Christopher Merrill - Portage

The canoe had sprung a leak, and so they had to portage to the sea, along a foot path abandoned to marauders from the city. When their guide could not identify the tracks in the mud, the cry of the bird perched in the dead tree behind them, or the markings on the boxcar rusting on the remains of the trestle destroyed in the last war, they set the canoe down and removed from their backpacks the handguns delivered to their rooms the night of their departure. The instructions were clear—Use only in an emergency—and yet they could no longer decipher the meaning of the phrase that had inspired them to leave before the ferry sailed into the harbor: the only anchor ever yet imagined by man. One fired at the bird, another aimed at the boxcar, the third ordered the guide to take the lead. From the bushes came the sound of something tearing, then footsteps, whimpering, silence. The guide scanned the shore, debating where to put in for the journey to the island on which they would draw up a new judicial code. The bird circled above the tree, and the sea blazed into light. No one knew which way to turn.

Christopher Merrill

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