The Echo at Heron Dock

Raj hated the microphone from the first minute of his first morning in charge.

The canoe hire dock at Heron Lake had one strict rule. Every customer heard the safety talk before they touched a paddle. The owner had always given the talk through a black microphone linked to a speaker on a pole. Now the owner was away for two weeks, and the talk was Raj's job.

"Welcome to Heron Dock," he said, and pressed the button.

"Dock… dock… dock," said the lake.

Raj looked at the microphone. A small silver knob on its side was turned all the way to the word ECHO. Years of sticky sunscreen had glued it there.

"It sounds like a cave in here," said Yasmin. She worked the paddle counter beside him, and she was already laughing. "A very polite cave."

"It is not funny," said Raj. "The talk is about safety."

"Then say something safe."

Raj took a breath. "Please keep your life jackets on at all times," he said.

"Times… times… times," answered the cliff on the far shore, a little late.

The first customers of the day had been waiting on the dock. They were a family of four, and they listened with worried faces. Raj kept going.

"Do not stand up in the canoe," he said.

"Stand up… stand up… stand up," said the lake.

The family looked at one another. Then all four of them stepped into their canoe and stood up. That was what the lake had told them to do. The canoe swung hard against the dock. The father sat down in a hurry, and his hat floated away across the water.

"We heard you," he said, while Yasmin fished the hat out with a paddle. "You told us to stand up. Three times."

"I said do NOT stand up," said Raj.

"The lake only remembered the last part."

Raj wanted to hide under the dock. He gave the family four new life jackets and a free hour. Then he watched them paddle away, sitting down very carefully.

"Fine," he said to Yasmin. "I will fix this microphone."

He tried everything he could think of. First he pulled at the silver knob with the pliers from the toolbox, but it did not move. Then he wrapped the microphone in a towel. The echo became softer, but so did his voice. A woman on the dock asked him to speak up. Finally he pulled out the plug.

Now there was no echo at all. There was also no sound. His voice was far too small for the big lake. It disappeared before it reached the end of the dock.

"Plug it back in," said Yasmin. "You were better when you were loud and silly."

"Thank you very much," said Raj. He plugged it in again.

Yasmin leaned on the counter and checked the clipboard with the day's bookings. Her face changed.

"Raj, a school group is coming at ten," she said. "Thirty students, fifteen canoes."

"Thirty students who will all stand up."

"Probably at the same time."

Raj sat down on an upturned canoe and put his head in his hands. The clock on the boathouse wall said twenty to ten. The nearest hardware shop was forty minutes away by road, and there was nobody to leave in charge. Yasmin tapped her pen on the clipboard and looked at the water.

"How long does the echo take to come back?" she asked.

"What?"

"Say something, and I will count."

Raj shrugged and pressed the button. "Hello, Yasmin."

"Yasmin… Yasmin…" The lake answered after about two seconds. This time it repeated only her name.

"It never says everything," Yasmin said slowly. "It only says the end of what you said. Last time it gave us 'stand up.' This time it gave us my name."

"So?"

"So we choose the end." She grabbed a marker from the counter. "If you finish every sentence with the part that matters, the lake will say the right thing."

Raj stared at her. Then he started to smile. "Standing up is not safe," he said, testing it. He waited, and then he said, "Please sit down."

"Sit down… sit down… sit down," said the lake.

It sounded perfect. They looked at each other and laughed so hard that the pole speaker shook.

They had eight minutes. Yasmin wrote a new talk in big letters on the back of an old paddle. Every line was short, and every line ended on the important words. Raj read each one aloud and listened to the answer. "Put it on, life jacket." Wrong. "Life jackets stay on." Better. The cliff returned "stay on," and it was exactly what he wanted.

At five to ten the school bus rattled into the car park. Thirty students poured out, talking loudly. A man with a whistle around his neck counted heads and sighed at the noise. The students crowded onto the dock, pushing and joking, and nobody listened to anything.

Raj climbed onto the bench by the speaker pole. His knees were shaking, but he held the paddle in front of him and pressed the button.

"Welcome to Heron Dock," he said. "Today we are in charge of the lake."

"Lake… lake… lake," said the water.

A few students laughed. Raj waited until the echo had finished. He kept every sentence short, as they had practised, and he spoke slowly.

"Jackets are on the hooks. Everyone, put them on."

"Put them on… put them on," said the cliff.

A girl at the front shouted it back. "Put them on!" Her friends joined in, and soon the whole dock was chanting it. They were pulling jackets from the hooks as they chanted.

Yasmin held up her fingers like a conductor. She tapped the paddle rail twice, and Raj went on.

"Never stand up. Keep your hands on the paddle."

Yasmin shook her head. The lake would only repeat "on the paddle." Raj tried again at once. "Never stand. Stay low, stay sitting."

"Sitting… sitting… sitting," said the lake.

"Sitting!" shouted the students, and they all dropped into a crouch on the dock, grinning. It looked like a very strange dance.

"If you tip over, you will stay with your canoe," Raj said. "Hold on to the boat."

"Hold on… hold on."

"Hold on!" the students answered together.

By ten past ten the students had learned every rule. They could chant them in the right order. They did it with so much energy that the herons on the far bank flew up. The man with the whistle came to the front. He had stopped sighing.

"I have taken groups on lakes for twenty years," he said. "I have never heard a safety talk like that. Every student remembers it."

"It was the lake's idea," said Raj.

"It was the lake's echo," said Yasmin, "and your voice."

Fifteen canoes slid off the dock in a long line. Everyone paddled sitting down. Nobody stood up, not even the boy who wanted to wave at his friends. Raj sat on the bench and breathed out for the first time all morning.

Yasmin passed him a cold bottle of water and picked up the microphone. She looked at the stuck silver knob, and she grinned.

"Do not fix it," Raj said quickly. "I think we need it now."

The first canoe pushed off the dock. Its paddle hit the water with a bang.

"Splash," said the lake.