Greg Gerke - Now Come the Days

Greg Gerke

Now Come the Days

The day brings me to a fish hatchery on the Oregon side of the Columbia River. Monday afternoon. My stomach brewing a sludge of junk food.

I lock my car and tip-toe through the gates hoping no one will recognize me. Lewis and Clark had been here -- or they were nearby. A monolith across the river named Beacon Rock is the main evidence. The Wahatpolitan Indians told Sacagawea that when winds blew slowly up the river they could hear the ghost of a long dead Indian woman who had jumped off the rock with her child when given to a chief other than the one she loved.

Salmon trundle and flip in the cement-cased waterways. Chinook. Coho. Sturgeon as well. Yes, it is almost time to go upstream and spawn fat fish, but they won’t release you for that. You brave ones -- I see you jump at the pour from higher tanks, scared and not understanding the vicious corners you must live in. A woman with white stretch pants and a camera laughs at you and soon adds, “Looks like this one is dead.” There are enough of your kind for someone to walk across the water on nothing but salmon. At least you won’t be by yourself when you go. But what is your psychology of death? Your final wishes? Maybe you would prefer to be alone at the end. To swim behind some riverstone, lie down and close your eyes. Without a dirge, without any myth or anecdotes to remember you by.

I could be a reporter working on a story but I’m not. My father is dead. It’s been two weeks. I am not seeing anyone. Not taking any calls. Happenstance has brought me to many attractions across the state. I figure it will become more difficult to do this sort of thing in a few months, when winter cools our bones. I want it to be like I have a life. That I go out and live every day.

The story here is rental cars, baby strollers, digital cameras and a gift shop full of stuffed likenesses and bumper stickers. The landscaping is perfect. Whoever designed it made it totally unlike anything Lewis and Clark could ever imagine. Walkways, fountains, shrubs spaced equally from each other. The one piece of wild are the ducks. Hunched on the bank of a little pond with firs and pines shading its brown, fetid water -- their heads never cocked, even when they sense danger.

I walk back to my rusty Volvo, start the car up to make my way to the hotel. A large black jeep with California plates pulls in. Three young men with shaved heads get out. They almost skip to the hatchery. One takes pictures of himself on the run. My father and I didn’t fish too much. He rarely spoke about the Indians. Just once my father beat the shit out of me. I had slashed tires with friends. I cried hard while he kicked my stomach, but I almost enjoyed the brutality, the deep physicality. His act said to me, Yes I am alive and I have many things boiling inside, ready to express. Enjoy this buddy. Once in a lifetime.

These days, driving the west, I think I’m starting to figure things out. Me, the salmon, the three guys -- it doesn’t matter. We’re all headed to the same place. It’s cold and dark and the war drums are muffled. It is the land beneath the land, the land beneath the sea. Our ancestors are there. They are waiting for us bring them better news.

Greg Gerke currently lives in Buffalo. His work has appeared in Fourteen Hills, Pedestal Magazine, Pindeldyboz, Hobart, Eyeshot, elimae, and others. He will soon publish a book of short fiction at Blaze Vox Books. His website is www.greggerke.com.