Crabbe

by William Bell

Mary was pretty good about it. She picked up pretty quickly on what was happening and began to watch for my bad moments. She would often suggest we do something distracting like go for a swim or have a canoe lesson or go pick wildflowers along the ancient, disused railway line about a mile away. I’m ashamed to say I told her to bugger off and leave me alone a few times.

  One evening after supper I was washing up the “dishes” — cans, tin plates, bush knives, porcelain covered tin cups — while Mary sat sipping Labrador tea. She’d been quiet for quite awhile and I recognized the look. Her graceful brows would tense up, her eyes seemed to go out of focus, and she’d tap the end of her nose with her right forefinger.

  “What’s up?” I said, more to break the silence than anything.

  “Ummmmmm?” She looked up. Her eyes locked in again.

  “I think I have an idea, Crabbe. Yup. It might just help.”

  And, standing, she turned on her heel and walked casually across the campsite into the bush.

  I knew where she was headed, too. To that big pack she kept hidden from me. The mystery bag.

  She returned with something in her hand and resumed her favourite seat on the log by the fire.

  “Here, take this,” she said, holding something out to me.

  It was a pipe, with an apple shaped bowl and a short stem, maybe five inches.

  My Father smokes a pipe. He has eight thousand or so of the damn things — probably thinks they improve his corporate image — and he’s forever stuffing the bowl, lighting, tamping, relighting, coughing, and blowing sweetish “aromatic” smoke all over the house. He never seems to get the knack of keeping the thing lit and so is always in the process of lighting rather than smoking. Racks of pipes litter the house: clay ones, wood ones, white, brown, yellow, even a red one for godsake.

  But this little pipe that Mary handed me across the fire was different. Not one bit of it was without carving. And I don’t mean elk’s heads or elephant feet or any of that crap. On the front of the bowl was a circle bisected horizontally by a curved line, like a stretched out “S.” It looked sort of like this:

  Around the circle were lines organized into little squares. The rest of the bowl and stem were covered with lines and leaves, all curled and twisting in and out, over and under, so that if you followed a line with your finger you could never find the beginning or the end. It was beautiful, delicate yet strong.

  I held it, lightly tracing the lines, waiting for Mary to speak.

  “I’m not sure about this idea I’ve got, Crabbe. God knows smoking is almost as stupid a habit as drinking.”

  Her soft voice drifted across our little fire in the waning light. Still fascinated with the designs, I didn’t look up.

  “But,” she continued, after half a minute, “maybe when you really want a drink, you could light up that pipe and it would take your mind off Whatshisname.”

  “Silent Sam.”

  “Yes, Silent Sam. If you’re careful not to inhale the smoke, perhaps you’ll find it easy to break the habit once you don’t need it any more. Think it’s worth a try?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve got nothing to lose.”

  “Okay, here.” She handed me a flat tin. Balkan Pride tobacco.

  “I’ve got more of that if you need it.”

  “How come you — ”

  She cut in quickly, “Never mind. Let’s have another cup.”

  Recognizing I was on the edge of forbidden territory, I shut up. We took our tea down to the bay shore and sat in our usual spot on the granite shelf by the little beach. The light was fading quickly now over our shoulders and night noises were beginning to swell. Bats flitted out over the calm waters of the bay that reflected the darkening shadows of trees on the shoreline.

  Mary told me about the pipe. It had been made in China at least fifty years ago, carved by hand from the best briar in the world. Then polished and polished and polished with a special oil. That’s what gave it the curious patina, she explained. The carving was all very symbolic. The circle, she said was something called a Ying-Yang symbol. It expressed a certain basic philosophy of life and existence that emphasized the unity of life and the harmony of inner peace. Or something like that. I couldn’t quite follow her explanation. She talked on long after it got completely dark. It was the longest speech I had ever heard her make and I was content to try to understand all the very deep stuff she was telling me while my fingers traced the lines on the pipe. After awhile I tried smoking it and managed fairly well for my first time.

  And I couldn’t help but wonder where Mary got all this knowledge she was pouring out on the dark, peace­ ful shore of our hidden bay. She knew a lot. She was dropping names I’d never heard of. I figured she must be university educated. And what she was saying — it wasn’t the kind of rambling, shapeless talk you’d hear from most people. It was organized, as if she’d done this before. I looked at her as carefully as I could in the dark. She was with me and somewhere else at the same time.

  But the way she talked about the pipe in particular, I knew it was precious to her. Although I didn’t know why. I guessed it had belonged to somebody she loved. And she had given it to me. Worthless old Crabbe. I didn’t think her idea would work, to tell you the truth. But if she was willing to invest something of value to her on me, I was certainly willing to try.

  It worked pretty well, as it turned out — that and the passage of time. Once I got the knack of keeping the thing lit I enjoyed it. When the craving for a talk with Sam came upon me, pinching like an irritating iron caliper on my brain, I’d stop whatever it was that I was doing, stuff the bowl with that weird smelling tobacco, light up and puff away gently. Smoking sort of relaxed me. A special mood came with it. And sometimes when we two were hiking out to check the snares or pick berries I’d just hold the pipe in my hand, running my thumb over the design as we strode along. The wilderness and those never ending hand-carved lines had a special effect on me.

  Crabbe’s Journal: 14

  Once I sort of fit into our way of life out there, the days melted and ran together. We lived in a gentle rhythm. To bed with the sun and up with the sun, or maybe a little earlier on a nice morning to watch the dawn come spreading over the hills and across the lake like red­ gold syrup. There were days when I forgot where I’d come from. And of course I refused to think about the future, even when the weather began to turn a little colder.

  I grabbed a little self-respect out of those days too. I was in good shape for the first time ever. I could walk at a good pace all day through the bush. The canoe no longer bullied me on a portage: I flipped it onto my shoulders just like they do in the movies and shuffled along, one arm dangling, the other balancing the craft.

  I was strong. My limbs felt light and supple. I ate like a starved army.

  Better still, I got so I actually thought I could survive in the bush without Mary — on an elementary level — able to find food (vegetable, animal and fish), build shelter; make fires (even in the pouring rain), cook fairly edible meals. I filed away lots of names for the thousands of living things around me. Of course, I was just beginning to tap the huge well of Mary’s knowledge, and winter would soon send me packing toward civilization.

  I knew I’d turned a corner in my struggle with Silent Sam, too. I was healthier and the craving came less often and more mildly. And I was bugged more by curiosity than the desire for booze. The mystery pack: it contained answers to the millions of questions I had about Mary. I was sure of that. But just as I feared her angry silence if I asked the wrong questions, I knew that tampering with that pack would kill our relationship. So I tried to put my curiosity behind me. It was tough, though. Because I wanted more and more to know about her, who she was, where she’d come from, what her dreams were, what she thought of me. Especially that last part. I wanted her to respect me. More than that, I wanted in the worst way for her to love me. Because I realized one sunny day as I sat on the shore watching her swim, gracefully moving her long, golden limbs through t
he clear water, I loved her.

  Crabbe’s Journal: 15

  The first frost of the year surprised me. When I emerged from the tent one morning at dawn (it was my turn to start the fire and make the tea) the whole campsite was coated with what looked like frozen mist. As soon as the sun cleared the horizon the frost quickly turned to moisture, but as the wood caught fire I thought about the time of year and it seemed that the days were a little shorter, the lake water was chilly — almost too cold for comfortable swimming — and we wore heavier clothing these days.

  Soon the trees traded in their many shades of green for the colours of autumn: bright yellow on the birches and poplars, flaming red and orange on the hardwoods, blood red on the sumacs. Later still, after the cold began to pinch the leaves from the branches, cold, bitter rains fell from leaden skies and chevrons of geese and ducks were on the move. Some rafted up out on the main lake at night.

  One morning we were sitting in the tent waiting out a miserably cold drizzle. That morning there had been ice on our bay shore.

  “Crabbe,” said Mary, after sitting in her thinking pose for awhile, “I think it’s time.”

  “Naw,”I replied, misunderstanding her, “still raining to beat hell out there.”

  “Umm? No, no, I mean it’s time we planned your re-entry into civilization.” She hunched her shoulders, gathering her sleeping bag tighter around her.

  A sinking feeling went through me. I knew this was it — I had been expecting it. It had snowed several days before, melting when it hit the ground and snow must have triggered her thoughts too.

  I stuffed my hand in my pocket for my pipe, and I said, trying not to sound whiny and pleading like a child, “I don’t want to go, Mary.”

  I cleared my throat, looked into those grey eyes, and called up all the courage I could, all the persuasiveness I could.

  “Mary, I know you won’t like this, but I have to say it. I love you. I want to stay with you. I don’t want to go back.”

  She began to speak but I jumped from a sitting position to my knees, my sleeping bag falling away, and took her shoulders in my hands and rushed on.

  “I’ve got nothing to go back to, really. I’m telling the truth. You know that. I don’t want to leave you here. You’re where I want to be.”

  And her grey eyes slowly filled with tears as she sat silently. The water magnified the grey for a moment then the tears overflowed and ran down her cheeks.

  “I knew this would happen,” she said in a small voice that seemed to come from somewhere else. “I knew I shouldn’t have kept you here. I’m sorry Crabbe. It’s just that I was so lonely.”

  “Don’t be. Don’t be sorry. Look, isn’t there another way? Couldn’t you — couldn’t you come with me?”

  “No,” she whispered. “Impossible.”

  We were silent for a moment. The rain pattered sharply on the tent.

  “Crabbe?” she said finally. “You have to go. You see that don’t you?”

  “Yeah, I see that.”

  “And thanks for what you said,” she continued. “I love you too. You’re a fine man.”

  It’s strange. The way she said that, I knew she didn’t mean romance love, the kind I felt for her. She meant friends love, and that was almost better. Romances seem to come and go nowadays, but good friends stay that way. So I was filled with fighting feelings: sadder than I’ve ever been that I had to finally go; happier than I’ve ever been that she loved me, the person I wanted most in the world to love me.

  So I didn’t say anything. I moved my hands from her shoulders and hugged her. She held me tightly for a long time and we both cried. It was a corny scene, I guess, if you weren’t involved.

  Two days later we began what was to be our last trek together. We headed out on a chilly but sunny morning and had to break through a thin layer of ice on the surface of the bay until we got to the main lake.

  You’d never guess where we were going. We were on a raid. That’s right, a raid. Not kid stuff, either. This was for real.

  Mary’s plan, as usual, was sensible with a little touch of craziness thrown in. We were out of staples like salt, flour and stuff like that (mainly because my presence in the household made the food go twice as quickly). I wondered one day where we’d get more and that led to wondering where my companion had got the stuff we were using.

  “I stole it,” Mary said casually.

  “What? You ripped off a Miracle Mart?” I laughed.

  She laughed too. We hadn’t been doing much of that lately.

  “No,” she continued, “from a hunt camp. Just a minute.”

  She took a quick trip into the bush and returned lugging the mystery pack and plunked it down by the fire. Pulling the leather straps free, she took out a map and spread it out on the ground. She knelt down and so did I.

  “I guess I can show you where you are now, since you’re leaving,” she said.

  The map showed in detail the whole area where we were situated. Mary pointed out our lake, the bay where our home site was hidden away from the world. Thanks to my newly gained map-reading ability I was able to trace my route from Ithaca Camp. (What an idiot I had been.)

  Mary also pointed out why this was a good place to hide. There were no roads for miles and miles — not even logging tracks. And no canoe routes came through the area, mainly because of the dangerous nature of the rivers that entered and exited our lake.

  “See this square dot?” She indicated with her finger near the bottom, almost off the map. “This is the hunt camp. It’s about four hundred yards from this medium­ sized lake that’s part of a chain of lakes. They’re just off the map, down here. Last spring I ran out of grub, so I got some here. They’ve got a huge storage area in the kitchen and the place doesn’t appear to be used in winter. I paid for the stuff of course. Left a note saying I was a trapper passing through and got caught short of supplies.”

  “It looks a long way off,” I said.

  “It’s two full days’ travel in good weather. Now here’s my plan. If we’re lucky, nobody will be around. There might be, since this is duck season, but we’ll have to hope. I will grab my food and once I’m on my way, you can follow the road out of the camp to a main road and sooner or later you’ll get a lift. It’s the only sensible way I can think of to get you out.”

  So, there we were, headed out on a big caper at the end of which Mary and I would separate, forever.

  We cached the canoe at the south end of the lake in a stand of balsam and I shouldered the big pack. It was light, containing only dried food, bedrolls, rainwear and another empty canoe pack for the food. Mary planned to fill both packs, hide one about a mile from the camp and return for it.

  We made good time. The leaves being down, the bush was fairly open. We travelled over every kind of terrain you could imagine. A couple of hours from our lake we began to run into a series of high, sharp ridges — like fingers splayed across the landscape. They were dark, grey granite, patched with small stands of sumac and scrub oak. It was tough country to travel because between the fingers were swamps and beaver dams and the fingers themselves rose almost vertically in places. I felt like a mountain climber. Occasionally we walked along the edge of cliffs three stories high.

  We spent the night on top of one of those ridges, tired as hell, under a clear sky dusted with stars.

  Next morning was cold and clear. A couple of hours got us into gentler landscape — rolling hills of hardwoods with a few creeks to cross. The only thing that slowed us down was the occasional patch of swampy ground that we had to skirt. There was still absolutely no sign of humans. I felt like a coureur de bois.

  Just about dusk we began to approach the lake. The land began to descend and we ran into softwoods, evergreens and birch.

  Mary stopped just before we broke free of the trees.

  She pointed across the kidney-shaped lake. And there on the far shore, on a small promontory of maybe two acres was a group of long buildings huddled in the trees.

>   Smoke was coming from one of the chimneys.

  Crabbe’s Journal: 16

  “Damn,” said Mary in her disappointment. “This is going to complicate things.”

  We retreated into the trees again and flopped down in a copse of spruce, weary from the forced march. Over a snack of dry, crumbly bannock, Mary explained the layout of the hunt camp, drawing a map in the dirt with a stick. There were four buildings: a kitchen-dining room cabin that could handle maybe twenty people; a rec hall with games tables and a big stone fireplace (“You know,” she added, “like you see in all the ski ads.”); and two small bunk cabins. The log buildings were bunched on the tip of the peninsula. A big dock of logs and planks stuck out into the lake.

  The kitchen building was our objective. The owners stored food in there all year ‘round — staples mostly. No perishable stuff, of course, but that wasn’t what Mary wanted anyway. She planned to use the same routine she used last time, leaving money and a note in block letters printed, supposedly, by an old trapper.

  As we lay there resting, waiting for darkness to complete its rise, I began to get nervous. The atmosphere was perfect for the jitters. The breeze had brought cloud cover with it and the sky held no light for us. A chilly ground fog rolled in off the lake. And old Crabbe, never brave at the best of times, got second thoughts. And when we began to hear voices floating across the lake and out of the mist, I got nervous as hell.

  Somebody over in the rec hall was having a great time. Jagged bursts of laughter cut through the fog and as far as we could tell, every window in the building blazed with light. As time passed the noise seemed to increase, the laughter and shouting to burst out more often.

  I suggested that we forget our plan and head back. I didn’t like the sound of those voices. But Mary insisted that we at least take a crack at it.

  “The weather is on our side,” she said. “No one will see us if we’re careful.”

  So a couple of hours after dark we moved out. If you ever want to experience real frustration, try walking through the bush on a completely starless night — silently. An eternity passed before we skirted the bay and moved onto the peninsula.