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Show Blue Run/48 his morning coffee. This is where I took O.W. after he married me. Joey, me, and my new husband O W.- four days between Christmas and New Year's, 1965. Ruby'd got a lard ass. In the four a.m. pitch black, her side of the flatbottom dipped low, so 0 W. had to sit as far as he could on the opposite side up front to balance. Daddy knew the invisible bayou channels. When low branches slapped O.W in the face he'd say, "goddamnit," in that low-mean voice And sometimes Daddy'd laugh out loud. Me and Joey snuggled between them, these men with shotguns on their laps It was dark, an ungodly hour before day and cold enough for skim ice on the channel Daddy cut trough three miles of timber flood, out to the clear pools where trees thinned enough for mallards to see the decoys when the sun came up. My father was outright famous across three states, I knew, for how he piloted the flatbottom through . dark sloughs, wide open turns into the darkness he knew by heart. Everybody tipped the Jesus out of him for that, knowing the dark by heart. And he did it full-throttle with a forty-horse Mercury Christ knows how fast we went, branches slapping O.W silly up front, those gut-low curses that kept daddy in stitches. I hung tight to Joey and scooted us both close to Ruby whose butt wasn't going anywhere. No moon and no stars that morning, just dark and cold in our faces, the high pitched motor every now and then hitting a root, threatening to shear pins. Daddy cut the motor and let the boat glide into a spot about the size of an ice rink. Steam was rising in the quiet-like the insides of something, mummy boy, maybe Quiet as the deepest, darkest place. Joey'd just turned five-the magic year, I'd learn. We all sat there breathing while it got light enough to make out decoys. My father loaded his gun, told O.W. to do the same. Metallic shrings rang out when gun's chambers jammed shut-final and real. O W. slid off the bow, breaking ice |