Free Of Song and Water by Joseph Coulson Page B

out under fair skies or, if need be, in the face of high winds and rain. He grows anxious on the way. Visiting once a month was adequate when he was a bachelor, but now, with a wife and child, he makes the run each week, anchoring in a hidden cove in the half hour before sunset.
    He pulls on rubber boots and slogs ashore, a spade resting on his right shoulder like a weapon. When he reaches dry ground, he doffs the boots and hides them in a cluster of shrubs.
    At this point, his routine becomes ritual; he checks and double-checks his markers to confirm that nothing’s been touched. As he loses sight of the river, he turns around, watching and listening for any movement or noise. From here, it’s not far. He follows a dry creek bed to a stand of scruffy trees.
    He crawls behind a screen of branches, bushes, and tall grass. With the edge of his shovel, he sweeps aside twigs and leaves – debris that he’ll carefully put back before he goes.
    He digs until he hits the chest, keeping the soil in a neat pile. He clears only enough earth to lift the lid. Then he inspects his treasure. He often makes
a deposit or a withdrawal, but what he really wants is the reassurance of seeing it.
    He hopes someday to keep his fortune in a more accessible place. There’s no going to it in winter. And lately he’s bothered by a buzzing in his ear, the voice of Faya’s dead father saying it’s a fool’s game to live without combinations and vaults. The words get under his skin like a sliver. He wants no financial institutions meddling with his money. He wants no unsolicited advice.
    He remembers reading Emerson, the argument that society is a joint-stock company prepared to sell a man’s freedom for higher dividends, for the benefit of preferred investors. I’ll leave my money where it is, he thinks. I’ll wait, see what comes. What I must do is all that concerns me.
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    STUDYING the river on clear days, searching its vague surface for new information, even the most fleeting, he pictures old pilots on the Mississippi and imagines a bend where two rivers join, where clear water mixes with brown.
    He drifts and takes a few soundings on the Windsor side.
    He drops the lead line at the stern. Watching it go, he thinks of Huck and Jim. He imagines them on the Detroit River, the two friends floating down from Windmill Point, resting easy in free territory, lying together on a raft beneath a blanketing sun.
    He’s fond of this image.
    He can’t explain its comfort to himself or to anyone else. It takes him back to his own youth, when all things seemed possible, when the silliest games became a hero’s journey and no defeat – no competition or battle – was made up entirely of defeat.
    He sees the ideal forms of Huck and Jim, their arms and legs splashing in the silver stream.
    He rests his mind on this picture, a habit that shores up his strength, his substance, and provides a ready escape, at least for a moment, from the
odd fear that grew in him during the War, a belief that his skin and bones were fading, turning into fog, as if his body were white vapor and nothing more.
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    WHY DID his mother, having lived so long in Detroit, give the landlord her trust? He blames the War. He blames himself. He could’ve stolen the money and figured out some way to send it back. He should’ve realized that a woman like his mother, so entirely alone, makes an attractive and challenging target.
    The landlord owns the place. He can toss her out. He can force her to make a choice.
    Without money, she has no protection.
    The lesson, he thinks, is a hard one. A man’s decisions must stand as a bulwark against vulnerability. There’s no time for regret. The best way is to choose, pursue an available course and take it without ambivalence or shame. To do otherwise is a sad resignation, a dull surrender to forces left unchecked.
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    THE RADIO speaks of rain, a late spring, and now,