River Boy

by Tim Bowler

  She bent down and looked at the mushy ground, at the water oozing up from it as if by some mysterious power, then took the lid off the urn and stared at the strange, powdery ash.

  And her thoughts ran back to Grandpa again, and she remembered his face as she had always known it, with its wicked eyes and laughing mouth, and she thought of his cussedness, his cantankerousness, his sense of humor, and . . .

  And all that he had been.

  And somehow still was.

  And she looked at the ashes and shook her head. These ashes were not Grandpa. They were soft and unresistant, moving according to her will as she tipped the urn from side to side; so unlike him.

  The real Grandpa was not here. The real Grandpa was as free as wind and water and sky. He was feeling no pain over this, and neither would she.

  She tipped the urn and let a tiny portion of the ashes trickle into the water from the source. The water collected them, and they started to run down with the current, some catching against the soft earth at the sides but most of them floating down like tiny seeds toward the greater stream.

  She thought back to what the boy had said about the river; that even when it reaches the end, it’ll already have started renewing itself here. She hadn’t understood him then; but she understood now.

  She tipped again and sprinkled more ashes into the water and watched them float away, specks of Grandpa’s life but no longer part of him, nothing to cling on to, nothing to hold him back.

  Or her.

  Life would go on again. There was no need for pain, only a wholesome sorrow that would, in time, relent. She looked into the urn and saw it was half-full, and stood up and started to walk down in the stream, sprinkling little trails into the water ahead of her and following them down toward the head of the fall.

  And when she reached the lip and stood there, just as the river boy had done only a short time before, and felt the power of the stream breaking over her legs and thrusting down into its mad descent, she knew that the spirit of Grandpa was not here in this place of magic, but in her, in Mom and Dad, in Alfred, in everyone who had ever known him.

  But the spirit of the river boy was in her alone.

  She raised her arm and tipped the urn one final time; and the last of the ashes scattered into flight, to be lost in bubbling life. She stared after them, tears starting again, then threw the urn down into the water.

  And dived after it.

  And, as she flew down, the air ruffling her face, she caught the river boy’s presence one last time.