Beach Reading

by Lorne Elliott

  I went outside to get my bike, and there, across the road, I saw her.

  Silhouetted in front of the sparkling inlet, moving like a fawn along the shore towards a grove of birch trees, she was a colleen, a dryad, a silkie. Keep your eye fixed on her forever, I said to myself as I approached, lest in a twinkling she transform herself into one of those slim birches in that sacred grove, or a seal who would slip away under the darling waves. I moved toward her because, like the tide before the moon, I was powerless to resist. I approached her as you would a goddess, trembling before her beauty. With a movement like falling silk she turned and saw me, accompanied by tempered harps in harmony. The dome of her brow was perfect, her ears were newly coined seashells, her cheeks were fresh apples. Her hair was spun bronze mink, her skin ivory, and at the cusp of one divine eyebrow, a rising Venus of the tiniest of beauty spots, to highlight the surrounding glory, a perfect imperfection. I could live with that.

  She slapped her forehead. “Goddamn mosquitoes,” she said. “Nature sucks!”

  “They’re an important part of the ecosystem,” my mouth said, while my heart cried out to wash with my tears of joy the dearest dead bug from off her alabaster brow.

  “Who cares?” Even when complaining, her voice was like a thousand rising larks. “Goddamn it. Do you have a Kleenex?”

  To do your bidding, my lady, I thought, I would crawl to Barrisway, run to Charlottetown, or work all my days in some corporate hellhole in Toronto to finally corner the Kleenex market, but a handkerchief woven from the finest silks of the Indies and embroidered by all the artists of Cathay was not too fine for her.

  “Never mind, I’ve found one,” she said, then took a balled Kleenex out of the pocket of her dress and spat on it. O lucky ball of Kleenex, to be so spat upon by those lips!

  “You missed it,” I said and I actually touched her face. Angels trilled a perfect fifth in both my ears and an electric shock ran through my finger and to my heart.

  “Godamn bugs,” she said, “Why don’t they use DDT?”

  “It kills birds,” I said, softly, meaning to impart in my tone the ineffable sadness of a falling sparrow.

  “Who gives a shit?” But I knew that her cruelty was like the cruelty of nature, and who said DDT was all that bad anyway? Its dangers were probably over-rated. All previous conclusions I had made about the world were up for grabs. She was beautiful, and so could not be wrong. I was a goner.

  Then she looked at me straight in the face for the first time. I hoped she had been hit by the same thunderbolt as me, but she seemed only to be examining my features with curiosity, not adoration. I was aware that my face was damaged somewhat from my fall two nights ago, and I felt a certain tightness and swelling, but there was no real pain. I assumed that it was minor damage, that it might even add to my appeal, like the saber-scar on the cheek of an action hero that women were reported to find attractive. I raised an eyebrow and adopted what I imagined was a roguish curl to my lips. I felt the swollen side spring off the tooth, which, if the sunlight caught it, might even glint. It didn’t hurt to smile, exactly, but it did make my lips tighter.

  “What’s wrong with your face?”

  “Three guys jumped me down at the wharf in Charlottetown and we had a fight.”

  “Looks like they won,” she said, taking out a cigarette and lighting it.

  I wished I smoked, and then I would have been carrying matches to light it for her. Why hadn’t I learned to smoke? My parents had neglected my education horribly.

  “What’s that?” She peered closely where I had shaved that morning with my dull razor and no mirror. I had nicked myself, and to stop the bleeding, I had found a spiderweb to ball up and put on the wound.

  “Spiderweb,” I said. “It’s a coagulant.” I hoped she would recognize the effort as well as be impressed with the extent of my woodland lore.

  “It looks dirty.”

  “I nicked myself shaving this morning. I always do when I shave. Twice a day. Like I do.” Being a full-grown shaving adult male, was what I meant. “My name is Christian.” I held out my hand.

  “I’m Claire.”

  I took it that the reason she did not take my hand was because both of hers were occupied with the lighter or the cigarette. Then something occurred to me.

  “Claire Duchesne?” I said. But then I thought, of course, it had to be her. “The artist?”

  “Well, I don’t know about that. I drew some pictures for that book…”

  And modest as well. “Pictures?” I said. “They are Works of Art! Those drawings are yours?”

  “Some of them.”

  “The best ones,” I said. “Who’s the other loser?”

  “Andrew Solomon? Total jerk.”

  “You can tell by his drawings. Yours are much better.”

  “You think so?”

  “Of course! It’s obvious.”

  “I’m glad you like them.” She looked me in the eyes for the first time.

  “They’re wonderful. Brilliant. Beautiful,” I said. “Much better than that other guy’s. His drawings are garbage.”

  “That’s what I said,” she pouted, and a line appeared between her eyebrows as my heart back-flipped. “He said that mine weren’t any good.”

  “What does he know?” I said. Give me the word and I’ll have him killed. Then I realized I still had a copy of the pamphlet in my pocket. Perfect. “Here,” I said “Could you sign a copy for me?”

  “What? Like an autograph?”

  “Exactly.”

  You could see she was pleased. I gave her my pencil, and in a moment of inspiration I presented my back for her as a desk. She placed the open pamphlet on my back and I could feel the pencil point scribbling through the paper, and her other hand holding it flat, touching my wing-bone, sending scorching ice needles into my heart, which was pounding so fast I wondered how she could write: the pencil must be bouncing off the paper. In the spruce thicket behind the park office a warbler sang the first two notes of “La fille aux cheveux de lin”.

  “I have to tell them at the office that I’ve arrived,” she said.

  “OK. I gotta get to Barrisway, change some money at the bank,” I said, sounding just like a real grown-up. “See you tomorrow.”

  “I don’t start work till the day after.” She discarded her cigarette onto the ground like, it seemed to me, any other suitors she might have been considering before she had met me, then turned and walked off.

  I hopped on my bike like all three Musketeers and pedaled at high speed toward Barrisway. There was a slight grade down on the way to the first hill and in case she was still watching I pedaled with my hands off the handlebars and my arms folded on my chest, nonchalantly. But this was not as dramatic as was called for, so I grabbed the handlebars again, leant forward, shot my right leg out back and knelt on the seat and coasted, got back into my seat, straightened up and hauled the handlebars up in a wheelie, using a bump to attain front wheel lift-off. I came to the first hill, up which I expended twice as much energy as was necessary, swinging the bike from side to side like a trick cyclist, the no-bar girl’s-bike feature helping me to swing it way over either side with every pump of the pedal, asking myself but when? but when? and hearing the tires on the pavement reply, soon Soon SOON.

  The horned lark which sometimes nests along this coast is famous for its courtship displays where he rises suddenly up into the air to twinkle his wings, whistle and sing. I twinkled, whistled and sang. At the crest of the hill I looked behind, but there was nobody watching. It didn’t matter. It was good exercise and made me stronger, and so improved me for her, although with the effort my face was now beating with something resembling pain. For the first time I wondered how bad I looked. A school bus passed, twenty kids inside hooted and one threw a milk carton out the window at me. I waved, smiling. I was once like them, young and stupid. Now I was o
n my way to losing my innocence, and to the most beautiful girl in the world.

  At normal speed it would have taken twenty minutes to get to Barrisway but that day it took me fifteen. Main Street turned out to look like a western town in a cowboy movie, with facades of old stores and clapboard walls. Except for the presence of the telephone poles, you could see a gunfight happening there. With a burst of speed, I arrived at the bank downtown. If there’d been a hitching post, I would have flipped my reins around it. I leapt up the bank stairs but it was closed. I looked down Main Street. A grocery store, hardware store, post office and a few boarded-up shops. I was probably in no danger of being swept away by the glitter. I imagined myself saying that to Claire and making her laugh. I practiced a wide winning smile and felt my face hurt again. Once more I wondered what it looked like. I touched my face as I crossed the street to the hardware store.

  “What’s wrong with your face, kid?” said the guy behind the counter.

  “I fell.”

  “Yeah, well the way you were riding that bike no wonder.” He looked at me with an accusing eye that said, “We don’t like your kind in this town.”

  I thought of saying, “It’s nice to have an audience,” but chose instead to ignore the comment and not sink to his level. Love raised me above such petty sparring.

  “Can you change a one-hundred-dollar bill?”

  “No.”

  “The bank’s closed.”

  “Come back tomorrow.”

  “I’ll try at the grocery.”

  “It’s closed too.”

  His problem was that he was not in love. I left his store and hopped on the bike and rode to the far end of town where the houses petered out, and then turned in a wide loop and rode at high velocity back past the store, standing on the opposite pedal like a cowboy using his horse as a shield from gunfire. I was doing it to amuse him, but I could see his face through the window looking back at me sourly. I know what you’re up to, it said, I was young once too. But his face lied. He had never been young, and had never been in love, the poor bastard.

  On the way back to the park office I stopped at the vegetable stand to buy more potatoes. It made me feel excellent that such an establishment existed, running on the goodwill and trust of one’s neighbours. As a result there was no bitter shopkeeper feeling his life tick away and taking it out on his customers, throwing rocks at horned larks.

  There was one problem though. I couldn’t make change for the hundred here either and even as generous as I was feeling, I couldn’t very well leave the whole amount, so I sat down cross-legged on the grass beside the road, took out my notebook and pencil and composed a note, making three drafts before I was satisfied. I knew it was Gump and Toe who ran the stand but I adopted an impersonal tone, which seemed to fit the loftiness of the thoughts I was expressing.

  “To whom it may concern:

  First of all let me say how impressed I am by the trusting nature of your enterprise, and let me offer my congratulations to the noble souls who have constructed and filled with the fruit of their labours this unique and friendly establishment, the excellent edibles for which I have already paid and enjoyed once. The simple act of trusting your fellow man is one small way that we can knit together the community, strengthen the social fabric and enrich ourselves in an honourable and (I hope in your case) profitable fashion. Its existence encourages other such enterprises, and so, with luck, shall goodness spread, even to the ends of the earth. Hear hear.

  Having said that, I nevertheless regrettably find myself temporarily embarrassed on the financial front, and so, although I do in fact have the cash with me, it is in too large a denomination to reasonably leave here now. I am ashamed that I am not as trusting as you in this regard, but perhaps due to my upbringing in an economic philosophy which you do not obviously share, I balk at the thought.

  So what I am proposing is that I take what I need now, and hereby promise to pay you with a more convenient and manageable sum when next I am passing this way. If there are any questions, you can find me at the park office. Thank you.”

  I tore the page out of my notebook, folded it and inserted it through the slot of the money box. I was pedalling across the causeway before I remembered that I hadn’t signed my name. Not to worry, though, the very nature of Gump and Toe’s business showed that they would be okay with that. And I found myself smiling when I considered how, apart from everything else, trust simplified things.

  When I got back to my campground it struck me that it wasn’t a very fit place to invite Claire, so I tightened up the tent and straightened the driftwood around it, then picked some beach-pea and hung it from the peak like a pagan charm. I walked the length of the beach, carried back the largest shells I could find and lined both sides of a walkway up to the tent door, grading them by size towards the entrance, to draw her in. Then I crossed the dunes to the meadow where I cut an armful of sweetgrass to lay inside. It smelled like heaven. I collected flatter stones to ring the fire-pit and make level surfaces for my pots and pans, and straightened up the sitting log.

  It would also be nice to impress Claire with some sort of professional triumph at work, preferably some sudden blinding coup which would establish my standing in the scientific community as a boy genius, accompanied by global media attention as I humbly accepted the wonderment of my colleagues at the enormity of my achievement. That would be perfect. So I re-read my notes about the relationship between the detritus left at high tide, the isopods that feed off it, and the sanderlings which in turn feed off these isopods. My hypothesis was that all three groups comprised a feeding cycle which was put into motion by the high tide.

  But I could do with some more observations, so I looked at my tidal chart, which told me that the next high tide in Barrisway would be 6:27 tomorrow morning. It would be slightly later here, and by checking the reading further east and judging my position between it and Barrisway, I approximated the high tide where I was, and wrote in my notebook, “MacAkerns’ Beach, August 2nd, high tide: 6:30 PM.” But that number looked rounded-off and unprofessional, so I changed it to “6:29.”

  Then, suddenly, my father’s voice in my head said something that I couldn’t quite understand, and I caught myself. Desiring to appear more scientific, I had sullied the spirit of science. I erased what I had written and wrote “6:30” again, feeling noble and serious. My mind was working clearly now, and it occurred to me that the numbers on tide charts at best could only ever be close approximations, and in general were probably posing as more specific than they ever could truly be, so I made another note: “Query: How to predict local tides more accurately and honestly?”

  That was as much as I could do for now, so I walked out to the road and down toward MacAkerns’, composing in my head a rough draft of my Nobel Prize acceptance speech. “I could never have conceived of the work for which you are honouring me without the unwavering love of my dear wife, Claire Duchesne…”

  I was healthy and alert, my lungs cleansed with sea air, blissfully tired from the exercise I was getting and probably also starting a nicely bronzed tan. My face still felt a bit puffy, but the swelling might only fill out my jaw and make me more attractive. I was young, fit, and with no bad habits, although smoking cigarettes was a possibility I might explore. Claire smoked, so it must be all right.

  ***

  I entered the kitchen wanting to tell everybody how I had just met a girl, but Robbie and Wallace were deep into some discussion, sitting across the table from each other. “Out with it,” Robbie was saying to Wallace. “Why did Constable Marjorie come by this afternoon?”

  “I already told you.”

  “No you didn’t.”

  “I thought I did.”

  “Why was she here, Wallace?”

  “Just checking up.”

  “That’s all?”

  Wallace paused. “Oh, yeah,” as if he’d suddenly remembered. �
��Also to tell us that if we didn’t respond to the government’s last offer, she’d been given the authority to kick us off our land.”

  “I thought it was something like that.”

  “Well, there you are then. No reason I should have told you if you already knew.”

  “So now what?”

  “Don’t worry. Things are progressing exactly as I predicted.”

  “You predicted that the cops would come to kick us off?”

  “It was bound to happen. The honourable Member from Barrisway Riding, What’s-His-Face, is on the warpath.”

  “Robert Logan Head.”

  “That’s the one. The election’s coming up and he wants to announce the park opening so he can go into his big smelly look-at-me-all-great-and-mighty routine. Apparently we’re threatening his chance for a photo op.”

  “You mean you are.”

  “I have no wish to take all the credit.”

  “So what do you plan to do about it?”

  “Get our side of the story out.”

  “Using your vast network of media contacts?”

  “I know lots of people. Lots of people know me.”

  “Yeah. That’s the problem.”

  “Don’t worry, Robbie. I got it covered.”

  “How?”

  “I intend to ask for equal media time.”

  “And why would they give it to you?”

  “Because they are legally obliged to.”

  “Who says?”

  “The Elections Act of Canada.”

  Robbie looked narrowly at Wallace. “Elections Act?”

  “All candidates are insured equal media time in an election.”

  “What’s that got to do with you?”

  “I have registered myself as Independent Candidate for Barrisway riding,” said Wallace. “I am running for office”.