Crabbe

by William Bell

  After that I started to check out all my teachers and I realized they all wanted the class to go along with their plan for the lesson -that is, those who had a plan — some of them, like “Beaker Baker” the chem guy, just hemmed and hawed and rambled all period. They all asked a lot of questions but, like I said, none of them were really interested in what you said. And the last thing they wanted was for you to think.

  But if you do think about it, school is stupid and ass­ backward anyway. The people who know the answers, ask the questions. And the people who don’t know the answers answer the questions!

  So anyway, we all made an unspoken truce. I minded my business and wrote their stupid tests and did their equally stupid assignments (most of them) and got by with dandy marks. During class I’d watch some movie behind my eyes or read, using the old book inside the text trick. I played their game and won all kinds of points and prizes and crap that I secretly hated. But nobody asked me what I thought of them.

  That went on for a few years until I got Peters for grade twelve English. He woke me up again.

  He walked into class the first day, all packed full of importance and plans — obviously a new teacher — and said, “Now, let’s get something straight, class. You are here to learn to think, not to memorize Shakespeare or draw plot graphs or expect me to give you all the answers. If you are an intellectual slob or mentally sloppy I’ll come down on you like a big truck. But if you try to think your way along and take an active part in class discussions I’ll see that you get an English credit. Now, let’s get started.”

  Of course, everybody figured this was baloney and a few of the guys tried to make it hard for the new teacher but Peters ended their nonsense pretty quickly. After a couple of weeks went by the kids were still shell-shocked, wondering why this guy did everything differently.

  One day he said, “Crabbe, stick around after class is over.” I did. While the next class was filing into the room he said with that machine gun delivery of his, “Look, Crabbe I’m disappointed in you. I’ve read your essay and I’ve read your file at the Guidance office. You write like a poet and your I.Q. is higher than mine, which is 150 — not that I believe much in I.Q.s. I want you to get off your butt and do some contributing in this class. You should be one of the leaders and you just sit there reading everything but what you’re supposed to.

  I want a change. Starting tomorrow. Understand?”

  “Yes Sir,” I said.

  “Good. Now get to class or you’ll be late.” Then he smiled.

  Peters was like that. He talked like a tough guy but he read poems like you were sure he was going to cry. And he always managed to slip a compliment into his talk to you. You didn’t notice it until later, then it made you feel good. If a kid made a mistake in class, Peters always managed to make the kid feel good about the goof. He’d say something like, “If you knew all the answers, you wouldn’t need me or this school, would you?”

  I’ll bet they hated him in the staff room. He always needed a haircut; he wore the goofiest looking baggy clothes you’ve ever seen draped over his five foot two inch frame. His tie was dirty and wrinkled and he wore a cardigan rather than a sports coat or suit jacket. And he had three or four pairs of fancy, pointy-toed cowboy boots. He was always dropping books on his rapid, commotion-filled transit down the halls. I swear, he actually slid around corners.

  I’ll bet they hated him in the staff room because every time he went in there, stepping over all the old bones and dead wood, he’d remind them just by being there that they were all dead and what they were doing was a hoax, draining all the creativity out of us. Peters was like one of those machines we played with in physics where you’d wind a handle and wheels would turn and then a spark would jump between two metal balls. He was always charged up and his energy jumped into his students.

  My Father thought Peters was a dangerous man who would undermine the school and in a way he was right-but for the wrong reasons: my Father’s criticism was based on the clothing. Peters did threaten the system. He made us think. But nobody wants a thinker. Thinkers are irritating and troublesome and they don’t fit in.

  Our school wanted everything to be smooth and I had been going along with them all for years. Peters made me break the truce. I began to ask myself again and again about my future and eventually I decided to cut out of the herd. The thing with teaching people to think is that you never know where they’ll end up.

  Crabbe’s Journal: 5

  My parents left for the club at about eight. Since they seldom returned before one or two I figured I had lots of time. As they left I was enjoying the last bath I’d have in a long time. When Cook slammed the back door I was packing my toothbrush.

  As soon as it was dark, I began.

  From my room above the garage a wooden staircase descends to the back patio, and behind the stairs is a door into the garage. It’s kind of hard to get at because the stairs were put in after the garage was built. They were a fire escape from my room. The city made my parents put it in when they had the room over the garage built so I could have my own turf.

  I began to move the gear from the hiding places, haul it downstairs in the dark, into the garage and into the back of our station wagon. Within an hour I had all the stuff transferred. It was almost ten o’clock when I started on the canoe. This was tricky. The boat was kept on two saw-horses behind the garden shed at the foot of the yard, between the shed and a high cedar hedge. The whole plan rested on my being able to get out of the neighbourhood without anyone seeing that canoe. So I had to work in the dark.

  First, I turned out the lights of all the rooms along the back of the house. The yard was now good and dark. Then I went to the tool shed, slipped behind, and tried to lift the canoe from the horses. Graceful creature that I am, I lost my balance and fell, knocking over the saw­horses and ended up pinned between the shed and the canoe. I was sure the clatter and banging woke the world. I lay there for five minutes, breathing quietly, straining for sounds of alarm or roving neighbours, or suspicious detectives in creased raincoats carrying big, shiny flashlights. Nothing stirred.

  Dragging myself out of the trap, I grabbed one edge of the canoe and dragged it from the space between the shed and the hedge. Once clear of the saw-horses and pieces of old lumber, it slipped easily on its bottom over the damp grass. I put it down and went back quickly to right the saw-horses and haul the tarp over them. As an afterthought I took some butt-ends of lumber and propped them up under the tarp. It looked as if the canoe was still there. Pleased with this ruse I picked up one end of the boat again and half-lifted, half-dragged it across the sixty or so feet of grass to the patio. I had to hoist it completely off the ground then so it wouldn’t scrape on the flagstones.

  I confess I am not good at lifting things. I am skinny, gangly, and not strong. But I don’t think even Hercules could get sixteen feet of fibreglass canoe behind a staircase and through a door into a garage. I couldn’t do it. I pulled, pushed, swore, lifted, yanked, begged. No dice.

  My only other choice was to lug the thing around to the front of the house through the big garage doors, but that was too risky. So I tried again. I hauled the front of the canoe to the top of the doorway and jammed it into the top of the door-jamb. The rear point was wedged into the angle where the stairs hit the patio. Great. Not only did the thing look ridiculous, I couldn’t move it at all, now. Cursing, I kicked the damn thing. It broke free of its perch, bow first, and thundered to the ground, half in the door, half out, knocking over a garbage pail and setting up a pounding clamour. I quickly went into the garage (not easy because I had to climb over the boat) and dragged the boat in. I closed the door and held my breath.

  Fifteen minutes later I had the roof racks attached to the wagon. Getting the canoe on top was a strain. I found that swearing helped a whole bunch. By the time I had it tied down securely, with big, lumpy knots I guessed would hold, it was almost midnight. At the last minute I remembered that paddles might come in handy.


  I was almost ready to go. I had just climbed into the station wagon to check the route to Ithaca Camp on the roadmap for the thousandth time and was straining to see by the interior light when I heard a sound that chilled my blood.

  A car had pulled into the driveway. My parents had come home early.

  Quickly slamming the wagon door I rolled onto the floor — just in time, because the electric door on the other side of the garage began to grind open, allowing the yellowy-white light from the headlights to splash into the darkness of the garage and throw eerie shadows up the walls and across the ceiling. I lay looking up at the roof of the wagon, as if the harder I stared the safer I was. My heart’s pounding roared in my ears. If they so much as glanced at the wagon, with that big red canoe on top, I was sunk.

  The long, black, rocket-like car my Father drives growled into the garage. The engine quit. The light dis­appeared. The garage door clanked shut. There was a moment of dead quiet, then doors opened and shut, echoing. Feet scraped and clicked on the cement floor.

  The sounds were distant, hollow.

  So were the tired voices.

  “I don’t want to talk about it any more. The kid’s going to have to work this all out for himself. I’m sick of the whole issue. It goes on and on. Do you want the light on?”

  “No, I can find my way. That’s easy for you to say.”

  “Very easy. But you don’t have to watch him flush his life down the drain. Because that’s what he’ll do if we let him. He’s not going to university. You know that, don’t you?”

  “What do you mean I don’t have to watch him? I’m his Father, for Christ’s sake…”

  The door to the house opened, then closed again, muffling their voices.

  My heartbeats continued to leap all over the inside of my body for a few minutes. I was sweating through my shirt and surprised to find I was breathing quickly. But I was safe. I sat up in the front seat of the car. I would be behind schedule because I couldn’t leave for a couple of hours, now. That would mean — I did some quick calculation — I’d arrive near Ithaca Camp just about dawn, early enough to be under the cover of darkness but too late to set out across the lake. So I’d have to hide in the bush near the river for twenty-four hours. I sat back in the seat and waited.

  I felt good on the long journey North, sort of free. It didn’t take long to get out of the city and away from the lights and pretty soon I was sifting along in the darkness, in a moving cave, cowboy music on the radio and the wind singing in the ropes that held the canoe on.

  Well, I was almost happy.

  Crabbe’s Journal: 6

  I drove off the main highway about an hour before dawn, and turned down the secondary highway, travelling about thirty miles until I reached a small town whose name I’ve forgotten. Noelville, or something like that. The main street of the town hit the highway at right angles and I turned right, quickly leaving behind a row of wood frame stores, a bank, a hotel and a straggle of wooden bungalows. In the near dawn the buildings looked tired and defeated.

  About twenty miles outside of town, well into the bush, signs advertising Ithaca Camp began to appear. The road was narrower here and the blacktop had turned to gravel a long time ago. I had to watch carefully for the logging road I wanted but managed to find it and turned the station wagon onto it just as the sky was beginning to brighten. I had met no other cars since I had left the main highway.

  The logging road hadn’t been used since the previous autumn by the look of the heavy layer of leaves — a good sign. I had to drive slowly. Branches that canopied the track whacked the side of the wagon and thumped hollowly against the canoe. I drove for about ten minutes until I spotted a good hiding place for the car -a big stand of evergreens packed fairly close together but allowing room to ram the wagon into the middle of them. I could barely get the door open.

  Stretching my creaky limbs (I hadn’t dared to stop except to take a leak, so had driven all night) I looked around and caught sight of the river through the branches. It was a dull, grey colour in the flat lighting. The forest was quiet; only light birdsong could be heard. The air was chilly.

  Always listening for motors or voices, I spent a few hours doing hard work. First, I unloaded the packs and dragged them down to the river bank, covering them with leaves in case a fishing boat happened along.

  Then I hauled the canoe down from the roof of the wagon, banging it and my head against the branches above the station wagon, and dragged it near the packs where I covered it with branches and leaves. Last, I cut boughs to hide the car even better than it was already.

  Satisfied that the family auto would escape the notice of anyone who wasn’t looking for it, I sat down in a sunny patch near the river but out of sight, leaned back against a tree and munched on a chocolate bar. I’ll tell you, some chocolate bars taste better than others. That one was the best I’ve ever had.

  The afternoon sun was warm and I was tired. A fresh breeze fooled around with the branches, rustling the dead leaves that clung to the trees since the previous autumn. The big river looked flat, lazy and slow, murmuring gently as it slipped by. I fell asleep.

  I awoke once in the dark a little chilly and dug my sleeping bag out of the pack. In a wink I was bundled up and back asleep. The next time I opened my eyes it was about an hour before dawn-the time I always get up at home. I have to. I can never get to sleep again. But this morning something was missing: the churning in my stomach that told me my nerves were getting ready for another day.

  After taking a drink from the river I set quickly to work. The sky was clear and starry with plenty of light.

  Lifting the canoe to the water and launching it was lesson number one. On the first try I half-dragged, half­ lifted it to the water-but not too well because it went in cock-eyed and took on a couple of gallons of river. So I dragged it out again, rolled it over to dump out the water, and tried again a few yards downriver where the bank sloped more gradually into the water. Fine. I went back for the gear and turned around just in time to see the canoe floating gently downstream. It cost me two legs wet to the crotch to retrieve it. That was when I thought it would be a good idea to attach a rope to the bow.

  That done, I tied the boat to a log on the bank and went back for the packs. Manhandling a huge pack filled with mostly tinned food into a canoe that bobs and tips with every move you make is no easy task, especially when you have to do it twice. And a third time, for the equipment pack. It was no consolation that I’d be eating my way through the food.

  But, I did it. I got it all in, stowed the extra paddle — then looked anxiously for a place to sit. I’d only been in a canoe with another person (You Know Who). Did I sit in the teeny seat at one end that was situated almost at the point? Or in the slightly wider one at the other end, which at least had some leg room? I tried the first. I had no leg room because of the packs and when I sat down the other end of the boat shot out of the water and remained suspended in mid-air. And my ass was about one inch from the water.

  This can’t be it, I thought.

  I got out and stared at the arrangement for a minute. Then a thought struck me. I (regretfully) dragged the three heavy packs, which I had stowed wherever they fit, and placed two of them, resting on the long edges, side by side behind the narrower of the two seats. I threw the haversack that held my clothes into the little space in front of that seat (almost bouncing it into the river). Then I took the third big pack and put it in the centre of the boat, just behind the thwart.

  Carefully, I got in again and gingerly sat down. The craft seemed to sit flat on the water. I was very pleased with myself. Until I remembered I had brought no lifejacket. Oh, well, too late now.

  Time was passing. I wanted to be past Ithaca Camp and way out onto the lake by light, so I pushed off into the current.

  I don’t know nearly enough funny words to describe the way my brave craft and I travelled down that river. If I’d had to paddle upstream rather than down I’d still be there, cursing and weaving
and turning complete circles in the middle of the river and bumping the banks. I realized in about five seconds that paddling a canoe by yourself (in the dark too!) was a lot harder than sitting in the front putting the blade into the water every once in awhile as the person in the back does all the work. I guess I imagined the thing steered itself.

  As soon as I accomplished one stroke, the current took the canoe over and I was more or less part of the baggage. Near the lake as it was, the river was wide, flat and slow, and I could almost guide the boat along. I went backwards part of the time, turned a couple of three sixties, and nudged a few logs and rocks, but I made it, safe and a bit scared, to the river mouth.

  It was daybreak by then. There was a grey-white smear on the horizon that showed a sky beginning to cloud over. At the river mouth I ran into a sand bar just beneath the surface and had to step out into the ice cold water and drag the canoe over the bar and into the lake.

  Luckily, there was just a faint breeze. My humorous and inefficient paddling made it slow going. I’d get in a couple of strokes on the right, sending me in a forward arc toward the left shore. Changing sides and repeating the motion pushed me to the right. Thus, I zigged and zagged toward a large stand of white trees on the farther shore that, I remembered, marked the way out of the lake. As I was anxious to get across the water, which was about two miles wide, I paddled hard and was soon tired. After I’d worked for an hour and was halfway across I turned to look back at the camp. With relief I saw that I was certainly too far away to be describable.

  After what seemed like ages, I made the far shore, letting the canoe scrape softly onto a beach. All my muscles were sore and complaining, especially arms and shoulders, and I was breathing hard. Blisters had begun to form across my palms and in the hollows of my thumbs. All this after only two miles! Still, I felt a sense of accomplishment. Out of sight of the camp, I was officially free.