The path of no resistance is the river.
An umbilicus to the womb of the world.
I lashed the boat slapdash to the top of the police car, went inside, picked up my trombone case inside which, checking it a last time before departing, I found this recorder. I don’t remember putting this in there (kids could’ve), but it was there and here we are, dear reader. It’s you and me now.
I put in at the Austin Rowing Center. The water from all the rains without river regulation had filled up the lake behind Tom Miller Dam. I could see water coming over the top of it. Water must have been spilling over Mansfield Dam up at Lake Travis to be filling up Lake Austin.
My eyes bulged at the sight of the water coming down. Not your docile blue-green urban waterway anymore. Foam eddied and swirled in angry chocolate water. Debris, limbs, and small trees floated by. Nature took things back. Soon these dams would break from the pressure. Clearly, the Longhorn downriver already had. The valley below Mount Bonnell must be a hundred feet higher now, all those palaces along the river under water. I just hoped the dams don’t break when I’m on the water, or within a mile from shore for that matter.
If it didn’t get too rough downriver, all this water ought to help me because I won’t have to get out and portage the twelve-foot boat. All the places along the river I could rely on for food would be flooded out now.
Parking on Veterans Drive, I dragged the boat across the crushed gravel hike and bike trail down to the rowing center which, with the heavy flow of water, was creaking and about to burst away from shore.
I had to make several trips to the car and back. I almost forgot my $1,000 binoculars. Maggie stayed on the wide wooden dock, watching me go back and forth. As I was coming back over the trail for the last time, I heard her barking.
Across the river they stood. A long line of them as far as I could see in either direction. I stood with my hands on my hips and scanned the line of them, a hundred yards away from me. Between us, this mad river.
Toddlers to tweens stood among the trees. They waited to see me disembark, for once on the river, on the river I would stay.
I stowed a gym bag of clothes, my trombone case, an umbrella, a pot, and a couple of long-necked utility lighters in the storage compartment behind me and stuffed as much junk food, beef jerky and apples as I could everywhere else.
I sat in the boat, held my oar across my lap. I had to coax Maggie but she stepped into the front well gingerly. Her legs shook.
I shoved off. It felt wondrous to be fully buoyant. There’s nothing like that feeling, your body instantly recognizing the gestation sensation. The buoyancy forces you to take in and let out a huge, deep, cleansing breath. I felt a heavy pang of missing my father as I eased into the water’s rhythms. I was a pretty skilled and experienced paddler for my age, having gone out a ton with my dad when I was young. My dad was a total kayaker. A solo, lone wolf kind of guy. When I regurgitated this phrasing I’d picked up from Dad’s pontifications to my mom, she’d said, “Hah, he certainly was a lone wolf. That’s for sure.” I knew now she was talking about his affair. Affairs.
Since he moved away I’d paddled less. Not Martin’s thing—such the man’s man hunter of deer and fowl—and not soccer-Johnny’s thing either. But I still managed to get out a few mornings a season, on Sundays usually. My church.
The kids have been snooping my head. They know this comforts me. Gives me time to recount all this to you, dear reader. They want me to do that. I get a powerful sense of that.
Hold on, dear rea… they’re hummsing to me on that thought. So strong… guess I struck a nerve…
Once I got going, I knew I was too heavy. I couldn’t control the boat well and the water was hectic, water like I’d never known, unbound, moving on its own. Too heavy, but I couldn’t jettison the dog, nor the trombone, nor the food because it was all I had and this was hundreds of miles. I had four half-gallon bottles of water. I’d have to make it last. I was glad for the cooler weather.
They didn’t need to burn the old world down. Most of human population was near water. When the dams broke, when the Panama Canal went bust, the water would flow and change the coastlines. When earthquakes and hurricanes came, there’d be no cleanup. When the tsunamis moved in…
The world’s nuclear reactors. When would they start melting down? Were they already? How was I supposed to save the world’s children from these things? I didn’t know, but once I was a mile downriver and things stabilized, I felt good, like all would be solvable. Traveling does this. Provides perspective. I’ve come to believe that the beginning can happen, as Simon said, and I am its catalyst. I may know nothing about how to run a world, engineering and science, but I believe I can lead them. Kodie and I can do it.
Much later, when the time is right, we can try to understand Dr. Jespers’s theory. I locked his computer in the trunk of my police cruiser on Veteran’s Drive.[19]
I affixed this recorder to my jacket, Mr. E. The river has been high and easy to navigate. Most of this trip has been a dream. I’ve been floating and my mind has too and when they sing, they pull me toward them. As I’ve said before, I’ve lost hours of time feeling their song.
I don’t need to paddle much. The water’s been moving with the upstream influx. All I’ve had to do is dip my paddles to steer. I try to stay near the banks but they’ve overflowed so much that at times I’m afraid of getting caught up in drowned trees or an eddy.
The morning of, the children got a download, and I think I did too. The code has been buried within me until now. Now, on this river, it’s starting to boot me up into this new me.
I tell you this story when I’m on shore before sleep, after boiling water and feeding Maggie, but mostly when I’m in easygoing miles-long sections. Telling this story has helped me process it all. It has kept me company, kept me hopeful, and has enabled me to see the bigger picture. It has tracked my journey, my evolution from the sounds heard that dawn to now.
I feel as if I am actually communing with you. Talking to whoever may read this, in a future that is hopefully settled and sane, it makes me feel good when nothing else does. That’s as best I can say it.
But, really, I pretend. I pretend to have a conversation with someone else. There’s hope in the noises I make. Like whistling past a graveyard.
The river had its noises, moaned and whispered its way to the sea. Birds followed us overhead, their wingspan at full sail in these new winds.
“What do you think, killa? Should I begin way back in June when I was having those dreams while reading Lord of the Flies, writing The Late Bloomers, Johnny’s sleepwalking?”
Mags looked back at me, these being the first words I’d uttered since we veered away from the rowing center’s platform. The hinges holding the thing to the shore had screamed as we paddled clear. The shipwrecked kids in Lord of the Flies feared a beast. The naval officer says at the end, “Fun and games.” Then the boys all cry, smudging their war paint. They are saved. The end.
Maybe I’m the naval officer. I come by boat. When I arrive, Kodie and I will convince them that there is nothing to fear. The world has changed, but this beast is just a residual nightmare representing all that fear that has come with such sudden, jarring change. Change is their beast. I’ll help them.
I could tell you about this float trip, but that’s not what this story is about. And really, it’s just a river swollen over pastoral Texas, trees and hills, a few towns. The water is so high now, the towns on the river flooded. The tops of trees, rooftops, commercial signage sticking up just above the surface looking like eerie buoys.
19
Dr. Warren Jespers’s recovered 2018 Dell HPC (High Performance Computer) is in a secure location.