Canal Days
Sarah D’Stair is a novelist and poet who lives in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Her poetry has been included in Burningwood, Damselfly Press, The Charles Carter, and other publications, and she is the author of the novellas
Hand to Bone, Roulettetown and Petrov Petrovich Is in Love. She has also produced and acted in several feature-length films, including M.r Pickpocket (2017), Science Fiction (2016), and Hully Gully: A New American Romance (2014). Her novel Central Valley has just been published by Kuboa Press (2017). |
It was halfway between Dad’s house and the Kozy Korner Mini-Mart. Maybe three miles total one way to the store and me and Heather would walk it on hot dry summer days. (Heather lived in a cozy house. Her mother loved Elvis.) Meet on the corner with five dollars each. Walk down Tully Road past the trees of a dozen orchards, past the yellow house that always looked clean and new out of place on this worn road, past the tractor house and the dairy poor cows house past the house I went into once but can’t remember why past dogs and horses and a few flowers in a few flower pots at the nicer houses. Past all of this. And then, the canal, the one that runs along Service Road. We are hot and we are talking nonstop about Bobby dedicating I’m Crazy for You on the radio and Mr. Franklin who isn’t in class for awhile because we heard he had a heart attack and about where her dad lives now and on to other things so many things to talk about when you’re ten. We arrive. Strip off shorts and shirts who cares no one is out here anyway it is just us and we jump full on into the swift water. Off the canal bank and then back up the sloped cement side and jump higher this time and further see if you can make it to the other side and then just float just glide and close your eyes and feel the cool on your skin and laugh so loud and pretend you’re drowning just for a moment now let’s hold hands and jump don’t let go I won’t you either okay now Go and then we go and we don’t let go and that is a triumph. Sometimes Mack the dog would join us. Jump in Mack and he would and splash toward us his tongue misshapen out of him too when we’d pretend to drown he would yelp out jump in to save us good Mack dad’s dog Mack I got for him when he was a puppy and I was in second grade a Christmas present a dog Mack who lived to be very old and who loved me. The water cool the water brownish blue farm water rushing down from mountain stores all the way down into the valley across and west a hundred miles to arrive here around my young skin to swallow me into its cool skin to watch a young girl laugh with Heather and to show Mack what he can do. This water on a dry hot dust yellow day almond trees on all sides that sometimes strangers would come out from and smile at us and the solid dirt path runs by the water tractors sometimes swirl dust that we breathe in then dunk to escape under this water there is my friend whose legs my legs touch and whose hand I felt on my bare back and whose hair slightly curled at times brushes my face and who laughs when I say she is pretty and who also loves the danger of floating down too close to where the water crushes and tumbles through a sieve to the next part of the canal. We swim close. Thrill our way upstream. Swim hard we would be crushed let’s go thrill our way back to the edge to climb up and let’s jump in one more time and then go to the store and we do jump one more time holding hands with Heather her freckles are lighter than mine but her hair is darker and in water it is okay if we touch remember that time in the bath we kissed and our hands and all our skin all over learned what all over skin soft feels like all over and now the canal days are our underwater days too. We leave the canal after one more jump. Clothes dry in the hot sun. Before we arrive we two arrive long and hot again at the store. We buy candy how much is the most we can get with five dollars how much will a tiny paper bag hold a lot and we leave the store for the long quieter walk back as we see who can reach the center of a BlowPop first and how many SweetTarts our mouths will hold I won last time she wins this one and we get to Grayson Road she goes right I go straight back to our own houses hers cozy mine yellow I cut through the orchard still the sweet candy in my mouth.
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