by Peter Rock
“Can we ride it? Once we go in?”
“Of course,” I said. “And then we’ll have lunch.”
- 52 -
It was my father who found the article, in the following day’s newspaper. I was drinking coffee and eating a piece of toast when he slid the paper across the table.
The article reported that a group of schoolchildren claimed to have seen a body. Out off the end of the peninsula, in the middle of Death’s Door. These children were on the ferry between Northport and Washington Island, and some had binoculars.
At first they thought the body was floating, motionless, and then they believed it was swimming.
The children were part of a tour group, and didn’t tell any adults what they’d seen until later in the day, when they were on the island. They hadn’t been believed, right away—it had been taken for a made-up story—but eventually the Coast Guard was called.
The boats searched all through Death’s Door, even out beyond Rock Island, but no body was found.
After breakfast, I set my plate in the sink and stepped into the garden, toward the path through the trees.
“Wait!” my daughters called. “Where are you going? We’re coming!”
“No,” I said. “I’ll be right back. Find Grambee—she has something for you.”
The screen door slapped shut behind them; their voices faded.
I crossed through back yards, parking lots, skirted the boundaries of old hideouts. The distant whine of a motorboat, hidden from view, the hush of a breeze in the cedars above.
The door to Mrs. Abel’s house was wide open; on the table rested an apple, a ring of keys. Her blue swimsuit hung from the ladder to the loft.
I could see through the window that the orange chairs had blown off the pier, into the shallows, so I went back outside, around the house, down the slope.
The white towel, twisted and dirty, had washed up on the beach. I stepped over it, wading into the shallows. When I lifted the chairs, crayfish scuttled away, backward, claws aloft. I stumbled, almost losing my balance as I splashed back to shore.
Clouds slid loose from the sun, my shadow black against the white stones.
Turning, I carried the chairs to the end of the pier, where I unfolded and set them down as they had been before. The water was clear, and through it I could see the pale lakebed, stretching away from me into depths I could not see through or into.
And then a flash of blue, of red, and faint voices. Down the shoreline, my daughters raced across the white beach, ready to swim.
Acknowledgments
Thanks first and foremost to my household—Ella, Ida, Miki—whose necessity to me is evident within this book; their patience with me allows its very existence. Thanks to Mark Doten, the exactly right editor, who encouraged me to make it wilder, not to tame it. Thanks to past editors who helped with insight and goodwill: Adrienne Brodeur, Harry Kirchner, Lauren Wein. Thanks to Jim Rutman and all at Sterling Lord. Thanks to the estimable Maya West. Thanks to Colleen Plumb for the beautiful cover image. Thanks to other friends, acquaintances and family—especially my Aunt Dee Brestin—for appearing in this book in ways that might surprise them. Deep thanks to Semi Chellas, for generosity then and now; a pleasure to break up with you, twenty years late. Thanks to Charles Burchfield, who died right before I was born; in his stead, thanks to all at the Burchfield-Penney Museum, especially the hugely helpful Kathleen Heyworth. Thanks to the Guggenheim Foundation. Thanks to Sheri Gilbert for pursuing copyright permissions, and to all the editors, agents and functionaries who sometimes freely gave rights and occasionally charged exorbitant fees. Thanks to the Reed College Dean’s Office Stillman-Drake Fund for paying these fees, and (in conjunction with English Department Eddings Funds) for bankrolling extensive isolation tank research. Thanks to Jolie Griffin for scanning the Loch Ness Monster. Thanks to all at Soho Press. Thanks to Ursula, for her advice, example and friendship. Thanks to everyone else I’ve met so far.
This book is in conversation with many other texts, artifacts, images and songs. Material reproduced, excerpted or referenced within the text is done so by permission, through fair use, or is in the public domain. Texts and images not listed below are the property of the author or of friends who shared them.
Images:
Charles E. Burchfield (1893-1967)
Forest Fire in Moonlight, 1920
watercolor, gouache, and pencil on paper
26 1/4 x 18 3/4 inches
Private Collection
Charles E. Burchfield (1893-1967)
The Night Wind, 1918
watercolor, gouache, and pencil on paper
21 1/2 x 21 7/8 inches
Museum of Modern Art, Gift of A. Conger Goodyear
Peter MacNab photograph of the Loch Ness Monster. First published in: Whyte, Constance. More Than a Legend: The Story of the Loch Ness Monster. Hamish Hamilton, 1961.
Jule Eisenbud collection on Ted Serios and thoughtographic photography, Collection 23, Special Collections, University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
David Seymour/Magnum Photos: “Blind boy who lost his arms during the war has learnt to read with his lips.” Rome, 1948.
Albert Zahn
Bird Soaring on a Plane; reproduced in I’ll Fly Away. John Michael Kohler Arts Center, 2003.
Lyrics:
“Get Behind the Mule”
written by Tom Waits, Kathleen Brennan ©1999, Jalma Music (ASCAP)
Used by permission. All rights reserved.
“Murder in the Red Barn” written by Tom Waits, Kathleen Brennan ©1992, Jalma Music (ASCAP)
Used by permission. All rights reserved.
“Side of the Road” written by Lucinda Williams © 1992 Warner-Tamerlane Publishing Corp. (BMI) All rights reserved. Used by permission of Alfred Music.
Texts:
Ashbery, John. “Crazy Weather.” Houseboat Days, 1977. Copyright © 1975, 1976, 1977, 1999 by John Ashbery. Reprinted by permission of Georges Borchardt, Inc., on behalf of the author.
Brautigan, Richard. Trout Fishing in America. Dell Laurel, 1973.
Brown, J.R. The Hollow Tree: A Repository for my Acorns. Manuscript. 1994.
Burchfield, Charles. Charles Burchfield’s Journals: The Poetry of Place (ed. J. Benjamin Townsend). State University of New York Press, 1992.
Camus, Albert (tr. Philip Toudy). Notebooks 1935-1942 (Volume 1). Ivan R. Dee, 2010.
Harmsworth, Anthony. The Mysterious Monsters of Loch Ness. Photo Precision, 1980.
Hemingway, Ernest. Selected Letters. Scribner Classics, 1968.
Hemingway, Ernest. Winner Take Nothing. Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1993.
Le Guin, Ursula. A Wizard of Earthsea. Bantam Dell, 1968.
Lewis, C.S. The Horse and His Boy. Puffin Books, 1965.
Lewis, C.S. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Puffin Books, 1959.
Lewis, C.S. Prince Caspian. Puffin Books, 1962.
Murray, M.D., Henry A. Thematic Apperception Test. Harvard University Press, 1943.
Oehler, Pauline. “The Psychic Photography of Ted Serios.” Fate magazine, December, 1962, pp. 69-82.
Poe, Edgar Allan. The Portable Edgar Allan Poe. Penguin Classics, 2006.
Rilke, Rainer Maria (tr. Charlie Louth). Letters to a Young Poet. Penguin Classics, 2013.
Rilke, Rainer Maria (tr. Jane Bannard Greene). Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke, 1910-1926. W.W. Norton, 1969.
Shurtleff, Michael. Audition. Bantam, 1980.
Warner, Gertrude Chandler. The Boxcar Children. Scholastic, 2005.
Wilder, Laura Ingalls. The Long Winter. HarperCollins, 2008.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig (tr. G.E.M. Anscombe). Remarks on Colour. Wiley-Blackwell, 1991.
Zahn, Albert. I’ll Fly Away. John Michael Kohler Arts Center, 2003.
br /> Peter Rock, The Night Swimmers
