Come and Play.

A choppy day, waves wide and white capped, the grey clouds rolled over the lake like a great big blanket. Woolly rain drops scratched my face. The little boat, the one you carefully painted red and decorated with thin white stripes from bow to stern with a steady hand last summer in the backyard, that little boat you built all by yourself – it had no chance.

I stood on the shore, Bubba whipping her tail side to side, smacking my calf with mud-wet fur, and watched your boat bob up and down, a capsized buoy waving a white surrender.

Mother Nature’s hands clapped loud, causing waves to leap in fear. Her growing grumble sent a humbling electric shock of split light. All sides of the shore lit up like a Canada day firecracker.

The doctor, he said there was no chance.

I toed the bright orange life coat you’d left on the beach, the straps whipping in the storming wind.

The doctor, he said you probably hadn’t felt a thing. It was just like falling asleep, he said; a peaceful way to go. There wasn’t much we could have done.

I’d asked you to come and play, I said: please, won’t you come and play today?

Shaking your head, you closed your bedroom door, you said: nope, can’t today Lily-flower. I have important things to do and you’re too little to come too.

Stomping frustrated feet on worn hardwood all the way down the hall, I yelled: suit yourself Jack-attack. I don’t like to play with you anyway!

I sat in the great big green reading chair, the same one Gammie sat in and sipped tea and said to me: little girl, come here and read aloud, won’t you? I pouted in the great big green reading chair as the wood screen door slammed once, twice behind you. I pretended not to watch through the full-size picture window as you dragged your little boat down the path, leaving a snaking trail in the sand behind you. Sitting all alone in the great big green reading chair, I stared out the full-size picture window and watched as the sky swirled – changing blue, changing green, changing purple, changing dark, changing – churning.

Mom, she pleaded: why didn’t you tell me where he’d gone, why didn’t you tell me Jack had left?

Looking at my toes, the air still and stale, I muttered to my feet: you didn’t ask, you know. And I was mad. I’d ask him to come and play. I’d said: please, won’t you come and play today?

When they brought you up on shore, your little red boat tethered to the back of Mr. Swaine’s old steel boat with the motor hanging out the back, you looked so small. You looked too little, too much like me.

When they brought you up on shore, laying limp and loose in the doctor’s arm, everyone wore a look that said: I’m sorry.

When they brought you up on shore, the clouds split right in half, a sideways slant of sunlight pouring through cracks of grey.

When they brought you up on shore, your eyes, they didn’t blink in the bright sunlight.

When they brought you up on shore, Mother Nature, she washed her hand over the lake and smoothed the waves like mom does our bed sheets on a hot summer night.

When they brought you up on shore, the lake, it was quiet like midnight.

Everyone wore their I’m sorry looks and Bubba barked twice and the doctor said again: there wasn’t much we could have done.

Then the lake, it whispered: I lost you.

The lake, it shushed through the reeds, saying: I won’t be the same without you and your little red boat you’d built by yourself that had no chance.

The lake, it cried: Jack, come and play.

xoxo

M.L. H’art

Red Car.

I used to ride around with this guy in a car with failing brakes. Intersections became inclined planar pavement, the car a red rocket pinball bouncing between obstacles. Traffic circles were Tilt ‘a’ Whirl platforms of chaotic manoeuvring – around and around and around we’d go until an opening in traffic led us out into the straightaway. Letting off the gas toward the open parking stall on the far end of the lot, the emergency brake would bring us home, tin-can shudder jarring us to a halt as the split bumper kissed the brick walled apartment building.

When it was cold, really cold, the doors wouldn’t open. We’d crawl in through the hatch and scrape the inside of the windows with overextended Mastercards, clearing enough frost off the cracked windshield to see late night headlights coming at us down the road.

The horn was a high-pitched wail, a constant bleep-bleep soundtrack announcing us as we weaved, in and out of and back into traffic, dodging shiny Jags and steering clear of pedestrians pushing newborns in swaddled strollers. The car, it was a 1988 rust-hole death trap.

One blister hot day after messing around under the hood, my driver cum mechanic left a rag lying on the hot engine. He slammed the hood, sparked the car and we turtled off down the open road. Before long, the car began to smell. The smell became a whisp of smoke. The smoke, a billow. The billow, an attraction for fellow automobilists, honking, waving, panicking. Pulling into a back alley, we rolled a long length to a slow stop, the crack snap of bald tires spitting gravel out in all directions barely audible under the hiss of the searing engine. We scrambled out into the alley, the car’s fumes hot on my bare summer legs. We watched and watched as the car, it smoked and smoked.

We left the rotting red corpse full up of the trash of life: crushed pop cans, dirty socks, smushed coffee cups, wrinkled candy bar wrappers, long-hardened French fries, one shoe, empty plastic bags, a cassette tape – it’s ribbon looping the backseat –, a baseball cap, the kind free with a two-four of beer, cigarette ash.

“Not so bad for two hundred bucks an’ more than a few years on the road, eh?” my driver laughed, throwing an arm over my shoulder as we walked down the alley, the car’s death rattle becoming just a whimper in the late summer light.

xoxo
M.L. H’art