The Day the Falls Stood Still

by Cathy Marie Buchanan

  “But how can that be?” Jesse once asked. “Dogs breathe, too.”

  “There was an airhole in the barrel and the terrier blocked it with its snout.”

  “No one can know that,” Jesse said, a dismissive pout coming to his lips.

  “The dog’s snout was a pulpy mess from being pressed up against the hole,” Tom said.

  “Was the dog hurt?” Francis asked, worry on his brow.

  “His snout healed up, lickety-split.”

  “Not such a good idea, bringing a dog,” Jesse said.

  “Not such a good idea, shooting the rapids,” Tom said.

  I slip the tomato I am holding into the pocket of my apron and say to Tom, “Even if she hadn’t suffocated, I don’t think Jesse should be involved.”

  “Someone should have pulled her barrel out,” Tom says. Jesse is crouching within earshot, inspecting the garden, though it is rivers and rapids and water that interest him, not vegetables and soil. I ought to have sent him away, and now it is too late. I put my index finger to my lips, gesturing for Tom to shush. I take him by the shirtsleeve and lead him around the corner of the house. “You’ve always thought the stunters were fools,” I say. “It doesn’t mean they deserve to die.”

  “You think Muddy will need help?”

  “If he gets sucked into the whirlpool, yes.”

  “Not with Jesse,” I say. “There’ll be things he could learn.”

  “He’ll come away thinking of Muddy as a hero, like everyone else.”

  “We’ve talked about stunters,” he says. “He knows what I think.”

  “It’ll confuse him, you helping out.” He rocks back on his heels a moment, looking pensive. “All right,” he says. “You’re right. Not Jesse.”

  When I turn back to the garden, I nearly walk into Jesse, who has crept around the corner of the house. He raises his fists, begins pummeling my ribs. “I’m going,” he says. “I’m going. I’m going. I’m going.”

  Tom scoops him up and throws him over his shoulder, and Jesse says, “Tell her I can go,” and struggles to free himself. Tom is up the back stoop in a single step. Then, through the open kitchen window, I hear three thwacks and stifled sniffling and Tom saying, “Your mother is right, and if you treat her like that again, you won’t fish for a month.”

  At supper Jesse is sullen, even when Tom says, “I’ve got something to show you, Jesse,” and produces a piece of paper from his shirt pocket.

  REINSTATE NIAGARA FALLS PARK COMMISSION’S MANDATE

  * * *

  PRESERVE

  NIAGARA FALLS

  In 1887 the Ontario legislature passed the Niagara Falls Park Act, vesting the Niagara Falls Park Commission with wide powers to restore and preserve the area around Niagara Falls. Despite the mandate, recent years have seen the Commission authorize unprecedented hydroelectric development with little concern for the harm done to the Niagara River and its environs. With the appointment of Philip William Ellis, former chairman of the Toronto Hydro-Electric Commission and longtime advocate of hydroelectric development at Niagara Falls, as chair of the Commission, all pretense of efficacy in fulfilling its preservation mandate has been lost.

  * * *

  * * *

  WRITE TO

  your Member of Provincial Parliament

  and Premier Ferguson.

  Insist on a renewed commitment

  to the preservation of Niagara Falls

  by the Niagara Falls Park Commission.

  * * *

  * * *

  Friends of Niagara, c/o Mr. J. H. Bennett, River Rd., Niagara Falls, Ontario

  “There’ll be five hundred copies ready the week after Labor Day,” Tom says, “all printed with the editorial from the newspaper on the back.”

  “It’s wonderful,” I say, patting his hand.

  He puts the circular in front of Jesse and goes over the gist of it with him. Jesse does his best to feign indifference, though his gaze drops several times to the circular. “We’ll be handing them out, and we’ve come up with a list of influential men and newspaper editors who’ll be getting one in the post along with a personalized letter.”

  I pick up the circular. “It’s a start.”

  “Mr. Bennett says that back in 1880, when folks were first lobbying for what turned out to be the Niagara Falls Park Act in Canada and the Act to Preserve the Scenery of the Falls of Niagara in the U.S., there was a petition signed by seven hundred men. It was addressed to both governments, and the list included members of parliament and Supreme Court justices and cabinet ministers and university presidents and bigwig businessmen like Molson and Redpath and Massey, and a long list of literary types—Emerson, Longfellow, Ruskin, a bunch of others I bet you’d know. Even the vice president of the United States signed his name.”

  Early morning on Labor Day, I feel Tom’s lips on my cheek. Even though Muddy’s run through the rapids is set for ten o’clock, we had agreed he would leave early, before Jesse was up. I roll onto my back and smile up at him. He takes my hand and gives it a squeeze, and then he is gone. I lie awake a long while, wondering exactly how far Tom would have gone to get Maud Willard’s barrel out of the whirlpool. He had gone in after Isabel, already drowned. He was wet all the way through when he came to fetch me from Glenview. And no one can toss a grappling hook to the middle of the whirlpool, not even him. It has got to be three hundred yards across. What gamble would he make for Muddy Sloane, circling in the whirlpool, asking himself just how long his oxygen will hold out?

  A while later I hear the boys stir. For three days, Jesse has moped around the house, with only the occasional slipup, once laughing at some funny thing I said, and another time returning my embrace before remembering I was the enemy. Such resolve seems out of place in a child his age, and I have had moments of worry, when I stop whatever it is I am doing and ask myself if I have made a mistake. Tom says it is only that he is reminded of what he will miss at every turn; there are broadsheets pasted up all over Niagara Falls, and “Muddy Sloane” is on the lips of every boy in town.

  But this morning Jesse flies down the stairs and delivers the bacon and toast to the kitchen table without being asked. He steps out onto the back stoop when his breakfast is done and looks to the west, then comes back into the kitchen and cheerfully says, “It’s not going to rain and there’s only a bit of wind, so the river won’t be all that wild.” He helps me wash up, chatting amiably as he often does about lures and bait and fishing holes.

  I am upstairs opening windows and gathering coverlets to air on the clothesline when the strangeness of his behavior hits me full force. I call out, “Jesse,” and, when there is no answer, I feel panic rise. I move to the top of the stairs and call out again. Still, there is no reply. I rush down the stairs, strewing bedding as I go.

  Francis is in the kitchen, on top of the table, startled by my sudden appearance. His fingers are poised over the sugar bowl. “Where’s Jesse?” I say.

  “Outside,” he says, snatching his fingers away from the bowl.

  “Outside where?” My voice is stern, and he looks as though he could cry.

  “He went to see Muddy.”

  “What?”

  “Not with Daddy,” he says, hopefully, as though that might make everything all right. “Tell me what he said.”

  “He went to see the barrel.”

  “When did he go?”

  “Today,” he says, pleased with himself. We have been working on the concepts of yesterday, today, and tomorrow for quite some time.

  I glance at the clock in the hallway and see it is ten minutes before ten o’clock. A barrel will make it from the Maid of the Mist landing through the rapids to the whirlpool in only a few minutes if it stays clear of all the boulders and eddies along the way. Jesse is likely at the whirlpool, away from Tom, who will be at the landing, preparing to send Muddy off.

  From the kitchen window, I can see Mrs. Mancuso on her knees in the garden, digging up the first of her potatoes. I scoop Francis up
and dash across the empty lot between our houses. “Jesse went to the whirlpool by himself,” I say.

  She begins to cross herself but thinks better of it and says, “There is crowd today.” She takes Francis from me with a single stout arm and with the other shoos me away. “You, go,” she says.

  A few minutes later I am loping along River Road, avoiding the curious stares of the spectators gathered along the rim of the gorge. At Colt’s Point, I take a moment to scan the stone beach far below. As Mrs. Mancuso predicted, there is a small crowd, locals who know how to access the passable parts of the riverbank. A neighbor might even be watching Jesse. And he knows to be careful. He has heard the stories: Captain Matthew Webb. Robert Flack. Maud Willard. Charles Stephens. He has seen the mangled bodies in the grappling hooks.

  As I scramble down the ties of the old incline railway, my beating heart echoing in my ears, familiarity sweeps through me. The panic and pounding are the same, as is the derelict track. The only difference is the other time I was escaping the whirlpool after finding Isabel’s lifeless body there. And now I am stumbling forward, into the gorge, toward endlessly swirling water, rather than out.

  Eventually, I do not catch myself. I fall to my hands and knees, and pain shoots though my wrist. It is Tom’s fault Jesse craves the river. I push myself up and wince as my wrist gives out. It is my fault, too, for not keeping a closer watch.

  When I am nearly to the stone beach, I see a barrel, like a black coffin, trapped in the whirlpool, circling round and round, and I guess Tom is not far behind, making his way along the shoreline to the whirlpool. I see a man hurl a grappling hook. The throw is useless, pointless; the barrel is at least a hundred yards from the shore. The beach is shaped like a crescent, and at its downriver point, to my horror, I see Jesse stripped to his underwear and running headlong into the whirlpool. There is a rope tied around his waist and a second rope clenched in his fist. A moment later I notice two men on the beach, one letting out the rope tied to Jesse’s waist, the other letting out the rope held in Jesse’s fist. I try to call out, but his name is lodged in my throat.

  For a moment the crowd stands in silent stupor, all but me. I am racing across the beach, tripping over stones, knocking into the elbows of the men in my path. Jesse is swimming with the current and takes several strong strokes, and someone begins to clap. Others join in, and soon enough someone calls out, “Swim. Swim.” How I despise each and every onlooker, the men and women who come to watch, the people for whom a brush with death will mean a morning well spent.

  I have almost reached the two men letting out the ropes when I overhear the gossip making its way through the crowd: “It’s the Cole boy, the riverman’s son.”

  “Pull him in,” I call out. “Pull him in.”

  The men with the ropes glance at each other, uncertain.

  “Pull him in,” I say. “I’m his mother. Pull him in or I’ll do it myself.”

  The older man, with a gray, bushy mustache, holds his rope out to me. “The boy said he’d give us a signal. He said if we pulled against the current, he’d be crushed.”

  “He’s a child,” I say.

  “Look, lady,” the younger man says, “the kid said he was going in whether we helped or not. He was a good ten feet from shore before we touched the ropes.”

  I sink to my knees, my torn, stained skirt puffed up around me, a billowing pillow ring.

  “You want us to haul him in?”

  I want Tom. Tom would know what to do. But he has yet to arrive.

  I look across the whirlpool, to the end of the stone beach opposite me, and there he is, coming out of the woods. I watch him take in the situation in a single sweep. In an instant he is sprinting toward me, toward the ropes connected to Jesse. He is beautiful as he runs, his fists clenched, his tanned arms ripping through air, his green eyes flashing will.

  I glance to Jesse, a few yards from the barrel, his arms tugging the water alongside him, his head lifting for breath every four or five strokes. “Tom will know what to do,” I say.

  “Tom Cole? The riverman?”

  “Yes.”

  Just as Jesse moves within an arm’s length of the barrel on the far side of the pool, Tom reaches the ropes. He grabs the rope tied around Jesse’s waist and lets out more slack. He begins to speak in a low, steady voice, words Jesse cannot possibly hear. “Wait. Easy.” The barrel heaves to a flatter bit of water. “Now.” Jesse somehow manages to thread the rope that was in his fist through a grip on the outside of the barrel. “Clear out. Clear out.” He uses his legs to push off the tossing barrel as best he can. Then he pauses, treading, water crashing over his head. “Swim,” I say. But Tom only continues his hushed commands. “Nothing fancy, Jesse. A simple noose will do.” It is a knot Jesse can tie in his sleep, a knot Tom taught him to make. “Haul it in,” he says to the man holding the rope now tied to the barrel.

  So far Tom has only let out rope as Jesse progressed away from the shore where we are on the opposite side of the whirlpool. Jesse was swimming with the current. But now he seems intent on the beach at the far point of the crescent, and, though his arms paddle furiously, he is losing ground to the current, being dragged away from the shore toward the mouth of the whirlpool.

  “Kick,” Tom says in his low, steady voice. And then a moment later, he is yelling, “Kick, Jesse. God damn it. Kick,” and I taste bile in my throat. But when I look Tom is taking up rope, which means Jesse is on his way toward us, and for a moment I do not understand the panic in Tom’s voice.

  There is a crook in the Niagara River, an elbow of sorts. At the crook, water hurtling through the gorge is wrenched from its straight path and forced to circle counterclockwise, forming the whirlpool. The pool cannot accommodate an endless river. And so at its mouth, the exiting water is forced down, under the incoming flow. I have watched Tom throw in logs. I have watched them disappear. It is here, at the juncture of the incoming and exiting flows, that the water can strike a blow like a sledgehammer. It is here Captain Matthew Webb was last seen alive. It is here Jesse could be sucked from my sight.

  Tom continues to pull in rope but is struggling to keep up with the slack as Jesse hurtles toward the mouth of the whirlpool.

  I keep my eyes fixed on Jesse, as though my gaze is a lifeline of sorts. The crowd behind me lets out a cheer, and I search for the improvement in his situation that I missed. But it is only that the lid has been pried from the barrel, and that Muddy Sloane has stood up from crouching and tipped his cap to the crowd. At least that is what I surmise; I refuse to take my gaze from Jesse. Oh, if only Muddy Sloane were still circling endlessly in his barrel. If only Jesse were watching from the shore.

  The oxygen in a barrel is sufficient for at least an hour or two. It is something Tom knows, something he might have told Jesse at the Maid of the Mist landing had I let him go. Or maybe it is something he and Jesse had discussed at great length, something Jesse knew even as he ran headlong into the pool. Like Tom, who chose not to wait for the coast guard at Fort Niagara to send new lines. Like Tom, who dangled needlessly above the upper rapids in the black of night. The scow was firmly lodged, he said. It would stay put in the upper rapids until the hull rusted through.

  My last glimpse of Jesse, before he is pulled from sight, is the white underside of his foot.

  I want to believe in the magic of cauls. I want to look at Tom’s face and see him read his river and know Jesse will be pushed to the surface and floated to shore. But I am afraid to look.

  Instead I glimpse his hands, which are letting out rope and more rope.

  “Pull him in,” I say.

  “Not against the current. Not yet.”

  I force my gaze upward, from Tom’s shoes to his chest. I glimpse his chin and see that he is counting. His chin is bobbing slightly, down, then up again.

  “How long?” I say.

  “I’ll give him a couple of minutes.”

  Captain Matthew Webb’s body did not surface for four days. Still, I begin counti
ng as well.

  There are ten plaques on Isabel’s aluminum bracelet, and I twist the bracelet around my wrist in small intervals, using the plaques to mark off the seconds. I slide the bracelet around my wrist six times. Then twelve.

  I have slid the bracelet around my wrist seventeen times when Tom touches my hair. “Believe in me, Bess.”

  I look up at his face, and I see tears in his green river eyes, or maybe it is only sweat. I cannot say for sure because before I can really look, he has abandoned the rope and is off, plunging into water that is thrashing and careening and wild.

  Seconds later someone hollers, and I look in the direction of the voice and after that to the spot a couple of the men on the shore are pointing toward. And then I am taking in the rope Tom left beside me because it is Jesse, not twenty feet from the shore. I look for Tom, who has surely rescued his son from the green depths. But he is nowhere to be seen.

  Jesse is on the stone beach without his underwear, coughing up water, gasping for breath. The skin around his waist is bleeding and raw. I throw my arms around him and try not to crush him. I try to remember he needs air. I push myself away and look into his terror-stricken eyes. Then he begins to sob, his fingers in my hair, pulling me close.

  He sobs, in my arms, his face against my chest. I look past the crown of his head to the whirlpool. Where is Tom? I begin counting, again sliding Isabel’s aluminum bracelet around my wrist.