I’m thinking maybe the answer is something to do with good fathers.
But Dave says, “The letter M?” And he gives me a wink, as much as to say, ain’t Dad a funny old buzzard!
“Dad’s pretty slick with the crossword puzzles too.”
Dave’s dad grins, modest. He’s swirling the mint sprigs around in the pot. They give off a strong mint smell. Puts me in mind of the night I went nuts with the mouthwash, which seems like another lifetime. You talk about shifts! Was I ever shifted from back there when the peace and quiet used to irk me so bad! Now I was loving it.
We drank our peppermint tea. Window looks out over Lost Gold Lake. There’s an island out there, covered in pine, maple, and birch. Big smooth rocks along the shore. Look as if you could dive off of them into that deep, clear water.
“I bet you kids used to jump off of them rocks, eh?”
“Sure, they did,” says the old man. “Remember the tires, son?”
Dave sits forwards, pointing with his spoon. “See them four big maples hanging out over the edge of the water there? Now a lot of dads will hang up a tire swing in the yard for the kids, eh. But my dad here, what did he do? He rows out there, pretty near kills himself, standing up in the duck boat (yes, you did). Lassos not one branch or two—was it six, Dad?—seven different branches out there. Puts up tires on all of them. Oh, we had fun on them things! Me and my cousins and our friends bumping into each other, falling into the lake. Brent, he was always up here. God he loved that, swinging on them tires! You could hear him across the lake. Remember that, Dad, how Brent used to whoop?”
Dave’s dad nods. The smile fades off of his face. “How is that boy doing?”
“Oh,” Dave says, and looks down.
Dave’s dad shakes his head. “I used to think it’d do my heart good to take and kill that old man of his with a shovel.”
Dave and his dad look out at the water.
Dave’s dad—his name’s Al—he says, “Your mother talked about that, right up to pretty near the end. She’d sit right here where I’m sitting now and look out, thinking of the bunch of yous playing. She was on morphine and everything, her arms swollen up. Smile on her face, thinking of you kids. She’d say, ‘I can see Davey yet, flying back and forth on them tire swings.’ Even when she couldn’t talk no more, I’d see her looking out there.”
The two of them are sitting looking at the lake and the island, drinking their tea.
I’m looking out, too. Trying to get used to the idea that what I’m looking at is Josie’s magic lake, where the gold is that was lost by the girl in the storm. The water that’s behind the church.
Al, he grins at me. He says, “We used to say if Dave here would ever settle down and give us grandchildren, why we’d hang up the tires again. Lots of old tires in the shed,” he says.
I’m thinking of Tammy’s kids, Meghan and little Matthew. I can see them yet, that night we rescued them from their father. Their white breath in the freezing cold. Their mixed-up faces wanting to say, Go away, and at the same time, Don’t leave us here.
I try to picture them swinging on tires.
Well, we had a nice long weekend up there. Sprang our news on the family. Bunch come over Saturday night, and there was music. Made me feel real welcome.
It was good to see Dave’s cousin, Jan, again. She come and got me while the men were out hunting on Sunday. Took me over to her and Tom’s nice new place they got. Screen porch off the living room. There’s a thirty-foot rock right there in the back yard, covered in lichen and moss, with blackberry canes and blueberry bushes growing out of it wherever they can get a toehold. I sat on the shiny pine floor and played with her one-year-old son while Jan made lunch.
Jan was telling me some of the family thinks Dave’s dad shouldn’t live all alone up where he does, no neighbour nearby. Some say leave him to it. That’s where he’s got his memories and his dignity.
I could see that’s what camp Jan was in.
“There’s a big fight going on in the family over it,” Jan says. “Some feels pretty strong, on both sides.”
And I think to myself, nah. You guys, all wanting the best for old Al there, all loving him for the kindness he showed you all your lives? Yous don’t know the first thing about having a fight in a family!
I was dying to ask Jan all about the town and the lake. But I didn’t want her to start looking at me like they done at the restaurant there. So I sat on the floor, piling up blocks for her little Alexander to knock over. He wanted the pile “huge.” That’s his new word today, huge. He liked to hunker down, wind up good, and send the blocks flying. He liked the pow, the action, things sailing to pieces. I could see what type of movies he was going to be into when he got older.
“Alexander, help Aunt Rose pick those up,” Jan says.
I was “Aunt” already. Made me feel good. “My niece calls me Ann Toes,” I says.
Alexander, he knew “toes.” He tugs my sock off. Grabs my big toe. “Huge!” he says.
I says, “Glad I washed my feet today.”
“Uncle Al make you wash under the pump?”
“No.”
“Let you use the bathtub?” Jan’s impressed. “He’s giving you the royal treatment up there, I hope you know. Want mayo on yours? Letting you use the indoor plumbing, in the third week of May? That’s a sign he really likes you. Alexander, get down from there. Last woman Dave went out with, Uncle Al used to tell her he didn’t have a working john. Made her traipse out in all weather—January, black fly season, thunder and lightning—”
“What, and Dave put up with that?” I would’ve thought that would be over Dave’s famous goddamn limit.
“It just so happened that the bathroom wasn’t ever working when Dave and Sharon came.”
Jan, she scoops up Alexander and puts him in his high chair. Washes his wee hands for him, gentle, while she spells it out. She says, “Uncle Al’s a sneaky old b-u-g-g-e-r. I caught him, redhanded, one day. I went up to take him some applesauce when Dave and her were coming to visit. And there he is, crawled in under the back porch, just his boots sticking out. He’s shutting off the water!’”
“Dave’d figure that out pretty quick.”
“Got to be a game between the two of them. Uncle Al did something different to the plumbing every time, seen how long it would take Dave to find the trouble. We’d all laugh. Dave couldn’t walk into the Lucky Duck without some joker kidding him about it. They’d be sniffing at the air, letting on he stank, saying too bad he couldn’t never get a bath.”
Dave got a ride out hunting with Jan’s Tom on Monday. Left me the truck so I could go into town.
I parked the truck in the grocery store lot and got out. I was standing in the town, with my two feet on the ground. I was standing in Josie’s town!
I wondered if something would happen to me. I’d get sucked into Josie’s picture, never be heard from again. Josie’d see me with her magnifying glass, froze here in the parking lot. She’d smile that smile of hers, as if to say she knows more about the weird things in the world than she can tell you. I was in such a condition there that I even wondered if, when I was flattened into the picture, I’d be able to see out.
Shook that stupidness off as much as I could and walked out on to the sidewalk.
Found the stone bench. There’s a sparkle to that pink stone up north, eh, when you look at it close. Sparkles all through it. Of course, the mood I was in, that hit me as magic-looking. The stone as full of diamonds as the lake. A royal throne, Jenny would call it. I sat there, looking down at the stone, moving my head back and forth to make the sparkles in it shimmer like water.
When I stood up, I didn’t have the sense to know I was embarrassing myself, walking around dizzy. I stand there, eh, gawping at a plumbing and heating business like it’s Buckingham Palace. The guy finally stuck his head out the door and asked if he
could help me.
I said there was no help for me.
He laughed and I wandered off.
Everything I seen struck me like it was famous.
I stood and stared at the pie lady’s place.
Seemed funny there was people walking around and driving their cars down the street, like it was a regular little town.
A woman pushing a baby stroller had to say, “Excuse me,” to get around me. I’m blocking the way, staring at the hardware, trying to guess which man in there Sally was going to marry.
Sally always had the opposite trouble of mine with men, eh. She’d run away from them all. Never give no guy a chance. But Josie told her a hardware man in the town, he was going to be a different story.
I go over to the church, like a sleepwalker. I’m in the picture that kept us going all winter. I’m walking along with all these sparklies coming up around my feet.
I could hear the lake water lapping before I come around the building. And then I was right on the shore of Lost Gold Lake. It was washing and slapping the rock that church was built on. Shining in the sunshine. Fresh breeze and a clean smell of water coming off it just as if it was a real lake. It dropped right off from the big smooth rocks, clear and real deep. Had to put my fingers in it, feel the bite of that icy spring water, before I could believe it was real.
Went back to the street and walked up to the other end.
There was the stone fountain. In the little park. It was still shut off for winter. I thought about making a wish, anyhow, throwing a new penny into the dry pool.
Now, you can say it was just a coincidence. I’m standing there thinking about whether there would be any luck in a dry fountain. And the township works truck pulls up.
“You guys working today?”’
Seemed weird on a holiday Monday. Said they were putting in today and going hunting tomorrow.
I watch them turn on the water for spring. I see the year’s first water jump up out of that fountain, and I hear it rain down on the stones. The dry stone is pale, eh. But once the water hits, you can see how nice the colours are. I watch the water running over them dusty stones, and I look at the colours all waking up. I like the splashing sound.
I seen Jenny do that at the shore, pouring water over the stones with her yellow plastic bucket. “Look, I’m waking up the colours!”
My first wish was for her.
Remember back then we used to have one cent coins? Shows how long ago this is now. I picked out the shiniest penny in my purse and wished for dear life.
Then I picked out another nice one.
“This is for all of yous.” I pictured each one of the girls in Group. Wished real hard. It was an awful load of wishing to put on one penny. Probably should’ve dumped out my whole wallet, for that bunch.
But I felt like I was in a fairy story where I only had three wishes.
And I’d learned enough by that time to know that I wasn’t doing no good to nobody unless I had a wish left for myself.
So I take a third bright new penny in my hand and make a wish that I can keep learning.
I watched it settling down through the water. Sun caught it nice.
17.
“DO YOU THINK it’ll be too late to go see Josie when we get home?” I says to Dave as we’re driving home that night.
“Should be in by ten,” he says.
Dave’s getting a kick out of me this weekend. I’m so excited. I didn’t talk about the town in front of his family, but there hasn’t hardly been one minute we were alone that I didn’t keep on about it. I told him every single thing that was in the picture that I found in the town. He don’t get what the big deal is. But he can see I’m happy. So he smiles at me the way you do at a six-year-old who can’t sit still on the way to the fun fair. He says maybe we’ll get there in time to see Josie tonight. He’s already tried saying we could call her. But that won’t do for me. I want to see her face when I tell her.
I’m happy it’s already Monday and I only have to wait till tomorrow night to see the rest of them. As we leave the north country and we’re rolling through the wide fields again, I’m thinking of how it will be.
Marg’s usually there early. Maybe I’ll tell her separate.
Or maybe Sally will come in first! Won’t Sally go nuts! Jumping off her chair with all that blonde hair flying. “Praise the Lord!” she’ll say. “Praise the merciful Father!” I get a kick out of Sal the way she talks churchy when she’s happy and jumps up and down like a kid at the same time.
Or maybe they’ll all be sitting there. I’ll light off the fireworks news right in the middle of them, set them all off at once.
What will Meredith make of us? We’ll stifle ourself when she walks in. Bunch of prisoners that just finished digging the tunnel. She’ll be the suspicious warden there, trying to figure out our lit-up eyes.
Josie cut a picture of the main street of a little tiny town out of an old magazine once. I found the town. So what? Really, so what?
But I was just a-fizzing. Kept telling Dave stuff that didn’t make no sense to him.
“I always believed there was water behind the church!”
“You did, did you?”
“You can’t see it in the picture, but it was in Josie’s dream.”
“The dream where she found out where they got the name for the lake?” Dave’s trying.
“I wonder if she cheats,” I says. “Maybe she heard that story somewheres. Maybe she read it in the magazine where she cut the picture out of and only thought she dreamed it. Oh Dave! It’s so deep and so clear! I knew it would be. I could just picture it, right the exact way it is, when I used to shut my eyes and Josie’d be talking about it. One godawful thing or another would be going on last winter and I’d be just like washing my mind in that beautiful water. Same with Sally. She’s been saying all along she’s going to be ‘like a tree that is near planted by the water, that in season bears its fruit.’ That’s out of the Bible.”
“The bunch of yous are all looney tunes, you know that eh?” he says, smiling at the road.
We put on the radio after a while and sung along, holding hands, rolling over them easy farm hills, all the way home.
Five after ten I run in the door. Make straight for the phone and call Josie. It’s funny, now I get telling this story, to see how cell phones have changed things. Them days, you never had a phone with you. You had to wait to get to home to make a phone call. I’m dancing up and down, all set to go tell Josie that we found her town. I’ll tell her I just have to drop by for a minute tonight. Can’t wait to hear what she’s going to say!
No answer.
Dave says, “Could be the urge struck them.”
That shows yous what was on his mind right then. We hadn’t got up to much at his dad’s, what with the thin partitions and Dave being tired out every night from running after turkeys all day. They only had one turkey to show for all their trying.
Dave’s putting his gun away. He keeps it locked up good because of Jenny. I’m making us a pot of tea. I got this picture in my mind of them and the turkeys trying to outsmart each other, tiptoeing in and out of the bushes, matched about equal.
I says, “Which of yous was the biggest turkeys?”
He told me a story about talking to a Native guy once, telling him why we call them Indians, because, when we first come across them, we were looking for India. The Native guy said, “Well, then, I’m just glad yous weren’t looking for Turkey.”
I remember we were laughing at that when the phone rung. I jumped for it, hoping it was Josie.
The hospital. They had my number on the file from before. Josie was admitted. We should come.
The kettle was about to boil. I was ready for that cup of tea. I could picture us sitting around the hospital for hours. I says to the woman on the phone, “Can you tell her we’ll be ther
e in a half hour?”
“I think you should come right now,” she says. It’s that certain type of emergency-calm voice.
So then, me and Dave, we’re running down the stairs and gunning it over there to the hospital and running up the stairs and going the wrong place and running down more stairs and up some other stairs before we can get to Josie.
“Holy Christ,” Dave whispers when we open the door.
He catches me to stop me, the way you catch a kid that’s going to run out on the road. There’s a doctor there and two nurses.
I pull loose and barge right up.
The medical people step back for me. I don’t waste time thinking that’s odd. I lean down to her poor ear. I says, “Josie!”
“Rose?”
“Yeah. Jesus! Was it—?”
Josie whispers, “Your three wishes…”
“Is this the last frigging time that bastard is going to put you in the hospital? Because I am about fed up with—”
The doctor, she put her hand on my arm and give the smallest little shake of her head. I never forgot that doctor giving her head that little tiny shake.
This is the type of time we’re good at, us survivors, eh. We can go all to hell after. But there’s nobody like us when the avalanche is on.
I said, “Josie,” I said, “there is water behind the church.”
Josie’s dry mouth tried for a smile. I put my ear close to hear what she was trying to say.
Josie whispered, “Dave?”
He bent over her. “Right here, Josie,” he says.
“Rose.”
Dave, he’s got tears. I don’t. Not yet. “Don’t worry, Josie,” he says, “I’ll always be with Rose.”
I says, “God, Josie, are you dying?”
Josie was thirsty. She kept licking her dried-out lips, but they wouldn’t give her nothing, just an ice cube to suck. Something about taking her into surgery. They needed her stomach empty. She moaned.
We stayed with her until they were ready to take her in.
A cop come in. They were looking for Brent. Josie turned her face away.
Paper Stones Page 18
