I Cheerfully Refuse

by Leif Enger

The world was so old and exhausted that many now saw it as a dying great-grand on a surgical table, body decaying from use and neglect, mind fading down to a glow.

My teacher was a venerable redbeard named Diego who explained the ancient principle “first do no harm” from early bassist Hippocrates: lock into the beat, play the root, don’t put the groove at risk. Diego said a clean bass line is barely heard yet gives to each according to their need.

group suicide in Green Bay. I knew people in Green Bay. I picked up the paper. The suicides were high school age. Five girls, three boys. They did it at one of their homes when the mom was out of town. They played some music, had a nice meal, and ingested the pharmaceutical known as Willow, a rising star in the market of despair. Willow was named for the sensation it was said to evoke of climbing through alpine tundra toward whatever comes after. The story included a quote from a heartbroken friend of the dead. The boy was twelve. He felt betrayed they had gone without him. It wasn’t suicide he said. It was exploration. He said Earth was all but done and they wanted to see if another world existed as some claimed. They’d been working up to this. Like all explorers they had a credo. Go in search of better.

A few years previous a small cruising sailboat had landed in my possession. A project boat you’d call it. A relic from our neighbor Erik Haflinger, who got it in trade for seven cords of slabwood back when people still imagined things would even out.

There’s something in romance if it puts you on a boat with the one you adore, in a harbor no storm can penetrate, with an affable ghost anchored nearby.

A romantic fears romance is not enough. It wasn’t enough for Quixote—did you know that? I wish I’d never finished that book. Romance was a trapdoor for him and finally gave way, for the old knight lost his bold lunacy and belief in giants—without which who would’ve read his thousand pages?—and used his last moments to denounce all tales and frivolity, and died like any fretful pensioner, his concluding mission in this world ensuring his stupid will got notarized. In the end it was all churchmen and attorneys, even for Quixote.

The bear was lanky and mangy and voluble. It had found a child’s sled somewhere, a concave plastic disc. It sat on its rump in the disc and with front paws turned itself in circles while Labrino laughed helplessly in his car. He told me that’s what made him decide to stay. As omens go, an exultant bear is hard to ignore.

“You’re a man who stops and listens. If that’s not the definition of friendship, it’s close enough for now.”

He said concerts and restaurants were well enough but a bookstore was civilization.

I’ve heard many griefstruck keep expecting the loved one to appear. There’s an urge to phone the lost member, to write a note about the sunrise or good coffee or the flurry of waxwings among the berries. The person’s presence remains default.

If Large Beef could read he might’ve made a working bomb, but would a reading Beef want to? Lark didn’t think so.

“I thought it was something else at first,” Sol said, meaning the kite. “What else could it be?” “A death angel,” she replied.

Come on Rainy, we’ll catch fish, I’ll clean them myself, etc. As if there were still clean lake trout waiting to be caught! As if it weren’t all carp and nauseating lampreys!

A lady offers to sell Rainy and Sol live leeches for fish bait. Relating lampreys to Dystopia is now all too real as Trump via DOGE appear to shut down spending to maintain the health of the Great Lakes fishery.

He was tall and slender and wore the same jumpsuit as us all, but he actually wore it, walking as if that’s what he would’ve picked from any closet on Earth. He had a wide kind brow and a beginner’s mustache and skin like a penny with the shine worn off. Right away I had the sense this youngster was in a story of his own. A big story. I didn’t know what kind. Things freshened around him.

We were still wobbly when Evelyn came in through the gate. She was startled for a moment, then beelined for me and wrapped me in her arms. You forget how it is to have someone be glad you are there.

Sol looked around warily at the Girards’ well-filled shelves. “I still might not write a book ever,” she said. “They take a lot of letters.” “You’ve got time,” I told her.