Friday
Friday
I t was still dark when Lewis emerged from the hotel’s front entrance, the neon sign feebly buzzing overhead. Winter’s sharp nails held fast to this spring morning, forcing Lewis to bundle himself in a heavy coat. The lonely highway stretched into the recesses of night on either side, only a single lane going in each direction. Lewis had to take out his phone and utilize its flashlight feature to find his way.
He crossed the pavement and met the edge of the levee. A flash of a lighter and the faint glowing tip of a cigarette gave away the presence of a man at the end of the pier. Assuming it was the local guide hired to take them out on the water, Lewis remained on the riverbank. He did not want to be the first to greet him, and so he patiently waited for the rest of the party to arrive.
Eventually, the headlights of a crossover came into view. It parked along the side and spewed out Ryan and his cohorts. Ryan patted Lewis on his back as he jogged down the pier to meet the guide. Perfunctory greetings were exchanged as the men followed in the groom’s wake.
After the guide announced a few safety procedures, Lewis squeezed next to Ryan’s best man. It was a tight fit with six men aboard the fishing boat, but most of Ryan’s friends were comfortable with contact, having been athletes in their youth. Lewis hunched up within himself, bracing for the lashing from the wind. The engine noise violently rent the peaceful dawn, and the boat lurched into motion.
The blast of air on his face fully woke him as the vessel tore down the river. Lewis could barely see as he had to squint his eyes. His heart thundered in his chest. If the boat hit some obstacle in the water, he and the others would surely fly off and sustain some amount of injury. However, he ignored this thought and instead relished the adrenaline rush. He had not felt anything like this in a long while, at least not since his slump began.
The guide slowed their advance as they approached a fishing spot. The walls of water gushing behind the motor lowered and peace crept over the river once more. A powder pink bled on the horizon, the first strokes painted by the waking sun before it would color the whole delta. In the faint light, the river rippled, a slumbering, oscillating beast. Shadows ebbed between land and water. Birds called along the banks. Lewis would have liked to have listened to them, but the groomsmen began chattering as they baited their hooks.
A cluster of cured fish eggs and a small shrimp added a festive decoration to an already brightly colored lure. A couple of other men tied strips of baitfish to theirs. Lewis silently thanked the salmon in the river for their meal preferences. He did not want to handle night crawlers. The hiss of lines and clicks of reels announced the start of a countdown of who would land a fish worth keeping first.
While the men discussed a questionable call from some ball game last night, Lewis stared into the murky depths. He gripped his fishing pole, feeling the line taut against his fingers. This equipment was not his, so he took extra care not to break or lose it.
He had gone fishing a few times before, off a dock in Santa Cruz with his cousins when he was ten, a guided excursion in Chico with his dad as a teen, so it wasn’t entirely foreign. Yet he still felt like a guest in a foreign land. He was unsure of the experience of Ryan and the other groomsmen, but their confidence swept away any doubts.
With the hum of banter behind him, Lewis’ gaze drifted across the water. While the light awakened, the near embankment continued to rest in shade and night. Never sure of what crept in the cover of darkness, his eyes naturally attempted to parse out the hidden secrets. Blotches of black, a shape just a shade lighter than the water, a gray among grays, any of these daubs could betray a danger. Though these waters lacked any large predators, the human mind was quick to fear beyond logic.
For that matter, what was the dream he had? No feelings of unease had beset him. Aside from the disembodied voice and its cryptic utterances, Lewis had felt quite cozy in the abyss. His eyes saw nothing, and an invisible force had closed around him in an embrace. It was better than any weighted blanket he’d tried.
And then there was his arousal. The last time he woke with any morning wood was in his early twenties, a lifetime ago. Curious how such a bland dream would draw forth the tent. Lewis wondered if a new kink had unlocked. But as he assessed the dream from what he could recall, nothing stirred below the belt.
Lewis’ mind drifted with the river. The babble of the men melted into the lap of water along the hull of the boat. Birds flitted across the powder blue dawn sky, heralding the morning. Though crowded by the bodies of other men, Lewis practiced a meditation removed from company. The only thing to rouse him was the slight bobbing of his line.
By the time anyone had a viable nibble, the sun skimmed the horizon. The guys whooped as Ryan’s second groomsman hauled the rod backward and frantically set the reel. A smile swept over Lewis’ face for the sheer excitement emanating from the boat. The thin line strained between fish and man, the tension sending ripples over the water’s surface.
“Almost!” boomed the groomsman jerking the pole to his chest.
The tension released and the man fell into Ryan’s lap.
“Shit,” said the groomsman stabilizing himself.
“That was gonna be a big one,” groaned another.
As the men commiserated the loss, Lewis continued to smile. This little floating island of men in the river was a bastion of the present. It was the first time in a while Lewis felt light. Here the demands and pressures of adult life seemed so far away. They haunted the trees spectating from the banks. On the water, he was untouchable.
After a quick breakfast of cold sandwiches, the men resumed the long wait for fortune to smile upon them. The groomsmen simmered down, canteen coffee passing between them. The sun crawled into full morning as the guide watched from below the brim of his hat. A few more false bites taunted them before Lewis felt his own line tighten.
His eyes flashed when a concrete tug forced his hands to seize up on the rod. This was it. The groomsmen erupted into a rote of encouraging cheers as Lewis exerted himself. He briefly wondered if he was out of shape or whatever was on the end of his line was that big or effected that much drag. It was probably the former.
His arms burned as the last few feet of line recoiled onto the spool. Amid a burst of cheers, the guide dipped the fish net into the water to bring the prize to the side of the boat.
Leaning over carefully, Lewis lifted the fish slightly above the water, its tail surging back and forth still after the tug-of-war. While the groomsmen patted Lewis on the back and congratulated him, their river guide evaluated it. Lewis watched the fish work its jaws, its tail quieting.
“Just meets the minimum,” said the guide, taking a quick appraisal with a tape measure. He then lifted it onto the boat. “You decide whether you wanna keep it or toss it.” He grasped a pair of pliers and removed the hook from the fish’s jaws before passing it back into Lewis’ care.
Lewis clutched the salmon by its gill flap. Feeling a bit guilty as he deliberated, he crouched by the side of the boat, holding it along the water’s surface. The salmon gulped between air and river. Its scales glistened under the morning light, the water pinging sparkles to Lewis’ eyes. Cool ripples flowed over his hands as the slick of fish skin softened his palms. He smiled and loosened his grasp.
“Here you go.”
The fish swam into the murk.
Ryan clapped Lewis’ shoulder. “Setting the bar this morning in size and morals!”
“All right, so the bar is the minimum keep size,” said a groomsman.
“Hey, at least Lewis landed something ! That’s more than the rest of us can boast,” another quipped.
No one else was able to bring a fish onto the boat the whole day. The ice chest they had brought to keep fish in found itself hosting a 12-pack of beer the men picked up after they left the river. En lieu of silvery scales, it chilled silvery aluminum. The men refreshed themselves in the hotel room of one of the other groomsmen, pregaming for dinner.
Lewis inhaled the fresh scent of the modern amenity. A bit of regret niggled his heart for not booking a better hotel, yet he reminded himself of the charm of being on the river. While pleasant on the inside, this castle loomed over a strip mall and two chain restaurants.
He lounged on an armchair, feeling the sun waft off of his skin. The other men turned on the TV and put on golf. The sound of clapping popped along with tabs and the hiss of carbonation. Lewis closed his eyes and his mind drifted back to the water.
When the sun set, the wedding party convened at a brewery for a casual dinner. Ryan and Ayla issued a clipped run-down of the proceedings for the next day. It wasn’t a formal rehearsal dinner, fitting for such a carefree couple, and most of the evening’s attention went to the sample flights shared around the table.
Full of beer and sliders, Lewis tottered back to his room after Ryan graciously drove him back to his hotel. Though the buzz had worn off during the car ride, sleep knocked heavily behind his eyes. His room was uncharacteristically cool when he returned. He hadn’t left the AC on, hadn’t even touched it. Perhaps the housekeeper had fiddled with the setting. Lewis’ gaze lifted to the window. It was open.
While he was glad the room wasn’t as stuffy as it had been, the chill would only grow more intense through the night. He shuffled to the window and gripped his fingers on the sash. Before he could close it, his eyes caught a glimmer under moonlight.
Leaning over, he noticed droplets of water on the sill. It wasn’t particularly clear water. A bit of dirt floated in the liquid coins. Lewis narrowed his eyes, wondering if some AC unit above him was dripping. Groaning against old warped wood and too many layers of paint, he slammed the window closed.
As Lewis settled into the covers, darkness swept over his eyes. Sleep came easily as air through an open door, but on the tails of the breeze of dreams, a voice whispered.
“ Fei …”
It wasn’t an abyss that greeted him this night. Instead, a river flowed before Lewis, a cloudless cobalt sky above. The river ran straight, glassy, with barely any ripples echoing from the banks that led to wide, grassless plains. Due to the unchanging landscape, it took a few moments for Lewis to realize he was skimming along the surface of the river toward the horizon.
There was nothing but raw land, sky, and water to indicate whether he was destined for some place or not. He was simply moving forward. It was an alien landscape, as though the Earth had finally given up the ghost and plant life ceased to exist. He peered down, but the water was dark and refused to betray its secrets.
A familiar feeling wrapped around Lewis’ body. He searched for the source only to find the continued nothingness. The force tightened around his hips, stirring a flinch, though his vector remained unchanged and unjostled along the river. He stared down at himself. His boxers sucked into his skin under the invisible force, his belly squished similarly.
The pressure began to roll in undulating waves along his bottom half. Lewis inhaled against the windless pursuit of the horizon. His arms reached from his sides to the water, but it was purely an illusion. He couldn’t feel anything aside from the force around his body. It was all an illusion, a dream. However, the force pressed into his flesh as real as his lungs expanded inside him. It squeezed tighter.
Lewis woke.