The sun sets on the water. The trout are either aggressive or in hiding. Trying to protect their young. The bass are cruising by, ambushing small fish from the deep cover of the weeds; they are machines programmed to kill and kill again.
They kill without emotion.
Small bass need to fear the trout, but the big ones are untouchable. They are made for processing the meat of their neighbors. They will never sate their hunger; they are not the sensitive fish that trout are.
The sun on the water is like paint. Drips and drabs dropped by an omnipotent and solicitous hand. The hour of the wolf leads us into the trade, night for day. Light for darkness. The darkness will last a long time, but light will come again.
You might wonder how this story ends, and it is a natural thing to wonder. Nature knows when she is being abused. Evil comes in waves. Fish and people are not so different. One trying to keep his head above water. One below. If you are scared, and you should be, then get to the weeds. The forest. Find someplace you can hide until the world has corrected itself.
Don’t take the bait. They can make it look so good.
Don’t take the bait.
Remember, they feed…
Saving space for Mader comments
ReplyDeleteI'm really liking this...series? Exploration? Love the metaphor and the rhythm. Bass are still jerks.
DeleteTHIS: "The sun on the water is like paint. Drips and drabs dropped by an omnipotent and solicitous hand. The hour of the wolf leads us into the trade, night for day. Light for darkness. The darkness will last a long time, but light will come again." Why am I seeing a graphic novel a la Maus here?
Anya’s roommate has a new boyfriend over, so her Saturday visit with Bubbe Yulia is at the older woman’s apartment. She has a fresh-baked apple tart in one hand and a bouquet of asters in the other, and as she climbs the stairs the smells of pencil lead, rubber erasers, and cooked onions rise to meet her.
ReplyDelete“You smell like the Moon,” Anya once said, having learned in her Astronomy 101 class that the regolith of the Moon is mostly graphite. Bubbe Yulia had given Anya her half-smile and asked when she’d last been to the Moon.
Bubbe has left her apartment door ajar; Anya steps in, calling her grandmother’s name. “Back here,” comes the voice. Anya sets her gifts on the side table and follows the sound.
She takes a step back when she sees. “Bubbe! Anyone could walk in!”
“Luckily it was you.” Bubbe sits nude in a chair in the corner of her studio, next to a mirror. She is drawing a self-portrait in pencil. Ropey shoulder and forearm muscles flexing, eyes a study in focus. Her softening but still strong body is a museum of scars. Unhurriedly, Bubbe puts down her pad, stands, and reaches for a plain cotton robe, ties it around her waist. “If it was anyone else wanting to get a peep, well, then they get what they deserve for their nickel.”
Anya knows only a few of the stories etched on her grandmother’s body. The stretch marks of pregnancy. The multiple go-rounds with bullets and shrapnel from the war. There is a crescent-shaped one the size of an old silver dollar on the back of her left shoulder that Anya asked about last summer when they put on their swimsuits and went to the community pool. Bubbe Yulia had tried to look at it – it was too far over to see – and shrugged. “I had forgotten about that one,” she’d said, and then promptly changed the subject to what they would make for dinner.
Anya never brought it up again, because that was Bubbe Yulia’s way. If she wanted to tell, she would tell. If not, then you were free to make up whatever tales you liked.
But today Anya has made a fresh apple tart and her roommate is in love again and she isn’t and she’s struggling with school and misses her mother and she wants Bubbe Yulia to tell her not some pretty lies about how well everything would turn out; she wants the truth.
Even about something so small.
“It is not a nice story,” Bubbe said, once she’d dressed and they’d sat down in the kitchen with the tart and fresh tea. The sun spills across the table onto the ceramic pitcher she made while she was, in Bubbe’s words, throwing pots with old ladies at the community kiln. It was painted white, with a single sunflower blossom. “Like I could ever forget,” Bubbe said when Anya had first seen it. “But it’s still good to see.”
Anya waits.
“An unlucky Russian bastard,” Bubbe says, a growl in the back of her throat. “Thought he was God’s gift to the women of Kyiv. Well. Now he’s the devil’s problem.” She smiles, sweetly, a little savagely. “More tea?”