“Wha—”
“Lisa, hush,” she whispered sternly. “This is grown-up stuff. Don’t ask him anything tomorrow. You hear?”
I nodded.
“Good girl,” she said, kissing my forehead. “Good girl.”
I woke to the sound of of rain against the roof, and Mick yelling. I slipped my shoes on and took the steps downstairs two at a time. Mick was in the front room, with Aunt Edith and Uncle Geordie staring at him, looking shocked.
“How?” Mick was shouting. “They were after numbers! That’s all they wanted! How many converts they could say they had. How many heathens they—”
“Mick,” Mom said, running in from the porch. “What’s wrong?”
“Wrong? What’s right?”
“He’s gone crazy,” Uncle Geordie said.
“Crazy? I’m crazy? You look at your precious church. You look at what they did. You never went to residential school. You can’t tell me what I fucking went through and what I didn’t.”
“I wasn’t telling you anything!” Aunt Edith said. “I was saying grace!”
“You don’t get it. You really don’t get it. You’re buying into a religion that thought the best way to make us white was to fucking torture children—”
“Enough,” Mom said, standing in front of Mick. “We’re going to look for oolichans now. Go get your things, Mick.” Mom stared at him until he pushed past her. I stepped out of his way and he walked by me as if I wasn’t there.
“He started screaming at us for no reason,” Aunt Edith said when he was upstairs.
“It’s got nothing to do with you,” Mom said quietly. “Don’t take it to heart.” She smoothed her hair, then noticed me and smiled. “Come here, sweetheart.”
I went to her and she put an arm around me.
“You okay?”
I nodded.
“I’m going to take Mick up the lake to cool off. He’s going to be pretty grumpy today. You want to stay with Edith and Geordie?”
I shook my head.
“You sure?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Then let’s go get our things.”
“Can we camp out there tonight?”
Mom brushed back her hair, frowning thoughtfully. “That’s not a bad idea.”
At the beach, Mick announced he was going back to the village. Mom said that was fine, but we were going in the punt up to Kitlope Lake. Mick glared at her. She crossed her arms over her chest.
“I know what you’re doing,” he said.
“You go where you please. You always do.”
“That’s right, use a little more guilt, why don’t you?”
“I’m a mom. That’s what we do best.”
Mick growled, but hurled his things into the punt and we were off.
I spent most of the boat trip sitting on an overturned bucket, wishing I was anywhere but there, getting soaked to the bone, staring at mountain after mountain, the clouds getting lower and darker. Every once in a while, Mom would yell at me to bail and I would, feeling the bilge seep through a hole in my rubber boots. I tried talking to Mick to relieve my boredom, asking him questions, just wanting to chat, but he frowned and said sometimes people should just be quiet.
Mom slowed the punt to a crawl, pointing towards the shore. I didn’t see anything for a few moments, and then movement caught my eye. A black bear was on the shore, its head bent down. From this distance, it was tiny, no bigger than my hand. It swung its head back and forth, and pawed at the ground.
“What’s it doing?” I whispered.
She shrugged. “Uncle Geordie said every time he goes up the lake, it’s on that point.”
“Probably eating seaweed,” Mick said.
“Bears eat seaweed?” I said.
“Too early for seaweed,” Mom said.
“Not if you’re hungry enough.”
The bear raised its head. It spotted us, turned and sauntered up to the tree line and out of sight.
You can tell when you’re getting close to the Kitlope watershed because the water changes colour. At Kemano, the water is still a normal dark green, but the closer you get to the Kitlope, the milkier the water becomes, until all around you the water is the colour of pale jade. Most of the mountains are rounded bald heads, scraped smooth by passing glaciers. Some of the bays still have icefields, and Mom said that when she was a kid they used to go bum-sliding on them.
The rain let up just as we got to the mouth of the Kitlope River. Mom leaned over and dipped her hand in the water, then washed her face. After stubbing out his cigarette, Mick did the same.
“When you go up the Kitlope,” Mom said, “you be polite and introduce yourself to the water.”
I didn’t see the point and said so.
“It’s so you can see it with fresh eyes,” Mick said.
“Over there,” Mom said, pointing to the left bank, “somewhere up in that part of the forest, there’s a village that was buried under a landslide about five hundred years ago.”
“Yeah?” I said, perking up. “Can we go see it?”
“No one knows where it is.”
The forest looked like all the other forests around. “Far-out.”
Most parts of the Kitlope River are as wide as a channel, but when you look over the edge of the boat, the riverbed is a few feet beneath you. Old logs stick out of the water like great, bleached finger bones. The ones you can see aren’t as dangerous as the ones submerged just below the surface, the deadheads, which can puncture your keel. Mick took over steering the punt, since he had more experience with the river. Mom went up to the bow to spot deadheads, but she wouldn’t let me join her because she said I’d be too distracting. We started up the river, hugging the shore. The banks were covered in yellow, dry grass. I looked out for kermode bears, which are black bears that are cream-coloured, white or very pale brown. But I didn’t see any, just a pair of eagles that circled high above us, then lost interest and flew towards the ocean. The water was furiously foaming and surging, so we virtually crawled up the river. Mom would shout out if she saw a log or a deadhead in front of us, and use her hand to point which direction Mick should go.
We stopped just before we reached the lake, and Mom pointed out some indentations in the rock on the beach that she said were the footsteps of the Stone Man. They were in granite. They looked like real footsteps.
“Can we go up?”
Mick shook his head. “The Stone Man isn’t in the mood for company today.” He steered us into the lake. “That’s where we’ll be staying tonight.”
“Where’s the Stone Man?” I said. On the north side, I could see a pale strip of sand. Kitlope Lake was wide enough that the shores on the opposite side were a thin line. Ringed with mountains, the lake was choppy because the winds were funneled straight down from the glaciers towards the ocean.
Mom pointed to the mountain behind the sandy beach. The clouds hadn’t lifted high enough for us to see him. When I was little, she told me that the Stone Man was once a young hunter with a big attitude. He thought he knew everything, so when the elders warned him not to go up the mountain one day, he laughed at them and went up anyways. Near the top, he sat down to rest and wait for his dogs. A cloud came down and turned him to stone. Sometimes, when the wind blows right, she said, you can hear him whistling for his dogs.
Mick unloaded our things while Mom took out some kindling and got enough wood together to start a fire. I unpacked the tent for Mick, who took over and left me with nothing to do but watch.
I asked Mom how we were supposed to see oolichans and she said to look for the sea gulls. Wherever the oolichans go, the sea gulls follow. She said that a long time ago, people were afraid to go up the Douglas Channel because this great big monster guarded the entrance. It was white and opened its huge mouth, making a roaring cry. The monster turned out to be just a huge flock of sea gulls feeding on herring. The flock would rise into the air and the monster’s mouth would open, then it would settle back on the water and th
e mouth would close.
She also told me about the time she was on this very beach and she saw a pod of killer whales chasing seals. The river leading up to the lake is shallow and tidal. It was high tide, and she had a clear view of the whales and the seals—she said it sure was something to see them chasing the seals, snapping out of the water and dragging the seals down.
“Cool,” I said.
“Don’t go wandering off,” Mom said. “There’s lots of sasquatches around here.”
Mick snorted.
“Your uncle saw one. Didn’t you, Mick?”
He grudgingly told me about the time he was checking his trapline up Kitlope Lake and he thought he saw a sasquatch. Its fur was pale brown, and it was standing, looking the other way, when Mick tried to sneak up on it, getting excited, thinking he was going to get rich, wondering how he was going to get the body back to his boat. The sasquatch turned out to be a grizzly that was, luckily, paying attention to something in the distance.
The sun set in the late afternoon, just as we were finishing our Kraft Dinner and bologna. It wasn’t so much a sunset as a fading, with the light leaking away. Our fire was a tiny orange dot against the deep black that reached right up to the thick splatter of stars. The Milky Way arched from horizon to horizon, a dusty, glowing path. The wind pushed hissing waves against the sand, and the fire spat sparks and sent smoke spinning upward. I don’t remember falling asleep, but when I woke up, Mick was carrying me into the tent. He put me down and covered me with a sleeping bag.
“Is she asleep?” I heard Mom say softly as Mick settled near her.
“Out like a light,” Mick said.
There was rustling and popping and I guessed one of them was putting wood on the fire. I yawned. The sleeping bag was cold so I tucked my knees up until it started to warm.
“So where will you go?” Mom said.
“I don’t know. Does it matter?”
“You’ve got to settle down some time.”
“And do what?”
“Why does it have to be so complicated? You find a woman, you marry her, you have kids.”
“That’s it? That’s your advice? Pump out some kids and die?”
“Well, excuse me for not wanting to run around saving the world.”
He laughed bitterly. “Ouch.”
“Michael,” Mom said, her tone becoming gentle. “You did your part. You said yourself it wasn’t worth it. Why get yourself beat up again?”
“I didn’t say I was going back.”
“So you’re just going to wander around. That’s your plan.”
He sighed. “No. I don’t know. I thought I’d find something here. Get my head together. But I haven’t had any stunning revelations so far.”
“You want some more coffee?” I heard the coffeepot clanking against something metal, and then she said, “What was she like?”
“She was a lot like you.”
The silence was so long, I thought they had stopped talking until Mom said, “You’re a great uncle. You’d make a great dad.”
“Admit it, you just like the free baby-sitting.”
Mom laughed and they started talking about the oolichan run being late. My hands unclenched. I caught my breath and my heart began to calm. Life would become unbearably dull without Uncle Mick.
I listened as Mom complained about Dad’s new plan to tear up the front fence and put in shrubs, as Mick told her about his last fishing trip and worried over how short the openings were becoming. They debated about bringing Jimmy oolichan fishing next year. Mick said it wasn’t healthy for a boy to be such a housecat. Mom laughed and said Jimmy took after his father. I was afraid to fall asleep in case I missed overhearing something important, but I began to drift.
I woke when Mick started snoring. Not loud, but he was right beside me, and his wheezy breath in and whistling breath out kept me from sleep almost as much as Mom’s twitchy arm across my waist. Our combined heat made the air clammy and stifling. I pushed my part of the sleeping bag down. Mom shivered and pulled it back up. I tried wiggling farther up, out of the blanket, but she cuddled into me. When I untangled myself, she lifted her head, blinked at me and asked where I was going.
“I have to pee.”
“Don’t go running around,” she murmured.
I stumbled out of the tent and went first to wash my face in the lake to get the grit out of my eyes. I paused a few feet away from the tent. I felt small as I looked up at the mountains, royal blue against the grey sky, tendrils of mist lifting through the trees like ghosts. In this soft light, the lake was dark and still.
A log, white with age, jutted out of the water. Balanced on top of the log was a long-legged bird staring out at the lake. At first, I thought it was a crane, but I couldn’t remember cranes being blue. The bird’s long thin beak pointed towards me as it rolled one yellow eye then the other, checking me out. I stayed very still—the bird was almost as high as my waist and looked cranky. I thought it ugly, but as we watched each other, I decided it had a Charles Bronson-type appeal. The back feathers looked like light blue fur, the wings and the stubby tail were smooth blue-grey, and it had a distinguished white streak on top of its head. I moved, wanting to run back to wake Mom and Mick but, startled, the bird launched itself over the lake, croaking, wings spread open, its neck bent back into a tight S. Later, when I looked it up in the library, I discovered it was a great blue heron, but while I watched it disappear in the distance I thought I was watching a pterodactyl straight from the Dinosaur Age.
Mick woke up not long after that. I heard him unzip the tent and start chopping kindling for the fire. I stayed by the edge of the beach, watching the lake. The fire crackled to life, the smoke rising in a straight, pale grey column. He made himself coffee, then came to stand beside me.
“You okay?” he said.
I nodded. “It’s just so pretty.”
“Sometimes,” he said, “when there’s a storm, you can hear voices singing on the lake.”
I reached out my hand and he took it. His hand was warm and solid. Mick sniffed. “Now I know I’m awake. You stink.”
I punched his arm. “I do not!”
“You up for a dip in the lake?”
“You’re kidding.”
He glanced at me sideways. “They used to do it in the old days. Cleans your soul.”
“No way. It’s freezing.”
“Suit yourself,” Mick said, handing me his coffee cup. He peeled off his thermal top and slapped his chest. “Last one in’s a rotten egg.” He kicked off his socks and stripped down to his underwear. With a loud hoot, he made a dash down the beach, waded up to his knees, yelping with the cold, then he dived. He cut the water with a sharp splash that echoed back to us, then he slipped underwater. The ripples spread, the mountain’s reflections jiggling like a blurry TV reception. He was still visible under the water, a pale shape slowly rising to the surface. His head broke the surface and he spat and shook his hair out of his face.
“You nut!” Mom scolded him, poking her head out of the tent. “Get out of there before you catch pneumonia.”
“Come on in, Gladys. The water’s just fine.”
“Get your butt out of there!”
He swam to shore, stood up and made a dash for the tent. She threw his sleeping bag at him, and he wrapped it around his shoulders, laughing as she told him what an idiot he was.
The water kept rippling, even after he had had his second cup of coffee, but nothing surfaced.
“What you looking for, Monster?” he said, coming up and dripping on me.
I couldn’t explain the feeling I had and didn’t want to ruin his newly restored good mood. “Seals.”
“They’ll come when the oolichans get here.”
He said he wanted to give Mom a rest, so made breakfast. It was just scrambled eggs, but she pinched his cheek and said it was the best breakfast she’d had in ages. He looked annoyed and said he didn’t need to be babied any more.
“What oo say?” M
om said, in a high, sweet singsong. “Oo don’t wike me tawk—”
Mick lifted her up and ran down to the beach. Mom squawked and hit him. “You do and you’re dead, mister! You hear me?”
He dropped her and staggered around the beach, barely suppressing a smile, clutching his ear where she’d clipped him. She smacked his back.
“Na’. Enough.”
When we left to go back to Kemano, Mom said we’d try one last time to see the Stone Man. We loaded everything back into the speedboat and drove to the middle of the lake. She stopped the engine, and we just sat there.
“That’s the Stone Man,” she said.
A large, black, hunched-over figure sat on the side of the mountain staring down at the lake. It felt like he was watching me, like one of those trick pictures that has eyes that follow you.
By the time we beached our boat at the Kemano fishing camp, the weather had turned. Mick said he was going to do some jigging, and Mom sat me down at the kitchen table and told me it was time to do some homework. I could hear his speedboat starting and then fading away. Uncle Geordie and Aunt Edith had gone to the Alcan site to refill some gas tanks. While everyone else was going around having fun, I had to sit at the front table and do math. I glared at my books.
“Your homework’s not going to do itself,” Mom said. She scrubbed the dishes and ignored the looks I sent her way. The morning was bright and cold. Watery sunshine turned the front room mildly warm. She refused to waste wood heating the front room during the day, and she was even using cold water for the dishes. When I knew she wasn’t going to relent, I zipped through my problems, not bothering to check if they were right or wrong.
Before I could go outside, I had to help dry dishes. “Sooner we finish,” she said, “sooner you can go.”
“I thought this was supposed to be fun,” I grumbled.
“Aw, poor baby.”
As soon as I’d wiped the last spoon, I tossed off my apron and was out the door before she could catch me.
“Lisa! Come put your coat on! Now!”
I booted it down the path to the beach. I headed towards the point, then swerved into the trees and waited at the edge of the graveyard. Mom yelled some more, then went back inside. She hated being undignified, and chasing me through the bushes would definitely qualify as humiliating. If I caught heck tonight, so be it. As long as I got a day to just fart around with no one hovering over me.
Monkey Beach Page 10
