by Steve Vernon
I rolled three times and stood up.
Mom was still yelling Dad’s name.
The last dragon dancer tipped off of the wharf and landed with a splash.
I couldn’t see where Dad was from my angle.
I ran for the wharf, my legs pumping hard, and all the while Fogopogo moved slowly towards the shore.
Chapter 31
In Over My Head, One More Time
I didn’t look back once.
There wasn’t a moment to spare for any sort of second thought.
I reached the edge of the land, leaned forward, and dove.
For half a moment I was airborne. I caught a quick glimpse below me.
The water was chowdered thick with people. Some were swimming, some were dog-paddling, most were grimly treading water. And then, all at once, I was in the water, kicking with the tide, when a wave caught hold of me and pushed me under the dirty harbour water.
“DAD!” I called, throwing my voice out as if it was a stone, but the word was drowned out as the waves washed over my head.
I looked up and saw nothing but an army of kicking feet. Some were barefoot, some still wore shoes. I tried my best not to swallow. I could feel the salty seawater burning at my eyes. I could feel it trying to slide in under my eyelids and between my lips.
My feet kept kicking, but the water was heavy inside my shoes, dragging me down. I was sure I’d hit bottom, but I remembered just how deep Granddad Angus had told me Deeper Harbour really was.
Deeper by fathoms.
Deeper beyond dreaming.
I kicked off one shoe. I kept on paddling. I tried to kick off the other, but it just stayed stuck. I swallowed water. I tasted salt and spit it out, swallowing a bit more. I splashed my hands upwards, like I was trying to catch onto the rungs of an invisible ladder.
My fingers tangled in somebody’s shoelace. They kicked at me blindly.
I slid back down. I felt the surface of the ocean slipping through my fingers as I started to sink.
I expected to see fish.
I expected to see stars.
I expected to see starfish.
All I could see was slow and cold and forever as I felt myself sinking down and I thought about how much I wanted to reach my dad.
Maybe Warren will save me like he did before.
Maybe Granddad Angus will save me.
Maybe Mom, or Molly, or the prime minister will save me.
And then all at once I pushed upwards and broke out of the water and drew in a deep breath.
I hadn’t needn’t anyone to save me but myself.
I looked around right after I had surfaced. Mom was there in the water beside Dad. The two of them were caught up in towing me in to safety. Mom didn’t look a bit like the mayor. Her hair was flat with the weight of water and the makeup that she had spent so long putting on this morning was streaked like the end of a today tattoo.
This is all going to work out, I thought.
Mom and Dad would learn to love each other and they wouldn’t get a divorce and we wouldn’t have to move to Ottawa.
We were going to live happily ever after.
All of these thoughts flooded into my imagination while Fogopogo kept sailing straight towards the shoreline without me noticing a thing.
Chapter 32
Tossed Like Sea Foam
The wharf was ruined.
The only way back to shore was up over the rough rocks near the old fish plant.
Mom and Dad and I dragged ourselves up onto the shore of Deeper Harbour, reeking of old fish and looking a little like members of an invading amphibious army who’d had the sea slime kicked out of them about two thousand leagues from the harbour.
I collapsed on the beach and looked around to see the rest of the wharf-wrecked survivors crawling up onto the rocks and coastal scree of the shoreline. Some of them managed a determined clamber while others were just tossed ashore by the waves like foam on the beach.
I’m not saying it was pretty.
Still, everybody seemed to be working together in that uncanny camaraderie that only a disaster can bring about. Those who had escaped the unexpected dunking threw ropes and lifesavers and tugged and towed people who weren’t so lucky onto dry land. A few brave souls even dove in and dog-paddled nearly drowned tourists and townsfolk to safety.
That’s just how a town works, I guess.
“The monster’s getting closer!” somebody shouted.
Everyone’s attention turned back to Fogopogo.
I looked up and could see that the monster was not more than a hundred feet from the shore—and getting closer.
Ha!
I guessed that Granddad Angus was coming closer to help the people who were still in the water. I had to grin at the thought of their faces as a full-grown sea monster pulled up to rescue them. Still, even though I knew it was the right thing to do, I was a little angry that Granddad Angus was spoiling our trick.
And then, all at once, the monster stopped moving forward and started to drift with the tidal current. I could tell that Granddad Angus had stopped pedalling and was just letting the dory drift. I guessed that he was just catching his breath for a while.
Only Fogopogo kept on drifting.
What was Granddad Angus up to? He had surprised me with the smoke and the fire-breathing. Maybe he had some other trick up his sleeve. Or hidden in one of his many vest pockets.
But nothing was happening. Fogopogo just sat there, rocking gently in the waves, caught up against a sea boulder.
I began to worry.
Something was wrong.
Something was really wrong.
“It’s coming this way,” somebody shouted.
“It’s angry,” somebody else said.
“It’s going to eat us all!” somebody else screamed.
And then somebody shouted “Dad!”
I sat there on the beach, half-drowned, staring in utter amazement as Dad half-ran and half-shambled down towards the water. He waded out until it was deep enough to swim. I felt Mom catching onto my shoulder. I think Dulsie had a hold on my other shoulder, but I could not be stopped.
I twisted away from Mom.
I heard something got crack in my shoulder. Maybe I had pulled my arm off but I didn’t care.
I fell down and stood up and kicked off like I was a human speed demon. I ran out into the waiting water to follow my father back into the sea.
Things got deeper fast.
Chapter 33
The Last Knock-Knock Joke
It wasn’t nearly as deep as I had dreamed it to be.
Dad and I waded out to the dory and dragged Fogopogo to shore. Other people came out and helped us drag. I saw Warren and Dulsie and even the prime minister.
I pushed past them all, and wormed my way under to look beneath the nine-hundred-year-old moose hide. It was a misty blur inside the monster. Granddad Angus had laid a few pans of dry ice on the bottom of the dory, which had made the mist that we had all seen. The fiery nostrils were nothing more than two sets of three lit sparklers twist-tied together.
It was a cold, smoky mess in there.
Granddad Angus was leaning against the portside pedal.
His face was as pale as fresh fallen snow and his eyes were glazed in a deep, faraway kind of stare.
“Get him up out of there,” I heard my dad saying, somewhere close behind my right ear. “It’s his heart.”
Granddad Angus reached out and caught me with one hand on my shoulder blade.
“Did it fool them all?” he asked.
I tried to say something, but my mouth wouldn’t work.
“It fooled everybody, Dad,” I heard my father say. “You sure as shooting fooled everybody.”
Granddad Angus grinned and for just a mome
nt I thought he was going to stand up and walk.
“When did you figure out it was me?” he asked.
“Who else in Deeper Harbour was fool enough to build themselves a sea monster?” Dad asked.
Granddad Angus tried to laugh, only he leaned back as if the funny hurt.
“It was something, wasn’t it?”
“It sure was, Dad.”
“I’ll take this with me,” he said.
And then he leaned back as if everything had run out of his body all at once.
“Don’t you dare let go,” my dad said. “Don’t you dare let go.”
Granddad Angus nodded weakly.
“Don’t you let go either,” he said.
“You taught me everything that I know,” Dad said.
“I learned as much from raising you as I could ever have hoped to learn,” Granddad Angus said. “You taught me more than you’ll ever know.”
He grinned a shadowy, tattered ghost of a grin and I could see my dad’s grin hiding behind Granddad Angus’s grin and behind that the grin I saw in the mirror every morning.
“I’m done now.”
And then he was gone.
“Well, that was truly something.”
I looked.
The prime minister of Canada was standing there beside me, his trousers bagged in seawater, staring at my dead Granddad Angus and my dad who was crying as hard as I had ever seen him cry. All the while he stood there, shaking his head and sort of gently half-grinning, not knowing whether to laugh or cry.
Granddad Angus was gone.
Dad was drowning in tears.
Dulsie and Warren were holding onto each other and Molly was holding on as tight as she could to the two of them. Everybody else who crowded around was still trying to decide what exactly had just happened in this harbour.
I looked up and saw Mom standing there on the beach alone.
I waded ashore and walked towards her, my steps heavy, as if I were wading into a deep, cold stream.
Chapter 34
Legal is as Legal Does
We buried Granddad Angus in a field just beyond the fence of his old house, underneath one of the trees. A tattered old birch tree, with the bark peeling off like it was waiting for somebody to write something on it.
Only I couldn’t think of any words that would fit.
Mom sang “Amazing Grace.” Dad just hummed along and tapped his foot several beats out of time. Warren sang something soft and Gaelic in a surprisingly fine tenor. I didn’t know what the words of the song meant and I didn’t know how to ask him at such a time, but a part of me felt that Granddad Angus would have understood and would have appreciated the deep Celtic mystery of it all.
“This isn’t legal, is it?” I asked. “Burying somebody outside of a graveyard?”
“I’m the police chief and your mother’s the mayor,” Dad said. “That’s as legal as it needs to get, here in Deeper Harbour.”
I cried.
Mom cried.
Dad cried.
Dulsie cried.
Warren dragged a handkerchief out of his pocket and foghorned his nose a little.
All of us stood there around my grandfather’s grave, letting our tears splash in the dirt together. Us crying together wasn’t going to change anything, but it felt good and bad and sad all at the very same time.
Then Mom took Dad’s hand and squeezed it a little.
Dad smiled. I thought again that everything was going to be okay.
And then Mom let go in a movement that wasn’t really sudden.
I had seen it coming all along.
I could hear the waves lapping at the beach, like a kid eating a forever ice cream cone on a hot summer day.
The three of us drifted gently apart.
Chapter 35
Under the Cover of Moose Hide
Three days later Dad lugged an old trolling motor out of the garage.
“It’s time,” he said.
And so it was.
We walked down to the harbour where the dory monster still stood, moored next to Warren’s boat shed. People had already begun to tear down and cart away the ruins of the wharf. They would rebuild and restore it and Deeper Harbour would go on.
Most of the town stood around, quietly watching and waiting for what they knew was to come. Nora deep-fried some sandwiches, but no one seemed the least bit hungry. A lot of them were firmly convinced that Granddad Angus had built that sea monster dory as part of the Fogopogo Festival celebration.
People are funny that way. It was like they had come to believe so deeply in Fogopogo that they didn’t want to let go of the dream. Of course it might have been that they were thinking with their wallets and trying to make sure that the tourists kept on coming, but a part of me believes that there was a lot more to it than that.
Which makes me glad.
“Wasn’t he worried that Fogopogo would get after him?” some wanted to know.
“It looks just like the real thing,” others said.
“How do you think he ran it all by himself?” somebody asked me.
I just shook my head.
I think more than a few of them suspected that Granddad Angus had some extra help and that our dory monster was actually what had caused all the trouble in the first place—but if they did, they were keeping their mouths tightly shut.
The twelve fishermen had dried out their dragon and danced up a gumbooted storm in tribute to Granddad Angus.
“I bet you he would have liked to have seen this,” I said.
“I bet you he’s watching us right now,” Dulsie said.
Warren had brewed up some tea and Dad and I stood and sipped and blew. Dad was wearing Granddad Angus’s magic fishing vest of many pockets. I hadn’t seen Dad take it, but I guessed it was only right.
“I want to keep this,” Dad said.
I didn’t argue.
After the tea, Dad strapped the trolling motor to the dory monster. I had one last look inside the moose hide. I wanted to see it one more time. I wanted to take it all in and store it in a deep part of my memory. I wanted to memorize every joint and nail and sliver.
Which was when I saw what Granddad Angus had been working on the night before the last ride of the dory monster. I felt it first, touching with my fingertips something gouged in the oak of the dory’s walls. A word, carefully carved.
I pulled the edge of the moose hide away and read the word that Granddad Angus had carved there.
A single name.
Marjorie.
A part of me wondered just why he’d carved it there.
Had he known he was going to die like he did?
Or maybe he just that proud of all that he and Dulsie and Warren and I had done this summer.
I didn’t know the answer.
I didn’t know if I ever would.
So I just let the moose hide fall back to cover that name.
Some stories are told better without words.
Some stories are meant to be whispered in the dark.
“It’s time,” Dad said again.
Just before I stepped back I grabbed hold of the amethyst eyes and pulled them off the dory monster, from where Granddad Angus had stuck them.
“I want to keep these,” I said. “One for me and one for Warren.”
Dad just nodded.
Then he poured a can of kerosene into the belly of the sea monster dory and lit the lantern and set it on my purple glitter banana seat.
He turned on the engine and the monster chugged into the harbour.
Chumma-chumma-chumma.
Warren stepped out of his shed, dressed in a kilt and full Highland regalia, carrying a set of bagpipes.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.
People c
an surprise you.
Mom and Molly and Dulsie stood just a little behind Warren.
Dulsie had a surprise for me as well. She wasn’t wearing one bit of a today tattoo. For the first time in as long as I could remember, Dulsie Jane Boudreau looked just like herself.
Warren played a pibroch as the dory monster chumma-chumma-chummed out into the harbour. About halfway out the motion of the waves must have tipped the lantern over. I saw a brief flash of light, like a shooting star falling out of the sky.
The sea monster dory burned, raising a large cloud of smoke that I was certain would be seen far out at sea.
I reached into my pockets and squeezed the amethyst eyes that I had taken from Fogopogo.
There are things you hang on to and things you have to learn to let go.
“Ottawa will be a big change,” Dad said. “You’ll be in deep water for sure.”
I thought about that.
“I know how to swim,” I said. “You and Granddad Angus taught me how.”
Dad looked at me.
“Ottawa won’t be so bad,” I said.
And it isn’t.
Chapter 36
Learning to Let Go
The amethyst eye of the sea monster sits on my bedside table, winking at me from the darkness. I hung Granddad Angus’s old saw over my bed with baling wire and screws. It’s a good thing that there aren’t any earthquakes here in Ottawa because if that old saw ever fell off of the wall it just might cut me in half.
Dad phones me at least once a week. He and Warren have gone into business together. They’ve made a museum out of the old boat shed. They’ve got pictures of the dory monster and a picture of Granddad Angus. Warren sells and trades his postage stamps and Dad gets to talk about history and they’ve moved Molly’s library into the shed, too. They’re even talking about building a new library in a few years, but I think Molly likes it where she is just fine.
Tourists are still coming. There is a new bus line running from Halifax to Deeper Harbour. Business is booming and the town is doing fine.
