Berth

by Carol Bruneau

  “Where you headed, honey?” he shouted as I slid in. He drove about twenty kilometres an hour, cars backed up behind us. “I’m just going as far as that house up ahead,” he said. Suddenly I felt so exhausted, I almost wished the sticky bench seat was a couch. “Don’t get too comfy,” the man joked. He was missing teeth. “Gonna have to kick you out soon.” He laughed, not entirely in fun, it seemed. He had a plastic coffee cup stuck to the dash and kept reaching for it, though it looked empty.

  “Ya wanna ride?” he muttered, out of the blue, as the house loomed close. When he pulled over, his fly was open. Jumping out, I started walking fast. He leaned on the horn as he passed.

  In a couple more hours it would start to get dark. The string of passing tail lights made me queasy again, but somewhere inside I felt glad for them. People going home. Normal people; husbands, wives—and kids, I imagined. Whining from back seats, What’s for supper? My feet couldn’t move fast enough.

  Walking backwards, the wind like a brace, I stuck out my thumb again. Drivers streaked past, their faces blank, but finally a woman in a pickup stopped. She had fluffy yellow hair and seemed nervous. You almost wanted to pat her stubby hand on the wheel.

  “I’m just going up’s far as the bingo,” was all she said. “Kinda chilly to be hoofin’ it.”

  “Can’t thank you enough,” I uttered when the Kwik Way appeared.

  She gave me a frightened look, forcing a smile. “Get inside and get yourself a hot cuppa.” It made me want to cry. As she pulled away, it was bright enough to read the neon-pink sticker on her tailgate: EVE WAS FRAMED.

  When I finally rounded the hill, Wayne’s place was in darkness. Kicking the shoulder, I sent a loose piece of asphalt skittering across the centre line. Already the skies above the island were a muddy orange, the woods dusted black. As I traipsed back along the dip in the road, the wind shrieked and chopped the water. It ate through my jacket. Plans hatched and fizzled as a thought warmed me; Sonny had gone to Derek’s. It was possible, even likely. I’d phone, then meet him there. Maybe Derek’s mother would help? When we were ready, we’d go back for the dog. Oh God, the dog.

  Another, feebler plan took hold. I’d jot a note on the back of Charlie’s envelope; leave it like an IOU. And I’d borrow a skiff and row across. Because maybe Sonny was there, and hadn’t gone to Derek’s at all. Something riffled inside me, not relief, but something almost soothing. I’d pin the note under a rock. Charlie’s postmark would be a clue to my desperation. People did worse, way worse, than borrow things in dire situations.

  As I scanned the government wharf—sweet God, let there be something with oars—a popping sound broke from the water, a sputter. Bright as a toy, that hopeful green, a boat was coming in, a lobster boat with traps piled high in the stern, so high the wind rocked them. As it got closer, I recognized the guy at the wheel and his son, the surly one; the men who’d given me a ride before.

  A van swerved to avoid me. Scooting to the shoulder, I watched as the boat swung towards the dock, then I started running. “Hey! HEY!” I yelled, waving. The wind threw back my shouts till I was standing on the dock, right over them. Both men peered up, looking frozen. The younger fellow grimaced.

  “Great,” he muttered out of the side of his mouth, “if it isn’t Ms. Hollow Tree.”

  A gnawing had started in my gut, and my face felt stiff.

  “It’s my boy,” I shouted. “He’s over there alone, and…and…” As if it were a rainy lunchtime on Avenger Place and I’d overshopped.

  Waves slapped below. The men seemed not to hear me. The son was securing things with ropes, the father hollering about the traps.

  “Please!” I shouted down and the father squinted up, rubbing the sides of his jaw. His fingers were like cigars.

  “Already she’s blowing pretty bad,” he growled. “Weather people are calling ’er a bomb. Rain, I guess.” He coughed a couple of times, a smoker’s hack, then licked his teeth.

  “Well, if we can make it quick. Whaddya think, bud?”

  “Get in,” the son said, hawking over the side.

  The flame from the refinery jumped in the distance, the reflection jittering over the falling darkness as we pitched through swells. This was a sheltered part of the harbour, but it felt like we were ploughing through drifts. The spray cut like a razor. As we closed in on the island, you could see ice breaking up, the black currents snaking through it.

  “You’re cracked living out here this time of year, miss,” the father observed above the hiss and slosh. He sounded scornful now. His voice and the wind numbed my ears. I tried to answer but my lips felt frozen, the way they might after a long, painful, dentist appointment. Thank God he kept quiet after that. Before too much longer we sheared in along the dark ribbon of water; and soon enough bounced alongside the dock.

  “Take cover, dear,” the old guy hollered. “What’re you gonna do? You want us to radio for youse?”

  Waving him off I nearly fell, scrambling out. The wind pushed my hand as I raised it in thanks. It screamed from the north, swinging the power line like a skipping rope where it emerged from the woods. I swear the pole was almost moving.

  The snow had melted, turning the path into an icy sluiceway. I grabbed at branches, sliding and pulling myself along. It took forever to cross the island. By the time the pond appeared, the sky had gone from purple to black. As darkness closed in, panic rose inside me.

  From the marsh the house looked to be in darkness. From somewhere, as if muffled by wood, came the sound of barking. A solitary, chilling repetition, the only dog in the neighbourhood. But as I twigged to it the wind blew it away. I tried going faster, till a timid relief flicked through me. There’d be a light, wouldn’t there, if Sonny had come home; the light in his room. Whether or not—

  I tried not to think about Hugh at all as I skidded over the rocks.

  The tower pulsed its slow, searching light. It seemed like someone about to stop breathing, about to expire, as it flashed and flashed again. And yet a calm settled inside me. The house was wrapped in silence, the back door unlocked. The wind tore at the windows, the eaves, a grinding noise that amplified the stillness of the kitchen. Emptiness seemed to well from the floor, the room ringing like a vault. Oreo’s spot beside the stove was empty, a dust bunny moving in the draft. I switched on the light and it blinked and wavered; the shabby fixtures leapt out in odd relief. The dog’s blanket was grey with hair. The clock, hanging lopsided as ever above the hotplate, said 5:45.

  I dialled Derek’s. The phone rang and rang before his mother picked up. She sounded edgy, short. Suppertime. You could hear the clank of dishes, a man’s voice, kids.

  “Hate to bother you, but is Alex—?”

  “Huh?” The woman’s voice was scratchy, impatient: “He’s s’posed to be here?” Before I could answer, she yelled out, “Derek? You know where Sonny is? It’s his ma?” The man grumbled something, then she came back on. “Sorry. Um, Derek doesn’t know where he is—oh, wait—what, honey? He went right home? Okay.” Her hint of concern seemed to harden, turn almost accusing. “He should be there. They got out the usual—didn’t youse, Derek? Look,” she said, “my husbant just got back?” There was a jostling, a pause, and a child, maybe Derek, yelling, “Dumb-ass!”

  “Well,” said the mother, sighing. “Hope you find him. Sure, he’ll turn up.”

  Turn up—as if Thrumcap were a street with fences and sidewalks. But she sensed my fear. “Don’t worry,” she murmured. “He’s prob’ly gone to Mikey’s house. You know what kids’re like. Here,” she said, and read out a number.

  I was looking at Oreo’s empty bowl. Her voice jumped like a cricket’s as I dropped the receiver.

  The yard was like a flooded rink, a slick, greenish grey under each revolving flash. I held my breath, listening for barks. I couldn’t hear a thing above the surf and grinding ice. I closed my eyes, listened harder, t
hen started back towards the pond. The feeling in my gut was as if a stone had dropped there. At the head of the beach I hesitated, almost choosing the path to the tea house hill. Sonny’s name caught in my throat as I stumbled over the icy sand, fighting the urge to scream. Where are you where are you where are you pounded through me. Sonny’s face swam in my head. It pulled me along, beyond the pond and up into the woods onto higher ground where clumps of thawed moss made for easier going. There was no moon, not even a sliver rimmed with frost, only swirling blackness, the branches snapping. My feet moved as if they weren’t mine, led by instinct striking its own trail.

  Then I heard it; a sober, hopeful yip, its sharpness piercing the wind. Another, and another, deepening into a nervous braying. My feet moved faster, even before the sound caught hold. The path levelled and I followed it through the bending spruce, my stomach in my throat. The barking got louder, more insistent, and I watched for a flash of white through the trees.

  “Oreo!” I called, hoarse with fear, burying the urge to scream, Sonny!

  As I pushed through the branches, faster faster faster, a pounding started in my ears. There was a whimper, frantic sniffing, the dog lunging, leaping to lick my face. With a shock, as if I’d been sleepwalking, I realized where we were. The dark shapes of gears and pulleys loomed through the bushes, set against a break of sky. As Oreo jumped and nipped, his tongue was so warm I thought it’d meld to me. In the same instant, my heart buckled as he sat back on his haunches and bayed at the trees. “Sonny,” I cried, then louder: “SONNY!” The woods closed around me, and I remembered the bunker, where he and Derek had played, and God-knows-who-else had conducted what? Target practice, war games, love?

  Tearing at branches, sidestepping, squatting, as if squeezing from one airtight chamber to another, I inched through the woods, stumbling on the moss. The shelter looked the same as when we’d discovered it. Pulling in breath, I pushed the sagging door aside.

  “Mom?” His voice was like a sparrow’s, tiny, frozen, and his face was pale and frightened. Huddled in a corner, he squatted, gripping what looked like a pencil. There was a smell, a sourness, as if fear had rubbed itself into his clothes. Falling to my knees, I crawled towards him.

  “Where were you?” he kept crying as I folded him to me. His body as big as mine. His hair tickled my cheek, a cold little shock. “I was scared, Mom. I was scared shitless that you’d ...”

  Prying his fingers open, I took the pencil from him.

  It wasn’t a pencil at all, but a sharpened stick, the kind used to fasten a hair clasp. It made a hollow little sound, hitting the packed earth.

  Slowly I found my voice. “Did Hugh—?” Sonny shrank from me and I tightened my embrace. “Did you see him?” My heart pumped. You could almost hear the wind pulling, loosening roots, splitting the ground.

  His eyes widened, not with fear, but something beyond it: trust? Their expression was like the expression in the eyes of the girl in the black and white picture etched in my brain. The photo from Minamata of the girl and her mother, the girl’s flat body, twisted hands and feet floating on a dark, fathomless surface. The mother’s arms a berth. The deep black pool; the serenity of that yielding.

  At sixteen, I’d almost wanted to be that girl. Until now, I’d wanted to put myself, if not inside her damaged body, then in her place, in someone’s arms, arms that would not let me sink, but would keep my buoyed, afloat.

  “I’m freezing,” Sonny whimpered, “I want to go home.”

  I thought suddenly of him in the chopper on Family Day, how he’d stood there on the brink, a thousand feet up; how, if he’d fallen or jumped, there was only the monkey tail and not a thing I could’ve done to save him, except for jumping too. Wasn’t the fall through clouds motherhood? The ring of burning atmosphere, an airy abyss of caring, of loving someone more than you could ever love yourself. A leap, one I’d set myself up for the day of Sonny’s birth. Passing the torch, too. Loving without the float of stronger, wiser arms meant leaping from the cargo door without boom or harness.

  A wave passed through me: the feeling of walking over a grave. I was the mother in the photo, or at least now I knew a little, just a little, of how she, and my own mother, must’ve felt. The instinct to shield one’s young as bloody as a bear’s.

  “Hugh didn’t…he didn’t—?”

  “What?” Sonny eyed me miserably. “He wasn’t even there.”

  I tugged at him; clumsily we squirmed to our feet and ducked out into the wind.

  “What were you thinking of, coming here?”

  He dodged my arms.

  “I didn’t want to see him. I was scared, when you didn’t come. I thought—”

  “What? What did you think?”

  “That he, he done something to you.”

  “Shhh,” I whispered, touching his cheek. The dog nipped behind, crashing through brush as we struggled against the wind. It would’ve helped if he’d been on a lead, pulling us. Though taking the path to the spit felt like waking someone or something best left asleep. I couldn’t think about what might be waiting, but with the trees bowing and whipping we couldn’t stay in the woods.

  I’m not sure what I expected to find when we got there.

  The tide had come up, pushing cakes of ice against the rocks and slicking everything with spray. Twice Sonny almost lost his boots and by the time we made it to the house our clothes were damp. The sea foamed through cracks in the breakwater, fingers of it pulling at the edges of the yard. But, thank God—yes, there was a God—the house was as I’d left it, the kitchen light blazing, but otherwise cold as a tomb. Sonny balked in the porch, whispering, “He’s here, isn’t he.”

  “Sonny. Alex. Alex Jackson.” I put my hands on his shoulders, drawing him close. But he strained away, blinking; studying the initials, dates, scratched in the doorframe. A.P. ’19-’48, G.S. ’49-’85, H.G. ’86-’88.

  “When I got home I seen him in the lantern. That’s how come I took off. Didn’t wanta talk to him, I just—”

  “But you said he wasn’t here. Sonny? Shhh,” I whispered, trying to keep calm. It was as if something had grabbed hold of both of us and wouldn’t let go.

  “Mom?” His voice was faint, almost a whine against the sloshing surf. “I just want to go home.”

  The wind was like a subway train, a howling shriek through a tunnel. The house groaned around us, as if being pushed. You could hear the waves crashing. I locked the door and pulled him upstairs. It seemed cozier up there, somehow. His knapsack sat on the floor, his lunch half eaten. I’d had nothing since breakfast. We split the remains of his peanut butter sandwich, then got into his narrow bed, the two of us in our coats. For an instant the air seemed to change, charged by the distant shudder of engines, but the sound was swallowed by the wind. “This is silly. I could go down and make a fire.”

  But Sonny caught my arm. “Tell me a story,” he said. “From when I was a kid.”

  “You still are,” I whispered back.

  His weight against me, he closed his eyes and waited. “When you were a baby,” I started, “your dad … Well, you hated going to sleep; you’d yell at bedtime. Don’t you remember?”

  The window pulsed, the glass pushing in, then something creaked and the light blinked. He went still.

  “You’d scream bloody murder when your father and I ...”

  “What?”

  “Hm?”

  “When you what?”

  Above the roaring surf and that screaming wind, I imagined plundering engines: rotors.

  “What is it?” He pinched me.

  “Nothing.” I put my finger to his lips as if he was tiny. “Go to sleep.”

  “Mom?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Can people read other people’s minds? Derek seen this guy on TV.”

  “Mmm.” I stared at the ceiling as the wind made a ripping sound. �
��Can you read mine?”

  “I dunno.” He shifted, hooking his arm through mine, nudging me to the edge. His face was a soft moon. “Wish I could read Dad’s right now.”

  The thundering outside got louder. A container ship, it had to be.

  “Can you read Hugh-the-arsehole’s mind?” he said.

  “Stop it.” I shook him gently. “Go to sleep.”

  “Can you?”

  “Oh, Sonny. If I could’ve ...”

  “Well,” he burrowed close, “that’s real useful.” He sighed, and it crashed down around me, the weight of my blindness. My stupidity. The pair of us squeezed into this mouldering little bed in a place that should’ve been condemned. I could barely open my eyes to the rest, the truth like needles.

  The light overhead blinked again, went out completely for a few seconds, then came back on. Sonny shut his eyes. Before long his breathing grew softer.

  What sleep I got was fitful, that feverish, half-awake state where every fear is amplified, every creak a footstep. Perhaps I dreamt, or merely imagined, Hugh coming in and stoking the stove, and climbing the stairs to find us. Then I pictured him in the lantern, as if I were a hovering gull; he was slowly, methodically draining the mercury from the trough, straining it, then pouring it back, grinning as the lens resumed its revolution. In my mind’s eye the whites of his eyes were quicksilver, a mirror of the sky.

  I came to, with the feeling that his lips had brushed mine, a chill so real I trembled. The light in the room had gone out, there was nothing but lashing darkness, not a flicker from the tower. Only Sonny’s breath and the pillow’s musty smell and the dog curled at our feet brought me back. The wind was raving, raving like all the world’s crazies out of control. As I lay there it rocked the house, and with every shriek the waves seemed to slap louder. God knows what the tides were doing. I thought of the woods, spruce bending, snapping; the copper beech in the tea house garden. The house itself like a hollow tree being battered, silenced. Nothing so much as a hum from the fridge below.