from the top. I’m not crazy, you say. Quizás, says the man. Maybe. No química, he says, hay azúcar, claro, pero no química, to indicate that his wife made the coffee from beans in their backyard. Beans simply set out in the sun to dry and then roasted in their tiny wood oven. He shows the height of the oven from the ground with his free hand. The coffee is so good it almost does not taste like coffee, and it certainly doesn’t bring the slight sense of suffering one should always have when drinking any coffee at all. You don’t own quite as many Spanish words as you’ll need to tell the story, but the lapses will be made up in something the man must already know. Por su puesto, you think. When the coffee is finished, he rinses the tin at the shore. You climb into the canoe once more to retrieve your backpack and pair of shoes. The man carries up a small bucket of bait and says me voy. Nods. He is going fishing now but does not ask you to leave his boat. The canoe is small, and so you’re happy when he continues to stand. You take off your shirt and sweater, which are heavy now, and wring them into the water. The man does not once look down. When he finishes paddling, however, he sits, and the two of you are closer than you would choose on any dry land. Knees nearly touching. He smells darkly of coffee and does not seem at all uncomfortable. You know enough about fishing to understand that it is about fishing and not much at all about talking. But in this early morning moment childhood questions become again your own. Perhaps it’s more accurate to say you become her, as much as a twenty-something young woman can again become a curious six-year-old. The fish, you ask, what do they like around here? And so, the voice is not exactly yours. In the eloquence of early Spanish lessons, the girl would have said, Abuelo, que comen los peces para el desayuno? Que les gustan mucho mucho, Abuelo? And she would have said it quicker than you and with much brighter eyes than yours in this moment, but the man responds anyway. The fish, they eat anything, he says.
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