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Solely and thus sorely did he row off the disk of the sun that the lake reflected and into the dark of the piling-held dock where many-legged water- and not just water life lived, where he lived, when he could. For $54 he rented the boat, the tackle, the winsome boxed flies in inky camouflage, but what he really paid for was the dark under the dock and the water legs with their habit of crawling or clinging to a region that confounded him, where mornings, he reached and pried and sliced open and ate through the variously molluscked and non-molluscked on his own.

He was not mad. He could not get out of his boat without a winch, commercial or otherwise, being legless.  The charitable called him cripple but born without, it was not a case of crippled from, but just himself. He towed himself into the best spot under the dock and grasped at the water life, its green shoots as misplaced or misaligned as he, and he became mad.

Starfish, crab, spider but not the minnow he decided—the legless minnow were not fair game. He left minnow alone. Fins were arms and if, while hauling up one of his catches, he tipped the boat too far and overturned, he, in his madness, would hope for the fish to help him swim even better than he with his arms like extra oars, swam. A dolphin with a saddle wasn’t what he expected but some fish nudging at his bubble-exhausted middle, nudging for all his pains taken, those many hooks unbent around all those gills. No way could he remount the boat himself if he overturned, he needed at least a leg over.

Birds that knew of his leglessness followed his rowing, or stood off, waiting, or dove at his bait and tried to steal it. He grabbed for them, declaring them armless, the wings useless. In the water with such arms as he had from having no legs, he could grab the birds easily and had, catching quite a few duck, and had eaten them plucked and grilled over an iron pot lid filled with coals. This time, in this fogbound, dark afternoon, he grabbed and caught quite a big bird. Not that he wanted to. The bird had hissed and snapped at him and his six inches of crab bait, had hissed and snapped as if it were going to take the bait right out of the crab pot and sever his line, hissed until he hissed and snapped back. The bird lowered its neck at that, and so did he, while the boat floated closer.

A lot of neck on that bird, a neck that could span the stretch.

The man sprang at the bird, oar and arm. The bird caught the oar blade in its beak and held on, the man levered almost out of the water until the bird, with a twist, tipped the man off his boat where he was perched, legless, in reckless pursuit of its fine stuffing and roasting.

The bird bent double under his arm when he came up for air. Rather, its neck like a lamp post lost its height and its middle went under where its legs landed and his weight centered over. The man rode, he held tight, enough that the life of the bird matched his own in danger and they swam together possessed, toward the boat that the tide was taking an interest in. The swan spoke, wings breaking his grip, its beak leaking hiss, let’s swim it said, its big feet flapping.

The swan kicked with vicious complaint and the man bit it then the bird bit the man so hard on the ear he bled. But still they kept ahold, the man more to keep afloat than for dining, the bird in spasms over a catch. When they met a current, both man and bird sank twice, and as soon as they floated over a current-made shoal, the bird, sinking again, gashed at his arm until he let go, cursing and flailing, he let go and chose the shore to swim for. The bird chose elsewhere. A fish perhaps. What fish saw him?

By evening, the boat, dry as boards, made sight of land, the bait sticky-rotten and the second oar dragging in the lock. There was just the worry and tick of fishermen who feared water loss, seeing him in themselves belly down in a crawl from the pushchair he afforded still parked at a beach not infrequently frequented by the fishermen who noticed the boat again, a week after that, the number pried off and scrubbed and painted blank, cutting at their lines with its shiftless float.

Why didn’t they look for him? Whoever reports a scrubbed boat is suspected of dealing with thieves. A man with such loneliness repels even the moon’s face in water. He could swim, they said. They had seen him.

The swan circles, some say, a certain spot.

© 2009 Terese Svoboda