Accidents of Nature by Harriet McBryde Johnson

Author:Harriet McBryde Johnson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR)

Day Six

To identify an object, it is necessary to refer to the group of which the object is a member or the whole of which it is a part. It is also necessary to specify the characteristics, qualities, or actions that distinguish the object from similar things.

“I won’t be riding in a canoe,” Sara says politely as soon as they park us on the dock.

The guy in charge shrugs. “Hey, no problem.” It’s that good-looking surfer type who really knows how to shag. I smile at him and watch his long brown legs carry him into the canoe. He is dazzling in the bright light of midmorning.

“Robert’s rebellion has hegemony walking on eggs,” Sara whispers.

“I can take two at a time on the canoe,” the surfer guy says. “While y’all wait, Bobby can show you how to fish.”

I already know how to fish. Dad likes to say it’s an essential part of a girl’s education. Bobby, a brawny boy in a baseball cap, gives us bamboo fishing poles baited with plastic worms. “Now, you have to keep real quiet, or you’ll scare the fish away!” He speaks to us like we’re children.

Peggy Jo steps carefully into the canoe. Mary follows, fearless, like a sleepwalker.

“Aw, too bad,” Sara says. “I was hoping the aussies had somehow organized a general strike of all activities. But Mary’s not resisting.”

Mosquitoes hum around us, but no one moves. On the water the cork floats are just as inert. Nothing is happening. Nothing is likely to happen, either. No self-respecting fish will bite a bright green hard plastic worm. That much is obvious. Not that lures and bait can’t be a matter of debate; Dad and his fishing buddies can argue for hours about what to use where. However, in a sandy-bottomed black-water lake, pond really, live earthworms are what you need.

The canoe has glided away. I try to make out the surfer guy’s voice, but all I can hear is the sound of Sara’s pastels scratching across the rough paper.

Sara’s drawing is becoming a picture of this place. The foreground is still in outline: cattails, the strip of sand, a spindly pine branch arching upward. On the horizon, a hill and tall pines beyond the lake. The shapes are right, but trees should be green; these are a jumble of blues, browns, and purples, with spots of orange and red. What green there is, is incidental. And then the lake—that cool, dull black sheet I love to wrap up in—is being rendered as a warfare of color: blues fighting reds, oranges against greens, blues versus grays. Here, one side dominates, there another. In some places, there’s such a melee that you can’t tell who’s winning.

Sara squints, so I squint too. Now I see; I can imagine the final effect. Unable to take in so many jarring extremes, the eye tricks itself into seeing a tame and muted scene.

It is this place, and not this place. There is no dock. No safety-orange floating barrels. No man-made body parts on the shore.

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