A Snippet - The Boat

(The walls of my room are covered with stuff. Most of it is fairly stationary but over my bed I have tacked, taped and stapled pictures from magazines, my own works of art and a handful of important photos. When I'm having a rough day I go to my room, stretch out on my bed and stare at these photos, most of which involve some form of water.

Tonight I felt the need to write something and noticed a painting right above my head. I decided to write based on what I saw, felt and heard, when looking at that painting. Below is the snippet that resulted.)

The sounds of the waves were gentle, hesitant as they brushed occasionally against the rocky shore. The sky was gray and overcast and there was the slightest of breezes. There was tension in the air but it was subdued. As if something terrible had happened and the world needed to be still, needed to wait for a bit before it was sure it could recover. The thick nylon line leading from the small boat wasn’t really necessary to keep the craft at the shore. The flat, smooth stones didn’t shift the way sand would. Without a hearty push the wooden row boat wasn’t going to go anywhere. The surface of the water was still enough to offer an almost perfect reflection of the boat. It barely rocked or moved. It was still, as if the panorama was only a painting. Beside the larger row boat, there was a smaller boat. A toy, tied to the brackets that should have been holding oars, floating peacefully beside it’s much larger brother, gamely lifting it’s little white sail toward the sky.

A child had tied it there. A small boy with golden yellow hair, bare footed in his overalls and warm flannel shirt. When he had come out to the water’s edge to play it had probably been sunny, warm enough for him not to notice the chill of the stones against his bare skin. Warm enough that he could ignore the small bit of water collecting in the bottom of the boat, that had quickly soaked the bottom part of his pants. It was too much fun to watch his little skow cut through the water, to crash it into the side of the bigger craft and imagine an entirely different world from the one he was forced to live in.

Maybe if Mom and Dad hadn’t been in the middle of another fight they would have noticed that their son had not only gone out to play as he had been told, but he had escaped the sand box he usually occupied and made a dash for the lake. Perhaps if Dad hadn’t lost control of his temper, yet again, and thrown the vase at Mom, she might have noticed how long her boy had been gone and run from the house to find him.

If Dad hadn’t stormed out of the house. If Mom hadn’t bent to pick up the shards of glass, her makeup running with her tears, and sliced her hand badly. If she hadn’t called Grandmother on the phone. If Grandmother hadn’t already been on her way.

When the coroner arrived on the scene he couldn’t immediately tell whether it was the cold that caused the boy to drown, or if he’d hit his head on the rocky bottom when he tumbled out of the beached rowboat. There was no blood to speak of but little boy’s heads are made of far softer things than adult's. Even the slightest bump could cause problems with a child. And Mom had been screaming that the boy couldn’t swim from the moment she found the still toddler.

There were words flying around. Neglect, murder, tragedy, fault, blame. Words that meant nothing whatsoever to the little boy. The crime scene people quickly determined that the toy boat wasn’t paramount to the investigation and Mom was clutching it as she knelt before the blanket wrapped figure on the gurney. There was a helicopter overhead that she ignored. The backyard of the country cottage ended at the lake, preventing most of the press from finding a way past the police line, but it wouldn’t take long before they rented or stole boats to get close enough for a photograph.

Grandmother stood away from it all cold and immovable. She did not comfort her daughter, nor did she kneel to mourn the loss of her grandchild. She’d seen it all coming. She’d known that one day or other this would be the result. She had no reason to regret, or to blame, only to agree with the still silent natural world around her that the world needed to take a breath. To pull back and examine with unnatural stillness, what had occurred. And perhaps…maybe…it would never happen again.

(Apologies to the artist. The magazine was old and I never thought to keep the blurb that explained who painted what.)