THE ROWBOAT

I Every year he'd sunk the old, clinker-built rowboat so it might again float. Every year he'd got drunk as if he might once and for all write off every year he'd sunk, kerplunk, kerplunk, one after another into a trough no water would staunch. Like a waterlogged tree trunk, every year he'd sunk just as he was about to launch into a diatribe on the chunk of change this bitch was costing him, the debt into which every year he'd sunk. II The old, clinker-built rowboat with its shrivelled strakes would be immersed in the lake, the lake that itself rewrote many a stage play for the big screen. The old, clinker-built rowboat in which he'd stashed the ice-tote from L.L. Bean for Crested Ten on the rocks (one part Crested Ten, two parts creosote), the old, clinker-built rowboat he'd threatened to leave on the dock and give a coat of varnish that would somehow clinch the deal, that would once and for all seal the old, clinker-built rowboat. III So it might again float the possibility one must expand with Coutts and Co. (without the ampersand), misquoting them as one might misquote the price of Paramount stock so it might again float. More than once he'd written a promissory note and put himself in hock more than once to assuage the fears for a property expressed by the Coutthroats so it might again float from the big screen to the stage and gain by losing something of its bloat, taking as he did the chance it might be imbued with some new significance so it might again float. IV Every year he'd got drunk and railed at this one and that, the baseball-birdbrain, the basketball-gnat, the gin-soaked punk he threatened with a punching out of lights every year he'd got drunk, the Coutts & Co. quidnunc whose argument was no more watertight than any by which he might inure himself against the basketball-gnat's slam dunk. Every year he'd got drunk but resisted taking a cure just as every year he'd shrunk from the thought, kerpow, he'd most likely go under given how every year he'd got drunk.