* Author : Diana Dima

* Narrator : Matt Dovey

* Host : Matt Dovey

* Audio Producer : Eric Valdes

*

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PodCastle 918: Waterways is a PodCastle original.





Content warning for self-harm and coercive control





Rated PG

Waterways

by Diana Dima

 

 

When his father died and left him the boat, he thought to himself, I can do it. I’m a boat-son, a boat-man, I’m no longer a child and no longer have to go home at sunset, when mother and sisters gather around the table and talk about the will and the debts. In the will his father had written to my son, who may yet feel at home on the water. So David spent days in the yard, scrubbing and polishing and waxing, and often fell asleep under the boat tarp in the cool May night.

When he left, he did look back at the hunched house and the village, faint as a smear of dirt on the green and the blue. He did feel a pang of guilt deep under the ribs. But mostly he was driven like a powerboat, like a steering wheel under his father’s hand. So he steered toward the northern shores where they used to go fishing for pike and drop anchor for the night in quiet coves.

It was a grey day, that first one, and no other boats on the lake, as though he’d sailed into another world. The motion of the water made him sick. His father used to say, what kind of man gets seasick on a lake? But in death he had trusted his son; had trusted himself to have taught his son well, and his death to fill in whatever gaps were left.

The lake mirrored the clouds and the clouds rippled with a stubborn wind. I can do it, David thought, his knuckles white on the steering wheel, fingers too thin, woman’s hands, his father used to say. The boat fought against him and against the wind, small waves breaking like glass against the hull. Eliza, his mother’s name, painted in rust-red letters on the stern.

That way I’m always with her, father had said at first.

Then later he would say: she’s always with me, the woman. Always with us, isn’t she, son, and he’d take a swig of beer and clap him on the shoulder.

But David didn’t understand, because his mother never came with them on the boat; and when her children swam in the lake, she never went in the water, only stood on the shore and watched them play.



At dusk, the outline of blue hills filled the horizon. On the fish finder screen the lacework of the coast drew closer, and David steered over the quiet waters. He felt alone in the whole wide world. And when he dropped anchor, there was nobody to check the length of the chain or that he’d set the alarm or that the anchor light was on. He boiled water and ate some oats and then lay down in the berth. Through the open transom door he saw the dark water, the sliver of moon dancing over it, and the lake smell, old and musty, wafted in.

Maybe he slept, and a shadow over the boat woke him. Or maybe he walked to the stern and leaned out and put his hand in the cold water, and fell into sleep and a dream. Faces under the water, eyes open wide. Hair spread under the surface like a net, wrapping around his fingers, sticky, dark. At the touch he jerked awake and when he bent down to look closer only his own face stared up, translucent in the moonlight, eyes wide and afraid. The lake lay still, not a ripple to break the reflection; and for a long moment he didn’t know whether he was above or below.



By morning the nausea had settled into a bitternes...