Treading Water
by Cam McAlpine
The old man with the paper bag is beaten to the ground by boys, purple wine
mingling with blood pouring from his face as he doubles over, retches.
We swerve to avoid a confrontation. “It looks like his arm’s broken.”
The silence of us all as we pick up speed. It never happened. And did it?
Later, in the icy waters below Cheslatta Falls where a perpetual mist hangs
in its own slant light, am swimming, head bobbing just above the surface.
Logging trucks barrel by trailing great clouds of dust. And on the other side
of the Nechako, this river that drowned three boys last year, the feller-bunchers *
are chewing trees. Above these falls the quicksilver rapids now smash
against a rock ledge formed from the gentle current of a thousand million years.
Am swimming and that’s all. Dozens of new spur roads since the last time *
we were out this way. There’s times the trucks roll down the road
at intervals of less than fifteen minutes. If there hasn’t been a good rain
the dust never settles. It’s just globes of light moving both ways,
the odd piece of tumbling bark, pine trees turning grey.
(near Vanderhoof, BC)
* “feller-bunchers” - large tractor-like machines that cut trees down and load them into piles ready for trucking, thus reducing the necessary labour force by two-thirds
* “spur roads” - small access roads into logging cut blocks.
Cam McAlpine is a writer and editor living in Prince George, BC. Previous publications include Canadian Literature, West Coast Line, The Capilano Review, and
It’s Still Winter.
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