urban trappist scriptorium

Wake Us and We Drown

My father said it was the largest catfish heÕd ever seen. We didnÕt know how it got onto our ferry, but there it was, flopping and gasping, spreading glop all over the deck when we got there that morning. I remember it seeming almost as big as me, but I was only seven and you know how fish stories go over the years. He told me to kick it off before we went to the Ohio shore where several cars would be waiting. At that hour, they probably wouldnÕt be too eager to be greeted by those fleshy whiskers and that gummy mouth.

But I didnÕt kick it off. It must have been on the deck for most of the night, because it didnÕt have much struggle left. I poked at its gills with my shoe and watched them flare, showing their bloody spiny bristles. I poked them again and they flared a little less. I poked harder but this time they barely moved at all, and I got frustrated because I wanted to see inside.

I suddenly realized that something wasnÕt right with this one. I asked my father why it wasnÕt moving much, and he told me that catfish need to be in the water just like we need to be out of the water. And if they get stuck out, I asked. Well, then they end, he said. Oh. And what about us, I asked, what if I dove down to the river bottom, would I end? Well, itÕs not quite that plain, he said. So maybe I can swim with the catfish, I said. I got excited. No, he said as he untied the moorings, youÕll still end, but then comes something else, something different, just like how dreaming is different from being awake. ItÕs the end of something, but itÕs not really the end of everything.

I thought about that as he started up the boat, and he told me again to kick the catfish before it ended. I said I would, but I just went back and watched its mouth gape and gape, but then slowly, and then slower. Kick it off, Job, he shouted from the wheelhouse. I looked over to him, saw that we were very close to the shore, and so I kicked at it several times until it had finally flopped through the side railing, tail first, those globby eyes gazing blankly back at me. I wasnÕt sure if it swam away or just drifted off. For many years I had dreams that tried to figure which it had done, but then I became far more intrigued by what my father had called the end of something and what that would be like. I always looked closely when those ends came around the ferry after my father had given it over to me a couple decades later. He became a deacon at New Life United Methodist, where Martha and I had our three boys and one daughter baptized.

IÕd like to say I got mighty good, but the ferry is such a simple thing that anyone can get pretty close to perfect after a steady week or so. YouÕd only be lacking how to adjust for the occasional storm that ups the current, how to hear the shore on a foggy dawn, or how to elude the kids on their jetskis. My boat was the Amos, a stumpy but steady craft, the wheelhouse always on the downstream side in the middle of the long, flat deck. I steered it back and forth across the Ohio a dozen or so times every day, maybe more in the fall when suburban folks (the wise ones, at least) fled Cincinnati to pick apples or pumpkins. About ten cars would roll onto it two by two, ride the short time across, then roll right off once they reached the other side.

You wouldnÕt think that a simple captain like myself would have seen a lot of peopleÕs endings (and I suppose, compared to some, I didnÕt). Not the sort of thing that happens on a little midwestern ferry, right? But I bet you that, if you stay some one place for long enough, youÕll see that the end comes anywhere it wants. And so does the beginning, for that matter. I was born on the Amos because my mother thought it would be better for her to be near my father than to stay home and wait until the time came. She wanted him to be around for their first child (their only one, as it turned out).

But my father knew much more about being around the end. As a deacon, he visited hospices or grieving families. He didnÕt tell me much, always said those private chats werenÕt right to discuss, but sometimes heÕd toss me a nugget he had gleaned from his ministry, like how certain people seemed to smile just before the end. But only, he pointed out, if they realized they werenÕt ending, just going to another shore.