Monkey Beach

by Eden Robinson

  “You okay, Al? What’s the matter? What?” the man said.

  Dad put his shaking hands over his face and stayed bent over, shuddering. It took me a moment to realize he was crying.

  “Go away!” I shouted at the man. “Get out! Go away!”

  “Stop it, Lisa,” Mom said.

  “Al?” the man said.

  Jimmy came running into the hallway. “Daddy?”

  Dad wiped his face and said, “It’s okay, it’s okay.”

  I pushed myself between them and glared up at the man. “You go away.”

  The man knelt down and smiled at me. “You know who I am? I’m your uncle Mick.”

  “No, you’re not. Uncle Mick’s in jail.”

  The man burst out laughing. After a minute of silence on everyone else’s part, he said as he stood up, “You thought I was in jail? Why the hell’d you think I was in the big house?”

  The look Mom gave him was so dark that if she’d given it to me, I’d have been running for my room. Instead, Mick started laughing again. Dad was blinking faster and staring at the floor. I thought Mick was making fun of him and, in an absolute fury, pulled my foot back and gave the man a good, hard kick to the shins. He was howling and hopping so fast that none of my other kicks landed as nicely. Then Dad grabbed me around the waist, picked me up and said, “Enough now.” To Mick, he said, “You want some coffee?”

  Mom poured three cups of coffee, and we all sat at the kitchen table. Dad sat at one end, Mom at the other and Mick in the middle. Jimmy stood behind Mom’s chair and wouldn’t come out to say hi. I had a death grip on Dad’s neck and wouldn’t let go, even when Mom told me to bring Jimmy into the living room.

  “No,” I said.

  “Lisa,” Mom said in her warning tone that meant I was going to get a talking- to when we were alone.

  “That’s what we get for naming her after you,” Dad said.

  “You named her after me?” Mick said.

  “Michael, meet Lisamarie Michelle,” Mom said dryly. “It was supposed to be a touching tribute.”

  Uncle Mick reached to shake my hand and I lunged to bite his arm, but he pulled it back just in time. My teeth snapped together so hard it hurt, like biting down on aluminum.

  “Lisa! That’s enough!” Mom said.

  “Don’t like you,” I said to Mick.

  “God,” Mom said.

  “Hey, I’m a good guy, not a bad guy,” Mick said, not the least bit mad. “I’m your daddy’s brother.”

  “I was surprised, that’s all.” Dad said, giving me a squeeze to get my attention. “Come on, say you’re sorry for kicking your uncle.”

  “No,” I said.

  “You think I’d hurt your daddy?” Mick said. “I’d never hurt him.”

  “You better not,” I said.

  Mick started grinning again. “You should have named her Agnes, after Mother.” When I scowled at him, he added, “ ’Cause she’s a delicate Haisla flower too.”

  “Mother,” Dad said, almost letting me go. “Jesus.”

  “What? Is she still mad at me? Man, she can hold a grudge.”

  “Mick,” Mom said, “she thinks you’re locked up somewhere.”

  “Why does everyone think that?”

  “They phoned us,” Dad said.

  “Who?”

  “All your friends. They said you were shot and the FBI took you away.”

  Mick’s eyebrows went up. He turned to confirm this with Mom and she nodded.

  He sat back in his chair and laughed so hard that the coffee came back up his nose and he started choking. Mom pounded his back. “You could have written. You could have phoned. But no, that would have been too much trouble—”

  “Okay, Gladys, now you’re hurting me,” Mick said, and she stopped hammering. “Jeez, I been kicked and walloped and yelled at, and I haven’t even been home a half-hour. I was safer hiding out in the boonies, for Christ’s sake.”

  “Oh, boohoo,” Mom said, sarcastically. “You had us thinking you were being tortured God knows where.”

  “I didn’t do it on purpose.”

  “You never do it on purpose.”

  “Enough, enough,” Dad said. “Let’s just figure out a way to tell Mother without giving her a heart attack.”

  While Dad and Mick went off to tell Ma-ma-oo the good news, Mom hauled the sack of cockles to the sink and began shucking them, popping cockles into her mouth, humming as she chewed. I was disgusted, imagining the cockles cold and slimy, and said so. Mom laughed, then said the best part was the cockles wiggling in your mouth.

  I was afraid to sleep because of the little man’s visit the night before. I lay awake with a stranglehold on Mr. Booboo and the lights turned on. Mom came by, and I pretended to sleep and she shut the light off. My bedroom is above the kitchen and when Mick and Dad returned, I could hear the murmur of conversation, but not the actual words. If I had got out of bed and pressed my ear against the register, I could have heard them, but I was too scared to leave the sanctuary of my covers. I heard the front door open and then Aunt Trudy shrieked. She cried and cried until Uncle Mick said she was ruining his second-best shirt. I fell asleep to the sound of Mick’s whooping laughter and the smell of coffee and cockle stew.

  Now that I think back, the pattern of the little man’s visits seems unwelcomely obvious, but at the time, his arrivals and departures had no meaning. As I grew older, he became a variation of the monster under the bed or the thing in the closet, a nightmare that faded with morning. He liked to sit on the top of my dresser when he came to visit, and he had a shock of bright red hair which stood up in messy, tangled puffs that he sometimes hid under a black top hat. When he was in a mean mood, he did a jerky little dance and pretended to poke at my eyes. The night before the hawks came, he drooped his head and blew me sad kisses that sparkled silver and gold in the dark and fell as soft as confetti.

  The morning after Mom’s birthday, as she was jarring the last of the cockles and I was using my blanket as a sleigh down the steps, she asked Dad to take me with him when he went for groceries. The road from Kitamaat Village to town is an eleven-kilometre strip of concrete that winds north along the coast and over steep hills like a roller coaster. It was finished in the late sixties and is patched every year when spring and fall floods eat away at the portions near the cliffs. Before the road was built, people went to town by boat. The town docks were across the channel, so even today, when people go to town, they say, “I’m going across.”

  The town of Kitimat, with its different spelling, has a fluctuating population of about ten to twelve thousand, while the village has between seven and eight hundred people. Most people from the village who work in town travel this road twice a day and know its hairpin turns so well that they say they can drive it blindfolded. After getting his second speeding ticket in a month, Dad was one of those who pushed to get the speed limit raised from fifty kilometres an hour to sixty. When the safety inspector from the department of highways came out to test the road, he drove back and forth four times in a car laden with instruments, then announced that the road wasn’t even safe to drive at fifty kilometres on dry pavement and the speed limit should actually be lowered to forty kilometres an hour.

  Dad was driving too fast that day, but I liked the speeds that sent you straining against the seat belt. We stopped at the bank first. “Jesus,” he said when he looked at his updated bankbook.

  “Is something wrong?” the teller asked.

  “I think there’s been a mistake. There’s a couple more zeros here than there should be.”

  “Oh,” the teller said. “Is your brother Michael Hill?”

  “Yes.”

  “He dropped by this morning. He said he owed you some money. He had your account number.”

  Dad shook his head. “He doesn’t owe me anything. Could you give me the exact amount he put in?”

  “You want to take it out?”

  “Yes.”

  “All of it? You’re sure?”
/>
  “Very.”

  The teller handed Dad a fat envelope, and instead of driving to the grocery store, we stopped in front of a long, run-down series of town houses.

  “Stay in the car,” Dad said.

  “Don’t want to,” I said.

  “Lisa, once, just once, don’t argue with me. Okay? Stay in the car and don’t move—”

  “Well, howdy stranger!” Uncle Mick’s voice boomed. I looked up and he was standing bare-chested in a pair of shorts on the porch.

  “Stay,” Dad said.

  He walked up to Uncle Mick and held out the envelope. Mick shook his head. Dad tried to push the envelope into Mick’s hands, but Mick lifted his arms above his head and dodged out of his way. Dad chased him until the door opened and a blonde white woman in a terry-cloth bathrobe started talking to Dad. They shook hands. Mick disappeared inside, came back outside wearing a flannel shirt, kissed the woman on the cheek and passed Dad as if he didn’t notice him. He came straight to the car, with Dad following behind him.

  “Hey, Lisa M,” Mick said, opening the door and sliding into the backseat. His legs folded up almost to his chest, and he had to keep his head at an angle or he’d hit the roof. “You want some ice cream? Your daddy’s taking us to Dairy Queen!”

  “Yay!” I said, bouncing up and down on the seat. “Ice cream! Ice cream!”

  “Hey, Al,” Mick said when Dad got to the car. “Maybe we should take my truck. I’m getting claustrophobic back here.”

  “Ice cream! Ice cream! Ice cream!”

  “Settle down, Lisa,” Dad said. “We’re not getting ice cream.”

  “Sure we are,” Mick said. “You said we should go for coffee and I pick Dairy Queen. Do you want to go to Dairy Queen, Lisa M? Hmm? Ice cream! Banana splits! Strawberry sundaes!”

  “Mick,” Dad said, turning in his seat to glare at his brother.

  “See?” Mick said, punching his shoulder. “You’re outvoted.” When Dad didn’t say anything, Mick leaned back. “Don’t worry about it, man. I figure it’s the least I owe you.”

  “You should invest it,” Dad said.

  “I am,” Mick said. “You’re my Bank of Al. Come Christmas, I’ll be bumming off you and living in your basement, you’ll see.”

  I unpacked the box of extra dishes we had given to Mick as a housewarming present. Mom put groceries in his cupboards while Dad looked through Mick’s tax forms. A few days after he started work at the logging camp, Revenue Canada had sent their own welcome-back package—a bundle of forms for each year he’d been missing, with instructions to file immediately or face an audit. Jimmy stayed curled up in Dad’s lap, thumb firmly in mouth. Dad gave an exasperated sigh and put down the papers he was holding. “This is a mess. It’ll take me a few weeks to figure it out.”

  “I don’t see why we have to file at all,” Mick said. “The whole fucking country is on Indian land. We’re not supposed to pay any taxes on or off reserves.”

  “God, don’t start again,” Dad said.

  “This whole country was built on exploiting Indians for—”

  “Mick,” Dad pleaded.

  “Look at this.” Mom was shaking her head. “Nothing but Kraft. How does he stay healthy?”

  I helped Mom by finding some wieners in the fridge. We began making a macaroni-and-wiener casserole.

  “I’ll make you a warrior yet,” Mick said, punching Dad’s shoulder.

  “Enough, enough. You’ll wake Jimmy.”

  “Tell your brother about the dishes,” Mom said to Dad.

  Dad started telling Mick about the tidal wave. I remembered that day very clearly. Late July, a bright, sunny day. Normally, you would still see people playing soccer on the field, or visiting with other people in the village, or picking up their mail—even after the warnings on the radio. You could expect a half-dozen or so tsunami warnings a year, and all they amounted to were some whitecaps. This time the evacuation order was real, and the fire station alarm was jangling in the background as Mom and Dad frantically ran to get clothes, bottled water and camping gear. Me and Jimmy were waiting in the car, with Jimmy screaming because Mom and Dad were upset and hiding it badly. Mom wanted to save her Royal Doulton and Dad said, “That’s just dandy. People are going to say hey, aren’t those the Hills floating by? They’re dead, but damn they have nice dishes.”

  “If my dishes stay,” Mom shot back, “so do your golf clubs.”

  “Jesus on crutches,” Dad said, getting out of the car and heading to the basement. “At least I use my golf clubs.”

  Jimmy continued screaming and Mom came and took him out of his car seat and carried him to the front seat with her, singing him a lullaby.

  She’d left the car door open. I knew I wasn’t going to get another chance. I snuck out of the car and ran. I was ecstatic. I was finally going to have an adventure! I wasn’t completely without an escape plan. I’d brought an umbrella. My idea was to turn it upside down and float away on it, just like in the books Dad read to me. I ran through the bushes at the back of our house and down the front street by the water. It was sheer bad luck that Uncle Geordie was driving to the docks to save his seiner. I saw his beat-up old Ford and I quickly veered off the road, running across the soccer field, but when I looked behind me, Uncle Geordie was pumping his gumboots, his yellow sou’wester flapping. I put everything I had into making it to the beach, then scrambled up a tree.

  “Lisa, get down! Now!” he yelled, coming right under me and opening his arms as if he expected me to jump.

  “Want see big wave!”

  “Don’t make me come up there!”

  If Mom or Dad had made that threat, I wouldn’t have worried because I knew neither of them was any good at climbing. I hadn’t even known Uncle Geordie could run, and from the way he was glaring at me, I didn’t want to find out if he could climb. He didn’t lecture me when I got down, just scooped me up and ran back to his truck, threw me in and drove me up to the old Hall, where almost everyone else had gathered, including Mom and Jimmy. Dad was driving around the village looking for me. Before he could go to the docks, Uncle Geordie had to go find him and tell him I was safe. They were both furious, but I was already crying, mad at everyone for ruining my big plans.

  That night, when everything was over and we were sitting in Uncle Geordie’s house, he told us about trying to save his boat. The docks had squealed and moaned, undulating over the water like snakes. One of the boats had swirled like a toy boat caught in the bathtub’s drain. The tide had risen so high, the ocean leaked and slid over the roads. Then the docks went underwater and the boats were floating over them, bumping and grinding their keels against them when the waves dipped down. Uncle Geordie gave up when the gangplank started twisting. Later, he found his seiner on the beach with half its keel scraped off.

  That spring was lush, filled with hazy sunlight and long afternoons on the porch with Mom, and we basked like lizards on her newly ordered patio furniture. Dad sat down beside us that afternoon and announced that he was going to grow a vegetable garden. Mom opened one eye, lifted a languid hand and sipped her coffee. “Good. Go do that.”

  At the garden centre, he poured over the seed packets, enlisting the help of passing clerks and other customers. He showed me pictures of the plants and asked if I’d want to eat this or that. He spent the next three weeks happily turning ground, fertilizing, balancing pHs and planting seeds in egg cartons on our windowsills. I enthusiastically searched for worms and brought interesting bugs into the house in a Mason jar with the lid punched through with holes. Mom refused to join in, annoyed when Dad asked if she’d mind weeding.

  “Look at these,” she said, holding up her perfectly manicured fingernails with their stylish red nail polish. “Do you know how long I worked on these?”

  Somewhere in our deepest past, in among eons of fishermen, there must have been a farmer. Whatever Dad touched grew like it had been fast-forwarded in a film. The sunflowers in the front yard shot up eight feet, with basketball-si
zed flowers that stared sullenly at the ground. The pumpkins and zucchini sprawled over potato patches and fought with the strawberry runners for ground space. Bees hummed contentedly in our greenery through the spring and summer, and the kids who raided our garden said there wasn’t a better one in the village. In the pictures of the garden that year, Dad posed me and Jimmy for maximum effect, standing us beside the largest sunflowers, having us sit on the most orange pumpkins.

  Over the years, he became more ambitious. He made an elaborate archway over the walk that led to our front door and planted trailing roses that everyone knew died in the winter. Ours survived to become thorough nuisances, choking Mom’s nasturtiums and displacing carefully laid bricks with their gnarly roots. Corn flourished for him, attracting hordes of crows and sparrows. Rhubarb spread broad leaves and grew to mutant-like heights, becoming hard and inedible when we refused to pick it, sick of the sweetly sour taste after weeks of eating it. Dad even transplanted a full-grown greengage tree from a house that was going to be demolished, and despite everyone’s predictions to the contrary, the tree survived, producing fruit three years after it was plopped in our front yard, attracting kids and birds. The birds squawked and fought over the plums, and at least once a year, some kid would fall out of the tree and break an arm.

  “Is a simple lawn so much to ask for?” Mom asked Aunt Edith over the phone. “Why does he always have to go overboard?”

  You could always tell when Dad had done something he knew she wasn’t going to like. His shoulders hunched, his smile turned up only the corners of his mouth and his eyebrows went halfway up his forehead, as if he couldn’t believe what he’d done either.

  “Now what?” Mom said, watching him gingerly carry a large cardboard box up our front steps. She opened the door for him, and we could all hear the high, sweet chirping of the chicks that poked their tiny beaks out of the air holes.

  Dad smiled his silly smile, and Mom bit down firmly on whatever she was going to say and slammed the door in his face. “Chickens!” I heard her shouting at him later that night. “Chickens! You had to pick the filthiest, ugliest, most—”