Hmmm, have you ever had one of those moments of quiet revelation when you realize there is something you’ve been hiding from yourself that is crying out to be acknowledged?
If you answered yes, you’ll enjoy the story “God’s Honest Truth” from my short story collection “Hunting Muskie: Rites of Passage”. Here is an excerpt to tease your interest.
The last embers of November daylight were expiring over the treetops as David Hamm rounded a bend on Point Pelee’s DeLaurier Trail. Overhead the rolling bugle call of a late-season sandhill crane resonated over the marsh. David raised his eyes and followed the crane’s sleek profile—elongated neck slicing across the sky like a spear and three foot, slate gray wings carving the air with graceful power.
“Reluctant to leave, are you?” David said to the crane as it abruptly banked to the east. “There’s a lot of that going around.”
He continued on the winding trail, passing swamp ponds with blankets of algae and cloaked in shadows, until he came to the viewing platform. He rested his arms on the railing and leaned out to watch a snapping turtle haul its cumbersome body out of the canal. The snapper, raising itself on its stubby legs, swiveled its prehistoric head slowly toward him. Its inscrutable gaze posed the question: Are you sure?
“A bit late for second thoughts,” David answered. “I’ve accepted the job and handed in my resignation here. It’s a done deal.”
The snapper regarded him for a full minute, as if waiting for him to finish.
“So why haven’t I told Lyndsay? I will. Just have to find the right time and the right words. She’ll be upset at first, but she’ll come around.”
The snapper turned away and levered itself further up the bank. David leaned back and scanned the length of the canal. It still amazed him to think that the DeLaurier men, squatters on this land 170 years ago, had dug the canals by hand to drain the land for farming. The act of leaving Point Pelee seemed, at this moment, like turning his back on those indomitable men who had claimed the land by taming it.
He turned his attention back to the turtle. It occurred to him that snappers could live for thirty years. It was quite plausible that this grizzled old-timer was the same one he had seen here when his father brought him to the park when he was only five. It had been a mesmerizing experience for a child with an innate passion for the natural world.
Pelee became his obsession. He was a familiar figure as a teenager riding his bicycle down Mersea Road, past the Sturgeonwoods Campground and Marina and past the cottages perched on the breakwater overlooking the lake, heading for the park.
Point Pelee was the only place to which he had applied after earning his Master’s degree in biology. And yet now, less than two years after he had realized his dream, he was leaving for reasons that he still could not clearly articulate. He knew only that a momentous shift had occurred in him like tectonic plates colliding in the subterranean depths of the earth. He was restless, discontented and anxious for change
The buzzing of his cell phone stirred David from his thoughts. He pulled it out of his pocket to check the number—Lyndsay calling from the Leamington Days Inn where she worked. She was probably just bored or needing to vent her frustration because the new registration system had gone fubar again. He slipped his phone back into his pocket.
There was no denying that the two of them had been out of sync. It seemed at times as if Lyndsay had something she needed to tell him as well. Or had she sensed that he was harbouring a secret and was waiting for him to come clean?…
If you’re intrigued, Hunting Muskie, Rites of Passage – Stories by Michael Robert Dyet is available online from Amazon, Chapters Indigo or Barnes & Noble. Check out the book trailer video on YouTube. https://tinyurl.com/yczf6wrp
~ Michael Robert Dyet is also the author of Until the Deep Water Stills – An Internet-enhanced Novel which was a double winner in the Reader Views Literary Awards 2009. Visit Michael’s website at www.mdyetmetaphor.com.
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Tags: Hunting Muskie: Rites of Passage · metaphor · Michael Robert Dyet · Point PeleeNo Comments