Lure

by Deborah Kerbel

  And so naturally, I had no way of knowing what kind of transformation had taken over my cousin during the winter months. When William arrived off the train that humid afternoon in early July, it was clear that everything about him had changed. I remember cringing at the sight of him. William had grown half a foot over the year since his last visit and must have stood close to six feet tall by my cursory estimation. He was a veritable giant! To make matters worse, I could see the outline of his newly broadened shoulders poking through his clothes and the dark stain of a full beard pushing through his once-smooth face. My cousin had transformed into a man over the course of the year. Just looking at him made my heart feel like it was sinking into my guts.

  I knew that, like me, Father noticed the difference in William immediately, because his face broke into a wide grin at the sight of him. A strange sense of foreboding gripped me as I watched William search the sea of faces. A sudden impulse seized me — more than anything, I wanted to rush forward, push my cousin back onto the train, and send him straight home to Kingston. But it was too late to act on the impulse, for a second later he spotted us and was striding in our direction, his trademark smirk glued to his lips, his cap pulled rakishly down over his brow, and his bag slung across his shoulder like a hunting prize. Father leapt forward, grabbed William’s hand and pumped it up and down vigorously, in exactly the same fashion that he might greet a fellow tradesman.

  “It’s good to have you back with us again, son,” he boomed. I winced again. I couldn’t ever remember a time when Father had addressed me as his son in the same prideful manner. The two of them strode off together while I trailed behind. I followed them across the road to the stagecoach with my head hanging low. In every possible way, it was clear to me that William was growing up while I remained just a child. Not knowing what I wanted in life or how to get it.

  I’d never felt so miserable.

  But that changed somewhat during the long ride back to 10 Colborne Street when William caught my eye and shot me a devilish wink the first moment Father’s head was turned. Believe it or not, I felt instantly better knowing that there was a part of him still childish enough to want to terrorize me. I started imagining what mishaps the coming months would have in store for me. You would think with all the trouble William caused for me each summer, I’d tell my mother to stop inviting him to stay with us. Although she felt a strong duty to her nephew, she would put a halt to the visits without hesitation if I asked. But the truth is — I was lonely. And when William was there, I wasn’t. One plus one equals two. It was as simple as that.

  Before you get the wrong idea, I must confess that our relationship wasn’t all cunning and plotting. Certainly, we had some good times together, too. There was the forge, of course. Having another person there to break up the long awkward silences between me and Father was a blessing. And on days when we weren’t working, William and I sometimes played cards or took the horses for a run up Yonge Street. But by far, our favourite pastime was fishing in the Don River and the various mill ponds along its banks. Sometimes on a hot, windless day we’d sit on the shore and dangle our feet in the dark green water. Or, if no other person was near, we’d tear off our shirts, dip our hair in the pond and then straighten up and let the cool water drip down over our sweaty bodies. As tempted as William and I were to jump in when the weather turned hot, neither of us could swim worth a lick. So we did our best to stay cool along the shoreline.

  The afternoon that William first hooked Sir John A. was one of those hot, windless days. Let me be clear from the start that I am referring to a fish, not our country’s honourable first prime minister.

  It was a Sunday. After church that morning, we returned home to change our clothes and fetch our fishing poles. Then we headed off to the Don. As usual, we cut through several neighbouring fields to get to the river that afternoon. Along the way we stopped to dig up some juicy worms and after we’d each collected a handful, we stuck them into our pockets so they couldn’t escape. Along the way, we talked about trying our luck in one of the mill ponds, where we’d seen some bigger fish jumping the previous week. I recalled that it was the pond with the big willow tree at the south end, bent over like an old grandfather with the tips of its branches just grazing the ground.

  Once William and I located the pond, we threaded the wriggling worms onto our hooks and then, as we often did when we went fishing, we separated from one another in order to keep our lines from crossing and getting tangled in the water.

  “You take the north side, I’ll take the south,” William directed, turning and disappearing through the forest of tall reeds. I waited for a moment, listening to the crunch of his footsteps growing fainter with every step until finally they were too far away to hear. Then, dutifully, I headed off to my end of the pond. My hopes were to catch a big carp that day and present it to my parents for their dinner. But in the back of my head, I knew that William was probably hatching a similar plot. Fishing with my cousin was always a competition. Who would bring home the bigger catch and earn my father’s praise? In previous years, my cousin was always the one to catch the biggest fish. But, to everyone’s surprise, I’d been holding my own with William this summer.

  And there are no words to describe to you how I relished the notion of the considerable irritation that brought to his life.

  I cast my line out into the dark water and watched the worm sink slowly down until it was out of my sight. Then, taking a seat on a nearby rock, I pulled back and forth on the line to keep the worm from settling on the muddy bottom of the pond. A big, blue dragonfly flitted across the rippling water, its wings shimmering in the afternoon sunlight. The pointed tips of the surrounding reeds swayed and sighed in the soft breeze.

  “Come on, fish,” I sang out. “Come get your lunch.” I held my breath and waited, but the croaking of a nearby frog was the only reply. Either the fish on my end of the pond weren’t hungry or my singing scared them off, for I didn’t even get one nibble that afternoon. Lady Luck, however, had chosen to smile upon my cousin. About twenty minutes after we’d first separated, I heard him bellowing from the other side of the pond.

  “John! I’ve got one!”

  Now normally that kind of announcement wouldn’t be any reason for concern. But there was an uncharacteristic urgency in William’s voice that raised the hairs on the back of my neck. In a trice, I dropped my own pole and dashed off toward the south end of the pond.

  “John, come quick!” William’s voice surged across the water again. “And get the net!”

  “I’m coming!”

  I pushed through the overgrowth of reeds, trying to run as fast as I could without slipping on the green, spongy ground. When I finally reached William, however, I found that there was no need for the net. The battle was clearly over. He was collapsed on the bank, pole at his side, and streams of sweat running down his face. He was scowling ferociously in the direction of the water, his broad chest heaving with exertion. I stared at him in shock. My big strong cousin had lost to a fish?

  “What happened?” I called out, rushing to his side. It was a strange feeling to see William looking so vulnerable.

  “I had him on the line, but he was too powerful,” he explained, his words emerging slowly between each panting breath. “I thought he’d drag me into the pond with him, he was that big. I held on to him for a minute and managed to pull him toward me when he got away. He even broke my pole.”

  And here he held up the remains of his fishing pole, snapped off in the middle by the treacherous fish. Suddenly, I felt like laughing. In an effort to conceal my smirk, I looked out onto the water, searching for signs of the struggle. The pond was smooth as glass, save for the lonely head of a small painted turtle peeking through the surface for a breath of air.

  “What kind of fish was he?” I asked, desperate to imagine the scaly beast that had conquered William. Could he hear the smile hiding behind my wor
ds?

  “I don’t know … maybe a carp, possibly a northern pike. But it was certainly the biggest fish I have ever hooked. He must have weighed close to twenty pounds. He was enormous!”

  It was difficult to imagine the mill pond sustaining a fish of that size, but I held my tongue. Tossing his broken pole to the side, William rose to his feet.

  “Yes, Sir John A. was certainly the biggest fish I have ever hooked,” he repeated, slapping the mud from his hands with a series of loud claps.

  Sir John A.? That just wouldn’t do!

  “Pardon me, William … but don’t you think it’s blasphemous to name a fish after our prime minister?”

  He frowned and let out a crude, swine-like snort. “Blasphemous? Don’t be stupid, little cousin.”

  “But he’s been granted a knighthood,” I argued, ignoring his coarseness. “Under the order of Her Majesty, Queen Victoria, no less. To give a fish the same name …”

  “… is a show of respect,” he cut in. “Why shouldn’t every great leader have a great name? And after all, Sir John A. is the biggest, most powerful fish in the pond.”

  I stopped talking, for how could I argue with that reasoning? I watched in silence as William picked up the remains of his broken pole and flung them into the water. After that, he didn’t want to fish anymore.

  “I need a new pole and Sir John A. needs a break to gather his strength back,” he said. “It just wouldn’t be fair to go after him again so soon.”

  I imagined perhaps it was really William who needed the strength-gathering break, but I kept that thought to myself.

  “Fine, we’ll come back next week after church,” I replied. “We can try to get him then.”

  The sun was just beginning to make its way down from the height of the sky. William and I leaned lazily back among the tall reeds and stared up into the cloudless ceiling above us. A family of mallard ducks napped under the shade of the willow tree, their bills nestled under their wings like little children tucked snugly into their beds.

  A cicada buzzed loudly somewhere nearby.

  “Do you know that there’s a girl back in Kingston with eyes that exact colour of blue?” William whispered, pointing upwards. I turned to look at him in shock. Why did his voice suddenly sound so hoarse? It was as if there was something caught in his throat.

  “Her name is Martha Henry and she’s got the most beautiful eyes you’ve ever seen,” he continued, slowly lowering his hand. “Bluer than that sky. And hair brighter than sunlight on the water.”

  My brow pleated with concentration as I tried so hard to imagine eyes like he described. A second later, I heard the dried reeds rustle under William’s head as he turned toward me.

  “Martha’s family lives in the house next door to mine. Perhaps you remember meeting her that summer you visited Kingston?”

  My thoughts flew back to that summer. I could vaguely recall the memory of a golden-haired girl who had found me crouched behind a raspberry thicket during a neighbourhood game of hide-and-seek. She’d looked to be a few years older than me and had a face so lovely and sweet that I remember thinking it belonged on a church stained-glass window. Could that have been Martha Henry?

  “Can you keep a secret, John?” William continued.

  A secret? I nodded dumbly and waited to hear what he had to say. It was the first and only time my cousin had ever confided in me.

  “I kissed Martha last winter. I kissed her twice, actually. She was incredibly … soft.”

  Soft? An odd feeling started to grow in the pit of my stomach. It was like a small flame that was growing, expanding like a wildfire until I felt my whole face and neck begin to burn with the heat. My imagination stretched across the space between us to catch up to his thoughts.

  “Which part of her was so soft?”

  He smiled a secretive, smug smile. And then his deep voice lowered to a light murmur, as if he was confessing to a priest. “She was soft all over. Her hair, her lips, her skin, her …” His voice trailed off into deafening silence. My mind spun.

  “Go on,” I whispered, my heart already quickening at the suggestion behind his silence. “Go on.” But as much as I tried to get him to say more, he flatly refused. Instead, he simply closed his eyes and sighed. There was the tiniest of smiles resting upon his face, as if he were enjoying the memory of a good book or listening to someone playing a nocturne on the piano.

  “And what does this girl Martha Henry think of a boy with fingers as black as coal from working in the forge?” I asked, my words barbed with envy.

  But William didn’t reply. And his smile didn’t fade for a second.

  How infuriating!

  Snapping a reed from the patch beside me, I held it between my thumbs and began to whistle a tune. Then I closed my eyes and tried to imagine touching, feeling, kissing something as soft as William’s words were suggesting. Would any part of Harriet Miller, the girl who had sat beside me at school, feel soft if I had ever dared to reach a petrified hand out to touch her? Or Kate, our family’s hired girl? Kate was probably twenty years old by now, but the thought of her red skin and chapped hands made me doubt that any part of her could compare to what my cousin was describing.

  Until that point, the softest thing I’d ever touched in my life was the little lamb Father had accepted as payment for fixing the broken lock on Thomas Hamill’s gate. I was a few days shy of my seventh birthday when Father had brought it home and let me pat it for a few minutes outside in the back garden while he searched for his whetstone. I can remember how it trembled with fright as I held it in my arms. It wasn’t much bigger than a cat. While I patted its soft fur, I silently prayed that Mother would come home and intervene before Father finished sharpening his knife. The lamb’s eyes were large and dark and scared and I was certain that it was aware on some primal level of what was about to happen. So I leaned down and whispered a church hymn in its trembling ear to keep it calm in those final minutes of its life. It smelled of grass and sunshine and outside. Somehow, I managed to hold back my tears when Father pried it away from me, carried it into the barn, and butchered it for our evening meal. I wouldn’t join my parents for dinner that night. Instead, I stayed upstairs weeping in the privacy of my bedroom where Father couldn’t scold me for behaving like a sentimental girl. I remember feeling so angry at Mother for being gone that evening that I didn’t speak to her for the rest of the night. If she’d been home, she never would have let Father slaughter that poor little animal.

  That lamb was the softest thing I’d ever known. Could any part of this girl Martha Henry have been softer than the pale, silky curls on that lamb’s belly? I wanted to know. But at the same time, I was also glad that William had stopped talking. Part of me was afraid that if he continued, the fire inside me would burn through my skin and fry my body until nothing was left. Cases of spontaneous combustion had been documented before. What if it was about to happen to me? Would William have the sense to douse the flames with water from the pond? Or would he simply allow me to ignite here amidst the reeds and smoulder away to ashes? I bit my lip and waited to see what William would say next. But he remained stubbornly silent on the subject of Martha Henry. Could he see how his story of this girl had burned my face? Perhaps he realized he’d gone too far by telling me so much. Or perhaps it was I who’d gone too far.

  The bells of the church chimed in the distance, bringing my daydreams back to reality.

  Bong, bong, bong, bong.

  Four o’clock. It was approaching the dinner hour. Leaving my cousin alone with his thoughts, I crept out of the reeds to retrieve my fishing pole.

  I stewed about William’s selfish secrecy for days. But, in the end, I forgave him for his silence. Especially when I found out that William had decided that Martha Henry was the girl he was going to marry. He would be turning seventeen in a few more months and was starting to
think about these things. Yes, William was almost grown up. He was making plans for his future, his profession, and a family of his own. And here I was, still a child — going through life with my head in the sand.

  Unseeing and unseen.

  12 - Max

  I was reading a book when the first wet letter appeared.

  It happened while I was studying in the deserted back room of the library. By then, it was the second week in October and I was still coming back to Colborne Street every Wednesday morning, eager for the chance to be near Caroline. Even though it was pretty obvious that she didn’t think of me as anything more than a weird, lonely kid, I couldn’t stay away from her. I’d even gone as far as officially dropping my Wednesday-morning class so I could keep the teachers and parentals off my back about the ditching. I know, it was desperate and sad … but I couldn’t seem to stop myself. She was everything I thought about all day long. And at night, the image of her eyes and smile haunted my dreams. I admit it — I was a total head case.

  It was while I was scanning through my science textbook that the wet letter materialized with painstaking slowness on the left hand side of the page — almost as if it was being drawn by the wet finger of a distracted child. Although at that moment, I didn’t realize it was a letter because it just looked like a long, quivery line.

  At first, I didn’t think anything of it. In fact, my only instinct was to check the ceiling to see if I was sitting under a leaky spot. I knew from working with my grandfather how notoriously porous these old buildings could be. I glanced up, but the ceiling looked smooth and dry … not a leak in sight. The water had to be coming from somewhere else.

  Staring back down at the wet book, my imagination began leaping in all directions like a frog chasing a frantic fly. But I refused to let it veer off in the one direction I knew it would eventually take.

  No, Max … don’t go there! Do. Not. Go. There.

  Trying to distract myself from my own thoughts, I flipped the wet page and forced myself to continue with my reading as if nothing had happened. That’s when the second wet letter appeared. I watched in horror as a very distinct “s” slowly formed in a long, watery squiggle on the page.