wreck he sat down in the empty canoe and let out a small laugh. How close he had come to a whole day on the river without tipping! He peeled the shirt off his body, wrung it out over the rocks, and then put it back on again before any mosquitoes could find his exposed skin. Leaning back into a patch of tall grass he tilted his chin up and let out a long sigh, releasing the last of the stress he had just undergone. “No time to rest now,” he muttered to himself. He thought of Curtis waiting back at camp counting down the minutes before he had to go look for some city boy out in the dark. He rather liked Curtis, and he didn’t want to cause him any trouble. Plus, his pride was on the line. He said he could do the full thirteen miles before dark, and god dammit he would do it. He rose and started to repack the canoe when he heard a faint whooshing sound in the distance. Then another.
“That must be the highway,” he said aloud. “I’m close.”
Reinvigorated, he doubled his efforts to get back on the water. He plopped the cooler and backpack to their positions and flung the oar across the now naked stern bench. He dragged the vessel back to the water and hopped in. With a few powerful strokes he was back in the current with speed.
A narrow beach emerged from behind a stand of trees as he rounded the final bend of his journey. He greeted the site with a broad smile and then drove the canoe like a nail into the shoreline. The beach was flanked by a mossy embankment made of old stones dragged out of the riverbed. Above it the old school bus sat waiting patiently like a dog for its master, its carriage full of overturned kayaks and canoes dripping in the twilight. His arms stretched towards the sky, and with a satisfied grunt, he stepped out of the craft for the last time and began dragging it up the beach. The temperature had dropped with the sun as it descended behind the westerly treeline and across the campground he could see flickering campfires, some partly hidden behind lumpy silhouettes.
A shadowy figure approached from the lawn above the embankment as the man lifted his possessions from the boat to a nearby picnic table.
“Well well the progidal son returns!” said Curtis, unaware that he said prodigal wrong. “I was keepin’ an eye out for ya, brother. Ya got back just in time, s’gonna be dark soon.” He grabbed the bow of the empty canoe and dragged it towards the carriage.
“Mind givin’ me a hand here?” Curtis asked.
“Sure,” replied the man. They carried the canoe behind the bus and hoisted it up onto the metal bars of the carriage. Then they clapped the sand from their hands and strolled back towards the picnic table.
“So what? Ya have a good time out there?”
“Oh yeah, a great time. Hey, check this out. Look what I found on the river,” and he reached into his empty pocket. Frantically, he reached into his other pocket, only to discover that the pocket watch was gone.
“Oh shit! Damn, it must have… I guess it… it must have slipped out of my pocket when I flipped.”
“Haha you flipped, eh?” Curtis teased and then leaned over to slap his knee.
“Yeah I flipped just up there. But further upriver I found this broken watch in the water. It was old and had some inscription on it, but now… damn. Can’t believe I lost it…”, he said, shaking his head. “Oh, by the way, I think I owe you guys a life vest.”
“No shit, really?” some new gravity in Curtis’ voice that the man did not expect.
“Uh, yeah, I lost the vest when I flipped. What is that like thirty bucks? I’ll pay for it, I don’t mind.”
“Nah man, I mean the watch.” He took a step closer. “Was it a gold pocket watch?”
The two men locked eyes.
“Yeah… wait, was that… your watch?” he asked.
Curtis took another step closer, looked to his left and right, and then dropped his voice. “Nah man, I found that same watch on the river last summer and lost it ‘fore I got back to camp, same as you.” He touched his nose. “Did it say somethin ‘bout… wasted time?”
“Yeah, yeah it did,” the man replied, nearly whispering.
“Thought so… Wanna know the craziest thing?”
The man gave a short nod, eyes fixated and wide.
“I met another guy who found that very same watch the year b‘fore I did, and he lost it, too. Just like we did! And he says that some guy before him found it and lost it, too!”
The man let out a short laugh. “You’re fuckin’ with me,” he said with a smirk.
Curtis stood up tall and puffed out his chest. “Brother. I ain’t fuckin’ with shit. I ain’t about them superstitions, man. This is different. That watch keeps showin’ up, like some kinda sign. This is some right strangeness. Believe me man, believe it or not. I ain’t lyin’.”
“Hmm.” The man was so certain he was being played that he hadn’t at all expected Curtis to be sincere. He was skeptical that they had found the same watch, but it wasn’t impossible, and Curtis did know about the inscription, which was a bit beyond coincidence. ”Well, whatever it is, it sure is strange…,” he admitted. He glanced back at the water and then returned his gaze to meet Curtis’. “Well, if it is a sign, what do you think it means? Is it good luck or something? Bad luck maybe?”
“I don’t know, man,” Curtis said as he stroked his chin. “Reckon my luck’s been ‘bout the same since I came upon it. What do you think it means?”
The man thought for a moment.
“I don’t know. Guess it could mean anything.”
For a brief moment they stood together in a silence that swelled with the sounds of the newfallen night. Frogs croaked, owls hooted, and the hum of insects droned along in crooked harmony. A gentle breeze came off the darkened river.
“By the way, do you have the time?”
“Nah, brother,” Curtis sighed. He leaned back to look up at the stars emerging in the twilight, “I just rise and fall with the sun.”