Unholy Saturday

Three boys down by the river search for crawdads. One has hammered a spear from a curtain rod, and head down, jeans rolled up to his knees, wades against the river's current. Barely seven, he's the most determined. He'll go home hours from now with nothing to show for his efforts except dirt and sweat and that residue he's unaware of sifting down from a distant sky and glinting like threads of mica across his shoulders. In the distance someone keeps calling the names of the brothers in the same order over and over, but they don't hear what with the river bank gorged with blue weed patches and all the birds in hiding. Perhaps no one is calling and it's only the voices of the air as the late light of June hangs on in the cottonwoods before the dark gets the last word.