A Boating Accident

Eroded, undercut, sagging for years beneath the weight of a dead sycamore, the bank gave way when the lake was closed and the dams opened up during the winter overflow, leaving the tree offshore, hunkered down in the water, half submerged, its white branches groping the sky like a blind spider waiting to prey. The boat just happened to be there (its outboard, suddenly crippled, useless against the current), swept like some hapless insect into a web, fought for awhile then capsized in the spider’s embrace, dumping him unceremoniously into the drink, dragging him under half unconscious, battered by the tree, swept into the channel, a red General Motors hat bobbing ahead of him downriver like a beacon buoy before it sank from view waterlogged. Time passes slowly underwater. After struggling in and out of consciousness, rising and sinking for what seemed like hours, snatching only ragged gasps of sky to drag down with him, water and despair overlapped him one last time and he decided to breathe to get it over with; Lucky for him the boy from the trailer court had stolen a boat to go joyriding or it would’ve been. Later, shivering in his wet clothes in the back of the boat (so the boat was stolen? Morality is relative sometimes) everything around him was [(closer) (more remote)] at the same time and he noticed (idly, smiling) that his Timex had taken a licking and kept on ticking.