Clemency
By Michael Miller

The orange Frisbee floated away into the night. As we pushed off in pursuit in our yellow canoe, I was reminded of a humid night, many years ago in Indiana. I was behind a car with taillights that receded into the darkness, just as this Frisbee ran from us near our campsite on Churchill Lake.

There had been five of us preparing for this camping trip to Maine, and we needed to bring this third canoe. Mark Schreiber had joined our group in 1996 and with Bill Lewis dropping out; we were always in search of a sixth person or someone willing to solo. I usually volunteered for pack canoe duty, in part because I didn’t see it as entirely safe.

We brought the Yellow Banana, our oldest canoe, which my brother Peter named for its shape and vibrant color. It was an American, bought from a friend in the early eighties and we used it numerous times in Maine, usually on the Bow River trip. It was light enough for the mile portage and resilient enough to handle an occasional trip through low water rips. But mostly I was drawn to its color. We once took the canoe, overloaded with three people and gear, straight into the wind and waves of Attean Pond. It was after Columbus Day, and we were headed to the Moose River. The skies were oppressive gunmetal gray, the sun was setting and there were whitecaps on the water. We had paddled across the protected side of the lake but now, confronted with the open area, wind in our faces, we eddied behind boulders as we summoned the strength to make our crossing. Without much hesitation, or thought, we shoved off and instantly knew it was the wrong decision.

The waves were too high, the wind too strong, but there was no return; if the bow of the canoe weren’t perpendicular to the waves, we were in the water, and we knew it. I was in the bow, kneeling, Peter in the stern, sitting, and my wife Diane in the middle, hands tight on the gunwales, fingers mostly in the water. We had again been deceived by our inexperience and here we were, in deep water, carrying too much gear, paddling as hard as we could, and making little progress. Worse, we were wearing our winter gear- heavy hiking boots and down coats- but no life jackets.

My arms were tiring and I was worried about all of us, but mostly about Diane, who sat helpless in the middle. I was also irritated that Peter didn’t seem to share my concern. I’d look back to yell at him to paddle harder only to see looks of bemusement. What was so funny? My anger didn’t help me paddle; it just added to my feeling of desperation. I don’t know what it is about our relationship, but one of us is always trying to convince the other to take some situation more seriously. It could be about something as trivial as a food additive or the behavior of another family member, or as important as global warming or that one of us is too fat. I couldn’t list the number of things we accused the other of undervaluing. In fact, I started listening to NPR after Peter made fun of the radio station I played while driving him to work. Mostly though, our prodding only polarizes the other into feigning less concern about the issue. I’m surprised, after telling him to paddle harder, he didn’t just toss the paddle into the water.

Perhaps the sense of danger is different in the bow than the stern. Though just a few feet apart, if the stern paddler gets his legs wet, the bowman will get soaked. Maybe Peter couldn’t see the bow leave the water, maybe his arms weren’t as tired as mine, maybe he didn’t feel as responsible. I never asked him.

Unbelievably to me but perhaps not to Peter, we reached the lee side of the lake. We pulled the canoe away from the water and stood and watched our friends, Dan and a powerful Linda in their aluminum canoe make the same crossing. It seemed like only minutes after they beached that the wind died and the clouds opened to permit a few warming rays of the sun. We spread out wet gear on the rocks, opened our mats, lay down and stayed, toes up, for a very long time. We were no longer in a hurry.

We retired the Banana when I bought an aluminum strutted, orange, Ramex, canoe that Eric referred to as a floating piece of plywood. My god, it was slow, but when Adam and I wrapped it around a bridge pier on the Ipswich River, we were able to pry it off with a fence rail. More remarkably, we unfolded it on land with no damage to the shell. Unfortunately I couldn't find aluminum gunwales, which is why we went back to old, thin skin.

The Banana lived on saw horses in Bill Lewis's yard long enough to rot the strut that held the two sides together, and then he returned it to my neighbor’s shed where it rested, covered in dust and cobwebs, until we decided it would serve us as a pack canoe. Describing how thin the shell was, Peter once observed how the bottom rippled with the current.

That registered but never bothered me, but then, in those days, not much did. I was accustomed to ignoring hazards and while I had the occasional accident, I always thought- so what. Before I was fourteen, I had visited most hospitals in my hometown. At thirteen, I walked out of an emergency room when I was still under observation for a head injury. I was also familiar with home repairs, such as removing my own stitches or the cast off my broken ankle.

I remember trusting doctors. The trust was reinforced through a week’s stay in the hospital after holding out way too long during an asthmatic episode. I remember Diane urging me to see my physician, to which I would bargain for one more day. That ended abruptly one morning at 2AM when I woke her from a deep sleep to announce I had given up.

I could have been released after three days but I asked to stay longer. I had fought treatment for months; I now sorely needed the rest. The trust continued until shortly after Matthew's birth when, while using my table saw to make custom furniture, I severed the tendon in my thumb and amputated the end of my right index finger. I hit the off switch, turned my back to the saw and then in a move I can’t defend, turned to sweep away a scrap of wood from the slowing blade. My hand bounced back into my chest, and when I could look, I saw it was not a clean cut. From an untrained perspective, I assumed my finger couldn’t be reattached.

Instead, the emergency room physician had Diane drive back to my suffocatingly hot shop, to retrieve the end of my finger. This was a woman who watched Taxi Driver with me but had completely blocked out the stairwell scene, where Iris’s pimp has his fingers shot off by Travis Bickle. Now she had to not just see, but also find, my finger. Bravely she returned and we both watched the emergency room physician drop it into room temperature saline where it remained for eight hours as I waited to be transported to a hospital covered by my HMO.

Chapter II

We set up our tents on a bluff just above the shoreline, with a view of the water and mountains beyond. Surrounded by fall colors and unusually deep blue skies, we beached our canoes near the end of the spit. Each night, after dinner and many bottles of wine, we used the sandy area to toss an orange Frisbee with a light stick attached to the bottom. This had become a yearly activity that succeeded in getting us away from our fire and out under the stars, and rare views of the Aurora. The game endured past twisted ankles and Dan's dunking off Bottle Island. The Frisbee was illuminated, but even so, in the darkness of the Allagash region, it was easier to track throws to others, than those thrown to you.

Inevitably, the Frisbee would land in the water and Adam would retrieve it by wading in, or we would chase it in one of the canoes. We would toss it back and forth to the guy in the canoe, even after Dan flipped into the water. It wasn't his fault; he had had too much to drink.

This time the Frisbee caught the current at the end of the beach and headed away, a fading, orange light. Assuming this was going to be a quick trip and again, without much thought, we grabbed the yellow canoe. I had ridden it in to the campsite, wobbly walls, loaded with gear, but the river had been calm and more importantly, it had been daylight. With stars overhead and the Frisbee already gone from sight, Mark and I shoved off.

We paddled to where we last saw the Frisbee and proceeded in the direction of the current. We knew if we got close enough, we'd see its glow, and so intent on seeing the glow, we were unaware that our friends were no longer visible on shore. Stubbornly, we searched and when finally we decided it was time to head back, we both realized we had no idea where back was.

The yellow flame of the campfire was gone, and the starlight that had guided us toward the Frisbee wasn't enough to distinguish the shape of the shore. We didn't even know if we were upstream or downstream of the campsite. We could see trees outlined against the sky but both shores looked the same. It all looked the same. Our flashlight illuminated nothing as the waves pulsed the bottom of the canoe.

I have always battled my perception of responsibility and there it was: how could I be so dumb to paddle into the night in this broken down canoe. I am an experienced paddler and had been camping in these waters for sixteen years. I was with the novice of our group, Mark, and I was reminded of Diane, trusting Peter and me.

If it were Peter in the canoe, we would have explored in the dark, bounced off a rock or two, assigned blame, laughed about it, and found the campsite. It was a game, one we never named and never admitted playing but it was as familiar as the smell of damp earth. Best described as the get lost, get in trouble, get out of it routine, like arguing, we were always doing it. The last time, before he left for Hawaii, Peter decided we should take a short cut through the New Hampshire woods north of Keene. Had he ever taken that short cut before? Of course not, but he was familiar with the area, and neither of us doubted we’d get to where we were going. Except we never got to where we were going.

What happened in the intervening years with this game, to focus not on the exploration of our inner selves but to the jeopardy of the players, I cannot fathom. Was it losing part of myself? Was it the unpredictability of the accident? When I broke my ankle, I was racing my friend Eric to finish a shingling job. When I broke the first of four ribs, I reached through the driver’s window to try to stop the truck I had failed to leave in gear. Most accidents, I could tell myself, could be prevented. But a sudden impulse to clear wood from my table saw? And how different is that really, from choosing the wrong canoe? Or was it simply having Matthew, someone for whom I truly am responsible? I do know something happened to the delicate conjunction between confidence and responsibility and here I was with Mark, berating myself.

Mark sits high and stiff in the canoe, the sign of someone who has never capsized. I've been dunked numerous times; I know how tenuous the bond, a canoe and water, how easily disrupted by a partially submerged rock. I saw this situation as one of comfort, not survival but I was trapped by my feelings of culpability and I needed a sure way out. I thought if we headed in the wrong direction, upstream, we would find the put-in and simply paddle back. Then I remembered the rocks we had threaded our way through. I was back to only one choice, to figure out where we were.

Chapter III

I knew where I was, driving home from Indiana University late one night in 1968. After leaving school at the end of my junior year, I made many exciting trips back to visit my girlfriend. These were intensely emotional, humid, early fall, southern Indiana trips, and my routine was predictable. I would spend the weekend, leave late Sunday night,, stop for coffee and donuts and drive three hours home before going to work the same day. These hilly, winding, back roads were very empty at this midnight hour, probably at any hour, and I knew them well.

As I followed those roads, my thoughts returned to the last passionate hours lying naked with Cathy. I was again tracing her most erotic areas: running my fingers from the curve of her neck, over her shoulder, down her side to her slender waist and then up again over her hips. Each movement adding excitement, each moment seemingly free of time. I rolled the window down and fantasized about next weekend's return when my attention was caught by the taillights of a car far down the road. As I pulled myelf to the present, I watched those orange lights reach the bottom of the hill, drift to the left but then, very suddenly, disappear. It was much too dark to see anything but the lights. Still, my breath quickened. I was no longer back in Cathy's dorm, but in my car, shocked by the absense of those taillights. Were they lost in the trees along the road, had they simply been turned off, or something more ominous?

There wasn't anyone to turn to out here, no cell phones, no hospitals, and no other traffic. This would be all up to me. As I came to the bottom of the hill, my headlights illuminated what I didn’t want to see; the underbelly of the car resting, bottom up, in a ditch along the intersecting road. As I stopped to get out of my car, heart pounding, I could see someone crawling up from the culvert, and soon, another. My panic turned to euphoria. I wasn't faced with making a life threatening decision; I was suddenly just a passerby, helping people.

Walking away from the overturned car were two teenagers, a boy and a girl. It was a brand new car, uninsured and it was being driven by the girlfriend. I didn't think for a moment about the car, just that there were two kids not covered in blood, and all I needed to do was drive them home. We continued down the lonely gravel road paralleled by the drainage ditch. They were so close to home.

Very quickly we got to his house. It was his car, or his family’s car. We parked and I followed through a door offset from the front of the house. The house set against a backdrop of trees, was small, boxy in shape, with the dining room adjacent and a part of the living room. Bedrooms were somewhere off the living room but it was hard to see, it was almost as dark inside as it was out. Why didn't someone turn the lights on?

The first person to meet us was the boy's father, roused by our entry. In the shadows, he appeared short but heavyset with disheveled hair. He stood just on the other side of the dining room table from his son. I was nearer the front door and I began to realize that something quite different was unfolding, nevertheless, I stood there grinning. They were, after all, okay and I was, after all, very young.

However unhurt they were was of no concern to the man standing in front of us. He hadn’t seen the car turn over. He only knew it had and now he was enraged and his anger, like the wind that precedes a thunderstorm, swept over all of us. “How could you’” he yelled at his son, and at first, his son stood shouting in return, as his girlfriend took a step back. But the boy had been here before and as his father’s anger grew, the boy’s voice began to trail. Clearly out of control, and swearing loudly, his father skirted the table and moved threateningly closer.

Awakened by the screaming, a younger son rushed to defend his brother, to deflect attention, perhaps to reason with his father. More shouting ensued, and as they confronted each other, and my hate for this man grew, I envisioned him beaten by his son. Instead, the boy was knocked into an end table, tumbling it and a lamp to the floor, the boy followed. I thought more senseless damage, more damage that would infuriate the old man, which would scar the family.

I couldn’t imagine a father reacting this way to his son’s traumatic experience. I have an indelible memory of my own father, carrying me from the backyard right after I had cut into my knee with an errant hatchet swing. I was always granted clemency when I hurt myself, almost no matter the damage done. The boy on the floor began to cry; and I, sensing there was yet another target in this room, was frozen somewhere between fear and disbelief.

I wanted to leave but I couldn’t just walk out of that house in Indiana. I couldn’t close the door on that boy, in that house, and when he asked, I agreed to drive him back to the overturned car, where he had lost his glasses. It was then I realized that he, standing in front of this man, felt the rage more than he saw it. As we drove back along the gravely road, his father followed swerving his car, feet behind me, and as I drove faster so did he. The journey from the car to the house was an adventure, quick and full of hope, the trip back to the car was an undertaking, slow and foreboding. I looked at the boy and thought how he needed comfort. Instead, I could see, he was back in his car as it flipped into the air.

The car was still upside down, the embankment maybe steeper, the night certainly darker. We both searched but it was I who found his glasses among the weeds. I looked first at the sullen father who watched from his car and then to the boy. I handed him his glasses and then I turned to leave. I hoped when he put them on he would see this tumultuous evening as it really was. He would see his father’s anger quite apart from the overturned car. Each incident with its own story, not inextricably intertwined. He needed to know that like a thunderstorm, his father's rage does not have to consume him.

I got home around four in the morning and I let myself in through the back door. Our house was of brick and wood construction and modern in appearance, with much glass facing the view of our pond. It was open and airy, the living room ceiling reaching up to the second floor hallway. We had moved into the house four years after it was built, two years after a drunk driver had killed the husband and wife who lived there leaving their two young daughters in the care of grandparents. Custom built in the early sixties and with a fear uncommon in those days, of the dangers of house fires, they had an extensive system of fire alarms installed. But fire was not what was coming for those very innocent people.

I drew my bath as hot as I could tolerate it and waited for the emotions of the night to wash away.

Chapter IV

It had been thirty years since I had followed those orange taillights to the overturned car and now I was paddling after an illusive orange Frisbee listening to the same voice I heard in Indiana. Over the years it had become a familiar companion, stitching different parts of my life together. When Adam and I slammed the orange canoe into the bridge pier on the Ipswich River, I was catapulted into open water and swept to shore. Adam, however, had been pitched between the piers, under water, and into a logjam where he might have stayed. Instead of thinking about his safety, I was busy listening to that voice. After I moved my hand into that spinning blade, I heard it in my shop when I should have been tending to my own medical care and now I tried not to listen to it as



Mark and I stared at the shore's dark outlines, and debated which direction to paddle.

Of course the one we chose was correct, and it wasn't long before we were again in sight of our friends standing on shore. Even though they were unaware of how lost we thought we were, their relief was evident. As we beached the tired, old canoe, I thought of that boy's glasses. I no longer dreamed that they might separate him from his angry father but, I did wonder if they would do something not quite so demanding for me. If I wore them, would those magical lenses show me a world where I could again make weightless Frisbee catches and play that game where mistakes could be adventures.