Serial by McKenzie Harris

Serial

by McKenzie Harris

The Cuyahoga River has been ignited more than 13 times in the span of its life. A fetid liquid is pumped so full of industrial sludge that flames slink along its surface in a pas de deux of elements, an intricate duo-dance defying nature and setting water ablaze. Its name is Iroquoian and means crooked water or place of the jawbone. It receives the Little Cuyahoga near the northeast border of Akron, the place that cracked my jaw. Land of LeBron, metal bands, high-functioning heroin addicts, and just 20 minutes from where Jeffrey Dahmer dismembered his first victim. My grandpa recalls his days as his tennis coach and how he wrote letters about the troubled student to the school’s board, how everyone looked the other way. Jeffrey was 9 years old when he witnessed the worst fire in the history of the Cuyahoga and 18 when he first crushed a man’s bones with a sledgehammer. In 2019, the Cuyahoga River was named River of the Year in honor of 50 years of environmental resurgence, but the water is still a squalid, sepulchral saxe.