For Us To Remember

Flash Fiction

Kristian Schofield on Unsplash

It felt familiar, this narrow bend in the stream, as if he had fished it before. He took off his jacket and laid it against an old fir and then he was sure that he had, perhaps many times. The water ran swift and smooth around the boulders and broke noisily into the drop below and he knew that there would be trout in the eddies and they would be young and strong and bold.

He fished from the bank for a long time and the place where he stood was now sunken and flooded, yielding little clumps of itself smoky into the stream.

Another flick of the bamboo rod toward the spot on the opposite bank where a fish had surfaced a few minutes earlier, perhaps an hour earlier, perhaps a decade. When to stop. There was no one to tell him.

The sun set quickly, surprising him cold. He found a jacket on the ground under a tall fir and pulled it on, the flannel lining warm and familiar-smelling. He sat against the tree with arms folded, hunger rising and fading, sleep elusive, like the way home, surely upstream but maybe down. Perhaps home had always been the shelter of a tall fir beside a bend in a stream.

Voices in the distance like memories, indistinct and breathy. A beam of light sweeping unsure steps, closing now, the beam shining a canopy cathedral. Two figures, a man and a boy, entered with reverence.

The man sank to his knees, tears breaking childlike.

“I knew we’d find you here,” said the boy in a man’s tone. “Did you catch a few, grandpa?”

“He didn’t even bring a fishing pole,” said the man, weeping.

“Come grandpa,” said the boy, extending his hand. “We’ve come to take you home.”

“He doesn’t understand. Just look at his eyes.”

“He’s still there,” said the boy. “I still see him.”

“It hurts me to think about all the things he’s forgotten.”

“He depends on us now,” said the boy. “It’s for us to remember.”