“Whelp! Those hornets won’t bother us any more,” said Don. “I’ve caught them in this jar!”
It was Sunday evening. He was was complaining that I make him sound ridiculous in essays and offering a generic example of something Essay Don might say.
“I have never once had you say anything about hornets in a jar,” I said, making a mental note of his exact quote, so I could write it down.
“You know what I mean,” said Don.
We were sitting in the living room. I was on the couch with a dog fighting for lap space on either side, Binks the Cat perched on my knees, and George intermittently popping up over the backrest to bat at my hair like a little, deranged cat puppet. Don was a few feet away, safe in his animal-free armchair island. We were talking about our day.
Our day had been good. I’d chatted with a friend on a long, pleasant video call; he’d exercised. I’d gone to a Protestant church; he’d gone to Catholic Mass. I’d actually, finally gotten some grading done. He’d baked twenty-some loaves of bread with his bread buddies, and stopped afterwards to see his best friend.
I’d gone for a bike ride. And then I got in a boat. This was the moment that our days converged.
I’m slowly trying to build up mileage for that ride across Iowa that I need to write about some day, so when Don called, I was miles from home on a pock-marked asphalt road that made my teeth chatter, thinking, “I should go five more miles before I even think about turning back.
I slowed to a crawl and answered, trying not to send the bicycle into a ditch.
“Want to go out on the boat?” said Don.
“I’ll be right there!”
“Right” there was a bit of an overstatement. I went as fast as I could, but still, by the time I arrived, Don had the little aluminum fishing boat tied up at the Luna Pier dock and was back at the house. I pulled on jeans and sweatshirt for the wind, and we headed down there.
To understand the rest of this story, you require some context. Let me go back in time to last summer, when the boat came home. Don had bought it for $500 and a jar of hornets from a guy by the side of the road.
Well. OK. I think just $500, and it might’ve been Facebook marketplace, but, in any case, he brought it home, mounted his tiny little 50-year-old-motor on it, and we commenced our adventures.
Don had several nice adventures in the boat. Then he put me in it, and everything went awry. On my first boat trip, we put-putted out of the narrow Luna Pier channel into a choppy Lake Erie. We tried to land on the sandy shore of a nearby wildlife refuge, and found ourselves marooned. The wind, and, correspondingly, the waves picked up and drove the boat up the beach. We tried to push it into the water; the waves said, “No thank, you! No boats for this lake!” and pushed it back. When we finally got it out again, we were both hip deep in water, holding on for dear life, so the boat didn’t take off on a solo cruise. Eventually, Don threw himself in, and I picked my way back through rocks and nettles to the channel and waited for him to pick me up.
The second time, he took me to a quiet little river. We were five minutes out when the motor died. We did not have oars, but we did have a large beach umbrella. I knelt in the bow and paddled, first one side then the other. Don fastened a rope to one of the cleats and waded to shore. And then, like one of those barges on the Erie canal, we made our ponderous way back to the dock. I waved brightly at fishermen every time Don had to weave the rope through their rods and over their heads.
“Let me fix this motor before you go out with me again,” Don said.
He went out; the motor died. He went out again; the motor died. And died, and died, and died. He spent much of last summer not in the boat, but by the boat, taking apart the motor, greasing it, flushing it — doing all manner of motor things I did not understand.
“What are you doing with the motor?” I’d ask and then not exactly listen. The sight of Don, outside the dining room window, hands smeared with black grease, peering at the motor became a sort of pleasant backdrop to my summer days. Sometimes neighbor men congregated around him, all of them scratching their heads, and peering, and offering theories.
He took the boat out; the motor died.
When spring came this year, he said, “Do you think I should buy a new motor?”
“Either that or sell the boat.”
He bought a new (well new-used) motor. It is huge and black and muscular.
“Want to go out on the boat?” Don said a few days ago. I hesitated, but then thought, Surely I’m not bad luck in boats. That’s ridiculous.
We sped out over the bay. It was exciting! It was lovely! Don asked if I wanted to get out on the shore near our house and let the dogs out. I sprung out over the bow, caught my foot on the side and tumbled headfirst into the surf.
Surely not.
That brings us back to this past Sunday. Don got in the boat. We put-putted down the channel towards the bay. I leaned back and felt the sun on my face. I watched a turtle leap from a log.
This is nice, I thought. This is really nice.
And then. And then, well. The motor died.
“What are you going to do about the boat motor?” I asked Don as George popped up again to claw the back of my neck.
To be honest, I didn’t really listen. But I’m pretty sure it had something to do with a jar of hornets.
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