Exploring The Dark Side Of The Garden Of Eden Poem by Ron Stock

Roger,35, is a tall, blond, thickset, redneck handyman, and as strong as a buffalo. He's dressed in a green-checkered shirt, brown safari hat, tattered jeans. His son, Denny,9, is small, thin-skinned, sweet. He collects stamps, listens to rap, and today wears tan pants, a teal coat, black tennis shoes, a Seattle Mariners baseball cap. It's cool in the Northwest. A mist hangs, below soft gray clouds and narrow bands of pale-blue violet sky. Rolling swells blanket nervous seas. A slight breeze whisks away the tips of dancing waves.
Roger and Denny are in a 15-foot aluminum boat. Roger is fishing for Sockeye Salmon in Puget Sound, near a gentle rip tide racing through a whitewater channel. The outboard motor churns, as Roger points his boat into the flow of the tide, and remains stationary. Next, he stands, steadies the throttle arm with one knee, casts his lure into a small pool, and almost immediately hooks a big, strong, fighting fish. Salmon like to run away from the tug so Roger gives out line. When his prey tires he tries to reel it back in, but before he can, this determined fish pulls his boat into a spinning vortex measuring over 50 feet wide. As the craft circles around just inside the perimeter of the vortex, Roger, Booming Yahoos, holds his pole over his head, while he, the terrified boy, and boat, are pirouetting around and around under his stationary rod and reel. All laughing stops when Roger's line tangles on the propeller blade and snaps. The beast, swims free. The engine sputters, dies.
A loud whine as Denny, dizzy, ashen-faced, slumps to the floor of the boat now spinning around in ever smaller and faster circles. With no oars on board to pull out of the vortex, Roger tilts the engine up, reaches down to untangle his line from the prop with a knife, finishes, lowers the motor, stands again, and pulls on the starting cord. The engine does not turn over. Roger pulls until the engine ignites, but the throttle with the over-sensitive spring is open too far, so while standing, when the motor sparks to life, the boat slings
Roger over a gunnel into the swirling sea. So now boy, in boat, with churning outboard motor jerked aside, and man, in water, are being sucked down into the funneling hole.
Roger squeals, 'Straighten out the motor.' The boy, livid, confused, does not. Flashes on playing house with a girl on a recent afternoon. Tries to blot, out, what, happened, next, cannot. The children, were having fun, exploring their bodies. Roger was pissed, eyes bulging, face crimson, scolding, 'Baad, baad, baad.' Roger picked Denny up like a loaf of white bread, carried him to the stove, squeezed the boy between massive thighs, turned on two burners, wove his fingers around Denny's thin wrists and howled, 'Jesus would be ashamed, ' as he spread wide the open palms of Denny's hands, over the blue flames.
Roger screams 'Help me, ' as his out-of-control body, and the spinning aluminum craft, with the churning propeller blade, approach the very bottom, of the downward spiraling vortex. Hatred rises from the floor of the boat. Love tries to creep in. The boy glances at the fresh, red scars, on the palms of each hand, in, the exact same spots where Jesus Christ had his scars, thinks, die, for your sins. And then, the gift, of love does creep in, as it dawns on Denny, 'Papa and cutting blade could meet, ' he lifts his body up, peeks, over the gunnel, at the brutal man, fighting for his life, and straightens, out the motor. Too late.