photo: ralph murre
Stilt Walking
the Upper Peninsula
by
Gillian Nevers
By the time I
thought to wake you, the stilt walker,
black rain
pants billowing in the wind, was behind us.
His lumbering
figure receding in the rearview mirror, his
day-glow
yellow knapsack disappearing into the west.
It felt like a
good omen for the trip east—this lanky boy,
grappling with
gravity along the shoulder of a highway.
So much so, it
made magical sense that a deer would stare
at me from the
side view mirror, until the interior went dark and
a blur of
brown passed over the windshield. The
thud, then tear of
hoof etching
furrows into the roof ringing in my ears—Oh,
please God,
let it be dead.
You walked to
where the deer lay and stood, as if in prayer,
a black silhouette
back-lit by semis barreling through
the morning
fog, before dragging it off the shoulder and rolling it
into the
ditch.
Sheets of rain
slashed across the road, slowed us, rattled
our nerves,
all the way to Montréal. We missed our
exit.
Took the next
one. Relieved to be off the labyrinth of merging
lanes and
ramps, found our way to the center, to our shabby hotel.
If our room
had been in the French hotel across the street, if
the sun had
shone, if you had read the street map.
If we had not
wandered for
hours, arriving at the Marché Jean-Talon too early,
the Jardin
Botanique, too late. If the Mexican
restaurant beneath
our room had
closed at midnight. If rain had not
followed us
to Vermont, chased us through New York, swept us back …
We drove in
silence, the rhythm of windshield wipers a metronome
keeping time
with our thoughts. At night, in each
anonymous motel,
we talked
about the deer, as if it were a child we failed to protect. Maybe
it was only
stunned. Maybe after we drove off, it
struggled to its feet,
ran into the
woods. “Maybe,” you said, “the deer was
no more real
than that
stilt-walking kid you say you saw.”
About an hour
out from Ludington, the rain stopped.
Still,
I couldn’t
shake the damp, stood on the deck watching
the ferry’s
wake, wanting the sun’s heat. You came,
stood
beside me and
read from the Detroit Free Press, “Stilt-walker
says trek has
shown him Michiganders at their best.”
Neil Sauter,
a Blissfield
resident, with mild cerebral palsy, completed
his 800-mile
trek across Michigan.
Blissfield. Maybe, we should go there some day.
~ previously
published in Verse Wisconsin
