Authors: Joseph Coulson

Of Song and Water (35 page)

BOOK: Of Song and Water

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He lets her go. “Take care,” he says, stepping over the threshold.

“You, too.”

After a moment's hesitation, in the brittle sunlight, he walks down the steps and across the lawn to his truck and climbs in behind the wheel.

HE STOPS at the corner and thinks. To go anywhere near the mess at Humbug doesn't seem wise. He'll give it a wide berth and use something other than his usual route to get out of town. He glances in the mirror. Heather is nowhere to be seen.

Now he'll head west for a while before turning and traveling northeast. He can't make up his mind whether to take the tunnel or the bridge to Canada. He'll wait until he's on the freeway and then choose.

In Tobermory, the houses on the harbor are red, yellow, and blue.

The idea strikes him as far-fetched. “Don't count on a second ending,” said Otis, his long finger pointing at the music. But he wonders now if Otis was right. It isn't always true. He's seen one or two exceptions to the rule.

Once the river is behind him, he'll drive north through Ontario and along the eastern shore of Lake Huron. He'll arrive in Tobermory and stay as long as he can, and he'll welcome the coming days when the trees turn brown and the sky becomes an endless field of gray. And there'll be nothing sad or colorless about it.

After passing the slag heaps at River Rouge, the sulfur and the heat, he settles on taking the bridge. He'll make the crossing. He'll reach the far shore and resist the impulse to look back.

In Tobermory, the houses on the harbor are red, yellow, and blue.

Designed by David Bullen
Typeset in Janson Text with Perpetua display
Printed by Maple-Vail
The paper is 55# Sebago Antique

Archipelago Books
25 Jay Street, #203
Brooklyn, NY 11201
www.archipelagobooks.org

eISBN : 978-1-935-74420-7

1. Fathers and sons â Fiction. 2. Great Lakes (North America) â Fiction. 3. Middle West â Fiction. 4. Jazz â Fiction. I. Of Song and Water.

PS 3553.0827036 2007
813'.54 â dc22

Distributed by Consortium Book Sales and Distribution
1045 Westgate Drive
St. Paul, Minnesota 55114
www.cbsd.com

Material from Tudor, Steven
Haul-Out: New and Selected Poems
, pp. 5, 18, 26, 27, 30, 32, 43, 44, 49, 50, 106, 111, 137, with the permission of Wayne State University Press.

Material from
The Aeneid
by Virgil, translated by Robert Fitzgerald, copyright Â© 1980, 1982, 1983 by Robert Fitzgerald. Used by permission of Random House, Inc.

Material from “Orpheus Alone,”
The Continuous Life
by Mark Strand Â© 1990 by Mark Strand.

Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.

“The Sidney Greenstreet Blues,”
The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster
, Richard Brautigan.

Lines from “September Song” (Anderson/Weill), “Stardust” (Carmichael/Parish), and “I've Been Loving You Too Long (To Stop Now)” (Redding/Butler) appear in italics.

All possible care has been taken to secure permission for copyrighted material.

Bequest of Stephen Carlton Clark, B.A. 1903.

This publication was made possible with the support of Lannan Foundation and the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency.