Outboard Motor

After my father unhooded it, lugged it down the steep path to the boat and clamped it on, drew back the cord again and again like a pitch about to be thrown, grimacing with each whining refusal, and muttered, finally said She doesn't want to start, after it always did, and we shoved away from the pier, rowed out of the dense tangle of weeds and lily pads, not once did our resting oars uncross their feet, not even as we entered the shallow inlet between our lake and the next, just purring through the reeds in that narrow passage, over the billow of silt, the rocks, never getting stuck before we flew through the waves, his hand guiding the tiller.