The River Swimmer

by Jim Harrison

  Emily was delighted saying that she always had wanted a part animal for a boyfriend. A key turned and her father entered.

  “I should have knocked.”

  “Why?” Emily said teasingly.

  “Yes of course my virgin sister of mercy in your black BMW.” He shook Thad’s hand. “You’re a chesty lad. Farm raised, I understand, so am I.”

  “Yes, sir.” Thad shook his hand thinking he had never seen such a beautiful suit. He had two first names: John Scott Walpole.

  They chatted about their mutual farm background with John Scott being raised on a large soybean and wheat operation in eastern Kansas and with Brazil getting the edge on soybeans right now it was all wheat, run by his two brothers and what with great wheat prices now the timing was perfect. John Scott insisted that Thad get his cheek checked before he began work for him at a warehouse and Thad said he had a doctor’s number.

  “Then do it.” John Scott inanely handed him the phone.

  At that moment Emily walked to the corner as Thad’s cell rang and she looked at the caller ID. She picked up and listened a moment then shrieked and slid down with her butt on the floor. Thad ran to her and took the phone and quickly dizzied and wilted himself. Thad’s father had gone to a farm auction down the road and been beaten with tire irons by three of Friendly Frank’s mechanics that morning. He was now in the ICU at Grand Rapids Blodget. Now John Scott took the phone. It is not widely known how effective and energetic some men of wealth and power (third-generation Chicago commercial real estate) are. Within minutes he talked to Rick, Thad’s mother, Frank’s daughter Laurie, a Northwestern University classmate who was thought to be a lawyer and the hardest piece of work in Grand Rapids, the Kent County prosecutor and the Kent County sheriff, ending with “Just be there,” his functional King Air pilot at Meigs, called his driver, ordered sandwiches to pack along, then explained how they were going to clarify matters. He was totally conscious that this wasn’t his business but it defiled his sense of order and his daughter’s well-being. On the way to the airport Thad continued to fill him in on the past events to which he responded “I hate bullies” and “small town big shots” recounting a couple of major rural Kansas friends. In two hours they were in Thad’s father’s hospital room at Blodgett along with the prosecutor, sheriff, and John Scott’s lawyer. Thad kissed his father’s forehead. He was in a half-body and head cast.

  “I hope you’re stupid enough to testify that our client started a fight with three big men with tire irons?” the lawyer said to the sheriff.

  Thad felt uncomfortable. His favorite teacher taught history and was known locally as the “left winger” but was also the best fisherman and hunter which got him off the political hook locally. His notion was that the human beast’s knack for unnecessarily crushing each other kept the human race on the hot seat. He contended that he had been treated more politely in a North Vietnam prison camp than by the local Republicans. He had amassed a great deal of historical knowledge about the violence of language and now in the hospital room it seemed meaningless to Thad to wipe up the floor with the sheriff when the central malefactor was Friendly Frank who would finally be charged for the barrel stave across the cheek and his own daughter would testify. Laurie had told him that her father had been deeply embarrassed when the police had explained that it was Thad who had saved him from hypothermia and drowning. ­Laurie wanted Thad to sue her father for enough to go out to Scripps in California, his heart’s desire, which was to study water and its inhabitants. He was pleased that Emily’s father John Scott was on their side but was lucidly aware that he was the kind of man of immense wealth and power who had made the world financial community such a mess in recent times. As his teacher had drummed into them, how could greed be the primary virtue of a culture?

  The sheriff had been squeezed dry and feeble.

  “I’m surprised that you’re unconcerned by the violence in your territory. Look at this young man’s face.”

  “He was trespassing,” the sheriff said lamely.

  “He was on the dock at the invitation of the daughter, his classmate. That cannot be construed as trespassing any more than shooting someone trick-or-treating on Halloween. No citizen has that kind of freedom any more than he has owning a pit bull that kills a neighbor’s kid. Your Friendly Frank is not all in all a bad guy, is publicly generous, but should not be allowed to control the community as a bully.”

  “He’s not going to be allowed to,” said John Scott. “He’s about to get his ass kicked.”

  That’s where Thad felt uncomfortable. It wasn’t the battle of the titans but maybe the battle of dicks. Why did men have to be this way? Thad’s doubt from Chicago reentered him. Emily was holding his father’s head and flirting with him.

  “You’re prettier than a speckled pup,” she said.

  “We say that in Kansas,” John Scott added, proud of his daughter’s beauty.

  The hospital room became inconclusive except the sheriff was humiliated and the prosecutor angry with him. “You’ve got to stop sucking up to Friendly Frank. Look at the boy’s face. That’s clearly felonious assault. And now look at his father for Christ’s sake. You’re letting a bully run the town. I know he was your largest campaign contributor.”

  Thad felt a slight wave of nausea over money and power, including Laurie and Emily. Nothing ever seemed to be denied to rich girls. He met Laurie in Grand Rapids last fall for her school shopping and a Chinese meal and a trip to Schuler Books and he had estimated she had spent a couple of grand which seemed repellent. What kind of preparation for life can wealth be except to make it easy? At least Emily and Laurie had a lot of curiosity and were good students. In the seventh grade his crush was Tooth’s niece. They hung out camping, fishing, and hunting. Everyone called her Dove because doves weren’t legal hunting prey in Michigan, a law she always violated. She shot them with her BB gun or baited and trapped them, plucked them and gutted them over a wood fire for Thad. Her father was the prime somewhat legal tribal meat supplier, shooting as many as thirty deer in the fall for older members. Sometimes when they camped and fished for brown trout Dove would cook a stew of dried sweet corn, venison, and fresh squash. They had such a good time his heart broke apart when they split up and she said, “You like those rich pretty cunts not a big-nosed Chip girl.”

  It was obvious Dove was going to go fast as a wife because of her hunting and cooking abilities. Now she had two kids and when she came out to the farm it was a melancholy occasion. Dove frequently irritated his father because she always outfished him. When they’d go off on a fishing trip in a rowboat they’d pack along a Dutch oven and her renowned store of sundried sweet corn, wild leeks, squash, and venison including many marrow bones. It was Thad’s favorite dish in life. He even liked Dove’s husband, a gentle and kind soul with no drinking problems. He felt strangely jealous of the children age two and three, a girl and a boy, named Pudge and Bone, who behaved like bear cubs. Thad himself was known among the tribal people as Human Fish. Tooth told him that a northern Michigan writer friendly with the tribe and author of somber works was known as One Who Goes into the Dark a Long Ways and We Hope He Comes Back. Generally in America tribal people are desperately misunderstood because no one takes the trouble and aggressive snoops are not welcome. Rather than dream, white people are given more latitude just as earlier in our history exploratory botanists were revered as earth divers. Thad was never sure what to think, having grown up around them so he had never felt distanced. There was nothing particularly spiritual about it but was mostly Grandpa’s matter-of-fact English at home sense of where he lived.

  When they all left the hospital room there was a general sense of victory except with Thad, who as a peacemaker just wanted it to be over and had invoked his water babies in his head to calm himself down. He remembered with amusement when he and Dove would push the rowboat off to go camping Tooth would call from the porch “No
babies, please,” and he would be embarrassed and Dove would laugh and shove.

  Emily and John Scott had dinner at the farm and spent the night. They loved the little dragline barge that got them to the island. “I feel safe here,” said John Scott and Thad wondered why he ever felt unsafe owning a goodly piece of Chicago. Thad’s mother had some Cornish pasties in her freezer. Both her grandmother and John Scott’s people were from the Lyme Regis area of Cornwall and there was a good evening of chatter but about 3 a.m. the bottom fell out of the family. Dove called saying the state police came to the door saying her husband had died in an auto accident near Mount Pleasant on the way back from a meeting in Lansing, the state capital, on tribal business. Tooth began to wail with power and she and Thad’s mother drove off to pick up Dove and the babies as Dove didn’t like her in-laws. They were back in an hour and John Scott sat on the sofa between Tooth and her niece both of whom were wailing at a volume never used in the funerals or mourning of white people. Dove kept screaming what would happen to the babies and her. Thad’s mother shushed her and she and Tooth took her to the spare bedroom near the pump house on the main floor. They would clear it all, it was a big room, and Dove and her babies would move in with them after they enclosed a bathroom. Dove could help with the farm while Thad’s father convalesced. Emily piped up that babies needed a father figure and Thad would work. “The dreamer?” Dove asked and everyone laughed. It was an obvious relief to Dove and Tooth that they would be taken in partly because of Dove’s dislike for her in-laws. Thad liked the idea of playing Dad to the two roly-polies while working on the farm. Meanwhile he and John Scott were making breakfast for everyone. John Scott said that as the sixth son and no daughter on the farm he had to help his mother with the cooking and learned to enjoy it. It was pleasant setting up a pork roast for lunch rather than freezing your ass in October. Making bread and rolls was his favorite. Emily was in the way and couldn’t crack an egg so formed sausage patties. Dove pushed Thad aside to make some big cheese omelets and he held the babies fighting on his lap on the sofa. They were laughing and trying to bite each other. He had always wanted a sister but now could see how combative they could be. Even though they were the same size she was the better fighter, as with lions.

  By breakfast time and a big skillet of fried new potatoes Dove was pacified, with a nice place to live among people she loved including her aunt. Children sense that grandmothers are substitute mothers and the babies were easily controlled by Tooth where Thad struggled.

  Thad and John Scott went out to the front porch to stare at the river, the only possible palliative. John Scott lightly brought up the idea that Thad might need financing.

  “That might be inappropriate,” Thad said. “Since Great-Grandpa we’ve been proud we kept our heads above water here.”

  “What about college for instance. It’s up to thirty or forty grand a year. I’m putting what was Emily’s soccer team through college. We recruited them from third world areas in Chicago. Faster and hungrier.”

  “Maybe I’ll get a scholarship to a good place.”

  “And maybe not.”

  “Well marine biology and oceanography weren’t the most rational choices but what I love.”

  “You’re Emily’s friend. And in a religious sense I tithe to education because it’s what I believe in and I can afford it. Just think of members of Congress being truly educated.”

  “I can’t imagine.” Thad laughed. He had been quietly brooding about tomorrow being Tomato Day, June 4, the first date felt to be guaranteed frost free.

  Thad had looked at the two hundred 5-foot-long hardwood stakes in storage. He hoped to start at 5 a.m. to finish in one day. Laurie wanted to come out to help as she had the two previous years. She and her mother flower gardened at home but her father felt that growing vegetables was low-class and ugly. Mother was going to pick up Dad at the Grand Rapids hospital in the morning. She had been worried about the cost but the lawyer said that could be an easy lawsuit. John Scott dozed off. He would be picked up for his plane to Chicago in a few hours so they would have an early supper that Dove and Tooth were working on. Thad glanced at the sleeping John Scott and wondered how though everyone in the culture seemed to want to be wealthy it couldn’t be easy if you also had a conscience. How could you help if that were possible? It seemed apparent in the recent press that men such as Warren Buffett and Bill Gates actually seemed disturbed about extreme wealth.

  Emily came tiptoeing down the path in a tiny swimsuit for a dip in the river. It was unreasonably warm for early June and she swatted a mosquito on her arm. Thad’s thoughts were errant. It was somehow the twin mysteries of sexual attraction and the water babies he had seen. Was it wrong to keep their beauty from those he loved? Probably. Laurie’s life was so blemished by her horrid father. By coincidence his cell rang and it said Laurie so he answered but it was her father who began ranting immediately saying that if his daughter testified against him he would disown her, thus Thad would cost his only child millions of dollars. Thad joked that it would be good for her to work for a living. Friendly Frank went berserk saying that if Thad didn’t drop charges, also his dad, they were in grave danger. Thad said he would be glad to pass along his threat to the prosecutor. The man started yelling, then there was a shriek. Laurie grabbed the phone from her father and ran for it, saying she hoped to get out that evening after her father’s monthly special gourmet dinner. She couldn’t leave her mother alone without defense as her father tended to be especially impetuous during these dinners when the menu was composed of things the dozen invitees brought. The cook was a graduate student at the University of Michigan and from Lyon, France, who had a part-time business catering such meals for rich Americans.

  Thad disrobed to his undies and swam with Emily to keep her safe as the current was swift on the river’s far side. There was a hollow in a bank thicket so they could neck in privacy and more. Emily was strong from sports but didn’t look so with a smooth body. He felt it was more likely he’d show Laurie the water babies. Laurie had spent time growing up in the largest woodlot behind their house to avoid her parents and as a student of nature would find the water babies less alarming.

  Tooth and Dove had made a venison stew for supper that John Scott thought tasted French. Tooth explained that many Chippewas had married French Canadians, including her grandmother who married a man from Montreal who worked in the timber business. She had gone to France once and loved to tell tribal members how the French ate snakes which were really eels.

  Emily begged to stay behind to help with the tomato planting. She loved tomatoes but had no real idea how they were raised. Thad assured John Scott he would be back in Chicago after things calmed down. John Scott said that Emily would rent a car and they could drive down the coast, or even through the Upper Peninsula and down through Wisconsin. He explained he had owned a nice little farm way up near Ladysmith, Wisconsin, but had a flirtation with a woman who pursued him to Chicago and in order to save his marriage he sold the farm.

  Pudge and Bone were making trouble fighting and biting each other and Dove and Tooth were played out cleaning up after dinner. Thad’s mother had gone to her room over worry about her wounded husband. Pudge and Bone had never had a proper naming ceremony. Pudge was almost three and ate too much but was very tough and Bone nearly four, named by Tooth for his propensity for toying with his pecker which little boys do. They felt the vacuum of their father’s death. What can little children know about death? Thad tried to take care of the kids and repeatedly read them Goodnight Moon, one of his favorite stories. They dozed off in their big bed in the new quarters organized for them by Thad’s mother. Thad went back to his current book Fluvial Processes in Geomorphology, a primer text for water people. June is hard on children because bedtime isn’t dark that close to the solstice so they think it’s unfair they should be in bed when there’s still daylight. When John Scott and the plane had buzzed the farm twice Bone
had yelled “Bird” and Pudge screamed “Plane,” jumping Bone’s back, bearing him to the ground and punching him. She clearly saw herself as her brother’s cop, the queen of earthly order.

  About half past ten he heard Laurie yelling from across the river. He fetched her in the rowboat and it was a grim story. Thad, his mother, Emily, Dove, Tooth sat with her at the kitchen table. During the dessert course of the fancy dinner Friendly Frank’s nasty lawyer had started goading Laurie about testifying against her father. She said, “Don’t talk to me.” Her father had crammed the soufflé in her face, breaking her nose with the pan. Everyone left in disgust except the lawyer, naturally. Laurie’s eyes were black and blue.

  “You should have let him drown,” Thad’s mother said.

  “Next deer season I’ll shoot the cocksucker,” Tooth offered. “I know where he hunts.”

  Emily held the trembling Laurie and Thad brooded while his mother had a much needed drink. He felt both murderous and powerless. He would make sure the prosecutor learned what had happened to a witness.

  Thad was up at 4 a.m. having coffee in the first trace of light on the eastern-facing front porch. He heard the tractor and went to help his mother load the flats of tomato plants onto the wagon next to her greenhouse where she had started them out in early May. Dove brought him out an egg sandwich which he ate hastily, then began driving the two hundred stakes. The process was simple in that you attached the planted tomato to the stake with a twist tie of the kind used to seal a loaf of bread. He felt good about the oncoming day. Many are ignorant of the fact that hard manual labor can make you feel good though he thought that nothing topped a fine hour swim. There was a little dread over the predicted ninety-degree weather but Mother said they’d quit at noon and finish tomorrow. Dove would make them a picnic and they would walk upstream to the pond where the water babies lived. He had decided that anyone on his tomato crew had to be considered trustworthy. Meanwhile he felt in his stomach the mystery of sexuality. He had given Emily and Laurie his bed and slept tilted way back in the La-Z-Boy reading chair. When he awoke and turned on a small light they were in a knot under a sheet with Emily’s hand on Laurie whose face was considerably more bloated, reminding him of his own after her father had hit him. This man was inexplicably violent even with those he purportedly loved. The sheet was twisted halfway up their bodies and still in half sleep the vision was electrifying and then mixed in with his need to see his water babies that afternoon, another mystery he couldn’t simplify. He was distracted by an early fantasy about swimming around Manhattan Island. He had recently checked the water current and it struck him as a simple feat.