Tippecanoe Indeed

The Lie

This summer, I've been staying with my aunt and uncle. It's a gorgeous stone-and-wood house, nestled back in the forest away from the road. The Tippecanoe river flows behind us, gentle and tugging. It was storming outside when I woke this morning, smacking the windowpanes of my bedroom, bending the trees and rippling the surface of the river. Gray rain danced and spat. Later in the day, with the Tippecanoe nice and high, I went kayaking.

I went with my aunt. We paddled our way upstream, past banks hedged with rushes and rotten logs, where mallards hunted for insects. We paddled about an hour, then reached the bridge where the road passes over the river and flipped our noses around to let the current carry us back. I dug an apple from my pocket. We'd both brought chilled Pepsi's, and my aunt hissed hers open while I slipped into the river, resting my stomach on the kayak and paddling gently with my legs, just enough to stay on course. I went slightly ahead, finding it surprisingly easy to navigate by sometimes trailing my body in the water and sometimes swimming alongside. But I glanced back when my aunt made a slightly strangled sound.

Somehow, her kayak had gone sideways and was being pressed against a log by the current, unable to move forward and unable to move over to the side. An easy problem, one that could happen to anyone. Aunt Sharon managed to thrust her kayak away from the log, but it was still sideways, and the river threatened to capsize it. It teetered on its edge for a moment, my aunt leaning desperately back the other way as she clung to her glasses, her oar, and her Pepsi . . . and then the kayak righted. It stabilized in the water for a moment.

Then something grabbed it.

Two arms, looking freakishly like rotten tree limbs, stabbed up through the water and seized my aunt's kayak. She gasped in a dignified manner, and I think I may be guilty of having shrieked like a little ten-year-old. A face and a body followed the arms, bearded in river-weed and garbed in scales of sodden leaves. Mud swirled around him from the torso down.

With his rotten arms, he seemed to be searching for something. He finally located the shining can bobbing upright in the river. Aunt Sharon's Pepsi. Both our eyes widened -- would the Rivergod punish us for dragging human pollution into his sacred domain? -- but he grunted, tilting his head back and pouring a gleaming amber arc down his throat. He wiped a sloppy hand over his lips, and said, "Catch that Pepsi Spirit," voice deep and vibrating like a bullfrog. Then the limbs and river-weed and rotten leaves tumbled apart into the river, all drifting away as separate pieces. Only a single, shining blue can remained, bobbing gently. My aunt and I looked at each other. She fished out the empty can. And we never spoke of it again.

Another lie: this pic is actually from several years ago, but same pic and same kayak.

The Truth

Aunt Sharon and I did go kayaking today. Everything happened up to the point where the kayak righted itself and the Rivergod arose. The kayak actually did flip over, and we spent awhile draining it and getting my aunt situated again. True fact, though: the can really remained upright and bobbing in the water. And unless my research is mistaken, "Catch that Pepsi Spirit" was the company slogan for 1980-1981.

Also, as I finish writing this lie, the sky has just turned an odd shade of orangey-gray and has started to thunder and storm. I rather like it.