Where the River Ends

by Charles Martin

In the history of mankind, no single person yet has learned to swim by having the strokes explained. At some point, they dive in. In art, that diving has nothing to do with holding a brush, pencil or chisel. It’s something your heart does and only then will your hand follow. You, me, any artist, cannot take the beauty that is woman and transfer it to any medium, be it canvas, stone or, least of all, film. Problem was, my art teachers had no idea what I was talking about. They thought art started in the hand and traveled up the arm and into the heart. They had reversed the process. Art flows out, not in. Though, I will say, if you’re empty, not much will flow out. Which might have been their problem to begin with.

The point was the point. And most never understood that. Most of them were infected with a sickness they didn’t know they were carrying. And worse yet, didn’t know they were transmitting.

People make a big deal about how their watch automatically sets itself to atomic time from a tower somewhere in Colorado, but if we were smart, we’d set our watches to river time. We’d wrinkle less and wouldn’t grow old as quickly.

The breast is not simply a body part. It’s a part of the whole that says, I am woman and I am beautiful, but it’s not on equal footing with the others. I sat in that room and realized that you can cut off a finger, cut off a hand, even cut off a leg, but if you take a woman’s breast, you are cutting more than just a body part.

Because cancer is a morphing disease, the chemo chases it. Cancer knows this so it cloaks itself and morphs into something else, finally finding a way to break through the chemo. Much like a bacteria works its way around an antibiotic, eventually becoming resistant. It’s the law of diminishing returns. The hope is to kill it before it breaks through. You want to keep at it, not give the tumors a chance to breathe, but we seemed to always be one step behind.

I shrugged. At least it was better than “1054.” Then I realized she was specifically talking about me. I leaned against the counter, speaking to her and the other three nurses writing in their patient notebooks. “You’re right. I am. And for that I’m sorry. But I’ll gladly let you trade places with her.” They never really said much to me after that. I’m not proud of that. It wasn’t cool or tough and it didn’t really win friends and influence people. I’m just letting you know where I was. The bottom is an ugly place to be.

At the end of the day, cancer is nothing more than a cell or group of cells that refuse to die. And to make matters worse, cancer cells are not foreign. It’s not like they come from somewhere else. Our bodies make the very thing that kills us.

The way a man speaks to a woman who’s alone in a parking lot after locking her keys in her car, the way he holds the door for an older lady with an armful of groceries, the way he asks a question of a female police officer, the way he stops to pick up the movie ticket that the college co-ed dropped, the way he orders for his date, the way he walks her up the sidewalk fifteen minutes before her curfew because he knew her dad was counting the minutes, the way he asks her father’s permission to drive her to the lake on Saturday for a day of skiing—the way a man treats a woman is intangible. It is like a baton in a relay race—handed off and given from one to another.

“Do I sometimes despair at this world?” He was quiet a moment. “You damn right.” He turned up the bottle, grabbed the worm with his tongue, held it between his front teeth, bit it in half and swallowed. He turned to me. “Nevertheless, I believe.”

The grooves were actually letters—carved into the wood. I looked a second time at the log, finally recognizing it. Even pirates need God. I retraced the grooves, finishing the sentence. “…I will be with you.”