The Wading Heron

Releasing its desire, the wading heron is rewarded with lunch. George read these words in a copy of the I Ching — a book of philosophy can also be used for divination. The way it works is that one flips coins, and based on the sequence of heads and tails that are flipped, you read a particular chapter and line from the I Ching book. It’s bibliomancy. Another way to do it is to pick up any old book of any shelf and open to a random page while focusing on a question in your mind and you open the book and point to a line without aiming for anything and there’s the answer to your question.

George hadn’t flipped any coins, though. He’d just come across that line browsing. Releasing its desire, the wading heron is rewarded with lunch.

What a nice answer to some question, he thought. But for George, the line did more to creating questions than it did answering. He decided to go for a walk.

Around the lake by the apartments where he lived, there was a concrete path George would often walk. It was in a tall pine woods, and common to spot turtles, snakes, frogs, and even the occasional fox.  George sat down on a log bench and thought. A stand of bamboo, midnight purple.

He thought a little more then uncrossed his legs and crossed them the other way and reached behind him and removed pistol from his belt and sat with it in his lap.

It was a 45 caliber pistol, chrome color, the handle eggshell white with gold etching. The etching made a design like ivy and from a vine there sprang an angel announcing with a trumpet and on the other side of the handle it was the same but on that side there grew a heart. George had made it by hand. He was a gunmaker. He’d done it according to his vision of a firearm imbued with a certain spiritual wholeness that comes with an item that is at once life-preserving and phallic, but also kills.

He’d been considering leaving gun-making. Closing down his shop, or converting it into something else. Apart from smithing guns, he was a skilled jewelry maker, origami maker, and as a wild card — a natural hypnotist. There was a lot he could do, he thought, that didn’t involve creating instruments of death.

The metal, he thought turning the pistol over in his hand. The bones of stars. The ivory handle, bone of the mastodon. This thing sprang up from death herself. The gun. Made from death, and made for death.

He thought about his father, too. Marine corp special forces. And the things that happen in war. George and his father hadn’t spoken in several years.

God, if I’m to give up my trade, please give me a sign.

Suddenly he noticed there was great blue heron on the lake. She was hunting. Pecking at the surface of the water. George stood and walked to the edge of the lake and watched. A fish would jump and the heron lunge and miss and there were other fish splashing on other sides of her but each time she lunged she came back with an empty beak.

George sat on the dirt by the lake and started digging. He dug with his hands until there was a hole about six inches wide by six inches long by six inches deep. He lay the pistol into the hole and covered it back up with dirt. As he sat covering it, the commotion out on the lake had all but died down and the heron seemed to have discovered some inner peace or Zen-like state because she appeared to be there meditating and she was on one foot.

George patted the dirt on top that tiny grave and at the same moment, a bright pink fish sprang from the lake and into the air and the heron simply opened her mouth and the fish fell in.

…

Back at home, George decided to go ahead and flip those coins. He was led to chapter sixty-eight, line three. Sure enough, it was that line. Stunning synchronicities often occur when consulting the I Ching. Releasing its desire, the wading heron is rewarded with lunch.

He checked his phone and saw he had a voice message. “Heya, George, it’s your dad. Been a while, I know. Listen, I’m in town, and thought we might grab something to eat, catch up. Was thinking that place on Woodland Pond Drive, in Cary. You know the place. It’s called Herons.”