No major injuries.

Pulled out of the water and treated at the scene, released the same day.

I remember how strange it was to hear it told so flatly, in the dry administrative language of an old report — a capsize, two persons in the water, both recovered, no major injuries, released.

A line or two in a file.

For the old man and the boy it had been the most terrifying afternoon of their lives, the day the lake nearly took them, and the paperwork had reduced it to a minor logged incident, the way paperwork reduces everything.

I did not yet know how completely that dry little entry was about to rewrite my own six years.”