Paddlewheel

        Dandelion fuzz blows on the wind, the soft burrs transparent in the sunlight. Naomi and the other children play with a hoop, taking turns rolling it down the road.  It races along, little hands stirring the stick to keep it going, until it hits a pebble and veers sideways, falling with a nearly silent clatter in the dust.

        The riverboat shines like an enormous iced cake, three-layered; Naomi counts them.  She waves, no one waves back.  Her cousin, who’s wandered off, must have been sleepy.  The family picnic is scattered across a red plaid blanket.  Little heaps of chicken bones, bread crusts, chocolate crumbs.  Apple and watermelon seeds dot the grass, already soaking back into the earth, warmed by the sun, encouraged to regenerate.  She skips a few feet toward the riverbank, watches the wake melt on the choppy surface.  She calls his name, the syllables drift out of hearing like wishes.

        Downriver, where the boat docks, the captain finds the tattered strips of cloth caught in the gears of his paddlewheel.  The blood has already been washed away.  The men of the town drag the loamy riverbed, wading with their dungarees rolled up their calves.  They smoke or spit tobacco over their shoulders.  They cast huge nets over the water, and Naomi watches, again and again, the evergreen shade compose itself through the meshes, the faint splashing as the nets sink in.  She closes her eyes tight so they tear up, mouths a little prayer.  After working all night they find pieces of Jeremiah, where the blades of the wheel divided him.  She knows he was curled up in the cradle that held him afloat above the river, lulled by its plashing, its mother murmurs. 

        That same year President McKinley is assassinated.  When the train with his body on board rolls through town, Naomi waits beside the tracks with her brothers and sisters.  They place copper pennies, worth the world to them, underneath the wheels.  Their palms smell like the coins where they’ve squeezed them tight.  They collect their souvenirs, flattened smooth, all the engraving mashed away.  They rub them against their cheeks, and feel a spark.  

Previously published by JMWW.

Email: Justin Vicari

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