Surface Rights

by Melissa Hardy

  Had Dad said anything about priming any pump? Verna couldn’t remember. Still, she was certain that she had heard the phrase before, “to prime a pump.” Used metaphorically in all likelihood. “I had a twin,” Verna recalled. “But I don’t think we had any psychic bond.” Or any bond at all, she thought. How sad was that? She wanted to weep, but didn’t have the energy. Instead she collapsed in on herself, heavy and wistful.

  “I knew Fern,” said Winonah flatly. “It was you we didn’t know.”

  Priming the pump turned out to be an almost Herculean task, which Winonah accomplished with what could only be described as plodding implacability. It entailed hauling water in buckets (eighteen, all told; Verna counted) from the lake and pouring it into holes in the top of the pump until the intake pipe connecting the cottage to the spring out back was full. She then checked the pipes for loose connections, and, finding none, released the shut off valve. The valve, as it happened, was on the back porch next to the woodpile.

  “Hey!” Winonah appeared at the door to the porch carrying a partially filled trash bag in one hand and the now damp cardboard box of Bob’s cremains in the other. “I found this carton by the woodpile, eh? Is it yours?”

  “Not recently,” Verna replied.

  “Robert Arthur Woodcock.” Winonah read the label.

  “And? So?”

  “So what do you want me to do with it?”

  Verna considered this for a moment before saying, “Throw it out.”

  Winonah dropped the box into the bag, pulled the drawstring, and tied it. “There’s water now. Maybe you want to get us some coffee.”

  “Good idea!” Verna wondered if she actually could get up from the rocker. From her shoulders down it felt like she was made of slabs of concrete; from the neck up it just hurt.

  “I’m not making it,” Winonah warned her.

  “Okay! All right already!” Verna wondered if handy persons were supposed to bully their employers. And had she actually hired her? She didn’t remember that part. No, to the best of her recollection, Winonah had just started working and Verna, for her part, had failed to stop her. Not a contract in the strictest sense of the word, but now that she had proven herself useful at a time when the same could not be said of herself, she was loath to dismiss her. Also, she suspected that it was ill advised to cross the round little woman. Who knew what she was capable of? “But you’ve got to help me up,” she extended her hands in Winonah’s direction. Winonah set the garbage bag down, crossed to Verna, took her by her wrists and, without any preamble, yanked, catapulting Verna to her feet. “Ouch!” Verna complained.

  Winonah appeared unrepentant. She picked up the garbage bag and headed into the house.

  Verna limped after her. “Say, what are you going to do with that bag?”

  “There’s a Dumpster on the way to town. I’ll drop it off.”

  They arrived in the kitchen.

  “There are filters in the drawer next to the fridge,” Winonah informed her.

  “How do you know that?”

  “I told you. I know everything that Lionel knew.”

  “And he knew where the filters were?”

  “Of course. What’s this?” She peered into the now unfrozen President’s Choice chicken curry.

  “Oh.” Verna remembered. “It was supposed to be dinner. I didn’t get around to it.”

  “It’s been sitting out all night?”

  Verna nodded.

  Winonah loosened the drawstring on the garbage bag, picked up the container, and, tipping it, slopped its contents into the bag. Verna could just make out one corner of Bob’s cardboard box as the sticky rice and congealed sauce slid over it.

  “He always hated Indian,” she murmured.

  “What?” Winonah bristled.

  “Nothing,” Verna said quickly. “Nothing at all. So where’s the coffee?”

  “Beats me!” said Winonah.

  “So Lionel knew where the filters were, but not the coffee?”

  “That’s right,” Winonah replied. “Lionel drank tea.”

  While Verna foraged for coffee, Winonah checked the drain valve at the bottom of the water tank to make sure it was closed, went upstairs, opened the hot water tap in the clawfoot tub and let it run until water started to squeak out of it. She returned downstairs, opened the cold water shut-off to the tank, and turned the tank on. Then she checked both the tank and the drain valve for leaks.

  While Verna, shaking, loaded the coffeemaker with Eight O’Clock Coffee from the can she had found tucked away in one of the cabinets, Winonah checked plumbing traps to make sure they were connected. “You’re missing a drain plug in the downstairs bathroom sink,” she told her. “I’ll pick one up when I’m in town.”

  While Donald’s Mr. Coffee Machine, vintage 1972, sputtered into geriatric action, burping hot brown liquid into a stained decanter, Winonah prowled around the foundation of the cottage, scouting for heaving or cracks, before taking a walk out to the dock to see if it was twisting or creaking and checking for corroded or missing supports and popped nails.

  While Verna crept back to the front porch, precariously juggling two mugs of steaming coffee, Winonah assessed the state of the power lines. “There’s been a lot of deadfall,” she told Verna as she relieved her of her mug. Verna sank back into the Heywood rocker, grateful to have succeeded in making and transporting coffee without undue mishap. Then she took a sip of coffee and burned her tongue. “Damn!” she exclaimed. “God, I hate that!”

  “Hate what?” Winonah asked.

  “I burnt my tongue! I’m always burning my tongue.”

  Winonah shrugged. “That’s because you’re in too much of a hurry, eh? You got to slow down. You know what Lionel used to say?”

  Verna, infuriated, stuck her tongue out and fanned it.

  “‘Don’t hurry. Be happy.’ That’s what.”

  Rolf!

  Jude, who had spent the better part of the morning paddling in the lake or chasing ducks, stood aquiver at the door to the porch, his tail in violent motion.

  Rolf!

  Winonah let him in.

  The Lab charged over to Verna, planted all four feet, and shook joyously, drenching her.

  “Jude!” Verna cried. “Yuck! Jude! Go away! You hear me! Over there! You smell like a swamp!”

  “Those power lines,” Winonah said. “They’re okay, but there’s some fraying at the pole. You’ll want to call Hydro about that.” She peered at Verna. “On second thought, I’ll call Hydro.” She blew on her coffee, took a sip, and grimaced. “This is no Timmy’s.”

  Verna lay back in the rocker and closed her eyes.

  “What’s for lunch?” Winonah asked.

  After a meal cobbled together from Verna’s meagre groceries and a can of Campbell’s Chunky Clam Chowder that had over-wintered in the pantry, Winonah wiped her mouth with a paper towel, stood, and stated her intention. “Shutters.”

  Verna countered with, “Nap,” and proceeded to drag herself upstairs, dogged by the redolent Jude.

  She had intended to sleep in her old room. It was, after all, her room. However, when she pulled down the faded comforter on the old spool bed — the same blue-and-white-checked gingham counterpane edged with ragged eyelet that she remembered — she saw that there were no sheets. There were, however, mouse droppings.

  “Damn!” She had forgotten about the mice.

  Verna sat down on the bed’s edge and glanced forlornly around her. The wobbly rocker with the caned back, the bookcase, seriously askew, the bedside table with the pink porcelain lamp, its tipsy yellowed shade festooned with dingy pompoms — all as she remembered, only shabbier, smaller. She felt sad, glum, the sole survivor, the last of the Mohicans. To be the last man standing — where was the fun in that? For one thing, who was there to notice? Idly, disconsolately she pulled out the top drawer of the bedside table — it stuck a little — and peered inside.

  Treasures and junk. Detritus from a previous life. Stray jacks, a pa
ir of pink plastic sunglasses, stale candy cigarettes, and a worn set of playing cards. A Duncan yo-yo from the mid-sixties, white on blue. Unlike Fern, she had never mastered the yo-yo. Or the hula hoop. Or anything else requiring a modicum of coordination and the ability to commit. She had been full of trepidation, a spaz — that’s what kids had called her. She shut the drawer.

  The room smelled musty, as though it had been sealed up for a long, long time. Well, who knows? she thought. Maybe it had been. Maybe once she was gone, it had fallen into disuse and had remained, decade after decade, shut in upon itself. For all she knew, she might have been the last person to sleep in this bed. The Macouns were not the sort of family that invited guests to their cottage, after all. It was too far north for that to be convenient and, besides, they were … well, not that sort. Not very friendly. Too tucked in around the edges. Too chary of their secrets.

  She looked up to see Jude standing in the door with her father’s slipper in his mouth. He looked animated.

  “What?” she asked the dog.

  Jude dropped the slipper and yelped.

  “Yes? And?”

  Jude yelped again, retrieved the slipper, backed up, and trotted down the hall.

  “I’m not sleeping in Fern’s room, if that’s what you’re thinking!” she called after the dog. “No way I’m opening that Pandora’s box!” She stood and walked into the hall. Jude was standing expectantly in front of Donald’s door. “Oh, I get it,’ she said. “You want me to sleep in Dad’s bed.” She considered for an instant not shutting the door to her room — in all probability it could do with a good airing. However, leaving the door ajar seemed to her reckless somehow, an invitation to mayhem. So she carefully closed it, making sure that the latch caught and held. “Let’s see if he left the sheets on,” she said, opening the door to her father’s room and following Jude inside. In the half darkness, she made her way over to her father’s bed and pulled down the Hudson’s Bay blanket stretched across it. Eureka! Sheets. She stood for a moment, looking down at them. Dad slept on these. There’s probably dander … old skin cells of his on these sheets, his dust. She sunk into a momentary reverie, then bestirred herself. “Well, it’s like they say, Jude: beggars can’t be choosers and I don’t feel like figuring out where the rest of the sheets are.” She crawled into the bed — no point in taking any clothes off, what with the Daddy dander and all — and pulled the covers up around her neck. Jude came up and pushed the now soggy and matted slipper at her face. Reaching up, she took it from him. “What?” she asked. “Yuck!”

  He backed up.

  “Jude!”

  He took a run at the bed.

  “No!”

  But it was too late. All four muddy paws on the bed.

  “Jude! You’re still wet!” Verna complained.

  Jude happily retrieved the slipper, clambered over her, and began to describe a circle in the bedclothes next to her in preparation for lying down.

  “Jude!”

  But the dog paid her no heed. He continued to circle until he had flattened the bedclothes to his liking. Then he lay down.

  “You stink,” she told him.

  Unperturbed, Jude closed his eyes. A moment later he was snoring.

  “Cut that out! You’re worse than Bob!” Grumbling, she adjusted her position to accommodate the dog. Moments later sleep’s undertow dragged her toward it and then sucked her below the surface, drowning her in dreams.

  Verna’s burning eyes creaked open to light ricocheting at a slant off the lake’s surface and through the dormer window in a tremulous shaft. Where was she? Oh, yes. The lake. Her father’s bedroom — the white-washed walls chalky in the tinny afternoon sun, the steeply sloping ceiling mottled from the reflection off the water, the smell of wet dog — eau du chien humide, as her father would have said.

  “P.U.!” Verna muttered. Narrowing her eyes to slits in order to put some distance between her burgeoning headache and the razor-sharp light, she took stock: throbbing brain, too big for its bony case; stomach, a cauldron of uneasy acid; the poor sack of aching bones that was her too-tender skin. And to finish it off, she thought, to conclude with a flourish, Canine Swamp Creature, parked right in the middle of the bed with his lumpy back pressed firmly against hers and his legs twitching. The dog had managed to appropriate so much of the bed’s surface that she found herself relegated to its very edge, teetering on its brink two-and-a-half dizzying feet above the floor.

  Out of an indeterminate somewhere in the room — a location that sounded like the bottom of a well — swam a voice. Reverberant. Bendy. “How are you feeling?” it wobbled.

  Verna eyed the distant floor with trepidation. An inch more and off she would roll. Given the height of the bed and her present entirely wretched state, that was bound to hurt. Her ears rang. “Precarious,” she ventured. “I feel precarious.”

  “Woof!” Jude yelped, but softly, a muffled bark. He was dreaming about chasing rabbits. At any rate, that’s what Donald would have said. But who knew what dogs dream about?

  “Dreaming ’bout rabbits, eh?” Again the voice. But whose? And where was it coming from? The location was hard to pinpoint. It seemed to bubble up from somewhere down below, before breaking through some skin of surface to half-pulsate, half-ooze across the room — blub, blub, blub. Oh, yes, of course, she remembered, it must belong to that Native woman, the indefatigable one, the one with some country singer’s name.

  “Winonah,” the voice took on more form, substance. “Actually it’s an old Ojibway name.”

  What? Verna thought. Just a minute. I didn’t say that aloud, did I?

  “Winonah, the daughter of No’okomiss,” the voice continued, plumping up, rounding out. “Winonah means, ‘to nourish’ in our tongue.”

  “I’ll take your word for it.” Verna hoisted herself onto one elbow, twisted to the right, and tried to shove the dog more toward the centre of the bed. To no avail. “Jude!” she complained. “Good God, dog! How much do you weigh?” For a few moments she forgot all about the voice, locked as she was in a struggle with the comatose Lab for a modicum of the bed’s real estate. Then it dawned upon her — the room was no longer dark. This gave her a bit of a jolt — as though someone had pinged her with a cattle prod. She stopped wrestling with the dog and crouched down. What the hell had happened to the shutters?

  “Oh, I took ’em down about an hour ago. That’s the last of them.”

  Verna fell back onto her elbows. Of course, she told herself. After all, Dad would have had a ladder tucked away somewhere and Winonah, through her psychic bond to Lionel, would know exactly where that was — probably in the shed off the back porch. While she was working this out, Jude handily regained, by a simple act of expansion, the small amount of turf that she had managed to win for herself. He inhaled and, as he exhaled, his body swelled in size.

  “You win,” Verna conceded victory to the Lab. She rolled herself back onto her left side. “Porker!” she grumbled. “Enormous, fat chow hound! If you were a cat, I would have thrown you across the room by now. Hey, Winonah! How did you manage to take down the shutters without waking us up?” Laying a damp palm over her clammy forehead, she closed her eyes. If recollection served, taking down shutters was a noisy process, filled with clatter. And what time was it, anyway?

  “Oh, it’s getting on to half past three.”

  Half past three? I must have …

  “And, by the way…” Chuckle. “I’m not Winonah, eh?”

  Verna froze. After an instant of convoluted panic during which her thought process skidded screeching into a patch of black ice and spun onto two wheels and out of control, she regained such command of her faculties as to realize that, of course, the voice with whom she had been randomly conversing over the past few minutes belonged not to the handywoman, but to some unknown man. Of course it did; a man who didn’t sound anything like a woman. How could she have failed to notice the difference? Although, to be fair, the properties of the voice seemed to have changed f
rom the time she had first heard it to the present moment — before it had seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at the same time, now it seemed to emanate from one locus; before it had been without character or tonality, now it had depth and roundness.

  It was then that she noticed the rocking chair.

  When she had come to bed, it had been drawn up close to the dormer window. Of course it had. In life there are objects that are capable of being moved, but that are, for one reason or another, not. Ever. Case in point: the rickety old Muskoka chair at the end of the dock. She could not remember a time when it had not occupied that vantage point or had been turned to face any direction but due south. As with the Muskoka chair, so with the rocker in her father’s bedroom. Its place was to the right of the bed and the left of the dormer window, toward which it was turned at a forty-five-degree angle. This was its place, its watch; where it had always been. After all, the whole point of the rocking chair was so that its occupant could sit, looking out over the lake.

  Now, however, the natural order of things, at least insofar as they related to the rocking chair and its place in the world, had been utterly violated — it was most decidedly out of place. In fact, it had been dragged away from the window and some five or six feet across the floor and placed so that it was turned away from the bed and the lake; instead, it faced the closed door to the hall. What was even more unsettling, however, was that, through its caned back, Verna could just make out the bulky outlines of a man’s broad back and the faded red-and-black plaid of a lumberjack jacket — a match to Winonah’s. Just make out, because she couldn’t quite make them out, not quite. Still …

  She panicked. “Jude! Jude! Wake up!”

  The dog stirred, then lifted his head to look over his shoulder, first at her, then at the man in the rocker. He lifted his muzzle and sniffed. His ears perked up. His tail thumped against the bed. His mouth opened. He smiled.

  “Hey, Jude!” The possible man in the chair greeted the dog. “Long time no see, eh?” A local, Ojibway, judging from his accent — the words flat and spread, open at the end, not quite finished, the intonation contained between narrow margins. “Come here, boy!”