Whirl Away

by Russell Wangersky

  Helen was walking quickly once she reached the road, her feet kicking up dust and small stones, her voice echoing off the flat, square faces of the houses. “Before it was St. Peter’s, it was just called The Green, and it was that for years and years. Even in a dry year when there’s no rain for weeks and the hills go all brown, the valley stays green, see? The river gets low, but it never stops draining—and there are peat bogs up there for miles, just a big sponge sending water down to The Green all summer long. There’s pasture here when everything else up and down the coast is dead and dry. But you know how it is: eventually a priest got posted down here on the shore who thought that saints’ names were better. When it comes to religion, people are always willing to do what they’re told.”

  Helen turning, stopping in her tracks, a small pale cloud of dust lifting up from her last few steps and blowing away on the light wind. “There have been people here for 180 years, you know. There used to be more people, sure, but 180 years? That’s something. Fishing the whole time, when there were fish. Same families, same work.”

  At the last house before the beach, there were starlings nesting at the joint where the roof met the walls, tufts of sticks and straw visible around a hole in the clapboard facing. Occasionally, a sharp yellow beak and a black, glassy inspecting eye peered out, and then were pulled back out of sight almost immediately, like a curious neighbour pulling back a curtain. At one end the shingles were torn completely away, showing the boards of the roof, worn grey like the ribs of some large dead animal.

  “My Patrick fished his whole life from here, out on the water almost every day all summer long, but for me it was a lot quieter. I’d wait for the boat to come back in, and when they were bigger, the boys went with him, until they moved away. Hard, steady work, and no money in it either. When there was fish, there was no price for it. When there was a price, there wasn’t any fish. But you’re not here to hear about that, I know. And we’re almost there anyway.”

  The road curved slightly and ended at a concrete-deck wharf with yellow-painted four-by-fours all around the lip. There were tire marks on the rough concrete, from either a car pulling away fast or some sudden-braking game of ocean Truth or Dare. Helen stopped and pointed, her lips tightly pursed. “They came down right here, down to the wharf, just last Saturday. There’s no boats here anymore, not full time, but that doesn’t stop the government from coming down and fixing the wharf every year anyway.

  “Kids come down here in the evening all the time in the summer, driving down from Placentia or St. Bride’s, and you don’t want to know the kinds of things they do in their cars. I mean, I’m sure you know, but you probably don’t want to be seeing it right there in public any more than I do. One moment there’s two people in the front seat, and then there’s only one, and it’s not hard for anyone to figure out the kinds of things that are going on.”

  A hard, quick frown crossed her face, disapproval cast in flesh. “And I pick up more bottles—liquor bottles, beer bottles, and cans too. Not out of the ordinary to have someone out there five nights or so out of the week when the weather’s good, and sometimes you hear their music all over the valley—and believe me, it wouldn’t be worth your while to go down and ask them to keep it down. Ask Millie about that if you get the chance—they’ll say things you can’t even imagine.”

  She stopped again. “Right here. That Saturday, they drove right out onto the wharf, the two of them, and he left the headlights on when he got out. It was eleven, but there was still a bit of light, no moon. And couples, you know, they fight sometimes, and they were just kids, really. They were arguing out at the end there, and until I got pretty close, I could really only see their legs in the lights. And she turned her back on him and he just put his hands in the small of her back and gave her a shove—just like this, just a little shove, but at the same time you could tell he meant to do it—and she kind of tripped over the edge and went in the water. And she came up angry, like it was a really bad joke or something, shrieking at him.”

  Helen stood beside the shed just before the wharf, showing how she had held herself flat against the side of the building and peered out around the corner, only a fraction of her face showing. In front of the shed, torn piles of net and a long rectangular pile of lobster pots, drying, dead sea urchins still clinging to the wooded frames and smelling like rot and iodine.

  Helen looked down at the lobster traps. “He’s not from here. He’s from down the shore, but he works from this wharf for the lobster season. Used to be Patrick’s fishing grounds before he died.” She looked back towards the wharf. “Saturday, I wasn’t far away, just here by the shed. Behind the shed so they couldn’t see me, not that they were looking or anything, and it was dark anyway, and he bent over at first when she got on the ladder and climbed back up, like he was trying to help her out of the water, but then he just stood up straight and he kicked her. Kicked her right in the face, and she landed on her back, down in the water again, and it was like she was all loose. It was clear she was hurt.”

  Wind came down off the high ground then and wound close around Helen like an exhaled breath, bringing with it the smell of the ground juniper and the blueberries, the waxy richness of the rhodora. All around, things were moving, plants nodding, the new candles on the fir trees still fresh enough to flex up and down in the wind. On the horizon, the clouds continued their march, darkening.

  “Then he got in the car and backed straight off the wharf, swung it around here where the road’s wide and headed back for the highway,” Helen said, and she was shaking her head while she said it. “I don’t think he saw me, but the headlights caught in my eyes, and I couldn’t see a thing then, couldn’t tell you what kind of car it was or anything, not that I know that much about cars. And he was up the road and gone, just gone, tires spitting rocks back behind the car, and I couldn’t even guess to tell you where he went after that, except that he turned towards St. Bride’s, not Placentia.

  “And I remember that as soon as the car was gone, I had the strangest feeling that I had gone deaf, as if after the noise of the tires squealing off the wharf I’d never be able to hear again. But then I realized that I could hear the waves. You forget about the waves—you hear them so much that you forget they’re even there. But that’s all I heard. I thought she might be shouting or something, but she wasn’t. I know he hit her hard, the kind of thing when you almost feel it yourself, like your body knows what it would feel like.

  “I went down to the end of the wharf and called out, but there was no sign of her, not a word or a shout or anything, and with the car gone, the water was as black as ink. I even went down along the beach, down there, because she would have drifted that way. There’s a current right across the face of the wharf, and you have to watch it coming in and aim your bow as if you’re trying to hit the right-hand side square on.”

  Helen pulled her shoulders back and shivered, as if the wind had turned cold and was coming in off the water. “I said to Millie we should call the RCMP right away, but she didn’t say a word. I don’t agree with that, but she has her own point of view. Always has. And we don’t count on police much down here. We settle most things ourselves. Mike Slip and my husband disagreed about the bottom corner of our land, and things were bad for a few years, until they settled it themselves. But this is different.”

  Then back inside, the blue house this time, Helen’s own house. “I’ve spent my entire married life in this house,” she said, spreading her arms out as she said it. “My entire life. Patrick died here in the front room, and by the end I was exhausted from trying to help him breathe. I know it doesn’t make any sense, but that’s what you do: I would hear him rattling away down here, the cancer deep in his chest and him struggling, and it was like I timed every single one of my own breaths to be in line with his, as if I could help pull air into him. And he passed right here on the couch. It was summer then too, and the first thing that I heard was the birds, those little juncos out there, peeping. The only reason
I could hear them was because I couldn’t hear him anymore. He’s in a grave up by Great Barrisway, his whole family up in there, and I suppose that’s where they’ll put me too, when my time comes.”

  The living room was small and close, a black cast iron stove squatting in the centre of the room, cold. “There was a time when that was the only heat, that and the oil stove in the kitchen, before we got the electric. I still have the oil stove—I just don’t think the other stoves cook things as well. I haven’t anything to offer on such short notice. I was hoping Millie would have some bread, you go over and she can’t help but share, and I take advantage of that, I know I do.”

  Helen sitting down then on the couch, the small living room dark and smelling of damp. “He brought this couch in from the truck on his own back. He was strong like that, strong and stubborn too. You couldn’t tell him anything. When we were first married, I thought I would change him, smooth him out a bit around the edges. But it always ran right off him like he wasn’t paying attention at all. I had my own ideas, but a place can drag you down. ‘Your own little world,’ that’s what Patrick used to say to me. ‘You’re just living in your own little world.’ Millie isn’t any better. Once, she said, ‘You’ve got your head up there in a cloud, and I ain’t saying a cloud of what.’ And I suppose I did, making up in my own head the way things were supposed to be—that Patrick was a good man in a rough skin, heading out there every day. But it’s important to keep that idea—it keeps you safe.” She stared. “You’ve got to keep a piece of yourself there, you know. A shiny, safe little bit. Like a place you can go away into in your head.”

  Helen looked out through the curtains as if something moving on the other side of the glass had caught her attention. But nothing changed, the outdoors as still as a picture—each stalk of grass, each frond, suddenly still.

  “That’s something they don’t teach you in any school. The trick is that you don’t let go of that last little bit. That wary bit. You keep just a little piece of your guard up, if you’re smart, just keep that little bit back inside you, and it will keep you safe.

  “They don’t do it now, you know, they’re down on the wharf with their boyfriends and they don’t stop to think that you always have to have a little part of yourself outside looking in. Just in case. You split something off to just keep watching. I’ve always been good at that.

  “I remember I said something to Patrick once, it wasn’t important, I can hardly think of what it was now, but he was moving logs in the stove, the little door open and the orange flames licking all around, and he had the poker in his hand, the short iron one, and the watching part of me saw his hand, just the way his fingers were around the handle, and all at once I knew. I knew because I was sensible enough to be watching, and really, I only had to take a couple of steps away—just enough space so he would think for a moment and change his mind before he actually got all the way over to me. You don’t give all of yourself ever, that’s for books, because you have to be ready. Have to know when to get out of reach, far enough away from the world that no one can touch you.”

  Helen’s eyes were black then in the dark of the living room, her body perched on the edge of the couch like a bird about to take flight, her hands in her lap and busy with each other. The living room was cooler than outdoors, the air slightly thick with an unmoving humidity.

  “You get better and better at it as you get older—put the walls up, and don’t let anybody shift them.

  “I thought I would find her the next day down by the rocks at the far end of the beach, but I didn’t. That’s where she should have been, unless the tide was strong and she got swept out around the point on that first night. I know I thought about finding her there where the beach goes away all to gravel, her hair spread out all around her head like a fan. I would have called you right away then.”

  Helen gave a brief, harsh snort. “Millie asked me if maybe I was making it all up in my head, she says I jump to conclusions sometimes, and beside, she hadn’t heard anything. She claims a mouse couldn’t come down the road without waking her up, she sleeps so lightly. But half the time when there are kids on the wharf she says she doesn’t hear anything, and she’s up above it all, anyway. Made me doubt myself enough to make me go down on the wharf to look at the tire tracks. I even got right down on my hands and knees and smelled them, just to see if they were fresh, but I couldn’t tell.

  “I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to get to a phone and call you, but I don’t think it would have made any difference. Millie probably wouldn’t have called—I know she didn’t want me to. She’s a stupid woman, really, although I do love her dearly. She won’t put things together even when they’re right there in front of her face. She leaves things out to suit herself, and she just runs away when there’s something she doesn’t want to talk about. She says I live in my own world? It’s nothing she doesn’t do, but ten times worse.”

  Helen got back up from the couch, smoothing her dress down over her knees, looking around the room. “It wouldn’t hurt for you to have one last look around the beach. I’ll certainly walk down there with you, show you the top end where the current comes in close to shore. The place she should have wound up, all things considered.”

  Helen was quiet for a moment, then headed for the door. “Did you know my husband, officer? You look like my husband. He was from Great Barrisway. He was a handsome man, like you.”

  Helen looked around, blinking in the bright sunlight as she stepped off the porch and down the three sagging steps to the path. A pair of crows were calling back and forth across the valley, their ragged croaks hanging in the air.

  “I don’t know where Millie is—I don’t have any idea where that woman might have got to. I suppose she’ll talk to you. Maybe she won’t. I don’t think that she could have gone that far—she has to be around here somewhere.”

  She reached the beach, the great heaped stones of the barrisway, tons of rock brought in by the winter waves and thrown up in a long drift from one end of the cove to the other. Helen moved slowly, carefully, her feet slipping sideways on the round beach stones, heading for where the stones were smaller and the beach was flatter.

  The black from the car tires, sharp-edged like ink on the concrete. The two black crows, high up in the valley, watching the woman as she walked. Helen completely alone.

  NO HARM, NO FOUL

  L ISTEN, I’ve never minded driving, and I’ve never minded company, either. I mean, if I don’t have anyone riding with me, I’ll even talk to myself, that’s how much I like to have someone to talk to. Once, I was on that big wide toll road across Nova Scotia, heading for Prince Edward Island—that one that lets you miss the dangerous stuff at Folly Lake. I mean, there aren’t any crossroads coming in, just trees as far as you can see, and most of them are tree-farmed black spruce, stretching out away from you in the straight lines they were all planted in—and I found myself answering my own questions, except I was answering them in a fake Scottish accent.

  A guy in a big Crown Vic rolled by me, one wheel on the yellow and then the other way out next to the gravel on the other side, swinging back and forth like he’s about to lose it all and roll into the ditch. Ten o’clock in the morning and he might have been loaded, for all I know. You see it all, you drive long enough.

  And I said out loud, “Big car like that, and he has to be all over the road with it. He’s not a very good driver, is he?”

  “Nae, he isn’t, laddie,” I answered. “Don’t ken how to merge or nowt.”

  All right, it sounds pretty stupid—and it was a pretty bad fake Scottish accent, too. But you’ve got to pass the time—and time, I’ve got a lot of that.

  I’ve got a lot of all kinds of other things too. A lot of car, a lot of attitude, a big old sense of humour. A pretty big wallet back behind me. A fair amount of gut out there in front of me, too.

  I sell. That’s what I do. I’ve always sold, one way or another. They call me a “manufacturer’s agent,” but the truth is
, what I’m really supposed to do is to get a product, any product, into someone’s hands and make them think they absolutely have to have it. Right now, it’s energy drinks—whatever the latest thing is, guarana, enough caffeine to straighten curly hair, you name it. Ten tablespoons of sugar hidden in a liquid thick enough to stand a spoon up in. In the past, it’s been fruit juices, snack food, and once, for a while, even agricultural machinery. Agricultural machinery—I was a fish out of water with that stuff, even if I did manage to unload some once in a while. The money was good when you sold something—even three percent is a lot when you’re selling something in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, just ask a realtor—but sales were few and far between. Ever buy a combine? Exactly.

  Back in Halifax, I’ve got a little apartment in a big building full of neighbours I’ve never met, satellite television for company, and one goldfish who seems to be impossible to kill. I just give it as much of the food as I think it will take until I can get back again, and when I do get back, it always seems to have managed to stay alive. And if he—or she, I guess—dies, well, goldfish all look the same, and if you’ve given them all the name Fish anyway, they’re pretty much interchangeable.

  I hang the suit bag by the side door, back passenger side, enough clothes until I think I’ll be back, and I take that into the motel with me every night, unless I want to advertise that I want someone to bash in my window and take whatever I’ve got. I bring the suitcase in and the samples too. Some people tell you they’d love to be travelling all the time, but a long time ago in a motel outside Corner Brook, Newfoundland, I spent most of the night listening to a bathroom tap dripping and had a little epiphany. There’s a word for you. And here’s what I mean: hotel rooms are all pretty much the same, just different places on a scale, and there isn’t much you can call romance even in the good ones.