Submission for the Red Cedar Review

Damn is it hard to write something 1000 words or less! Well, here's my rough draft. I don't know how much I'm going to mend. I think it's pretty good so far.



Our Rivers

“That’s it!” the boy cried.
“What’s it?” his father asked, suddenly appearing at the back of the boat beside his son.
“The ocean! That’s what I’m seeing!”
“Shouldn’t you be up there at the front with the rest of your class? You know how much I love rivers and how much I’d love to stand here starting at it with you, but as your chaperone, I have to make sure you guys are helping the crew with their readings.”
“All right,” the boy said huffily, but he still couldn’t stop thinking about the river, its secret language, its churning mysteries. The river was just one step on an inscrutable journey to the sea, and it was already bearing the boy’s reflection to the infinite ocean.



“Here you have it, sirs. Ole’ Ernest Hemmingway’s favorite river, the Big Two-Hearted River. Now do you two want da two-hour scenic route or da much longer five-hour route?” the yooper asked.
“We should take the long one, dad,” the boy said, eyes wide.
“You sure?” said the boy’s father.
“Yes! We only have two days left up here!”
“Well, all right.”
The yooper drove the father and his boy another two miles before he braked. He helped the man and boy pull out their kayaks and lower them to the bank, where the two of them promptly plopped themselves into their vessels like the inveterate paddlers they were.
“Now, before I push you two off, do you have any questions for me?”
The duo had already been briefed on the river and its negligible perils, but there was one concern that still weighed in on the boy’s mind.
“What happens when we get to the end where it opens up into Lake Superior? Can we keep paddling out into the lake?”
“Afraid not,” the yooper said, noticing the boy’s frown. “You see, da kayaks just weren’t meant to sail on those big, open waters. Your trip has to end at da mouth.”



“I remember you two from awhile back!” the yooper exclaimed when the pair returned after many years. “Let me ask you two, short or long?”
The young man beheld his father. The virile, Byronic, river junkie was still there, but somewhat smothered by wrinkles, creaking joints, and white-gray hair. His father looked almost artificially old, and both of them knew it. His condition had really set in over the last five years or so.
Never taking his eyes off his father, the young man answered, “We’ll take the scenic route.” His father smiled.
This time they shared a canoe, an old-fashioned birch bark one that his father had been working on since he was forced to slow down. The canoe was a masterpiece -slender and light, yet strong and durable.
The scenic route really was worth it. The young man had never seen such chiascuro riverbanks, regal sand dunes, or beautiful, beautiful, beautiful water. It was clear, cold, brown, and glowing with a deep honey-amber that seemed to emanate from the soul of the world. Both reared their heads at the same time to lose their faces in the shadow of an eagle. Words had been sparse throughout most of the journey. At this point, anything new to add couldn’t possibly compare to letting the wind, water and birds do the talking, the young man thought; there is a lot to be said for silence, he decided.
With the river mouth in sight, his father let an emotional tone slip into his voice, “Doctors are saying six months now.”
The young man had relieved his father of the paddling half way through the trip, leaving him to sit at the prow, legs folded up against his body like a child does when it doesn’t want to leave a friend’s house, yet he seemed perfectly serene.
“Aw dad, don’t listen to them. They don’t know anything,” the young man said, but his cracked words betrayed his calm.
“I’m glad we took the scenic route,” the young man’s father said.
“Me too…me too,” came the answer.





The service was long, and, throughout it, the young man thought he had never known such deep, pure, sublime sadness. Back at school, he felt like an orphan to the world. Everything seemed so alien. Everything reminded him of his father, especially the Red Cedar River that flowed behind his dorm. Often, he’d go there and stare at its middle until the glare hurt his entire body. Today he was doing that very thing.
He took his notebook with him, hoping to get some of his writing homework done, but everything he tried seemed futile and predictable- totally pointless. His paper, he thought, would drift upon a barren wasteland ocean of other papers, his endings and plots would be chosen from among the platitudes and clichés that circled in its calm, lifeless whirlpools. Whether what he did sank or swam, it would still lose its meaning in the vast, ultimate end for which he and all things were designed.
Tears streaming, anger rising, soul burning, he stood up, raised his notebook, and prepared to throw it into the water. He wanted to drown, to drown everything- himself, the notebook, the world- and get it all over with.

But then he started thinking about his notebook in the river. It would float down the tranquil Red Cedar for another couple of miles and then it would join another river. Maybe the notebook would merge into a very large river some day, one that might move fast at times, slow at others. Its waters may swell, only to fall beyond the next turn. There would undoubtedly be rocks in the notebook’s way. Sometimes, the river may seem to stop all together and leave the notebook motionless before countless separate streams. Changed, the young man sat down at his place along the river and opened his notebook. He had a long time before his reflection would reach the sea, and he now had a lot to write about.