Free Love & Darts (9781937316075) by Nath Jones Page B

with clay on his legs,
the one who reaches out to the second man with something just
beyond brotherhood when he knows that other’s gentle heart so
desperately, deeply loves him. Neither can do much about his
feelings. So one with clay on his legs pulls away from the two
strong hands that hold him close. His leaving the caress is
something they all notice. With a kind willingness if not with
plunging joy he’s off the raft and ridding himself of that clay in
the water for a minute.
    Even with all the maturity of their
agreement, the man left with his feelings is not so relaxed. He
wants both lovers for himself, now if not forever, and having to
share he is angry from the neck up.
    She is numb from the waist down. She doesn’t
love either of them. Not like she should. She lets her legs drag in
the cold river water. And she wants to rid herself of knowing
either of them. She stands again and pushes the raft downriver. The
man left with his feelings stands, too, and picks up the second
pole. They move downstream more quickly, more effortlessly, and
without the rise and fall that happened when only she was
pushing.
    But. The man lets go of what’s real and
picks up what’s nonexistent to help propel them all. It’s hard for
the woman to understand why he keeps making such an effort. But he
does. He’s working diligently at something she doesn’t understand.
He kneads what’s in front of them with yearning, longing, love, and
his twin pangs of hope and despair, sweetness and embittered
grace.
    There is an elegance as though he wants to
draw them more near to something impossible. She turns her mind
away from his work and keeps pushing her pole into the river
bottom.
    The man in the water notices none of the
others’ unseen exertion and swims behind them both, holding onto
the edge of the raft, kicking out with fun frog-legs, blowing
bubbles, pushing them all downstream his way, keeping his distance,
waiting a few more minutes to get back on.
    She likes that he’s pushing, helping her
make them go, because she doesn’t like that—doesn’t understand
why—the other man laid down his pole and just gave up. The
reflections she gathers up from the water exist almost, but they
aren’t real enough to distract her from the work that’s necessary:
pulling the pole up, planting it into just a reach ahead, pulling
her body closer to that place, bringing the raft along with her
feet until her body is past that pole, and then methodically
pulling it up, and dipping it again, sometimes twisting from one
side of the raft to the other to keep their heading.
    The man on the raft is still angry from the
neck up. He doesn’t understand why they don’t know he’s laid down
the pole and picked up the current instead. Hand-over-hand he pulls
the nothing rope that’s frayed and twisted as if caught in the
teeth of a gar that swims through the shallows of a faraway, nearly
unimaginable delta, through brackish silt avoiding the sea. The man
left with his feelings on the raft just wants the man in the water
to love him; no, not only him, her too. So of course he lays down
his pole and pulls the invisible rope and so they move forward.
Hand-over-hand the blisters rise. He is pulling them toward an open
end where the river gives up like Sunday afternoon onto the flat
forgotten parts of the Gulf and they will be there, soon maybe, if
he keeps ever-pulling.
    Hand-over-hand he is angry from the neck up.
Pushing her pole into the mud she ignores his pouting pathos and
looks back at the man in the water blowing bubbles, kicking with
fun frog-legs. She watches him and he likes it. He notices her gaze
and rolls onto his back to let go a belly of sunlight warmth. He
wears the silver river lining like a glass ornament blown full of
mercury and rises endlessly against impossibility.
    She wants him, puts the pole down, starts to
climb into the water, but he comes up to her instead, pulls himself
onto the raft. With water sheeting down his body and