The Heron's Game, by Sarah Nielsen

Fishermen by the Shore at Sunset, by Henriette Gudin (France) before 1892

The Heron's Game

The heron opens its wings wide, dwarfing its thin body with a surprising, feathered sail, and flies off with the fish speared in its beak. Its abrupt flight startles Amos, who had watched the bird from a fishing boat offshore, waiting to haul up the last of the day’s catch. For nearly an hour, the heron never moved from its place in the stream, close to where the freshwater met the sea.  It stayed suspended on two spindly legs above the water, until the ripples around it ceased, until the water creatures grew used to its shadow.

The bird’s sudden flight startles Amos back to the boat rocking gently beneath him. The five others on his boat are already in motion, hustling to return to the docks  for the weighing and payment of the day’s work. Amos joins them. His hands, rough and ready, move with learned precision – haul, pinch, knot, load.  His crewmates’ voices, the cawing of the gulls, the lapping of the waves – all meld into background noise until a voice rises sharp from another boat, carried across the bay. It is Levi, hauling in the nets, shouting orders to his crewmates even though everyone already knows what to do.

As kids, their mothers had encouraged them to play together, but they could never figure it out. Amos would arrange checkers on the playing board while Levi built red and black towers. Amos would color pictures while Levi raced to see who could use every colour first. They would stare at each other as if different species. “Ships in the night,” their mothers eventually laughed. But Amos internalized the awkwardness, blamed himself. Levi, forever the same age as Amos, in the same class at school, but never quite a friend. Levi, who was now a competitor for Francine’s affection. Lovely Francine, who seems to mean it when she smiles at Amos on their walks home from school. Who listens when he talks, and says, “I was thinking about what you said the other day….” Who has made him wonder – hope – there is more than one way to be a person in the world.

Seized by impulse and resolve, Amos explodes into flight on the deck, pulling up the last of the nets in one swoop, hoping it will be enough to outdo Levi.  At the docks, they count the catch. Levi’s boat has caught more.  Levi preens, gloats, sticks his head back, squashes his chin into his neck. He reminds Amos of a pelican, diving and gulping, greedy and indiscriminate.  Amos starts the familiar self-reprimanding - why can’t he be better? But then he thinks of Francine. Amos resolves to play a different game.  One of the heron – patient, observant, focused.

Sarah Nielsen

Sarah Nielsen is a writer, energy executive, and Army veteran who lives alongside the Colorado mountains with her family.