Currents

“Think fast!”

The flopping sunfish collided with his chest and he squealed, throwing his hands back and shutting his eyes. The fish landed in the creek with a healthy plop and swam away downstream, through his legs ankle-deep in the water. Its back glittered beneath the surface until it was out of sight.

“You’re such a girl sometimes!” I laughed, good-naturedly.

”They’re gross, Keaton! They’re covered in slime!”

He bent down and sloshed his bronze hands around in the clear freshwater. My two remaining captures swam in my bucket like Pisces, placidly tracing the path left by the other in circles, never touching. I picked up my fishing rod and reeled it in all the way. The fish were eager today, and I could count on him not to scare them off while he tiptoed over the rocks like a crane, gazing through the liquid glass with his focus and thin legs, never so much as disturbing a minnow.

“So I guess you wouldn’t want to put a worm on for me either?”

“I don’t think so.”

He grabbed his plastic bowl and turned upstream again, the current licking higher against his ankles’ bulwark. On the bank by my fish bucket, our shoes were lined like colorful teeth with sock fillings, and his stack of biology textbooks towered over his pink canvas loafers. Each book was about water-animals: microorganisms in streams, crustaceans of American lakes, freshwater vertebrate life cycles…I don’t know how he could remember all of that. To me, the water was just a place to fish, or maybe swim; the day was definitely hot enough for it, but we were shrouded from the noon sun by lush layers of backlit leaves. The forest’s ceiling was a high-up tent of lime green we played under like stowaways, safe from all the mess of the outside, running through the shallow creek in the shade, our noise only interrupting the jingling of water over rock and the soft conversations of treetops; I loved how it felt like we were running away together, and I imagined the fish in my bucket were our only chance at a meal. That sort of lamb-living was always exciting. I took my shirt off even if I wasn’t going to swim—my dad was shirtless any chance he got, especially while fishing—and decked my hook with a thin worm fresh from the ground. Only Harvey was upset that I didn't have a tackle box. I cast downstream, turning my back to him.

“You know,” I said, sort of shouting, “they say the biggest fish are in Montana.”

“Who? I haven’t read that anywhere—why is your shirt off?” I heard over my shoulder. He always got skittish when others showed skin, especially boys. We had gone to the lake with our camp-mates and he never even took his shorts off. He never let me see him without a shirt either, even if no one was around.

“My dad and uncle. They caught the biggest, meanest bass out there one year—big as a lab, they said.”

“That sounds terrifying. What do they even do with it? Something like that could feed a whole family,” I could hear him sloshing towards me. I turned.

“No, keep fishing! Don’t worry.” He put an Indian paintbrush behind my ear. I met his hazel eyes, marbled like the sunfish in that green-hued light. They were brilliant, set like gems in his face. He didn’t linger, moving his eyes directly from mine to the water and turning back.

“Don’t know…definitely didn’t eat it, though—probably just threw it back.”

“So they pulled it out of the water just to watch it wiggle around? Sounds like a waste. Did they take a picture?”

“No, they said they didn’t have a camera. This was back in the 80’s—no phones.”

“Hm…something tells me your father and his brother aren’t being entirely—oh! I found one!”

I turned again; this time as he was pulling his plastic bowl from the water. I reeled my line in and set the rod on the bank with the shoes. Inside the bowl I could see a brown lump darting around like a crazy goldfish in a tank too small.

“Is that a frog?” I asked, warily.

“Why would I ever catch a frog? They’re everywhere,” he laughed. “It’s a water bug. Their babies go through metamorphic phases like other aquatic invertebrates to turn into these things. They store their own air, you know, in bubbles on their butts. Some call them ‘toe-biters’ because of how painful their bite is. Just swimming around down there looking for toes like…like a toe-shark.”

“A ‘toe-shark’?” Even though he was definitely smarter than me, with all his books and animals, I was the more poetic. Up close, the bug was horrifying. Its big black eyes were cut like an alien’s, two giant arms protruded from its head, and it had the misfortune of being built like a big cockroach. It felt like something I shouldn't be looking at, and knowing then how it sported a nasty bite made me uneasy, like I wanted to jump out of the water right then in case the round stones under my bare feet turned out to be some of them.

“How is a big bass scarier than that? Won’t that hurt you?”

“Only if I let it.”

His mind wandered away from me in that way it always did, when he was taken by something new and interesting to him, lost in his specimen. Who could tell what he was thinking? To fear a fish and love a freakish bug…

“Don’t worry—they’re kind of rare,” he blurted after some silence had passed. “I didn’t expect to find one. I’ll let it loose downstream—it’ll just swim away.”

He tread along the bank and released the monster. Knowing it was in the water kind of put me off from fishing—that and all the success I had already—so I started toward our stuff, but didn’t even make it to the bank when I heard a high-pitched yelp and a splash. He had slipped, fallen on his side in the creek, completely drenching his shorts and button-down. I started stressing over the bug and ran to him, but all he did was moan over his clothes, even if it was a perfect summer day. I offered my t-shirt laying in a heap on dry land.

“Alright, but don’t look while I’m changing.”

“I won’t. But we’re both guys, after all; it’s not like you have to worry about me seeing something wrong or different.” I started putting my shoes on while I waited. He didn’t reply until he was done.

We marched back to the cabin in that blinding afternoon light. July in Virginia is unforgiving, and we used all the free time we had while at camp to beat the heat, playing in that cool tunnel of the creek. Camp Lasso was a summer program parents could leave their kids at to make friends and mess around under someone else’s supervision while school was out. It had junior and early-teen divisions, and it was advertised as educational, so you can bet there were some real well-read types sent there—some from real wealth. I loved to learn, but I was just happy to be in the outdoors with people my own age; my dad never sent me there as a means to get me away or school me. It was just because I liked having fun—and I liked seeing Harvey.

As we entered the grounds, I could hear something change in his footsteps. He dropped the arm cradling his books from his chest and let it hang—he halted. A dark blue Cadillac was parked outside of the main lodge.

“They didn’t text me that they would be coming…”

“Who?”

“My parents. That’s their car.”

Harvey’s family lived in Virginia, nearby enough that they could drive, but still over two hours away. That they had shown up well before the end of the program was a commitment—something had happened. Even though that summer was my third stay at Lasso, I had never seen his family enough to know them well. The driver’s seat door opened and a tall, tan man stepped out onto the sun-baked gravel. He was dressed like he had just come from a business party, mean and skinny as a whip in his white slacks, moccasins, and gelled, black hair that reflected sunlight like the hood of his car. The lot smelled thickly of warm earth, ground when it has no moisture to weigh it down so its dust and grains float upward. We were at a distance from the Cadillac, and I remember a heat wave rippling his lean figure in the distance.

”Harvey! What the hell are you doing?! I’ve been waiting here for thirty minutes! Get your ass over here!” He boomed.

Harvey let out a sharp sigh through his nose.

“I’m coming!” He replied. “Go ahead, Keaton. I’ll find you later.”

I felt for him. He had told me a little of his situation, of his family’s emotional poverty despite their money, but like I said I had never seen it for myself. I thought of patting him on the shoulder, but he started walking away before I had the chance. He moved pretty fast—I don’t blame him. He was lost in the garbling heatwave before I could take a second step.

The Cadillac wasn’t by the main lodge when the bell rang for dinner, nor was his face in the throngs of kids lining up for spaghetti and meatballs. A group of boys were roughing it up in line, while Rudy Burns, the absolute worst at any science projects they tasked us with, streaked his face with whipping ribbons of sauce; Harvey missed a real show. I didn’t have a cellphone myself, and I remember the frustration of not being able to just call him. I had never felt the need to own one until then.

It wasn’t until that night, when everyone was tucked into their bunks sound asleep, that I saw him—for the last time. The cabin door squeaked open, a blade of summer moonlight carving over the plank floor and its ridges, and then came those calm little steps. Other boys teased him for walking like all daintily, but I liked it, and it sure was useful. He moved again like a heron in the moonlight, never scaring any fish.

His footfalls came right up to my bedside, and I felt the blanket move as he invited himself under it.

“Harv, what happened?” I asked, as quietly as I possibly could.

“I’m running away, Keaton. I can’t be around my parents anymore—I’ve decided.”

I thought he was talking crazy.

”Run away!? Where to? We’re fourteen!”

“My dad came today to say he didn’t like me being here anymore, that he needs to teach me how to be a man—that I should be ashamed of myself…the maid went through my things at home…”

I felt him grab my hand beneath the sheets. I didn’t follow what he was saying. To me, he was completely normal, nothing to be ashamed of. Sure, he was meek, and maybe too tidy, but he was smart and funny and always polite. What wasn’t I seeing? We both heard Jackson Hamilton roll over in his bed, then resume his dumb snoring.

“Harv, don’t run away. This is a bad idea. Are your parents outside now?”

“No, I took a bus to get here. I’m leaving for real; I can’t live otherwise.”

He gave my hand a firm squeeze and forced a bunch of fabric into it. He stepped out of the bed, just as gracefully as he had slipped in, and stopped gently to trace his fingers over my cheekbone. I didn’t know how to react. As he stood above me, I swear I saw tears in his eyes, glinting like springwater in the dark cabin. I didn’t follow him that night, as his shadow made for the door—he felt to me like a wild creature I had no right to interrupt, only witness—but I didn’t get much sleep either. I didn’t want to turn a light on and wake my bunk mates, but as soon as dawn’s rosy dye began to paint over my covers I could see what he had thrust into my hand for what it was: the shirt I had lent him, bundled around a little note.

It read, “Please don’t forget me. I’ll wait for you.”

The following years were filled with questions I I told myself I would never find the answers to. Life, for better or worse, moves on, and a fourteen-year-old isn’t the best at worrying about something out of his power. I entered high school, my body grew, the lenses through which I saw the world changed color, my uncle passed, college started, I fell in love with a woman from my hometown…the unpredictable sequence of all that you go through, that leaves you sanded and rolled like a rock in a tumbler.

So why relive all of this again? Because even though ten years have gone by, I still think about that boy from Virginia, running into the night with nothing but the clothes on his back—my friend of three summers begging me not to forget him. It left a real anchor in me; it didn’t drag me down to the sea floor, but kept parts of me stuck in certain spots, and when my girlfriend asked if I’d like to spend a week in June with her in the warm heart of Virginia, a chain was pulled.

We drove the four hours from our Maryland house to the resort, knowing we were close when the steep swathes of the Appalachian mountains surrounded us. The trees were conversing endlessly and I couldn’t resist rolling all the windows down, breathing deep those perfumes so rich with the alive they never seem to change—always perfect. The light streaked through the boughs and splattered across the road, and I thought of the creek and its sunfish darting beneath the surface just like the evening glints—and the possibility of a toe-shark hidden along the road somewhere.

We arrived, skin tingling in the air conditioning, and placed our things in our room. It sported a real gorgeous view over the infinite green here well before us, and around to sway well after.

“Want to eat now? They just opened the restaurant downstairs; I don’t think they’d mind if we’re a little early with our reservation,” she said.

“Sure,” I replied. What better way to start a vacation?

It was only six o’clock and the dining room had just opened its doors, so not many customers had filtered in yet. I confirmed my name and reservation: a table near the edge of the room, where enormous windows stretched from the velvet carpet to the embossed ceiling. Real luxury. The sunset could reach its fine fingers here, too, stained green from pushing all the leaves aside. We were seated and our orders were taken: a mojito for her and just one beer for me—I don't drink much. We placed our orders for food after a few sips, and sat waiting quietly in the waning light. It might’ve been the beer, or the release after a long day of travel, but I felt a great sense of calm. I couldn’t wait for the chance to reunite with a place I had grown so distant from; my body embraced the sights and the Viriginian sunset, and a warm blanket of sleepiness waved over me like the afterglow of a day at the beach. The beer was cool against my throat and my girlfriend looked dazzling by the window, her blonde hair lit into a crisp halo—but something happened to shake it all up.

Our waiter brought my girlfriend her meal, balancing the dish with his left hand and sliding it easily down to her table setting, while another waitress I hadn’t seen until then came with mine. Having two waitstaff wasn’t the strange part—that happens all the time. What was strange was the woman who brought me my food. She set it down right in front of me, as a waitress should, but was oddly silent, stiff and quick. The sunlight touched her tan hands delicately, stark over the white tablecloth, but when I looked up with a “thank you” and a small smile, I was locked in place by an arresting brightness. Framed by curtains of dark, sleek hair, two green marbles shined back at me, impossibly pure—and impossibly familiar. Her expression was hard to describe; to anyone else it would’ve seemed neutral, a regular shape of polite meekness, but if you made eye contact, if you were me, there was a constellation far greater: a little fear, the wetness of shock, genuine plea, and, to me, a little joy. It was as if she were shouting a million different words through me. I couldn’t muster anything to say; I didn’t know what to say. She turned on her heels, too fast for me to glimpse her name tag.

Had we met? I couldn’t place it, but her gait when she was walking back to the kitchen, the easy movement of her legs and her lithe figure—and those eyes! I swear I could hear the water rushing under that gaze of swimming hazel, and could see the diagrams of fish and plankton dancing right beneath them.

“Keaton! Close your mouth, you look like a trout! Your girlfriend is sitting right next to you, you know.”

I felt a hard pang, and was brought back to the table, to my present.

“It’s nothing—just thought I saw someone I knew.”

”Well, don’t let me catch you staring like that,” she chuckled to herself. “Mm…you'll love the steak..”

I didn’t have it in me to go through it all with her.

I started on my food. After all those years, I sure didn’t forget.