Row Your Boat

“Row, row, row your boat,

Gently down the stream

Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,

Life is but a dream”

My father sings. But life is not a dream. 

Life is a nightmare. 

It all started with that damn spider. My father is a drinker, and when he drinks he likes to gamble. He was in the pub with his old drinking pals. It had just rained. They’d been drinking all through the night, and into the day.

“Look at dat dere spider,” one of my dad’s mates said, “Oit looks loike oits aboot to cloimb up dat dere spoot agayn.” 

“Nonsense,” my pa had responded, he’d been an aristocrat in his youth, some sort of duke of some place that rhymed like fork. He’d lost his holdings because of his drinking, but he retained the manner of speaking. 

He continued, “It just rained, there is no chance that spider can make it back up the spout.” 

“Hundred pounds says it can,” a man said from across the bar. This man was a stranger to my father, which should have tipped him off to his ulterior ways, but my father was drunk and is stupid. He tried to resist at first though,

“Not a chance.” 

“But look at how small the spider is,” the man said, “it is positively itsy; there is no way something that small could make it up such a big spout after such a rain.” 

That was a convincing argument, or so my father thought. He did not weigh the fact that the man was betting against what he just argued. 

“Alright then,” my father said. 

They shook hands. 

About thirty minutes later, the spider climbed up the spout. The stranger asked for his money, which of course my father did not have. I should remind you that this was back in the day, where a hundred dollars really went a long way. 

“No worries mate,” the man said with a smile, “You’ll just owe me a favor or two.” My dad could see in his smile the man had only one tooth. It was a molar. The rest were golden replacements. 

Then the guy left. 

My father didn’t hear from the guy for a long time. In fact, he had forgotten about him and the entire encounter completely. Until one day, my father was walking home from the bar, and the man approached him from a darkened corner. 

“Hello again mate,” he said to my father. 

“Uhhhh,” my father said. My father at that moment was very drunk. 

“Mate, it is time I called in the first of my favors.”

“Uhh.”

“I got a job for you to do. There are two people, a lad named Jack and his lass Jill that I’m going to need you to…” He looked around the street, “take care of for me.” 

“Uhhh?” My father was confused. Even his alcohol addled brain could tell this was a pretty serious jump from a one hundred pound bet. 

The man’s eyes narrowed. 

“I thought you might say that mate,” he said, “lets just say that if these two aren’t taken care of, someone else will be.” 

“Uh?” 

“If you don’t kill the two, we’ll kill you.” 

That broke my father out of his drunken reverie a bit. 

“Why… do you want… to kill them?” He asked slowly. 

“Let’s just say that Jill is the wife of what some might say is a mafia boss around these parts, and let’s just say she’s been having let’s just say inappropriate relations with this guy Jack.” 

My father didn’t say anything. 

“They’ll be up on the hill tomorrow. It would be a terrible shame if they happened to fall down that hill if you get my meaning.” 

The next evening my father climbed to the top of that hill. Surely he was still hung over, but the fear over what he was about to do must have frightened him. He’d done some pretty wretched things in his day, but killing two random people? It just seemed a bit dark. 

He crested the hill and saw the pair. They were playing around a tire swing. The hill was empty except for the three of them. He walked over to them. They greeted him as he came closer.

“Hello,” he said, “quite a cliff we got here.” 

The two hadn’t really thought about the cliff until that moment. They walked over to the side. 

“Well yes, I suppose it is quite steep,” said Jack.

“I’d really hate to fall down that cliff,” said Jill.

It may be obvious, but Jack and Jill were not the sharpest of minds one would ever meet.

My father crept up behind them. I am not proud of what he did next, but then again I’m not proud of pretty much any of the life decisions my father has made. 

He pushed them down the hill. Well, to be more exact he pushed Jack down the hill. Jack somersaulted down until he finally landed face-first onto a large, spiky rock. Broke his skull in two. 

He then wrestled with Jill, trying to push her off. They fell to the grass in an intense struggle. The sun crested the ridge.  Suddenly, they found themselves kissing. Then, other stuff happened that I do not want to think about or talk about. 

Anyway, they fled together, escaping to America. 

Jack didn’t die that day, actually, however, he entered into a serious coma from which he never awakened. 

My parents lived together in Brooklyn, selling macaroni. I was born somewhere down the line, and that’s how the stranger found us again. He walked into our shop, and I of course didn’t know him at all. 

He asked to see my father, which I obliged him. They sat at a table, conversing in low voices for what felt like hours. Eventually, the stranger got up and walked out our door. 

“Who was that Yankie?” my mother asked my father. 

“It was the man I always feared would come back,” my father said, grabbing a drink from behind his macaroni maker, “He said I owed him another job since I didn’t actually kill you or Jack.” He took a giant swig, “So it looks like the Doodle family has another job to finish.” 

I never asked to be born. And I certainly never asked to be brought on this god-forsaken mission. The stranger sent us into the Columbian countryside; we had to track down a cartel hideout and retrieve 140 kgs of premium-grade narcotics by any means necessary. 

Getting there had been miserable, but I should have known it would get worse when my father decided to take charge of the plan. He told us that he spoke Spanish fluently. He of course did not, but he was black out drunk so none of us could stop him. 

He walked right up to the entrance of the gate and just started yammering in whatever he thought Spanish was, which meant a real so/so imitation of Skippy Gonzales with the occasional “ésé” thrown in for spice. It was an incredibly racist exchange all things considered.

They immediately took him in for questioning, but he attracted so much attention my mother and I were able to sneak into the depot and lift a trunk of high-grade Colombian bam bam. 

As we reached the doorway out of the depot, however, the alarm started to ring out. I guess somebody spotted us finally on a security camera. Honestly, all things considered, it was a miracle we got this far without being spotted. 

We hightailed it back into the compound, during which I was pretty much just mentally preparing for death, when suddenly found ourselves at a dock. It lead into the river, which in turn lead straight away. Our best shot at escape. 

There were a bunch of power boats all over, but the only one we knew how to operate was the rowboat. Again, my mother is a borderline simpleton and I am eight. We hopped in and started rowing just as we heard loud Spanish voices yelling behind us. 

A few minutes into the stream, we looked down into the water and noticed a shape tied to an anvil at the bottom of the river. It was a burlap sack, which we cut loose and dragged to the surface. 

What would you know it was my father. We were contemplating throwing him back overboard when he gasped for breath. The asshole didn’t even have the decency to die. 

Just then, we saw boats hightailing it up the river after us. We started rowing. Now we are back to the present moment. 

“Row, row, row your boat,

Gently down the stream

Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,

Life is but a dream.”

My father sings from the bottom of our rowboat. I fear his brain has been robbed of oxygen for too long. Plus he’s definitely still drunk. We row as hard as we can, but an eight-year-old boy and his mom aren’t fast enough to outpace power boats. 

They surround us, guns pointed. My father is lying in a pool of his own drool at the bottom. My mother is crying. The river is still taking us forward, however. We’re getting close to a rickety old bridge. 

A man yells out in Spanish. I don’t understand him. My father pokes his head up a bit, 

“They said that this bridge is called the London Bridge.” 

We’re heading right underneath it as I am about to tell my dad that that is clearly not what they said, when the bridge comes crashing down on top of the power boats around us.

London Bridge is falling down.  

Miraculously, our boat is untouched. 

We continue to float down the river, several kilos of Colombian Whitesnake on board. Finally, our family will be free from the stranger.

Life is but a dream.