They have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water. --Jeremiah. 2:13
We could hear her cry out from across the lake, the wail of a mother who has lost her child. All the creatures cry like this on the lake at night, every animal, at one time or another a victim of these waters. Amorous midnight strolls ruined by western screech owls and red-throated loons, Woodhouse toads and the splashing of lake otters; challenging you to hold onto the romantic notions that these quiet, moonlit waves inspire during the daytime. When I come to the lake at night, always alone, it’s only to drown out my contemplation, not to be silent with my thoughts. It is a noisy and discouraging place.
* * *
The main road winds close to the lake, though our covenants prevented any deforestation along its banks. Strangers to the lake would hardly know that homes abound beyond the shores. Tonight one of these houses awakes to grief. We can see her car lights strobe between the twisting trunks of Madrona, as she races to this side to identify her son. It doesn’t take her long to reach us, to slide along the gravel, to run towards the ambulance lights, Oh, my son, Please, my son, No, my son.
* * *
“What happened?”
He rambles, drunkenly, soaking wet with water, water that now holds his friend broken, moored to the bottom by milfoil and elodea. He explains how he and his friend wanted to play chicken with the lake, racing down the boat launch, pulling up at the last moment with the parking brake, spinning around; again.
“We went straight in.”
I can see the two of them in my mind. Laughing at the edge, pretending that it all hangs in the balance. Gunning the wrong pedal, laughing still while they begin to submerge; pretending that the water is a comedy, and a story that they’ll later tell. The car lies agonizingly close to the surface.
It’s a nice car, fast and detailed; the kind of car a single mother might buy for an only son; a son she fears might run off with a strange girl; a reward for not leaving; an incentive to stay.
“What happened?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know.”
* * *
The water mocks us. Onlookers wonder why we don’t dive beneath the surface to collect the young man’s body. The mother beats at each of our chests. ‘Heroes! Fuckers!’ It drives the occasional black striper to walk to the shore, threatening to quit the department; to dive in as a civilian. The water beckons.
We have no truce with the water. We don’t control it. In a house, we redirect it towards the flames, but even then it fights us. It takes the strength of two full-grown men to contain it. One time in training, someone opened up the nozzle too wide on a 900-degree fire and the water vaporized instantly, the resulting steam burning us all through our bunker gear.
* * *
I see him a week later, racing around the lake, apparently gifted with the ability of selective memory. I see him a month after that, drunk on his porch, young enough to withstand the daily drownings. I see him one more time at the end of the year, bags and boxes, suitcases and belongings stuffed into the back of his truck, the water finally catching up and driving him away.
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