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Tuesday, August 12—

A fifty-four inch long, eighteen-inch wide remnant of dark pink countertop might do. Kneeboarding/wakeboarding is the fun I thought of this morning. The object would serve doubly too, as a table to lay across the tote to play Monopoly upon later. Scraps of plywood in the shed were too paltry and angular, even if I could’ve screwed two together with 2x4’s.

A-ha! An eight-foot long countertop hiding behind a flat of Styrofoam insulation might do. Heavy as morbidity and dense particle board substrate, but a smooth Formica surface for river water to slide easily under. Not Wakeboarders-of-America approved, but WBA wouldn’t be there to make fun of us making fun with budget salvaged goods.

Might do.

Hauled the orphan out to the front yard and spanned it between two upended garbage cans, measured the boat floor, fifty-four inches across--and cut the countertop in half, screwed two 2x4’s to the undersides for strength against warping. The curvaceous, and remarkably professional-looking handle stolen from the Weed Whacker, clipped smartly onto the boat rope hook, as though that was the purpose the distracted grass-whacking engineers intended all along.

I leaned back and admired the creation, imagining 360-degree tubular flips and high wake-jumping acrobatics and crickets cheering as we whizzed past.

Glitter Beach campsite—
2:10 p.m.–
Caleb dubious, looking at the device laying flat on the water, pinky-purple surface with one rounded front corner, washing over with river. His "It won’t float me," missed the point. "It’ll sink if I stand on it."

“So do water-skis,” I argued. “The point is for the pressure of the the river to push hard against it. It’ll raise and plane, if you do it right.”

I threw out the rope with handle attached. He turned the shelf, pretty side down, and kneeled on its back as I started the motor and towed slowly.

We moved ahead. Caleb grinned. He held the front tip up out of the water. I increased the throttle and we moved around the point. EZ swam out from shore, determined to stay with us and share in our fun.

2:22–
EZ in the boat. (She would swim ten miles not to be left behind if her body allowed it.)

2:25–
It’s a learned skill. So is throwing a boomerang and, by faith, having it return, though wakeboarding on a counter top is easier than boomerangs because religion isn’t involved; we know this can work.

EZ sits in the bow barking. Caleb manages a slow tipsy balance. I increase the speed. The countertop wiggles side-to-side and nose-dives. He lets go the rope. I circle and we set off again with him laying on the shelf like a surfboard, legs for rudders. I ease the speed up, he, confident with the steadiness of the plane, tries kneeling and falls over.

He wants me to show him. I do. Then he tries it again. Success, though bucking and imbalanced, he waves at the woods and many admirers.

3:30–
Grand Sandbanks. EZ chases frogs. Caleb and I share the blowing-up-the-air-mattress duty. He finishes, jumps on the warm furry flat top and drifts away, too far away to get back by himself, with half of his support held up on my air.

3:45–
EZ is chasing frogs under the boat. My son is gone, somewhere in northeast Iowa.

4:25–
Air-bed and kneeboard are set up in the sun across the river to dry. The solar lights, brought along from their spot by the stoop at home to lend ambient sophistication to our river home for the night, are recharging in the son over there too.

We are sitting in the boat. Caleb is tending to a cut on his big toe. It was sliced there yesterday when the phone rang and he stepped on a sharp computer shroud he’d put on the floor while installing a CD-burner.

He asked me to look at the coolness of his gash three hours ago, begged me to gaze down into the white labial rimmed depths. I didn’t want to. I don’t want to now.

"If I beat you at Monopoly later will you look then? I can squeeze it open so it looks like lips talking. Do you have a Band-Aid?"

I have one hidden in a zip-lock for emergencies. But he’s got one he doesn’t want to use.

"Maybe. Why! You don’t need a Band-Aid for that."

"I just want one. It makes me feel better, like getting a kiss from a mothe ron an ow-ie."

"That won’t help."

"Even though it might not help it’s a sense of security," he says, "for adults who don’t need their kissing momma."

"So why do you need a Band-Aid? It’s like a mother kissing an ow-ie, and a Band-Aid is like your mother kissing your ow-ie, but if you don’t need your mother kissing an ow-ie you don’t need a Band-Aid. Therefore..."

"No! But it’s a kiss for the adults."

"If you’d wanted a damn Band-Aid you should’a brought the whole damn box of Band-Aids and not just a damn one."

"—I don’t need a damn Band-Aid. I want a damn Band-Aid." "—and not expect a father to provide motherly kisses like a momma?"

—"I didn’t expect anything from you”--

"Kisses from your mother?"

"No I didn’t ask for that."

(Silence while we construct further arguments.)

Me: "You need to dry it out."

(Him, still searching for logic.)

"What, That? Dry it out?" he finally asks.

"Of course. It’s soaking wet."

"It’s NOT soaking wet."

"That’s why it’s all white and putrid-looking."

"It was that way last night."

"Then your toe is dying."

Caleb jumps from the boat and limps to a frog by the shore, crouches down and kisses it. It hops two feet away and sits again, more warily watching for flies.

"I’m making sure it’s a momma, not a handsome price in disguise, before I tell it to kiss my cut."

4:45–
"Let’s go gather wood," I say.

"Are we going to go into the woods, or are we going to use your new method? Your new method SUCKS!"

I ask how my new method sucks.

"I have no reason. I just felt like saying that. But what? We going to be like, standing in the middle, and they fall in the bow? Or what? Because today I’m in the bow. I must let them tumble onto my injured feet?"

"Yeah. You’re a son and I can push you around. If Chelsea can do it, you can do it."

"Chelsea did it?"

"Yes."

"She used the saw?"

"She used the saw, with EZ up there confounding and crowding her too. She used the saw magnificently and into the bow, into neat stacks the firewood dropped."

"There’s already a nice collection of firewood by the fire, put there by her."

"Yeah, for a midget."

Caleb gets out of his boat seat and walks to the bow as though he’s going to pee. But he’s thinking, running through arguments. He finds none, returns to his seat without peeing.

5:05–
Caleb, sawing hard, like a crazed maniac with a Polish chainsaw.

5:07–
A well-seasoned limb is pushing the bow down.

5:10–
Another well-seasoned limb is angling high off our port gunwale, yet to be sawn. Caleb is trying to find the right spot for the saw and swearing, using the mother of all teenager swearwords. He screams “YAH,” and slaps behind his left knee, another Mother-of-all-bad-words-ending with “er” blurting from his lips.

"I’m going to tell your mother about your swearing."

"Fuck you, Mom."

I am getting hot, sitting in the stern, steering the motor at the correct angle for him to saw, watching him saw. "Hurry up. I’m getting hot."

He saws harder.

6:10–
In safe anchorage at Black Box Spot, Milwaukee Brewers ball game on for background distraction.

Caleb is beating me though I’ve had only a half-sip of beer. He encourages my beer drinking on these occasions so he can feel smarter than me. We are minding our own business in the low-lying sun and doing nobody harm, not disturbing the woods or the river by throwing raisins into it—which is a very bad act according to an ecologically young purist he camped with recently. EZ is the center of our attention, this break in our action. She has raised from her nap in the bow and is shivering and twitching and staring at the forest behind the boat. We, he and I, are both flummoxed. We’ve looked back there—even shut off the losing Brewers—without announcer Bob Eucker (the whole reason for listening anyway) who’s supposedly listening from a hospital bed after replacement of both knees—to get a better listen.

6:14–
Up-anchor and to the bank, so EZ can go potty and show us why she’s been vibrating. EZ jumps out and runs down the shore sniffing rocks and sand, but doesn’t pee. I compliment her ploy and invite her to rejoin us.

6:24–
I told Caleb that there was Tas-Tee dressing on board. It’s a commercially sold equivalent of a local sub shop’s House dressing which, "he drinks by the gallon," says Chelsea, who works there and brings home fifty-five gallon drums for her brother to quaff. He opens the cooler and pulls out a single thin slab of processing chicken sandwich meat, opens the bottle with one hand, and pours out a pool of dressing into the circle of chicken. Then, with head high, guzzles the sauce (drizzling it into the river) and munches the meat, like how a rainforest researcher drinks rainwater from a leaf.

A mink gallops down the riverbank. (EZ knew.) It laps Caleb’s overflow salad dressing that spread out like an oil slick against shore, leaps in the air, shudders, and disappears into the trees.

6:31, playing Monopoly–

"Why do you push your tab back?" Caleb asks.

We have each opened a beer and he wants to skoal cans inside their foam insulators. But he has seen me bend the can tab back then lift it.

"It catches. Pulls my mustache if I don’t. Something you’d know nothing about."

He lifts his can to his lips.

—"don’t be drinking that yet," I snarl.

"I’m not! I’m thinking about how ... So, if it’s up here," he tips his can slightly and flexes his lip, imagining a disgruntling tribulation such as a mustache caught in a beer tab.

10:15–
Drifting ... Perseid meteor shower, moon whitening full fat in the east, fireflies winking ghostly and silent in the passing dark woods. Oars out for quiet to pull us away from overhanging trees. We beached at Grand Sandbanks and climbed up to the meadow, standing in brightness, watching the river reflect curly moonlit currents inside our memories, recording the images and aromas of togetherness for recall when we’re old.

Wednesday—
9:45 a.m., going home–
Stopped at Grand Sandbanks to give EZ a Suave Daily Clarifying scrubbing. I have sought unscented shampoo—whether for dogs or not, and haven’t found it available. Pity.

I call her into the shallows and pour on the lather. Caleb takes the back half. EZ is patient, torn between dislike of being washed but glad for the attention. Sudsed, she refuses to join Caleb and I in the river, who are there for her benefit, coaxing her to swim out and let the river rinse her coat free of shampoo. So, back to the boat for her food dish, we drench her on shore.