from "Seining"

C.L. Bledsoe

Seining

I should like to flee like a wounded hart into Arkansas.

—Oscar Wilde

I watch my father's tired muscles push his body across the parking lot. Inside the Fish Shack, he sits in an old plastic‑backed chair, looks out the window, and studies the weather. The building is drafty with exposed black insulation on the outside. Big metal tubs, the ends of barrels that had been sawed off, sit on the floor. This is where the fish guts go. An old man used to pick them up every few days to feed to his pigs.

"Gonna get cold," my father says. "I hope you've got a better jacket than that, when the cold hits."

"Dad," I say. "How are you? What'd the doctors say?"

"Aww, they turned me loose soon as they saw how ornery I was." He grins.

"How's your leg? Did they say the blood clot was gone? Completely? Do you think it's a good idea to be seining? Shouldn't you wait a while, at least?"

"No, I'm fine," he says, annoyed that all I know is to pester him, like a woman, he's said many times.

"You've got to take care of yourself, Dad; you're getting on in years. You've got to rest, and do what the doctors say."

He nods. "I get along fine. Are you gonna need some money for gas to get you back to Fayetteville?" He asks.

I shake my head. I can't take his money, even if I'm starving. He'll only wait until I'm gone, put it in an envelope and mail it to me. He is my father, and he will not listen.

We exchange awkward hugs and I get in my car.

"Be careful," he says. "Lots of crazy drivers out there on the weekend."

I want to tell him to go home, relax, put his feet up. Instead, I pull out onto the road. It used to be gravel but now it's been paved. On my right, they're building a church in what used to be the Bledsoe vineyard. Past that is the nursing home.

I remember when I was younger, every so often we'd see foxes crossing the field from the woods that no longer exist on the other side of the road. Deer, coyotes. I haven't heard a coyote in years. I learned to drive on these roads, back when they were gravel, before that, when they were dirt. Now, there's a subdivision of thin‑shelled ugly houses with tiny yards. I drive on. Behind me, my father is sitting, reading a newspaper, waiting for the crew to show up so he can seine again. What else is he going to do?


Posted over on Big Muddy