Rob McClure Smith

To Speak of the Happiness of Fish

You never see a river right from a bridge or the shore but need to be on it, like this. Feel it under you, its tug, the life of the thing. You feel the cold of a river on its bank, but not the cold that is the river, the way the pull of it displaces you. The landmarks look familiar but they don't fix you anymore and you’re different every moment, changing and changing. That big silo I’ve seen a million times, but rippled in green there it's different, and so I am too. I’ve moved on.

All empty now, every one, which is sad, another death. It reminds us the city didn’t make this river: the river made this city.

It’s strange, the more you know about a thing, and study it hard, the more you realize you don't know anything at all. It’s that mysterious, a river. You should always be afraid of it too, for get careless and it makes you pay.

My great-grandfather did this job too. Back then a man was full-time, which is no more the case, and part-time easily becomes no time. I've been at the school a while now, but always a pager in my pocket. It’s understood. Time in the river goes fast for someone in trouble. Call comes I go. I’ve had the kids running after me if I forget my briefcase, as if I’ll need it where I’m going. They enjoy the idea of their teacher having a double identity, like in a comic book. They’d like it if I had a costume. Maybe I should have one made. Or a bumper sticker: rescue of the living, retrieval of the dead.

Lived here all my life, same shores. Gifts come at a price. There's a narrowing of a life, a tending to the shallows. My talent is to know the reaches of this, its moods and bad places, and that talent can't move, isn't transportable. You can't downsize it or outsource it but it nails you to the same old ground forever, locks the doors on other things. We all make those choices, in some form. Creatures can't change their natures and no more can we. Fish settle in a place, spawn there and die, and are not unhappy in my experience, swimming hard to stay still, to speak of the happiness of fish.

How you deal with dark things is not let them overwhelm you. I found a blind man at the edge of an embankment once, the water two feet deep, if that, stick floating beside him, a white stick it was. Up above was a broken fence, plank ripped out. See, he’d tap his way along that fence on his way back from the bar at night, for being blind doesn't lose you that inclination any, and knew the first opening was the bridge, and there he would cross. Except that night it wasn't.

Back in my father’s day, they forgot to close a gate. It was a regatta, with comings and goings, and a woman turned in at the open gate and left her pram facing the river. She thought the brake was set, turned to lay a blanket on the grass, the baby strapped in good and tight, and the thing rolled away down the stairs, bumping, twenty feet into the water it came, tipping. He used grappling irons to recover it, but it was too late to bring it around. He cried that day, my father. I’d never seen that in him before. It shook me up: the sadness and his weakness shown. This is why I'm always at people to close gates. It's easy to lose a life, or throw it away just. You learn something new every day, no cliché that. You take a lesson and go on or under you slip with the rest. You keep closing gates, and latching them good and tight.

You find laughter in the dark too. This time last year, I got a holiday suicide call. It’s always holidays. I see the jumper on the quay wall, about to, and she sees me down here. 'Are you who I think you are?' she shouts. 'Yes,' I say. So she climbs back over the railing, shakes her head, and holds her hands out for the cuffs. 'No point in me jumping,' she tells the policeman. 'That one's father was the same Riverman saved my mother.'

The bodies are what you never get used to. You'd think you would. Some are naked. I don't know why that is. I've often wondered. That's a terrible thing. We're born naked, right enough, actually should live naked I think, not literally, but honest and open. And I've seen a beautiful woman, who is still beautiful, all naked white like that come up out the water, and it's very, very shocking because you're seeing a human life, or the evidence of it, and still lovely in its way, but it isn't there anymore. It’s gone.

I don’t know about souls. I suppose what I do, mostly, is protect people from themselves.

A kid dropped a big slab of concrete on my skull once, true story. Split me open, twelve stitches to close the gash. I was lucky I didn't capsize, for I wouldn't fancy my chances in that state. He kept on dropping bricks too, and I had to keep under the bridge, the boat filling with blood and my shirt soaking through all sticky wet in it. He quit eventually and I rowed to the infirmary. I don't know why he left, saw a police car maybe, or got bored. They get bored easy at that age. I don't know why people do things like that.

You make of it what you will. My father told me a story once about a rower on a long dark river who, drifting in the moonlight, hears a grinding of steel and rocks, and sees these two men breaking stones on the shore. The first man is angry, and sweating, and cursing the rocks. The rower shouts, "What are you doing?" The man says, "I'm breaking the fucking rocks on this barren empty shore." Well, the other man is doing the exact same thing, crushing rocks like that, but doesn't seem angry at all. The rower says, "What are you doing then?" The other man says, "I'm building a cathedral and it will overlook the river here where it is so lovely and be reflected in the water and the pending arches and the high windows will shimmer where you row.” And he points to the very place.

                     copyright © robert smith

                                2010