The Margin of the River by Mitchell Toews

I finished shaving. A $10 coffee shop gift card was in the car, and although I knew I should hit the weights and take my usual morning walk, I also felt like a lazy day was not a bad idea.

Janice nudged me aside on her way to the ensuite.

‘What’s up?’ she asked.

‘Dunno,’ I said while pawing through the underwear drawer for just the right pair—supportive but not too bossy.

Once satisfied, I called out, ‘what are you up to today?’

‘Dunno,’ she replied, peeing with morning gusto. ‘Buy some food. Go for a walk down by the river.’

I finished dressing and tapped on the door, ‘See ya!’

Crawling along in the coffee drive-through line, I noticed an older woman sitting on the curb. Her home, I presumed, was set on its kickstand next to her—a beat up Schwinn 10-speed with a wire carrier and matching, overflowing saddlebags. I silenced the Canucks Morning radio babble and opened the passenger window. The woman sat comfortably, sipping a large coffee, the morning sun shining down on her and her dog, a German shepherd. All things considered, they looked pretty macklijch. ‘Mach as kach,’ or ‘as comfy as shit,’ as our old hometown German slang saying went.

‘Nice morning!’ I called over. Her eyes were blue, made pale and watery by the cold. 

‘Yeah! Chilly night, though,’ she replied, many crows’ feet vying for a crinkled spot next to those friendly eyes. 

‘No doubt, no doubt. Hey, look, I was given this gift card and so I can pretend to be generous. Can I buy ya a coffee?’ 

Both she and the dog regarded me with a slight, sideways tilt of their respective heads. ‘Fer sure, fer sure. This one is just about gone,’ she answered after a few beats, shaking the cup in proof.

‘Kay. How ya take it?’

‘Double-double,’ was the raspy reply.

‘Okay, meetya over there,’ I motioned with a toss of my head to the front of the parking lot.

I ran the window up and turned the local hockey talk blockheads back on and listened to them discussing a certain star player’s ‘battle level’ as I waited in line. 

‘I’d like to see that overpaid Swede spend the night outside, protecting all of his worldly belongings, and sleeping on top of a hot air exhaust in a cardboard box. Now that is a high battle level.’ I said pedantically to my car radio, jabbing my finger in the air for emphasis.

I bought the coffee and a couple of doughnuts, paying with what was left of the gift card and a $20 bill. I took the change and put a fiver and the doughnuts—first just one, then both of them—into the bag. 

‘Here ya go. Bought doughnuts too—they go good with coffee I hear.’ 

‘She likes ’em,’ the woman said, nodding at the shepherd. ‘Thanks, eh!’

I watched her walk stiffly back to her post where the dog sat waiting, leashed to the Schwinn.

The car drove, I sipped coffee, the radio droned on. I bumped the heat up a notch and thought about the old gal and her ratty Schwinn bike and the grey-muzzled shepherd. Old? That woman’s probably about my age. Wonder what she did or didn’t do to get a seat on that damn curb? Maybe that’s just the way it went for her? And maybe my life is equally as random, just turned out a little different than hers, is all.

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Thereafter, in a reflective mood, I found myself accidentally-on-purpose driving by the house where a pit bull bit me the day before, when I was out for my morning walk. There was a pick up truck riding my tail, forcing me to drive by the place a little faster than I wanted to. Peering sideways and bobbing my head to see if the dogs were out, loose again, I peeled by the low-slung house. The truck rumbled past and I reached the point where the road came down alongside the Fraser River, then cut south, towards the Trans-Canada highway. 

Without meaning to, I touched the tender spot on my thigh where the dog bit me. Quite a chomp—piercing through two pairs of sweatpants to puncture the skin. There had been two dogs, a white mutt that thought we were just playing and a muscular terrier, bred for aggression, his ears trimmed off savagely. I felt guilty about the whole thing because I had made a fuss, shouting at the dogs’ owner who shook a .22 at me in response. In a fury, I sent an angry text to the local animal control.

I just wish the dogs had been tied up, I thought, slowing as I neared a sharp curve in the road ahead.

Cautiously, I pulled the car off the road and down a gravel trail that led onto the sandy riverbed during low water levels. The narrow path was only three or four car lengths long now because the river was so unusually full for this time of year. 

I wanted to take my coffee down by the water’s edge. It was quietly thrilling to be next to the Fraser when it was running high. Being close to it lets you feel the might—to sense the weight and the vastness of the water—how it is immeasurable; beyond human scale in its capacity to give or to take.

A large cedar tree stump made a fine seat, there, on the margin of the river. I stopped counting growth rings after 100, resting my coffee on the long-ago sawn surface and flipping through Twitter. After a while I stood up, looking across at the opposite shore. The moving mass of grey-green water in the foreground made me dizzy so I focused on a nearby tree trunk to regain equilibrium. 

Next to the tree was a small white object, sticking up oddly and looking out of place. I strained to see, but there were too many alders and willow whips and too much tall grass in the way.

Hopping down from the stump, I stepped up instead onto a good sized fallen poplar log. Walking along its slippery length, I stopped when I was about ten feet from the mystery object. From where I stood on the log, I had a strong vantage point. Looking down in the good morning light, I could clearly see the two dogs that had attacked me the day before. They lay stiff-legged in rigor mortis, held by death in the tall grass a few feet from the unstoppable current. The white dog lay atop the other. Her thin neck was broken and she faced north, across the water to the far mountains. The ruddy pit bull, young just as I remembered him, lay staring up at me with unblinking black eyes as I balanced above him. 

A shuddering sadness grasped me. I stood precariously on the damp tree trunk and saw where the bullet had gone into the skull, the forehead stove in and the lovely red fur singed black around the bloody hole. I thought back to the old shepherd at the coffee shop, cared for by a gentle woman who struggled to feed herself. So random. So fragile. Such grace on one hand, infinite cruelty on the other.

I knew what had happened and why. I cursed myself for the complaint I sent to the animal control office. I felt the cold brutality that I had set in motion and now the animals were here, now and forever beside the wide, uncaring river.

My guilty sadness was like a separate figure—a hideous, formal being that regarded me from the riverbank where it crouched, pulling the warmth out of me and slowing the beat of my heart. It had watched over the two dogs; unmoving and patient, guarding them through the cold night. It had waited for me to come; somehow causing me to seek out this place. This accomplished, it passed along its grim burden to me.

And in that instant when I accepted the weight the sadness placed on me, my regret was set aside and I loved the dogs. I could feel the joy in the white mutt; hear again her laughing bark and see her bright eyes as she chased after me across the frosted grass.

I loved the pit bull and its fearless spirit and how it raced out to challenge me, happy to protect the yard and the people in the house—the people it loved.

Mitchell Toews

Image: riverbank under trees by dd