PRL Serials

The man in a canoe is a sight to see, laid back, one foot up on a side. His legs are long enough that his foot skims the surface of the water, sending out ripples. He is tall for his age, a lanky man-boy of seventeen, and he has dark skin like his mother. His father’s skin is lighter, tan and always slick from the baby oil he applies in the morning. The man is fit from days running and playing in the humid air of the summer on soft, clover covered hills behind his rural home in the southern piedmont region of NC; where he was born, as were his parents, and their parents, and so on. He likes to climb trees when he sees them and he is tall enough that he can reach the high branches and pull himself up from the ground. He got a lot of good pears that way; the man is a big fan of pears.

He is using the canoe that his father received as a gift so many years ago. The man’s family doesn’t have very much at all, they are poor by most standards, but the man had generally been a very happy child and never felt that he was left wanting for anything. His father does odd jobs as a handyman and he is also a custodian for the local school. His mother works when she can, she suffers from lupus and when she feels healthy enough she does laundry at a local motel. His family lives in a house at the end of a dirt road that the man’s grandfather built many years ago, amidst mid-sized hills and patches of trees. It is an impressive two stories and there is a porch on each. There are eight total rooms, two bathrooms, but most are empty until the holidays or when family visits; which isn’t too often because of the remoteness.

The man in a canoe is celebrating; he was happy to carry his father’s canoe by himself to the lake that was a mile from his house, and he smiled as he tipped it into the water. He climbed into it and pushed off from the muddy bank with a paddle and he had been on his back, looking up at the clouds for hours, dreaming about his next step. The man is a recent high school graduate, he walked the stage for his diploma only hours ago, his parents and twin sister in the audience. He’s been looking forward to life after school, the thought of being in complete control of his own existence excited him. He thinks about the places he can go. He has saved a couple thousand dollars from years of helping his father with his odd jobs and he’s also gained enough practical skills to find employment in any new place he could find himself. The man has experience with cars, residential electrical wiring, plumbing, roof and shingle repair, and most landscaping duties. He is alone on the water because the day is finally here, he can be whatever man he chooses, in whatever place he finds himself.

Ultimately, the man in a canoe is scared and has retreated to his safe place alone where he could be worried, away from his family’s expectations, their needs. The man has forgone much of a personal life in service to his family that he knew never intentionally put any burden on him. He had always just been very reliable, helping to pay bills when he could, playing chauffeur to his sister, fixing things around the house to save his father the stress, he was even known to cook a meal or two a week to relieve his mother. And needless to say, by the time the man is a seventeen year old high school graduate and dreaming up to the clouds in a canoe, he has very few friends who aren’t relatives and he has never even had a girlfriend. But the man has pined for a girl for many years and his thoughts shift to her. Her name is April and the man has known her most of his life; they attended the same school and she would graduate next year with his sister. She knew him well, the two were friends, but she could never imagine that the man had any feelings for her because he never seemed to indicate any particular affection when they interacted, only standard niceties that one can expect from a southern gentleman. When the two were in their early teens, April wondered if she could have feelings for the man, but when she tried to kiss him on the stairwell at their school, he pulled away from her and she assumed that he didn’t share her desire to be anything more than friends and classmates. In actuality, the man had dreamed about that kiss for years, he was only nervous that he had no practice. After the encounter, he asked his sister’s advice, and she explained that, “Its hard to learn how to do something if you never practice it.” Which made sense to the man, but the next time he managed to be alone with April in the stairwell, she wasn’t interested in him anymore, she had a boyfriend by that point. Their friendship since that time was only that, an occasional friendship that really only existed when they were in the same physical location, like a classroom, or the school gym. And over the years, she became less human, less real, but more vivid in his imagination where he dreamed that she was interested in all the same things that he liked, and that she looked forward to his conversation.

The man in a canoe decides that he can use a companion and the only one that he really wants is April. He sits up in the boat and stares at the plank of wood that was an empty seat across from him. He closes his eyes for a second and when he opens them again, April is sitting there, wearing the last outfit that he remembers seeing her in; a short, white skirt that stops well above her knees and a white tank top that accentuates her breasts and slender frame. Her skin is even lighter than his father’s, and her hair is curly and tamed into two puffs on either side of her head, making her look younger than she is.

“Why’d you leave the ceremony so fast? You didn’t even take pictures with anybody. You that ready to leave high school?” April asks, her voice almost sing-song and so soft.

“I just needed to do some thinking. It’s hard to think with a lot of people around crying and hugging.” His graduating class was about two hundred people and even though he’d known many of them his entire life, he didn’t really feel a strong sense of loss at the thought that he would no longer see them everyday. Most of them were annoying to him because they had made the classroom unbearable, always talking and making jokes when he was trying to learn about new places and things. And when he spent his lunch periods in the library reading, they were the ones who would interrupt him with questions to make him feel weird for enjoying the quiet of the library. He would not miss that and he wondered how many libraries he could find to sit and read across the country.

“I’m trying to decide when to leave and where to to go.” The man knows that his time at home with his family has come to an end.

“Well, you can go as far as your money and the kindness of strangers will take you,” April says, using the soft voice that the man loves, but sounding much more thoughtful and wise than she was when he talked with her at school. “Just pick a direction. What about north? To Canada?”

The man had not thought about leaving the US so soon. It was an inevitability, though, he’d read about countries in Africa that intrigued him and he knew that one day he would see them, but not before he knew more of the US, and when he was better able to afford the trip.

“You could just go north, as far as Maine. You could follow the Appalachian trail. Or you could see the Midwest, the northwest, just the west coast.” April says.

“Where would you go?” The man asks, smiling sadly at April across from him. He thinks that the two of them could have been something special.

“I’d go wherever you would go.” She says smiling.

The man and April are interrupted by someone calling from the shore of the lake. He paddles over in the direction and discovers his sister.

“Mama and Daddy been looking for you. Somebody here to see you.” His sister can’t stop looking at April who is still in the canoe as they talk on the muddy bank.

“Why is she just sitting there?” His sister asks. “Hey April. When did she get here?”

“She’s not. Who’s here to see me? Somebody from school?” The man isn’t expecting visitors.

“I don’t know, he said you met at the public library. He’s our age, Hispanic guy. April is gonna disappear isn’t she?” His sister hasn’t taken her eyes off of April who is still in the canoe and had not moved.

“Yea, soon enough.”

“Were you having sex with it?” His sister asks sheepishly.

“Why do you have to be gross? No, I just needed someone to talk to. Let’s go back, I wanna see who’s here.” The man cannot imagine having sex with April as he made her that day in the canoe, he wanted the real thing or nothing at all.

The two head back in the direction of their house. Behind them, April had disappeared into thin air.

“You could have just talked to the real April, she considers you a friend. Or find some other real girl to talk to.” His sister worries that he will never be able to find love because he can make anything for himself out of thin air for a short time before it disappears.

When they make it to the house, the man’s sister heads for their parent’s car and is off to run errands after reminding the man to bring their father’s canoe back to the house.