Afloat

by Jennifer McCartney

  He is gone, and we cannot hear his footfall. We look at one another, then into the forest, waiting and listening for his return.

  ‘That was a moose,’ I say.

  ‘How did the moose get here?’ Brenna wants to know. ‘I’ve never heard of moose on Mackinac.’

  Rummy takes another drink of Belvedere. ‘The ice,’ he says.

  ‘He came across the ice in the winter.’

  ‘Don’t they swim?’ I ask.

  ‘Maybe he swam,’ Rummy says thoughtfully. ‘We’ll never know.’

  It is almost one o’clock, and we fold the hat around the playing cards and the zebra. The rain is unrelenting, all three of us are wet through, our hands frigid, water dripping from our noses, drunk, elated. The three of us hold our offering together, fists touching, and Rummy yells, ‘I’m fucking soaked, asshole. Don’t say this Canuck never did anything for you,’ but his voice breaks and he makes a choking sound.

  Kneeling, our knees muddy, our brains suspended with vodka and the lingering presence of our visitor, we drop the hat into the crack in the island. Rummy pours some vodka in after it.

  The offerings make no sound, they never reach the earth, they simply fall. We never hear them land. Bryce told me the Native Americans believe this a spiritual place, nothing dropped into the crevice ever reaches the bottom.

  ‘I can’t believe we saw a moose,’ I say, as we begin the long ride back home.

  His bike weaving dangerously back and forth across the path, Rummy agrees with me.

  ‘But the moose was as real as I am,’ he says.

  St. Paul, 6:21 p.m.

  Rummy stands on the doorstep. In the bright burning of the streetlight, his entire frame is lit up like an offering. He is wearing dark jeans and a brown leather belt, his gray hairline holding steady, his face with the same distinguished, wry expression I’ve become used to from studying his headshot on the university website. His hair and jacket are wet, though the weather around us is quiet, everything echoing like a too large church hall. I can feel the rain but cannot see it, yet. It is the eye of the storm – or perhaps it has passed altogether.

  He is here just as I’ve imagined him these last three weeks – constructing this impossible meeting, considering the possibilities, what I will say and how he will respond.

  ‘You’re late,’ I say, relieved.

  ‘Drove through the storm,’ he says apologetically. ‘It’s a big one.’

  He holds up a bottle in a brown bag and waves it at me.

  ‘You knew I’d make it.’

  I hear in his voice that he is the same, that underneath the old skin I am not used to yet, he is there.

  ‘Well, come in.’

  As he passes through the doorway he is close enough to smell. The scent of somewhere I’ve never been. There is a brief moment, imperceptible as it passes, where our time is not all gone and the evening is still ahead.

  In my relief at Rummy’s arrival I feel dizzy, and look to my wooden crucifix above the light switch – but it’s gone, and I don’t remember what I’ve done with it. Aunt Lydia gave one to my mother as well, and I couldn’t have thrown it away. Has Anna taken it? When did I last visit Resurrection Cemetery? As I age the graves accumulate along with the guilt at my inability to visit them all, but the drive is too far, the traffic so fast, and perhaps Anna will take me to my parents tomorrow.

  Something has slipped, but I catch hold, and after a moment I am fine again.

  Rummy. Saving me from time, delivering me from grief if only for an evening. Animated. Real. Covered in skin. He scratches his nose, briefly fingering a nostril, and we pause for a moment before he stretches out his arms – an angel, or something not so obvious – and says, ‘Give us a hug then, Bell.’

  We embrace and he is warm and solid, his body reliable and working properly, keeping his insides safe all these years. He feels now a better friend than ever before.

  ‘When is Erik coming back?’ I ask as we draw away, his watch clasp catching in my hair.

  ‘At eight,’ he says, disentangling himself from me. ‘Nearly two hours.’

  When his son returns they will continue on to Milwaukee. Down from Calgary through the Midwest and over to Wisconsin for the annual meeting of the Oral History Association. Rummy is the keynote speaker. I am part of his latest project, his bid to keep our small part in history alive. His wife Aileen is not strong enough to travel.

  ‘Come and sit,’ I tell him. ‘I’ll get the drinks.’

  He follows me into the kitchen and sits obediently in my chair, making an ahhhhhhh noise as he leans back. His jacket is open, a navy-blue corduroy lined with fleece, and underneath his V-neck sweater is Hunter Green; I recall he had an almost identical sweater on the island. He puts both hands on his thighs as he takes in the kitchen.

  ‘You’ve done well for yourself, Bell,’ he says. ‘Right part of town, right people. The house is white. Easier to sell if they’re white, I hear.’

  ‘It’s true,’ I say. ‘That’s true. And thank you.’

  He raps the wall beside him with a knuckle while looking around.

  ‘So are there different shades involved here?’

  Pulling open the fridge door to retrieve my half of the promise, there is a single photograph held by a magnet in the shape of a sailboat – Russ meeting the President in Cheyenne, me in the background, plastic ID badge around my neck. I was close enough to sneeze on her.

  With ice in each glass, I pour Rummy’s liquor for us both, then add the ginger ale. The bottle slips, and when the floor dries it will be sticky. He takes the glass from me and holds it up.

  ‘Rye and ginger, together at last.’

  ‘Your favorite.’

  ‘It’s all I ever drink,’ he says. ‘Here’s to old friends.’

  We raise our glasses across the table from one another, our eyes full of the past. We sip carefully, and it seems unbearable to wait any longer. Rummy wipes the table with his sleeve, erasing the wet ring left by his glass. I had Anna’s coasters out this morning, but they’ve disappeared.

  ‘I’m glad to be here, Bell. I needed to come.’

  ‘It’s hard to believe you’re really here.’

  Something crashes against the window, but doesn’t come in.

  ‘Now,’ he says.

  From the inside of his jacket pocket he withdraws the tiny earpiece he’d described over email, and I fumble with its minute dimensions while he fits a similar piece over his own ear. A wireless, voice-activated recording device available in different colors, I’ve seen them only on television. Turning to Rummy with the device buried in my ear canal, he nods in approval.

  ‘It won’t record until I say begin,’ he explains.

  ‘You’re the expert,’ I tell him smiling.

  He smiles back, shrugging his shoulders.

  ‘We Canucks have always been better listeners than the rest of you.’

  ‘What’s it stand for?’ Alan asked as I perused Rummy’s latest title a few years ago: The Demise of the Canadian Reservation: Personal Narratives by First Nations Peoples.

  ‘What does what stand for?’

  ‘Rummy.’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  It felt odd not knowing, and I refused to join him as he pondered the possibilities.

  ‘Rumsfeld, Rump Roast, Romania…’

  ‘Romania would be shortened to Rommy,’ I pointed out.

  ‘Rumpelstiltskin,’ he continued, ignoring me.

  ‘You should read it when I’m done,’ I told him.

  ‘Or I could stare at the author’s photo and call it reading.’

  Alan had fallen on an icy city sidewalk that morning, and I received blame by association; I worked at city hall, where the decisions were made about which neighborhoods to salt first after a storm. I put the book away.

  Looking at Rummy, sitting across from me at my own kitchen table, I feel grateful; this figure sent to ensure my past remains real.

  ‘What’s your real name?’ I a
sk him suddenly.

  ‘My what?’

  ‘Your real name. I never knew your real name.’

  He shakes his head. ‘You always knew my real name,’ he says.

  I lean back in my chair, Patty’s red, faux-fur Tit-Bits in place.

  ‘I guess I did,’ I say, feeling oddly unsure.

  ‘My mother’s favorite card game,’ he says. ‘I thought I’d told you.’

  Cupping his drink, relaxed and making no mention of our task ahead, his hands are just as I remember them, large with thick fingers – pouring coffee, wiping tables methodically as everyone else passes them over briefly with a damp cloth, holding the pages of the Sunday Star, gesturing as he comments on other people’s lives with a kind of balance and tolerance that makes him seem older than he is. As he leaps onto Trainer’s back I watch the two of them galloping down Main Street, both alive and vital as only the past lets us be.

  I’ve drifted again, I can tell. Rummy is polite and says nothing, sitting exactly as I’ve left him.

  ‘You remember Trainer’s favorite joke?’ I ask Rummy tentatively.

  He doesn’t hesitate. ‘What’s the difference between a Canadian and a canoe?’

  ‘Canoes tip!’ I say loudly.

  He chuckles, and then looks thoughtful. ‘It’s not really fair though. It’s the exchange rate you know.’

  I refill his glass and mine, this time with no ginger ale. He doesn’t complain, and the phone begins to ring – Anna, checking on me. Rummy waits, but I wave the noise away.

  ‘My daughter,’ I say explaining. ‘I have a daughter. But I’ll speak to her later.’

  He nods, understanding. This evening is just for the two of us, as planned.

  ‘I’m not sure exactly what you need from me,’ I confess.

  He leans forward. ‘It doesn’t matter what I need,’ he explains. ‘It’s what you need to say. Oral history is a very organic process. It’s about giving memory an audience,’ he says.

  This idea has been his life’s work. This listening. His dedication to passively recording the truth with no interfering questions, no tampering with the narrative has brought him a Governor General’s Award for Non-Fiction.

  ‘Who else will you speak to?’ I ask.

  He coughs deeply from his chest, and for a moment I am worried he will die here, leaving me alone. He recovers.

  ‘Everyone,’ he says. ‘Street sweepers, volunteer firefighters, the mayor, tourists, the governor, the governor’s gardener, school kids, dock porters, carriage drivers, State Park tour guides, the police, hotel owners, ministers, chefs, the fake British soldiers, ferry captains.’

  As Rummy speaks the island streets become busy again, peopled with figures I’d forgotten to record. I begin to sweat, the air hot from the island sun, uncomfortable; perhaps I’ve turned the furnace too high.

  ‘Your chapter will be called Restaurant Worker,’ he continues. ‘I’ve already thought of an epigraph.’

  ‘What is it?’ I wonder.

  ‘You’ll have to wait and see,’ he says. ‘Velvet died,’ he says as an afterthought. ‘Dickweed too. She was over a hundred.’

  ‘Guess all the flags were at half mast,’ I offer.

  We both take a sip of our drinks and I know what he will say next.

  ‘I was sorry to hear about Alan.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘I guess you know what it’s like.’

  We both take another quick drink in silence.

  ‘Do you ever wish you could go back?’ he asks.

  We have not begun recording, this is an answer for him alone. I think of my journals. The envelope at the bottom of my closet, the way everything ended so horribly, and I realize what I have always wished.

  ‘I want the possibilities back. The feeling that something better was ahead of me.’

  Rummy leans forward, wise with whisky and says, ‘Most people have never even had an island. We’re the lucky ones, because if we didn’t miss our past then we didn’t live enough.’

  The phone begins to ring again, and the house shudders from a change in atmospheric pressure. I am safe.

  ‘It’s just nice that someone wants to listen,’ I confide.

  ‘That’s what everyone always says,’ he tells me.

  He hesitates.

  ‘There is another reason I’m here, Bell. But that can come later.’

  I’m curious as to what it could be. He sets his drink back softly on the table, the glass empty.

  ‘Jesus, Rummy,’ I say. ‘Where did the time go?’

  ‘Well,’ he says. ‘I’m here now. Let’s begin.’

  I start at the end.

  ‘I still believe he was a good person,’ I say. ‘Even after everything that happened.’

  Mackinac

  Oct 12?

  Sunday

  He is gone

  XXXXXXXXXXXX

  Where?

  Everything before, everything has been drowned, suffocated and even here, the island, even here nothing keeps the world from us and my mother is dying and Trainer is gone his blood all wet in the street and Bryce…

  Is gone. And no one knows where. Six nights ago he was not at the Cock, and he was not in bed, and the next morning Dickweed remembered seeing him on the two o’clock ferry the day before. One oblong duffel bag. Everyone agreed he must have missed the last returning ferry, and would arrive from the mainland having slept in his car overnight. But he never appeared. In the afternoon I made a list of places he could have gone nearby – the pubs he’d told me about on the mainland. After six phone calls there was no one left to call.

  That first day I sat beneath the pay phone at the ferry docks until it was dark – still hopeful and worried whether he had enough money and if he’d remember to call. That evening, when the last ferry docked, he was still gone. His BMX was still in the bike rack near the docks. It was an expensive bike and he never left it unlocked, but there it was. It was this careless disregard that terrified me most, as if I’d found his car abandoned and unlocked at an airport or train station.

  My blood began to feel too full for my body, pulsing, frantic, and wanting to escape. A girl I didn’t know stopped me on Main Street to ask where he was. Casually, I told her he’d gone to the mainland for a while, but she’d probably see him around soon. She looked at the ground, told me how Bryce came to her rescue one evening, punching a man who molested her.

  ‘He was arrested that night for fighting,’ I told her meanly.

  She shrugged, turning awkwardly to leave. ‘He was doing the right thing, you know?’

  ‘He’s a real saint,’ I said flatly, and she left.

  From Main Street I went straight to church so that I wouldn’t have to sit at the Cock and listen to F 12 on the jukebox or have John give me free pity drinks while everyone discussed where he’d gone.

  St. Mary’s was open. It felt like the logical place to be.

  I believe God pays careful attention to these island people.

  They are all happy and eating well. They can afford to be here, and not at a roadside diner eating waffles and having to piss without letting their ass touch a greasy unisex toilet seat. They are here and I serve them, work for Velvet, pay bank fees and taxes and still this island is only on loan and we can disappear from it because we are nothing. Actors. Even wearing our nametags we pretend we are more.

  With real money comes the attention of waiters, dock porters, credit card companies, cameramen, travel agents, secretaries, photographers, politicians, accountants, models – so why wouldn’t God pay attention to the well-maintained island steeples and women who worship in high-waisted designer dresses, the men with tans wearing khakis by Tommy Bahamas? Maybe I could borrow some of their good fortune. Their ability to arrive at different ports of call with highball glasses and fresh clothing and know that in each new port they are valued, their patronage is welcomed and no one would ever leave them behind.

  Swimming is for the losers.

  I asked reverently for a misund
erstanding, a simple flat tire, a drunk-driving arrest even, anything to have made that day alone without him my last. On my knees I held onto his name, his prophet name, and wondered if thinking Lehi loudly enough would have any effect. If it would keep him afloat, wherever he was. If the existence of it would bring him back.

  But all that kept surfacing was he left me he left me he left me…

  St. Paul

  ‘And what did I ask for?

  ‘Oh, Rummy. There was only one thing. In retrospect it was too late – even as I knelt staring up at the Virgin arriving by boat onto Mackinac – it was too late, but then I didn’t know what I should be asking for. I didn’t know what he was about to do. All I asked – foolishly – was that he still loved me. That he would come back. Even then, with Trainer gone, if he’d just turned around and driven back for our last week together he would have been saved. But there was something wrong even then – that first day – and I couldn’t quite figure out what I felt I should know. I never have. The reason why.’

  Rummy listens and says nothing. The earpiece feels warm inside my ear, as if it lives.

  He was a good person. You can’t taste someone and not know what’s inside them. So young. He did everything like he wouldn’t ever get the chance to do it again. As if he knew.

  He was a good person. And I couldn’t have known what was about to happen. Supposing I had? Supposing I’d received a message of some kind before he’d done it? Or any indication I meant something. That I was not so easy to leave.

  There must have been a reason for what he did. I don’t blame him. I just wish I’d paid more attention. I wish there was some way to know for sure.

  Are you recording all this?

  Mackinac

  For the first three days after his disappearance I drank only water, vomiting even the chocolate croissants Rummy brought me out of sympathy. There were no car accidents or bodies discovered anywhere in Michigan, Wisconsin or Canada. The Tippecanoe received no phone calls, and searching through Bryce’s apartment there was no indication he planned on leaving – there was no letter addressed to me. I spent the evenings holding his pillow.