Beach Reading

by Lorne Elliott

  “Seal,” I said.

  “What?”

  “French for seal. Phoque.”

  “Yeah. That’s it.” He smiled, and left me to my work.

  But I didn’t have much else to do. I unpacked and set up a stereo microscope on my desk and looked at one of the demonstration slides that came with it. I read parts of some other books and pamphlets. The morning ticked by and my headache started to dissipate, leaving behind an empty howling space, like Warsaw after the bombing. I took more aspirin, which made me feel fuzzy and cocooned. Fergie popped his head in again at lunch time, said he was going to get something to eat and asked would I like to come along. But I had no money and didn’t know whether I wanted to bounce around in a vehicle for I didn’t know how long, or whether I could hold down anything more challenging than the potato I had brought with me, so I said no thanks.

  He left and I walked out and crossed the shore road to an area that was different than the rest of the park, wind-blown stunted spruce smeared up in a thick mat by the weather. According to one of the publications I had seen that morning it was a feature known as a “Krumholtz” or “Tuckamore.” It was all run through with a network of winding paths like a rabbit warren, beat down to the red soil underneath, then sand as I came to the shore. I thought of taking a short dip in the ocean but the water’s edge was knee deep in seaweed. I looked at my watch. Forty-four minutes until I was due back. It wouldn’t be so bad if I knew what I should be doing. I supposed I could continue making bird lists or maybe I should explore all of the beaches in the park and write a paper. “An Evaluation of the Suitability of the Beaches of Barrisway Park, PEI, in Respect to Tourism, Natural Resources and…” I couldn’t think of a third. I sat on a rock and took another aspirin while I ate my potato. They didn’t taste bad together. Pomme de terre à la mode Aspirine. Maybe I could add beach recipes as an addendum to my report.

  I timed my arrival at the park office just as the second hand on my watch touched one o’clock. I went to my room and sat down behind my desk. The problem now was how to fill the rest of the day. A work-sheet Fergie had given me informed me that there would be a half-hour coffee break at three-fifteen, which meant I had almost two hours of solid time-wasting till I could officially waste time for fifteen minutes. I opened a book at a chapter on the life cycle of the jellyfish, and read that some species were an edible delicacy in Japan. I made a vaguely oriental face and said Ah So! which as far as I know means nothing in any Asian language, then I delivered an imaginary karate chop to the imaginary neck of Rattray.

  I started sketching a chart to break down the work-day into component parts. It wasn’t a bad job, really. It certainly hadn’t been difficult so far, and was as interesting as I could make it, but outside the office the day was passing, and on the beach the tide would be going out again, never to come back in quite the same way, and I was missing it. I looked at my watch and started to count the hours until Quitting Time, that holy grail at the end of the work-day, receding further out of your reach the more you focussed on it. And, after that, it was home and sleep and back to work tomorrow. And tomorrow and tomorrow, as the man said. I found myself thinking, for the first time in my life, the word “fuck,” mildly shocking myself that I had said it, if only in my mind. But it felt cathartic as well. I tried saying it again, out loud this time. “Fuck.” The heavens did not fall. In fact, it made me feel grown-up. Just a word, I thought, subject to the same grammatical rules as any other word. “Fuck you” was directed. “Fuck off” was dismissive. “What the fuck?” was the interrogatory form. “Un-fucking-believable” was comic in its steadfast dedication to inserting the word at every fucking opportunity. “For fuck’s sakes!” was the appeal to some mythological being (either the Great God Fuck, or that mischievous woodland sprite out of Midsummer Night’s Dream, Robin Goodfellow, also known as “Fuck”). There were a fuck of a lot of fucking ways to use the fucking word, that’s the fucking truth.

  I picked my teeth with a piece of cardboard and took another aspirin.

  There was, of course, another way to get through the day: Concentrate on this moment, the slippery Now, and fill the time with satisfying achievement. So I flipped through more pamphlets and tried to concentrate. I read. I sighed. I looked at the clock and read some more.

  One publication was on the diet and behaviour of shorebirds by Andrew Solomon, so I scanned it, on the lookout for more signs of incipient madness. “We observed fourteen migratory flocks of sanderlings in Fundy National Park over a period of two weeks,” it started. There was a footnote which said, “See chart 1A.” I found three columns there which listed the approximate numbers in the flocks sighted, the weather, and the time of each sighting. 3:35…3:07… 2:49… 2:26… And it seemed to me there was a pattern. The sightings were roughly twenty minutes earlier every day. I felt my interest in the subject stirring. I looked for and quickly found a navigational guide in the books I had put on the shelves and while I was checking this, I heard a truck arrive. I turned back to the guide and read some more, and then Fergie came into the office.

  “How’s it going?” he said.

  “Good. There may be a connection between feeding times and tidal height amongst sanderlings.”

  “Whoa boy! Slow down. No need to blow a gasket. Take it easy.”

  “Some of the data is all in this paper by Andrew Solomon, but I don’t think he’s made the conclusion.”

  “Really? Hunh! Well, best follow that up then,” he said, and left quickly.

  I had something to occupy me now so the afternoon no longer dragged. At three-thirty, workers appeared in the lobby where they opened large boxes, extracted and carried fixtures and mirrors into the bathroom. I sat in my office and listened to the whirring of power tools and hammer-blows on metal and cement. At twenty to five I was pacing around in front of my desk, and at five exactly I was out the door. Fergie met me there, locked up and got into his truck.

  “See you tomorrow,” he said, and spun out of the driveway. But I had an interesting project to pursue now, so tomorrow did not seem such a dreary prospect. High tide was in three hours. I filled my water jug from an outside tap and biked over the causeway to my campsite.

  I swam, lay down and slept for a while, then woke up just as high tide was starting to ebb. I went down to the water’s edge and noticed the line of detritus marking where it had reached its high point on the shore. I crouched and looked at this detritus closely, took a handful as a sample, and thought about that. I was still thinking about it as I cooked my supper of potatoes fried in saltwater. I also thought about how I probably could do with some variety in my diet. Maybe I could go to MacAkerns’ for stale Oreos and Cheeze Whiz.

  It was getting dark now, and the air was becoming chilly and clear. A sea breeze sprang up and immediately settled down. I got on my bike and pedaled back across the causeway to the phone booth at the park office and put a collect call through.

  “Hi Mom.”

  “Christian! How are you? Is anything wrong?”

  “No. Just phoning.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yep.”

  “Oh…good. So! How are things?”

  “Great. I’m camping on the beach, and I met this family, and I went to work this morning and met everybody and just finished my first day working, though they told me that I wouldn’t get paid till Friday…”

  “You’re out of money.”

  “No…Well, at least I don’t think so. Maybe. I mean, I might be able to hold out till then, but, no. I should be all right…”

  “You want me to send you some?”

  “Well, I don’t think you have to, like I say, Mom. But, well, maybe…”

  “Will a hundred do?”

  “Yeah, but like I say, I don’t really need it. There’s a lot of berries around here which I’m picking…and, oh yeah, I found some chanterelles…”

  “You’re li
ving off berries and mushrooms?”

  “No. Not entirely. That family I told you about…”

  “You’re begging from a family you just met?”

  “Mom. I’m not. Really…”

  “OK. Listen. You know that shirt I gave you?”

  I didn’t know why she was bringing that up now. It was a white shirt which she insisted I take in case I needed to attend some formal event. I didn’t see the point. A few times during the trip down I wanted to throw the shirt away or leave it behind accidentally-on-purpose, but Mom told me that it had been Dad’s, and that he had always wanted to give it to me, though it didn’t look like anything he’d ever worn. It had a stiff wide collar, and short sleeves, and looked cheap.

  “Dad’s shirt?” I said.

  “Well, no,” said Mom. “It wasn’t really. I just told you that because I didn’t want you to throw it away.”

  “Mom? Why?”

  “I’ve sewed a hundred-dollar bill into the collar.”

  “Really?”

  “For emergencies.”

  “Why didn’t you just give me the money?”

  “Because you would have spent that too.” Which was fair enough. To be angry with her would have been hypocritical. In truth, having someone care about me enough to lie to me for my own good gave me a warm and secure feeling. “It’s been how long since you left?” she asked.

  “Three days.”

  “So that’s a hundred dollars a day you’ve spent. For six weeks, that’ll be four thousand two hundred expenses, and you’ll be paid how much? Eighteen hundred?”

  “Yeah, about that.”

  “So at this rate you’ll come out of the job two thousand four hundred dollars poorer.”

  I suddenly realized what that meant. “Fuck,” I said, almost to myself.

  “Christian?”

  “What?.. Oh. Sorry Mom. People down here seem to swear a lot.”

  “Well, don’t around me.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Fine. Now. How did you manage to spend so much?”

  “There’s been some unforeseen expenses.”

  “Initial start-up cost overruns?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Spare me. I’ve heard them all.”

  “OK. Well, thanks anyway, Mom.”

  “Now. How’s everything else going?”

  And we talked about other things. What responsibilities I had at work. The rumour of my supervisor’s nervous breakdown. The necessity of changing my socks, brushing my teeth and wearing clean underwear. I told her I had heard about a guy down here who was wheeled into the hospital to undergo a lung, liver and heart transplant, but his mom was OK with it, because he had on clean underwear. She laughed.

  I told her about the beach, and the birds, and the park. I did not inform her about my first experience with beer and the injuries to my face. And as we came to the end of the call we didn’t assure each other that we loved each other. We didn’t say those things, not because we didn’t love one another, but rather, I like to think, because we believed that Love was sacred, even the word, only to be said at special times, and casting it around indiscriminately diminished its value. So when I said that I’d better get going, she said, instead, “Yes. Don’t want to bankrupt me too. Have fun. Work hard.”

  “OK. Bye, Mom.”

  “Bye Christian.”

  I hung up and immediately felt the thick dark night surround me more closely. It was silent and chilly and I shivered. I biked back to my tent and it was even colder out there, the stars snapping brightly way out in space, with only the thin skin of atmosphere down here to keep us warm and alive, and outside of that an infinity of absolute zero. Everything felt fragile. I needed a woman.

  Or a beer.

  Like the first time in my mind I had said “fuck,” I surprised myself with that thought too, and I wondered if I was now an alcoholic. I shook the thought out of my head, and started to walk to MacAkerns’, making a serious and firm commitment then and there to never, ever, even if forced at gunpoint, so much as look at that vile product, beer.

  ***

  “Want some scotch?” said Wallace.

  “OK,” I said, and sat down.

  “You look like shit.”

  “Lay off him, Wallace,” said Robbie. They were sitting around the table and Robbie had a forty-ounce bottle in front of her. “Are you in pain?”

  “Not really.”

  She poured some scotch and passed the glass across to me.

  “Better keep a close eye on him,” said Wallace. “I mean to say, I like the occasional tipple, but he’s a maniac.” He looked at me warily, as though I might pounce on the drink. “Patience,” he said. “I know you’re dying to get hammered as soon as possible, but wait for it.”

  I took the glass. “It was my first time.”

  “That bodes well.”

  “Nobody told me to slow down.”

  “Drinking is like any other sport,” said Wallace. “You gotta pace yourself.”

  “Now you tell me.” I looked at the glass of scotch and decided I would not drink it immediately, but would take my time. I believe the verb was to “nurse” it. And one scotch surely could do no harm, particularly if I thought of it as an experiment. The only way to find if I was on the verge of becoming a teenage alcoholic was if I monitored myself under strict laboratory conditions, like here in MacAkerns’ kitchen. I tilted the glass to my lip and took a gentlemanly sip.

  I stopped and made a face like a leaf-nosed bat.

  The scotch tasted very, very bad, both aggressive and medicinal, like gasoline and orange peel. It gave off fumes that caused my nose to wrinkle up and my eyes to water. It was completely undrinkable. When my face relaxed I said, “Is it supposed to taste like this?”

  “Like what? I’ll have you know this is a thirty-year-old single malt,” said Wallace.

  “It’s awful.”

  “Oh? You’ve found that, have you? In your long experience as a connoisseur of fine Scotch whisky?”

  “No. This is my first. But it’s, like… awful.”

  “Well, you have to get used to it,” said Wallace.

  I sipped again to see if, like the beer, the second sip was better than the first. It wasn’t, although by anticipating its awfulness I was not as cruelly surprised. Then I had an idea.

  The trick to avoiding becoming a raving teenage alcoholic was to stay away from alcohol altogether, and nothing would help me do that better than this vile concoction, of which I clearly would never be able to drink enough to get drunk. Any worries I had on this front could therefore be put to rest with one simple move, the logic of which seemed to me absolutely iron-clad. To confirm the vileness of alcohol, as well as teach myself a lesson I would never forget, I put the glass to my lips and downed the contents in one gulp.

  Wallace, Robbie and Brucie all looked at me, then looked at each other, then looked back at me again. I shuddered horribly and made another more extreme grimace, squeezing the muscles in my face to cause a pain large enough to drown out the taste. I moved the sides of my lips like I was trying to worm a gag out of my mouth. I worked the cords of my neck while I frantically cleaned the insides of my pallet with my tongue, and swallowed the saliva out of the way of my taste buds. Blinded by tears, I coughed, stood up, marched the two steps to the sink, turned the faucet on full blast and stuck my mouth under it, washing it out and coughing extensively afterwards. When I finished I returned to my seat and sat down again.

  “Are you OK?” said Robbie.

  I took time to consider the question, because now something else was happening. The scotch, hitting the floor of my stomach, seemed to be spreading in a slow explosion of delicious warmth, soothing and healing like a Balm of Gilead, right unto my fingertips. It not only healed the pain of drinking it, but added something extra. “Could I
have another?”

  “No way,” said Robbie, and she took the bottle, stood up and put it on the counter.

  “Just one…”

  “No!” And she meant it. She poured me a glass of water and set it down in front of me. “Now, drink this.”

  I obeyed.

  “If we had any aspirin I’d give you a few, but we don’t,” said Robbie. “Lots of water and aspirin prevent a hangover.”

  Hangover! Even in a universe as benevolent as the one I was now inhabiting, I remembered that a hangover was a very bad thing indeed.

  “I have aspirin,” I said.

  “Well, take a few.”

  I obeyed again, took the aspirin bottle out of my vest pocket and popped two into my mouth.

  “Can I have a w-w-whisky?” said Brucie.

  “No,” said Robbie.

  “Why not?

  “You’re too young,”

  “Wallace said he had a d-d-drink when he was my age.”

  “Yeah. And look how he turned out.”

  “C-c-come on.”

  “Do you want to wake up one morning with a face like him?” said Wallace, and he pointed at me.

  “G-g-got a point there,” said Brucie, backing off.

  “Or be like him, God forbid,” said Wallace with a massive shudder. “No, Boyo-Me-Lad Brucie. Whatever path you take in life, abide by this one simple principle: Don’t Be Like Whoever-The-Hell-He-Is. I mean, first he swans into our house and tries to poison us with wild mushrooms, then forces us to go on his drunken debauchery in town, and doesn’t even tell us his name, for Chrissakes. Consider him an unacceptable role model. Much better to fashion yourself after your older brother, me.”

  “You really want to screw him up that bad?” said Robbie.

  I was sitting comfortably now inside a marvelous warm cocoon. Even the fact that I had to go to work tomorrow wasn’t that bad when you thought about it. If I was able to sustain the mood I was feeling now, the wastes of time I had to endure there would be quite manageable. I should bring a bottle to the office and drink my way through the workday. I smiled, and then for some reason remembered Fergie wearing that same smile. So that’s how he did it.