To Great Depths
Jann Everard

“DO YOU REMEMBER the first time we canoed to this lake, Tom?” 
I know you hear me. It’s so quiet I can hear the drips from my paddle, an insect whiz by my ear. 
“You always said that the shoulder season was the best time to canoe to avoid meeting other people.”
The sun shifts from behind a cloud. Sequins flash on the water’s rippling surface. The short stretch of river leading to the lake is shallow and winding. I hug the boggy shore, pull through the beds of water lilies and the long tendrils that bind them to earth. The blossoms are surrounded by water shields and floating arrowheads — an army of plant life. 
We all need protection in the end.

*

Overhead, the sky is cloudless.
“Did you know there are over sixty shades of blue?”I ask, running through those that I know — cerulean, cornflower, cyan. I want to remember today by its exact shade. Moody blue is not precise enough for this memory. 
Near shore, an orchestra of white pines warm up as the wind rises. Once, while the campfire faded to embers, you described to me a place you’d read about in a book. A place so remote that even the wind got lonely, you said. How that made you laugh. No place has ever been too isolated for your explorer’s heart. You’ve never loved anything more than being outdoors alone. And yet, you always returned home to haul wood in for the winter, plant and harvest our kitchen garden, fish the creek, and collect mushrooms in the forest out back with our son.
I turn in my seat to look for him. Is Bill still there, lingering at the put-in where he unloaded the canoe? Does he imagine his parents’ progress along the zigzag path through the reeds? Or is he already meandering back through the bush to our cabin, intent on finding the warbler he could hear but not see? His hug has left me with a lingering warmth. His hand, resting on the bag in the bow, felt like a final blessing. “Birds fly away, Ma,” he said, as he pushed the canoe from shore. 
“He’ll be fine, Tom,” I say now. “Remember how he’d sleep nestled in among our packs as a baby? How proud he was of the first paddle you made him?” Such a wild child, our Bill. He would miss the school bus on purpose, hide in the forest so that he could watch the birds. We knew our boy was special. He clung to you like a limpet, spoke little, but absorbed everything you showed him about living close to nature. Now he’ll keep his observations to himself. The track of an animal and family secrets; they’re safe with him. 
I paddle on, warming from the exercise. In days past, at the end of a long trip when we lay on the cold stone or spongy moss, I would bury my nose in your neck to inhale the scent of sunbaked skin. It still hovers on the air, but faintly. My skin never smelled as good as yours.
The river empties into the lake. Birdcalls pepper the air, the voices of leaders organizing their flocks, relaying directions. It’s the time of year when birds leave. They swoop and dive, pluck a last meal from the air, sip from the lake’s surface. The water at my fingertips is warm to the touch, but the lake is very deep. I push up my sleeve, plunge and bring a handful of the clear liquid to my lips. It’s a shuddering cold below. An aching cold. 
Nature will keep you whole, Tom. 
It’s me that breaks down. 

*

Don’t cry. You’ve said that so many times that I push my nails into my palms, will myself to stop. Crying always sent you to the bush, left me with Bill and the woodpile and explanations about your whereabouts that never quite satisfied the folks in town. But when you came home? You conjured heat on wintry days, made dew-touched raspberries as fine a gift as rubies. I was happy to watch a blade of grass grow if you were next to me, your touch as light as a blue jay’s feather on my breast and thigh.
Near the deadfall to my right, two sleek brown heads appear, then a third. The otters disappear and resurface closer to shore. They chitter and bob, turn my tears back into a smile. 
“How about here, Tom?” 
It’s a good site. I measure the distance between canoe and land, pat the flint and steel in my pocket. I can swim like an otter, make a warming fire in minutes. Like famous Tom Thomson, you’ll end your days in an Algonquin lake. With Bill’s help, the cement blocks he loaded for me, the old canvas bag. It’s the natural place for you to rest. We talked about this. 
The knots are tight. I rock the canoe, ready myself to capsize, go deep, avoid the gunwales, surface closer to shore. For an instant, we will both be suspended in that shocking cold before you are pulled down and I am buoyed back to the surface. No funeral service for you, my dearest. No crowded plot or ornamental urn. 
And tomorrow? Tomorrow, Bill and I will go about our chores at the cabin. Next week, we will report you gone. No one else needs to know that you died yesterday, with an armload of birch, on your way back from the woodpile. I’ll assume the reticence of grief. Bill will stick to his story: that he last saw his Da at the put-in, the day he heard the passing warblers sing.  

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Jann Everard's short fiction has been published widely in Canada as well as in the U.S. and New Zealand. Flash fictions have appeared in The Binnacle, Best New Writing, The Mom Egg, and the anthology Blood on the Floor: Writers Survive Rejection. Jann was the winner of The Malahat Review's 2018 Open Season Award. She divides her time between Toronto and Vancouver Island, Canada.

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