Pond boys

 I juggle a steaming cup of English Breakfast and a bowl of Quaker Steel Cut Oats in one hand, and slide the screen door open with the other. The eyes squint. The brow frowns. The day’s colors begin to settle on my skin. Some purple establishes itself on the Salvia. The Zinnias pinken and the Cardinals redden. Around here, things know how to fall into place. At night, a rafter of turkeys strut, gobble, and hoist their way up to my grandfather’s pine trees. Now, I drag my slippers across the deck and place my breakfast on the railing, between Petunia and Black-eyed Susan. The chair is never quite where I want it to be, so I tug it lightly, pull it slightly. Never to my own satisfaction. I sit myself down and it hits me that it rained last night, as I begin to feel the cool water from the pillow seeping through my pajama pants. Ah well. I bring the cup to my lips and test the waters. Too hot. I take a spoonful of soggy oats instead, letting the spice of the cinnamon marry the sweetness of the banana in my mouth; the tang of the blueberry purse my lips. I look out onto the pond and see two figures standing on wooden jon boats. These must be the men whose voices I woke up to earlier.

“The one good thing about fishermen used to be that they were quiet,” my mother seethes beside me.

“How come?” I comply.

“Fish aren’t like people. They avoid sounds.”

The man with his back turned to us is doing all the talking. His daughter is getting a divorce and the son-in-law comes from money but his lawyer isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed so she got the house and the china cabinet and they’re still combing out the custody details although he’ll probably end up getting their son every other weekend which is just as well because he’s not father material. The conversation comes in and out, mimicking the rhythm of the water kissing the shore. The man facing him is wearing black sport sunglasses and an olive green cap that matches the shade of his boat. He nods his head occasionally, peppering mhms and ahs interspersedly. The monologue deviates to last week’s barbeque with Mickey and Fred and Bobby and Lu, and I gulp the last of the chilled soy milk from my bowl. I wipe my mouth on the back of my hands and sit back with my right ankle on my left knee. My mother tunes out the world by gardening. She finds respite in the plucking of scale bugs beneath rhododendron leaves. In the taking and repotting of mint and basil cuttings. In the digging of fingers into warm, moist soil. Then, and only then, do the men in her world stop making noise.

I take another sip of tea, this time letting the heat sit on my tongue and swish across my teeth. A hummingbird buzzes into my field of vision, his blue gorget glistening in the sunlight. Hurriedly, he sucks the nectar of a pink foxglove, moves on to the neighboring rose of Sharon. It’s only nine thirty am but this hummingbird means business. All of a sudden he is flying towards me, inching methodically closer and closer, as if timed by invisible sliding doors. He locks my eyes in his and I fear for my eyeballs. If I reached out I could touch him. In the time it takes for me to blink, he’s gone.

The men’s voices reemerge, and I carry my tableware inside, satisfied knowing no fish will be torn out of water today.