Walter was history's best fisherman - history's best minnow fisherman. He combed and cleaned his net like a lint trap or a summer screen door so delicate, seaweed fibers, mussel shells. He fished more of a dance, a twirl his arms up and down and around and always spun in the shallows like a waterspout he would glide his butterfly net through the lake and capture little fish he placed into a sand castle bucket filled halfway with water he would always pour back into lake. He was strictly a catch and release fisherman.
All the mothers on the beach would stare at Walter and his water waltz and at his mother who stood next to him so he wouldn't fall. It was hard not to stare at Walter always alone with his aged mother and he had to be at least a teen by now. Perhaps it was hard to tell, autism doesn't age well, but we had been beach regulars for fifteen years and Walter and his mother had for ten.
The last time I saw Walter he danced and fished. I laid on the beach with my cousin and we observed his patterns and his mother his rock who stood there for ten years with the minnow fisherman. The next day my own mother cried more than when her own mother passed and she told me, she died Walter's mother died
Even now I stand in the shower skin deep in water and think about where Walter is now. I see him in my mind dancing in some bath tub with a butterfly net in some foster home without a mother to break his fall.