Into the Water

A short story

“We came from water, and to the water we will go.”

Did he say this aloud? The old man wasn’t sure. And there was nobody he could ask. There was the dog, though. It didn’t speak, but it would pull its ears back when spoken to. The dog listened. It hardly ever looked at him, but it never interrupted either. The huge ears were at the back of the head now. He had said it aloud, after all.

The river at his feet gurgled and spat, angry with the first north wind of the season. The wind pushed him like a dry branch. He was a dry branch, wasn’t he?

The old man planted his feet wide and grinned. He would stand here, at the very rim of the swirling bubbles, because he chose to, and no wind could order him otherwise.

The dog made a circle at his feet and plopped itself into the sand behind a rock.

The mutt was meant to be white, but just like medical whites, it dulled to gray with time.

Every morning, the dog would wait for him at the crossroad. It followed him toward the river, more like a morning shuffle than a walk. His back hurt less when he shuffled. Not going anywhere hurt the most.

The dog always trailed a few steps behind. If someone had seen them from the side, they would have thought that the man and the dog each went their own way. Not that anybody could see them, though.

“They say being old makes you invisible,” the man said. “I wonder if it makes you intangible, too.” The dog politely moved its ears.

The old man nudged a pebble with his foot. The river caught it and dragged it deeper. The current broke against the pebble, wrapping it in blades of grass and brown leaves. The dog raised its head to watch. The old man smiled -- not yet intangible.

He patted his chest pocket, tracing his fingers along the ridges of a folded newspaper. The nagging tiredness in his back lifted. He spread his shoulders, as if he could raise his arms like wings, and fold them high above his head, streamlined and strong. As if he could still dive into the icy water.

The dog whined and pawed at the wet sand.

“Don’t be stupid,” the man said. “I’m not going to jump. Nobody’s drowning.”

He pulled the newspaper out of his pocket. It rustled in the wind as if trying to escape. The right page was folded out. Of course, he could no longer read it, but he could see the blob of the photo. He knew the text by heart. ‘A Doctor Rescues a Boy from a Frothy River’ the title said.

“Frothy,” the old man waved the newspaper at the dog, “they wrote their articles like poetry back then.”

The dog yawned. He knew it wasn’t boredom. Mammals yawned to cool off their excited brains. He used to entertain his patients with facts like that.

“It wasn’t frothy,” the man shook his head. The wind moved the fur on the dog’s ears. “But it was freezing,” he said.

And those boys didn’t know that. Tourists usually didn’t. They would overheat and jump into the water that looked safe and clear like bottle glass.

A flash interrupted the flow of his memory. A green spot buzzed past his face. The dog barked at the beetle.

For years now he’d watched the world as if through a plastic bag, just the way he saw it under the water that day -- everything blurred, and only the change in color marked the threshold where one thing ended and the other began. That’s how he spotted the boy’s dark hair against the yellow sand.

He wouldn’t call himself a good swimmer. He also wasn’t exactly young, yet young enough for that dive. The boys had jumped into the water from a hill up the stream. They planned to paddle out at the shallow parts down the stream. The problem was, not everyone’s systems were designed for this kind of entertainment. Four boys had jumped. Three heads swam up. Their voices, squeaky with excitement, called a name. Then, their calls turned to screeching. They splashed and slapped the surface like useless ducklings.

The man had grown up near this river. He knew its depth and pace. He knew the boy would still live if he got pulled to the air fast enough.

The man raised his arms, streamlined and strong. There was no time to take off his t-shirt. He jumped into the icy water dressed as he was, the current claiming his shoes on impact.

The dog didn’t seem to listen to him anymore. Instead, it chased the green zigzagging flash between the shrubs.

“Hey,” the man called for it. The dog didn’t react, too busy with the hunt. “Leave it,” the man said, suddenly aware how stupid he must have looked speaking alone near the river.

How did it come to this? How did one move so seamlessly from being a local hero to someone whose only listener was a dog? And the thing was, it wasn’t the fame that he missed. The fame was not the reason he framed this newspaper so that his grainy face smiled at his patients right till the day he retired. He had never shared the truth with anybody -- he was too ashamed. The thing was, he didn’t care about that boy. He didn’t care about that boy’s life. What he cared about was that he had changed the course of that life. That was the only moment when he knew, with clarity he could never achieve before or after, that he did exist.

Time had erased the certainty. Each year went over that feeling like an eraser over a pencil drawing.

He swatted at the beetle with his newspaper. A satisfying clack stopped the buzzing. The man let out a breath. Here -- the course of events changed once again.

The dog leapt forward, barking at the pebble the old man had nudged into the river. The man narrowed his eyes, and there it was -- a glimmer of green trapped among the debris around the stone.

The river would claim that insect soon. The green sparkle would be gone, its short and simple life erased. The river would continue flowing, and so would life. This beetle would change nothing for any future plants.

“No,” the man said. He shook his head. He stretched his hand toward the beetle. “No.”

He scanned the blurry lines at his feet -- the tufts of grass dissolved in moving water. If he could crouch and stretch his right hand far enough, he’d probably get the bug. The dog stopped barking and now was watching him.

“Now I have your attention, huh?” the man asked, bending down.

The dog whined as he pressed his knees into wet grass and tried to reach the pebble. He almost made it, but the shiny thing was still too far. If only he had something to fish it out with. He sat up straight and sighed. The newspaper rustled in his left hand. He would never find another copy. But he knew the article by heart now, didn’t he? He eyed his blurry photo one last time, then put the newspaper in his right hand. His arm reached out, strong and steady, and lowered the paper down.

My photo of the Zeta River in Montenegro.