The Good Man

James Miller

The good man wanted to spend quality time with the kid—his wife’s little brother.

The kid talked about his experiments with levitation the whole way down to the bayou, with the blue-gray boat rattling in its trailer behind the truck. He insisted that anyone can get off the ground, at least a few inches, maybe one or two feet. It’s a lot of work, he said. Most people don’t bother. Do you?

The good man guided the blue-gray boat past thumbs of packed earth, tiny islands full of thin, bare trees. The water was thick with October cold.

The kid repeated names he would soon forget. Live oak, green ash, winged elm. Live ash, green elm, winged oak. Once, they nudged close to shore, and he jumped out, scrambled up a tangle of roots, crunched in dead leaves between sleeping barks.

The good man waited patiently in the boat, watched the kid breaking off twigs from the lowest branches.

Soon the kid came back to the boat, talking about mysterious traces of passage in the woods. Something has been on the move, he said. Something big, but fast. Maybe dangerous.

The good man listened to the story and agreed that sometimes strange things came through these parts.

As the good man pulled the boat back onto the trailer, he thought about what it would feel like to kick someone in the stomach. Last week the kid came through the living room, found his big sister lying on the floor watching television, crushed the air out of her lungs.