BY THE ARM

I was following the red brick path that ran along the Ohio River, back up to the sidewalk in front of the Lafayette Hotel. I spotted one of those odd contraptions you stick a quarter in and it lets you see really far away. I’d never actually seen one outside of movies that show people site seeing on top of the Empire State Building. I dropped my quarter in and looked out at the water; nothing but driftwood. I tilted the machine up towards West Virginia on the other side of the river, but nothing was going on; nobody walking on the sidewalk or driving down the street. I did see a kid standing outside on the second story balcony of an apartment building. He tried opening the door but it was locked then pounded on the glass with both fists. He took a few steps back, bent over and picked up a stick, and threw it at the door. This time it opened and a brown-haired woman came out in a white t-shirt and cut-off shorts and grabbed him by the arm, but he fell down and kicked his feet in the air and my screen went black, my time was up.

I watched a steamship go by then put in another quarter. The mother was gone. The boy was still on the porch, sitting on a chair eating a sandwich. I looked to the right and found a bedroom window. The mother was lying on the bed, on top of the covers, on top of a small pillow underneath the arch of her back, without her t-shirt on. She had a bottle of lotion in her left hand and she was squirting it in a straight line from her neck to her navel and my screen went blank, my time was up.

I searched all four pockets twice for another quarter but came up empty. I took a seat on the large, round, stone map of the Ohio Valley. One of the locals and his son came up from the water carrying fishing poles and an empty gray bucket. Both had on black t-shirts and black hats with rebel flag logos.

“How’s it going fellas? You guys catching anything?”
“Naa, the water’s running so fast, Jr. keeps getting his line caught in the driftwood.”
“Yeah there’s a bunch of junk in this river. I watched a big blue cooler float by about fifteen minutes ago.”
“Oh you ain’t from around here then.”
“No, I’m from Michigan. I had a weekend conference over in Morgantown and I’m just stopping here for the night.” He nodded his head to let me know he knew all along.
“Yeah, we had one hell of a flood come through here a few years back. There were campers, cars, animals, people; all kinds of shit come floating down here. Me and my old man pulled a black Mustang outta there, damn near new. One of my buddies found an old Volvo.”
“Did you get to keep them?”
“Yeah we stripped ‘em down and sold ‘em off for what we could get, but that wasn’t much. There ain’t no money down here no more. Used to be sixteen steel mills right here in town, union workers started at $16.50. But now that sonofabitch Bush lets all the Chinamen dump their steel over here. Only four of the mills are open now and you top out at $9.00. People can’t feed their families on $9.00.”
“It seems nice and quiet down here and everybody’s pretty laid back.”
“Yeah don’t get me wrong, Marietta’s a hell of a place to bring up a family. There ain’t no crime down here, except when the college kids try getting rowdy with some of the local boys, but we’re just having fun then. I mean the schools are real nice. No problems with the coloreds, no metal detectors in the schools, none of that mess. You just gotta get lucky and find some decent work and take care of the family.”
“You have any luck finding work down here?”
“Yeah, I got me an Associate’s degree and went into the Navy. I got out and went to work on the ships for awhile until I got a job doing underwater welding. It sucks but it pays real nice. I bought me a nice piece of land down there on the west end. I figure the house can hold my family for at least three generations; my son and maybe a grandson.”
“No shit. What’s it like underwater?”
“It ain’t too bad, except for when they rebuilt the bridge going into West Virginia. Most of us quit after two hours. There were catfish down there big enough to swallow a car and we spent most of the two hours trying to fight ‘em off. They wouldn’t have ate us or nothing but they wouldn’t get out of the way.”
“Damn that sounds crazy. You ever catch any off them catfish in there?”
“I pulled one out of the Muskingum, weighed ninety-six pounds.”
“Nice. Well hey man I gotta get going, you two take it easy.”

I started walking towards the hotel again and his son tried running off the walkway onto the grass. The man grabbed him by the arm and swatted him twice on the ass.

I walked through the hotel lobby envious of the young boy. He will grow up to respect authority. He is an eye-witness to the value of hard work. He will raise his family in the home his father secured for him and will one day pass it on to his son. I would have let my son explore the bank along the river. He would be an eye-witness to the value of learning from life experiences and making mistakes. But as soon as my back turned my son would go further and further into the river and by the time I found him the water would have filled his lungs.