Ed licked the water with his paddle, making shallow, thoughtful strokes, whittling thin curls of lake water behind him. The green mottled fiberglass hull carved a gently rippling “V” across the western edge of Lake Me. Near the duck feeding area.

He didn’t really want to battle. Not today, at least. Today would have been a ( Read more... )

        Ed Groat and Henge stood there, that fateful morning, on the banks of Lake Me. Fog hung across the surface, and frogs made noise. It was not really a glamorous bank, mostly hillsides carved by bulldozers and filled with aggregate gravel and pulverized red bricks - refuse from Milton University building projects.    
        Ed had unloaded ( Read more... )

Ed Groat loaded up his fiberglass canoe on top of his 1986 Dodge Ram pickup. Silver grey with primer and rust, a hackneyed rack on the roof of the cap Ed had made himself out of two by fours and the frame from an old Sears Roebuck weight set.

By day, Ed Groat was a bricklayer.

Laying bricks made ( Read more... )

    The naval battle was sure to be a summer blow out. That’s what Henge and Ed Groat figured, anyway.
    “Summer’s like a leaky canoe,” Ed said on the banks of Lake Me. “Somebitch needs to be fiberglassed over,” he said. “Sealed up.”
    Ed looked into his coffee mug the morning of the battle. Nothing but a brown residue, and a pungent burnt smell ( Read more... )

            Ed Groat owned the canoe. He was a hoarder in a house his parents owned in Hyde Park.

His neighbors were always after him. Writing to city council.

Dear Mr. Groat, the letter would tell Ed, and they would use words like delinquency, and derelict, and dilapidated. Premises, and yard, and things like forthwith, and ( Read more... )

            “Yeah man,” he said, “canoeing is the way to go man.”

He went on: “Eco therapy,” he said.

“Yeah.”

“Dem somebitches prolly spent a hundred dollars to fill up their tanks. All for what Jack? Just a day on the river? Who’s got that kind of money Sam?”

“I dunno.”

My shoulders and ( Read more... )