Monarchs
by Pawel Grajnert
It is the season of cellophane still water and thick as mud summer heat on the Southernmost reach of the Lake, a pale green. The sand, burnt by the sun and its accomplice, an empty sky, in turn burns feet.
Now is after the alewife days, when these anadromous fish would pollute the waves and the wind and the shore, by dying and decaying, cooking in a freshwater cauldron that man had opened up for them.
The ability gravely in desire by all the chubby men on this beach of beige sand is to be left alone each in his own way. Alcohol is always popular. But a cigar, or just an air of arrogance, does well enough as an open book.
Some of them sit or stand or lie and search for peace during the two-weeks free from life as a professional adult in mid-summer. A cozy class of lawyers, doctors, professors, local TV program directors, progressive Chicago politicians, and their equally qualified spouses and children who all take great pleasure at being in Carl Sandburg's grassy, sandy, sometimes silent summer home because they can.
Some complain today, again, because there’s no wind to power their sailboats, in harbor near the energy plant. Safe for now from plying open the plastic fresh water before them.
An old sailor man, though, too old to run a big boat, successfully navigates the wavelessness close to shore with a fishing pole and a sheet of greying canvas over an evening red and royal blue striped home-built dinghy.
The women, mothers, sleep or dream of the life possible in the coolness of the night, when movement, when existence becomes more probable. Their plump bodies moist and tan and warm and waiting. Some sit or stand or lie and search for strength to make lunch and then dinner and still remain still remain still remain still; to not ripple the water, to not endanger the calm, to not cut through the cellophane "for family's sake."
While others chat in rhythm to this silence.
The children and dogs, who'd earlier crawled up a dune to play in the forest at the top, scuttle down like nothing around here, but like crabs scrambling around after the tide’s gone out. Each mother now stands surrounded by children and yelps and barking.
Everyone longs to fill their always-full-refrigerator empty stomachs but stops.
And there from the North (although some would later have it come from the East), onto the beaches, up into the dunes, descending upon them – monarchs: thousands upon thousands, orange and black, regal, delicate butterflies in migration.
They fill up the beach and cover the rocks. Land on every tree branch. Blade of dune grass. Get caught in spider webs and hair. Get smashed under foot, squish through toes of children failing to hide. Whole wings trapped as bookmarks of this day.
Disgust and panic. Disgust and panic. Scrambles. Home! Everyone home!
Except the old sailor in the dinghy, who deftly grabs a butterfly, plucks its wings, pierces the black body of the wriggling bug with a hook and plops it into the green lake as a lure.
Until the old sailor died. The dinghy never to be seen again.
BIO: Paweł Grajnert is a writer, filmmaker and visual artist working in Poland and the US.