Surface Tension

As the raft made its way across the river, Emerson Carver forgot his own name. He looked down into the prized water of the Philipse and couldn’t find his face. The surface was coated with gray algae and there were disturbances from the paddles pushing through the tension. He sat back down and rubbed his hands over the life vest that was too small for him. Could it really hold him up if something occurred? He tried to remember his first name. He couldn’t. He knew the last name sounded like Shaver. He was close, but would never get any closer than that.

All his life he’d stayed ahead of his greatest fear. It became easier once water turned into a commodity rather than an assurance. Lakes dried up. The ocean rose, but then receded. Now there was silt where there used to be coral reef formations. Emerson had a house with his beloved in the middle of dry land. He’d never told his wife how afraid he was of drowning. When he found her in the bathtub unconscious one evening, he assumed this was fate laughing at him. Your fear would find you. It always would.

He took to his bed and it was only after seven nights of sleep that his memory began to deteriorate. Phone numbers left his mind. Numbers always go first. Next were the names of his children. No logic to it. Kierstyn went first even though she was in the middle. Then Walter, then Mary Anne. As he lay in bed, bits of his mind were absorbed into his grief. He never understood grief to be a parasite. There was so much to learn even as retaining information became impossible. Emerson never feared growing older or losing his faculties. He faced it as a reality of existence. It was only water he feared, and the water was far, far away. If he had to die in his bed, he would, but he would die dry.

The hands grabbed him by the arms. Firefly flashlights. Had someone brought him outside? Was that the fragrant air of early spring? The flowers had been compromised by a short winter but they were persisting. Nature would see them all buried, and then it would root inside their bones and push through their epidermis. They would serve as bed for a new beginning. Emerson was on some kind of stretcher. He saw the day-glo coloring of someone in charge of a rescue. He wanted to explain that he didn’t need to be rescued. The heat would scorch a pile of grass near the house or strike a window just right and light the living room carpet aflame. He would be upstairs in the bedroom, and all would be smoke. He didn’t need to be rescued, but he couldn’t think of the word “rescue” and so there was no negating it.

Into the back of a van on this flimsy wartime gurney. The van was going at a high speed as though they were being chased. He couldn’t tell how many of them there were in the vehicle with him. One said something about missing sisters. One asked if there was any more bottled water. At the sound of the word “water,” Emerson tried moving his arm only to find that he was paralyzed. He couldn’t tell the extent of the paralysis, but he prayed it was temporary. He would need to sit up. He would need to ask these people to pull the van over, or, if they could, bring him back to the house he’d lived in for the last forty years. He had no desire to go where they were going even if it meant safety. Even if it meant tacking on a few more useless years to a life that had already gone on too long. One day longer than his wife’s life was too long as far as he was concerned. He tried to say “Stop” but couldn’t part his lips. The van hit a pothole, and for a moment, everyone in the back went against gravity. Emerson felt himself go up and come back down. His finger twitched. He might be able to save himself from salvation after all.

On a fishing trip with his father at the age of eight, Emerson fell off the boat and into the lake where they were to spend the day. His father jumped in after him, but he couldn’t find the boy at first. Something within the water had tugged Emerson a full ten or eleven feet, and when he opened his mouth, all manner of profundal and benthic invaded him. He tried to swim, but his education on the matter left him. As he felt his body go limp, a hand yanked him by the back of his neck up and out of the water. His father wrapped an arm around the boy and the two were off back to the boat. They didn’t even go home after that. His father insisted they stay and finish out their afternoon. Emerson tasted lime for days after that. His tongue would search his lips for any sign of relief, and never find it.

When the van stopped, Emerson was the first order of business. The stretcher was pulled out, and he felt breath on his ear. Someone was asking him if he could move. He was trying to find the word “No” when he felt himself rise. The finger twitching had been a sign. There was life in him despite his own intentions. He stood, and someone put something around his neck. Was it a noose? Was this a tribunal? Had he committed a crime other than failing to die when his wife did as life intended? He touched the fabric. It felt like mesh. It felt unsatisfactory. This was a life vest. Why would they put something like this on him? What was going on?

He felt the raft before he saw it. His eyes were clouded with a mixture of fog and dust. Hands were moving him where they needed him to go. They sat him down. Something clicked. He stood up to run, but they shoved him back down. A voice told him he was all right. He was safe. They were all safe. Who was “all?” Who was “they?” He was not safe. He could hear water. When had the river arrived? He was far from the Philipse. Had it come closer? A voice yelled something about separation, and there was a push. They were on the water now. Emerson knew there was something beneath him that was not solid. Something he was pressing down on that wanted to breathe freely. He tried to remember the word “suffocate.”

There were people paddling and some calling out orders. How many people were on the raft? Too many. No raft could handle all the activity Emerson felt around him. He only stood up the one time to see that there was nothing to see. When he sat back down, he felt a new absence behind him. A voice rang out. Someone yelled something that he couldn’t make out. A flash of action. Two more absences. The raft suddenly felt as though it were lighter. There was a jostling. He tried to grab onto something, but there was only plastic. There was only the temptation of fog. He lay down wondering if there would be room. There was. There was nothing but room.

The raft settled where the river refused to turn. It didn’t feel stuck. It felt uncertain. Water moved around it. Emerson lay in the emptiness. Small rivulets would sneak over the top and parade across his belly. He thought of his wife and how small she looked in the bath when he found her. The doctor had said it was a heart attack. That it wasn’t drowning. That she had most likely died feeling at peace, because wasn’t water so peaceful? Emerson left the man’s office and took to his bed. Outside he imagined rain, and rain, and rain. He thought of rain filling the house and filling all the sinks and the tub and pushing his bed up to the ceiling where it would take everything else it had left behind the first time.

Now he was floating. There was retail between him and his fear. The water was simply beneath an inch--maybe two. He sat up and tried to remember the word for “fragment.” The fog had lifted on his left, and he could see what looked like shore. A convocation of trees carrying dead branches. A sitting rock. Indentations in careless mud. Earlier he couldn’t move, and now he felt an impulse to jump. Jump clear across the water and onto land. Generous, dry land. The kind that welcomed biblical heroes and unforgiven villains alike. He knew if he could only fly, not even fly, simply sail a bit, then he would be free.

His body was lumber. He knelt in the raft, and there was no question of standing. All balance was gone. Kneeling was all stability would allow. He saw the water adjusting itself around the raft. He was terrified to interfere with its chosen path. He remembered being a boy. He remembered the pull from his father and then the hard hand on his neck. He tasted the lime again. He tasted the bacteria and the protozoa and the dead and the living. But what was living? What was dead? There were no sounds anymore. No sirens. No crackle of fires introducing themselves to the forest. There was just him and the water and a patch of shore where he could stand if he could remember how to.

Emerson moved one leg off the raft and into the water. It was warmer than he assumed it would be. The bottom was low, but not low enough that he couldn’t stand. His neck would be above water, he surmised. Neck and head. Was that enough? It would have to be enough. Once his other leg was out of the raft, the entire apparatus floated away from him. There was no refuge now. It was shore or bust. He waded trepidatiously towards the sitting rock. That was his lighthouse. That was his point of focus. He was only a few feet away when he felt an unsteadiness where his left foot was stepping, and suddenly he was under.

The pull wasn’t there, but the pressure was. A barrel against his lungs. A compression chamber around his eyes. He kept his mouth closed, determined to never taste quarry again. There would be no hand on his neck this time. His father long gone. Everyone long gone. His children only calling to ask if he’d seen the news. Kierstyn in her government job letting him know that she could get him a place in a complex up in the mountains. Walter off the grid and swearing to never go back to it again. Mary Anne with her own children to worry about, calling him for advice. Asking what to do. What to do, what to do.

The pressure behind his neck felt like something familiar. Not the hand of a father, but something like a tap on the shoulder. A wake-up. His wife always woke before him. She’d go for a walk and write in her journal. She’d put the coffee on, and then there it was. A tap on the shoulder. Time for him to get up. Time to begin the day. There was an influence happening around him. Maneuvering him towards that tapping sensation. There was no need to follow it; he need only to fight his instinct to resist. As he made strides against the internal urge to swat away the mobile pressure, he felt a cascade of oxygen come upon him.

His hands gripped something malleable.

Mud. That careless mud.

Emerson looked up to see the sitting rock beside him. His hand reached out and admired its sediment. Above him was a branch that appeared to be living despite its source bearing nothing but crisp annihilation. He smelled smoke, but it wasn’t close. Hands to lift himself up, and then legs to stand. Yes, he could stand. Something seemed to remind him that he could. He was only up for a moment, when he needed to sit back down. Luckily, the rock provided. Things were always provided if you were prepared to be provided for in ways you had not previously imagined. He looked at the river. It was turning again. It had found its way.

Emerson Carver thought of his wife, and he remembered her name.

“Roberta.”

His own name would come to him later. He’d simply open his mouth, and the sound that came out would be his name.

Or something close enough.