He remembers the muck between his toes, the blood rising in the water like a curl of smoke, how mad Johnena was, because the cut was deep and they had to take him home. The scar was a wide mother-of-pearl crescent on his foot.
The first time Annabel saw it.
It was early in their marriage and they had gone up to the bedroom after lunch. She had spotted it as she left the bed. It was winter and the bedroom was cold. All she was wearing was her slip but she sat down again and touched the scar. The tops of her breasts brimming over her slip. Even then he knew that he would remember that moment. Lying in bed in the middle of the day, spent and happy after love. How tenderly she had touched the scar. How curious she had been about it. As if she wanted to know everything about him.
Then he remembered another time at the lake. How could he have forgotten?
With his cousins Buddy and Allan. After a square dance.
They had talked up the dance all week. Allan was home from his first job away, a kind of returning hero, and he and Buddy were keen to show him a good time. And to remind him that home was where the real fun was. The fiddle music, the dancing, the girls. Drinking behind the hall, talking and laughing and picking at each other, maybe even a good fight. The girls.
But nothing much had happened. The mood was somber in the truck going home. They passed around a bottle of Black Diamond and were silent.
Allan had to have a piss so Buddy pulled in at the same little beach where Curly had cut his foot. Allan missed his step and half-fell out of the truck, which made them laugh. While he relieved himself, Curly and Buddy finished the rum. After the last pull Curly pitched the bottle towards a stand of trees. When they heard the glass shatter they laughed some more. They could see a light on the far shore. They tried to think what it could be. It was too bright to be a kerosene lamp and it couldn’t be electricity, only the people in town had electricity. They walked to the edge of the water.
‘It’s a fire,’ Allan said.
‘Who would be burning anything this time of night?’
‘A bonfire.’
‘Who would have a bonfire this time of night?’
That’s when Buddy spied the shape, tucked in the shade of night and tree and reed. A rowboat.
‘Let’s go find out,’ he said.
The boat a shadow, more felt than seen. The surprising cold of the water cutting through Curly’s shoes and socks. Then its warmth. His hands groping for purchase. His tailbone hitting something hard. Even with the booze the pain was sharp. Then it became soft, almost a friend, as he lay on the bottom of the boat. He felt Buddy push the craft from the shore and jump in. Setting the boat to rocking, falling on top of him. The two of them tangled up in limb and laughter, the boat rocking from side to side as Buddy found the seat.
Looking up from where he was sprawled Curly could barely make out the shapes of his cousins. There was no sky. Just the dark. He felt himself melting into the warm night. He didn’t care about anything anymore. Even about Sarah Miller snubbing him. He didn’t care if nothing else ever happened to him. He just wanted to stay there, under this soft summer night, with the sound of water lapping up against the sides of the rowboat. His cousins were also silent. They had all been taken by the night.
The sound of retching. He felt every syllable. As if the vomit was being dredged up from his own gut.
‘Son of a whore!’ Buddy. ‘Did you have to barf on my feet?’
The smell of puke. And shit.
So they would blame Allan. Buddy cursing, Curly laughing (the vomit had not yet swilled into the water where he lay). Meanwhile, the boat tiptoeing away. By the time they realized there were no oars in the boat, they (rightly) judged that the water was too deep for three men who did not know how to swim.
‘Son of a whore,’ Buddy said again.
The boat lurched and rocked as they desperately felt for oars again, then tried to paddle with their hands. They were closer to the light on the other shore now and saw that it was indeed a fire. The next day they would find out that Little Janie MacIvor had burned down her porch by setting a small bucket of ashes – she had been making raspberry jam – on the steps. But the house was saved. And the raspberry jam.
Early the next morning Joe C MacDonald spotted the empty truck, then the boat on the water. By the time Curly got home the story had gone around the lake twice.
All this was a long time ago. They were all old now: Allan in New Brunswick, shacked up with someone new, the last he’d heard, still working for Barbour. Buddy had gone west after losing his job at the heavy water plant. He could still drink a twelve-pack after supper.
Curly looked at the fishing boats in the distance. At a rack of wispy clouds. The small island. The dark and light sand, the rocks and wood and debris the sea delivered. The markers that the fishermen used to find their traps – small squares of painted and numbered plywood. Orange and lime and purple. A black numeral on a crimson background, its edges gnawed raw by the sea, the paint flaking off in thin elegant strips. There was beauty in its decrepitude. In its imperfection. He thought of the fisherman who had painted it. That was his number, this black nineteen. He would look for it every dawn from the prow of his Cape Islander. Would be happy to spot the jaunty red and black square bobbing out of the waves. That was his number, below were his traps, this was his work. His world. And when he and his helpers hauled up the wooden traps, they would be full (maybe) of squirming green and brown lobsters.
The plywood markers were icons of belonging, of hope, of a man’s reason to live. Because for Curly work was what made a man. What he was born to be. What made his life count. The markers were emblems of a way of life that Curly knew little about. Just like he knew nothing about the mining of coal. His people and Annabel’s had been farmers. They knew the land, the raising of animals and the growing of grain and hay and vegetables. They knew the weather. They knew how to get rid of a stump (with saltpeter); how to cure a sprain in a horse’s foot (knot a string around the leg and recite the Charm for the Sprain); how to get a barren apple tree to give fruit (twist its arm with a coat hanger). But he lived so close to the ocean. How could he have ignored it for so long?
The water crashing on the shore. The gentler wash of the surf when he was nearer the dunes, or on a calm day. The long rippling tide then, strong and smooth as the muscles on a horse. The flat waters when the wind pushed it offshore. The silence on a windless day.
He saw.
Odd shapes of driftwood. Where did they come from? Some shack or house or boat from The Island or beyond? The wood was as soft as Annabel’s leather gloves, as the velvet of her wedding dress. A rock with a hole in the middle, like a donut. The smooth glass pebbles, so smooth he’d finger them in his pocket as he walked. How many years had it taken the churning surf and sand and ice to polish them? The pieces were triangular, round, oval. White, brown, green. Clear. The surprising blue of a jar of Vick’s. Also turquoise and pale and dark lilac. He had seen the sea glass before, on windowsills and in jars in people’s houses. Summer people, usually. Come-from-aways. It came from the old dump, carried to the ocean by the river that ran through it. But where had it been before?
This, the thick rounded bottom of a bottle. Horse liniment, he judged by the colour. Painkiller, his grand-father called it, and he sometimes asked Curly to rub some on his back.
A piece of glazed grey and brown crockery. Like the jar in which his mother stored butter in the icehouse. A constant in his childhood, but once it was gone, he had never given it another thought. Where had his mother’s butter crock gone? Was it in a barn or attic somewhere? Or busted into rough pieces like the one he now held, and carefully replaced on a long shoal of small rocks, all the same size, the ocean having its own way to sort things. And this piece. From a bottle someone had enjoyed. He knew just by holding it.
He kept some of them. Put them in an empty feedbag in the barn, where he sometime
s ran his hands through the shapes. They were smooth and cool to the touch. Cold if it was winter. Little bits of sand still clung to some of them. Or dried seaweed. Some felt so glossy that he rubbed them against his lips to feel the smoothness. Touched them with his tongue to taste the salt.
Some days the ocean spit up more than usual. He guessed it had something to do with the tide but he wasn’t sure. He knew nothing about tides. He bent along the frothy line of the sandwater, studded with crushed crab shells, bits of rock and coal and glass.
A woman had held this turquoise. What had it been? This green he knew; it had once held beer. This brown had been in a fire. Even in his pocket it felt hot. A house fire. This jade piece. Holding it he felt someone’s worry. He didn’t think it was strange that he knew. He didn’t question it. He was as sure of it as he was of standing on the shore of a great ocean that went all the way to Europe. Some things you had to take on faith. Perhaps the jade piece had held medicine for a sick child. This amber was from a liquor bottle. He felt anger and sadness in it. Maybe a woman had found it hidden in a shed. Cried as she poured out the booze, watched the grass suck the evil into the earth.
No picture came to him when he held a piece. No faces or details.
Just a feeling.
BURGER BLAST
Walking down her grandparents’ driveway for the first time this year. Slowly. Like the people in Tobago. Looking at everything: The luxuriant green of early July. The little brook winding its way through the shade. The hours she has spent beside it, watching the little fish, the trout, and eels. The skaters, gliding on the water with their pontoon-like legs. The tadpoles in the mud. The progress of twigs and leaves dropped in the current. The play of light and water. That underwater patch of red clay you could squeeze between your fingers into wonky plates and bowls – and once, with Santana, rub over the skin of your legs and arms and faces. (‘You’ve gone and ruined that new t-shirt,’ Annabel said.) The dusty swirls of dandelion leaves between the ruts on the driveway. Santana’s mother says that there is not one part of the dandelion that you can’t eat, even the root.
That patch of emerald moss. (Peering in you can sometimes see the movement of fairies among the tiny trees.) The boulder at the bottom of the hill that her blue CCM and front tooth collided with.
Curly and Annabel have a new mailbox! She had not noticed when they arrived last night, too busy looking for the porch light. And Annabel’s face in the window.
‘I thought you’d be as tall as me, now,’ she said before hugging her with her strong arms. The tremor of emotion on her lips. Inside there was hot chocolate, made the way Lucy likes it, with baking chocolate and a marshmallow melting into froth.
She is fourteen, ‘old enough’ now to take the train alone. Wendy and Dale would pick her up in August. It was the last summer, she was telling everyone. Next year she wanted to get a job. Not at Burger Blast, where Celia and Shane work, or at any other fast food place because she doesn’t want to touch meat. It was too bad in a way because she liked the Burger Blast. She hung out there a lot, had a milkshake or some fries. But she didn’t put ketchup on them anymore after Celia told her about finding maggots in the ketchup pump while cleaning it out. Seeing a Help Wanted sign at the Petro Canada next door she had gone in to talk to the manager. He told her she was too young but to come in again next year. Wendy said, ‘As long as you don’t do the night shift. You’re not working there at night.’
Her apple tree. From which, if she sits in a certain branch, she can observe the road unseen (except for Curly, he always spots her). The smell of raspberry leaves from her perch, the beige dust announcing a vehicle. The people in the cars talking or laughing or glum. She’d seen Eric and Jenny go by once and she felt disloyal, as if she were spying on them. Another time a chipmunk ran up to sit beside her. She did not move and neither did she. They were one with the tree, the blue sky and the dappled light.
At the Petcoffs, something new beside the garden: a greenhouse. Santana waves at her from the window and both she and Jenny come out. After they hug, Lucy says to Santana, ‘Wanna go for a walk?’
Because she is bursting to tell her.
His parents had named him after Jackson Browne – ‘I told him my best friend was named after Carlos Santana’ – he was in her homeroom and in Math and Social Studies; she had liked him from the start but they had not gotten together until the second last week of school, they had wasted a whole year! His hair was black black black and his eyes blue – he was Irish. And after she noticed that he had two (different) Nirvana t-shirts she had bought one of their CDs, and a Nirvana sticker, which she had positioned on the cover of her binder hoping he would see it and he had, and he had smiled at her!
But nothing had happened until the last dance of the year. She hadn’t expected to see him there – he never went to the dances, and she was coming out of the bathroom she had just smoked a joint with Celia and Amanda – and he was right by the door. It was like he’d been waiting for her and they started talking and that was it. He asked her to dance and they saw each other the next day and every day after that. Their last night together he had given her a mix tape and as soon as she got home she went to her bedroom and listened to the songs he had chosen for her: Nirvana and Slayer and Nine Inch Nails and then – she couldn’t believe it – the Ricky Martin song they had danced to that first night.
And now they weren’t going to see each other for two whole months.
They’ve reached the old rock pile that Santana likes to sit on, the rocks were always warm there but you had to look before you sat because the garter snakes liked it, too.
‘Guess what?’ Santana says.
‘What?’
‘Jenny’s pregnant.’
‘She’s going to have a baby?’
‘Yeah, can you believe it? It was an accident; she had an IUD but something happened.’ She looks at Lucy, then away.
Lucy has a bit of a crush on Eric. She finds him attractive and funny. And he is always nice to her. Now he’s made a baby. She wants to think about this.
‘It might be fun having a little sister or brother,’ she says to Santana. ‘I always wanted one.’
‘I did too, when I was like six or something. But it’s too late now.’
‘Celia has a little sister.’
‘You told me. Anastasia.’
‘She’s so cute. We have lots of fun with her.’
‘I’ll bet Celia has to babysit all the time.’
‘Well … sometimes she has to.’
‘The fate that awaits me.’
THE AMERICANS’ BEACH
Coarse pebbly sand pushing against Lucy’s breasts, belly and thighs, right cheek and ear (towels are for wusses). Salt drying on her back. The glint of wave after smooth silver wave through the prism of seawater on her eyelashes. Santana is beside her. They do not speak.
Behind them, the adults have set up their blankets against an outcrop of pink gypsum. Wendy drove them here (Dale stayed in Sudbury; they’ve split up); Eric would come later, after he milked the cow. They talk and laugh and drink beer. Not long ago Lucy and Santana would have been running in and out of the water on the stinging hot pebbles, playing soccer with the other children, gathering driftwood for the fire. Now they sit apart on their own little island, only going to the main camp for food – and to steal beer. Only when the darkness falls will they feel compelled to join them around the fire. In the distance they see Eric coming, a towel over his shoulder and a twelve-pack of beer in one hand. Someone is with him. It’s Karl. And straggling behind are his two sons, Jared and Reuel. Karl lives in Halifax now. The boys still live in town with their mother, but this year Lucy has not seen them at all. They are busy with sports and their own friends. They no longer go to the town beach. The boys also choose to sit apart from the adults. Now the main camp is flanked by outposts of teenagers, one of girls, one of boys. Lucy positions herself to
gather intelligence. ‘They’re not going in the water. They’re wearing jeans,’ she says.
‘What are they doing?’
‘They’re eating chips. Doritos, I think.’
‘Yum. Wish we had some.’
‘They’d be good with the beer.’
‘Jenny won’t buy them – she says they’re poison.’
‘Jared is really tall now.’
‘He is such a snob now that he’s on Triple A. He won’t even say hi to me at school.’
‘Wha-at!’
‘He pretends he doesn’t know me. He’s the same with Reuel. Like he’s ashamed of his own brother.’
‘Karl is sitting with them now.’
But not for long. Peeling off his t-shirt, he dives in the water for a quick swim. Then he goes back to his friends. Or rather, to Wendy. Wendy’s got her big flirt on. Lucy can hear her laughing, can just see her looking at Karl from under her long streaked bangs as he lights her cigarette.
The darker it gets, the closer they sit together.
Then it’s time to douse the fire, to find sandals and bottles in the not-quite-dark, to gather damp towels and sandy picnic debris. To decide who’s going to carry what back to the car. But wait: where are Jared and Reuel?
‘Ja-red! Reu-el!’
‘I saw them going up there,’ Lucy says, pointing to a scrubby hill. ‘Ja-red! Reu-el!’ The voices, young and old, male and female, singsonging, laughing, a little drunk or stoned, no one fretting because they didn’t go in the water, right? No, they weren’t even wearing bathing suits.
‘Ja-red! Reu-el!’ So that no one hears the boys shouting from another ridge: ‘Here! We’re here!’ But Lorne sees them, two dark shapes waving their arms against the midnight blue sky.
The boys race down expertly, and when they arrive everyone makes a big fuss over them and they look pleased, which makes Lucy happy. She felt sorry for them, sitting alone all night, their father ignoring them.
Lucy Cloud Page 17
