One Year in Coal Harbor

by Polly Horvath

  “Aw, Bert. Anyhow, Ked, we wanted you to try some pie. We wanted you to order three kinds of pie!”

  “At least!” said Bert.

  “But it looks like everyone’s packing it in. I guess we ought to go too so Miss Bowzer can have a nice visit with that young man who looks like an otter,” said Evie, and then her eyes darted guiltily to me and she added, “Or not such a nice visit. Usually seeing someone after all those years all you have is an awkward old time, finding you never knew what you saw in the person so long ago. Don’t you think, Bert?”

  “I’ve never had such an experience, I guess, Evie,” said Bert.

  “But you can guess that, right?”

  “That’s what I’d guess,” said Bert firmly, and then got up to pay the bill.

  By now, Mr. Barrista was manning the cash register so people could pay and get out without bothering Miss Bowzer.

  Evie and Ked and I were heading for the door when this old guy everyone calls the seer grabbed Ked by the sleeve and pulled him over to his booth. Ked didn’t know yet that you don’t want to get corralled by the seer.

  The seer is an old fisherman who sits in The Girl on the Red Swing all day and drinks coffee and mutters to himself. Once when I was helping out, Miss Bowzer wanted me to pour him more coffee, but I admitted that he scared me. He’d been sitting there as many years as I could remember, just getting older and shaggier and weirder. If he can, he engages you in conversation about his dreams. To hear him tell it, he dreams every night about everyone in town. He thinks the dreamtown is real and that it’s important we all know what he sees us doing there. The first time he told me about this, I told Miss Bowzer I thought he was crazy and she said, “Oh, he’s just a little addled after all those years alone at sea. The ones who go out alone for long days and nights, they get funny in the end.”

  “My dad fishes alone!” I said.

  “He’s got you and your mom, for heaven’s sake. Harry’s got no one at all. That’s probably why he’s invented this whole dreamtown. He doesn’t see folks much in his real life. But in his dreams he’s got a life full of everyone’s comings and goings to keep track of. And it don’t hurt no one to listen to what he sees. You know we none of us can stay entertained with just our own life. We gotta be kept up to date with a bunch of different lives and what’s happening in them. That’s why TV’s so popular, I guess. But who’s Harry got to keep track of? No one. So he keeps track of us all. Everyone feels better with a job and I guess he thinks that’s his. And if people don’t listen, he never bothers them twice.”

  That was more or less true but the part she left out was that when people politely but firmly stopped the seer’s rambling dream narratives, his eyes followed them the rest of the time they were there, watching them eat, like he knew stuff they didn’t and felt sorry for them, not being able to see what was coming. Well, if that didn’t give you the willies I don’t know what would. And who wants to know their oncoming sorrows? Even if they’re only imagined, haven’t you got enough to deal with in the here and now? But there he was telling Ked stuff, and Ked seemed riveted.

  I went to wait with Evie and Bert, who were in the alcove next to the gumball machine.

  “Gumball?” asked Bert as I approached. He handed me a nickel and one for Ked, too. But I hung on to Ked’s nickel, since putting it in, turning the knob and waiting to see what color you got was the best part. The gum itself only had flavor for about three minutes.

  “Look at that boy!” said Evie. “He’s listening so politely to Harry rambling on.”

  “He’s such a nice boy,” said Bert. “You can tell that straight off.”

  “And not frightened like some by the hair.”

  The seer has a matted beard and mustache and long matted tangled hair. He looks a little like a dog that hasn’t been groomed.

  I could see the seer going on and on and Ked seemed frozen. It began to occur to me that Ked wasn’t being polite so much as he simply wasn’t capable of moving on. This, I thought, was an unexpected bonanza for the seer. Someone he could corral who didn’t know how to disengage himself.

  “Someone better rescue him,” I said to Bert and Evie.

  So Bert went over and told the seer we had to go.

  I gave Ked the nickel for his gumball. He looked a little embarrassed and self-conscious but he got the gumball as it seemed to be expected of him and then we ran out to the car in the pouring rain. Dripping in the backseat and trying to keep our forming puddles separate, we stared ahead into the foggy downpour.

  “Now, Ked,” said Evie. “You don’t have to have anything to do with that man in there. He’s a nice harmless old guy but he’s kind of wrong in the head, if you know what I mean. Next time just say good night and move on.”

  “I didn’t know,” said Ked.

  “We’re not blaming you, we just want you to know,” said Evie.

  “What did he tell you?” I asked, unable to restrain myself.

  “He said to tell you he saw you sitting on a platform in his dream last night. And you were all alone. He said to tell you it was important.”

  “Me? Oh, that’s so creepy,” I said. “And he thinks everything he dreams is important.”

  “He don’t know nothing, darling,” said Evie. “Not more than the rest of us. He gets lonely. Most people just ignore him.”

  “I try to buy him a cup of coffee or lunch now and then,” said Bert. “He don’t have much and he’s too proud to sit here all day without paying for something to eat.”

  “Even though Miss Bowzer would let him,” said Evie. “Because she’s got a good heart that way. He knew her dad, who was a fisherman too. But he won’t take her charity. He tells people their futures or what he sees them doing in the dreamtown, in exchange for a meal. Some people listen to him just to make sure he gets fed.”

  “The last time I talked to him he said that people shimmer up over the town like light reflected off water. That’s how he sees everyone so clearly. He watches the reflections,” I said. Even though I don’t want to hear the seer describe things that probably aren’t true, I do like his idea of everything shimmering above, able to be seen by all of us if we look. He might have been a poet if he’d been a little more on planet Earth and a little less crazy. All that shimmering talk reminded me of a Mary Oliver essay where she watches a turtle die. It was my favorite of all the things Miss Connon had given us to read and I had memorized the last bit. “Not at this moment, but soon enough, we are lambs and we are leaves, and we are stars, and the shining, mysterious pond water itself.” So maybe that is what he saw shimmering, our shining mysterious pond water selves. But I didn’t share this because it’s not the type of thing you spout off when you’re in a car with someone you’ve only just met.

  “Well, that’s mostly nonsense talk, that shimmery stuff,” said Bert.

  “It don’t mean nothing unless you want it to mean something. These things never do,” said Evie. “Don’t give it another thought.”

  “He says he sees it all in his dreams. That he sees what happens next. It’d be nice to know what was going to happen next,” said Ked. Then he flushed again, as he seemed to whenever he thought he’d shared something terribly personal. I got the feeling he wasn’t used to being included in normal speculation.

  “Sees it all in his dreams? We all do, honey,” said Evie. “We all see it all in our dreams. It don’t mean it’s true. Now let’s go back to the trailer for some ice cream.”

  So we did, and over the ice cream I shook off the willies a bit. Of course because we were at Evie’s house the ice cream had mini marshmallows in it. They didn’t improve the ice cream but they didn’t hurt it either and I thought that was what you could say about most things. Although I couldn’t quite get to the kernel of that idea, the feeling of it made me happy because it meant in a way you didn’t have to sweat and work so hard to improve things and fix things and you couldn’t much ruin them either. You could change them but that was the most you could do. It kind of
took the pressure off your time on earth. Mini marshmallow theory of life.

  “What did the seer say about you?” I asked Ked, pretending to be busy with a marshmallow.

  “Oh, he didn’t really say anything,” said Ked, but I could tell he was lying. “He told me to tell you about that platform, that’s all.”

  “What does he mean a platform? Like a stage? Or a train platform?”

  “I don’t know,” said Ked. “I didn’t think to ask.”

  “I guess it doesn’t matter because I don’t believe in his dreams anyhow.”

  “I guess I don’t either really,” said Ked, but he looked off and ate his ice cream in such a way that I got the feeling he did. Or at least wanted to. And looking at him, I was curious. Some people you meet and it’s like they’re a door you go through. In and out and that’s that. And sometimes you meet someone and they share everything about themselves, give it up so quickly and fully that you know there’s nothing left to mine for there, it’s all on the surface for you to see. But sometimes you meet someone and it’s as if they’re this whole biosphere and you want to go in and roam around and find out what all is in there—as if it’s so rich and plush a space you’ll never find all the animals living under the ferns. No matter how much you roam and look, there’s always going to be more interesting stuff hidden in the depths, microbes and reptiles and plant life and mammals and things you couldn’t even guess at.

  I finished my ice cream and went home to tell my mom about Dan Sneild coming to town and see if she was worried about him stealing Miss Bowzer from Uncle Jack because let’s face it, Uncle Jack hadn’t put himself in a very solid position.

  “Oh, old boyfriends,” she said, shrugging. “She’s probably more curious about him than anything.”

  But lying in bed that night, I worried.

  Welsh Rabbit

  In a saucepan over medium heat whisk two tablespoons of melted butter with two tablespoons of flour. Add one teaspoon dry mustard and one teaspoon Worcestershire sauce and some salt and pepper. Stir in one half cup of dark beer. When this is smooth, add three quarters of a cup of cream and then two cups of shredded sharp Cheddar cheese. Serve over toast or a waffle. It is especially good with waffles, and if you call it Welsh rabbit you may get to eat the whole thing yourself.

  What Happened on Jackson Road

  THE NEXT MORNING WHILE sitting in class, I wondered how Ked was doing on his first day in his new school. At lunch, Eleanor asked me if I wanted to go to her house later and I gave a vague answer because I wanted to sniff around The Girl on the Red Swing and try to find out why Dan Sneild was in town and how Miss Bowzer felt about it. But I wasn’t sure if Miss Bowzer would be okay with this or consider it an invasion of privacy. I mulled this over during math. When the bell rang I had pretty much decided on Miss Bowzer, not Eleanor, when I saw Ked hanging from the monkey bars on the playground. He was so tall that he had to bend his legs from the knees and even then his knees almost hit the ground. The junior high got out an hour before us so he had obviously made his way over to our school. I wondered if it was to see me or if he was just wandering around checking different places out.

  “Hi, Ked!” I called.

  He let go of the bars and dropped onto his shins.

  Eleanor came outside and raced up to me. “Who’s that?” she asked in my ear. I wiped it. How did she manage to exude so much stickiness without even touching you?

  “It’s Ked,” I said.

  “How do you know him?” asked Eleanor as we walked over.

  “I just met him. He’s new in town,” I said, deliberately not answering her question. I didn’t want to say he was Bert and Evie’s foster child. As soon as people find out someone is a foster child they treat them as if they are criminals or diseased. One thing I learned when my parents disappeared at sea was that it is human nature to secretly suspect that the things that happen to people are really their own fault in some way. That we bring our misfortunes upon ourselves. Even if the bad things that happen to us are clearly just a case of bad luck, there’s a kind of underlying belief that there’s a certain amount of bad luck in the world and it attaches to people who are less deserving. I wanted to protect Ked from this even though it was probably something he already knew.

  “Hi,” I said as we approached him.

  “So, Primrose, are you coming over to my house or what?” asked Eleanor, completely ignoring Ked.

  “No, I think I’ll show Ked around.”

  “Why don’t we take him to the hockey game? He’ll meet guys his own age there, and then you and I can go back to my house,” said Eleanor.

  Ked and I both looked at her blankly for a moment. I realized we were talking about Ked as if he were an inanimate object or a dog. Something to pick up and put down where we chose. But there was something in his air that was a little like that. As if he weren’t quite in the same hemisphere as the people he was with.

  “I could take you to Uncle Jack’s, I guess,” I said.

  Uncle Jack’s house used to belong to the navy and had a gym attached to it. He leaves the house open so that the kids who want to play street hockey after school can get into the gym.

  “If you want to play hockey, there’s always a hockey game there,” said Eleanor, without turning around.

  “I don’t have a stick,” said Ked.

  “Maybe one of the guys has an extra,” said Eleanor. She probably wanted to find an excuse to peek in on Spinky, who played there every day.

  “We could tell Evie and Bert you need a stick,” I suggested.

  “No,” said Ked, and he looked so damply uncomfortable, for a minute I thought Eleanor’s condition was contagious. “I don’t want to start asking them for stuff.”

  “Well, you could buy one, then. They carry them at the hardware store,” said Eleanor.

  “I don’t have any money,” said Ked.

  “Do you play hockey?” asked Eleanor, but she pronounced each word slowly and distinctly as if he spoke a foreign language.

  “I like ice hockey,” said Ked, and then looked embarrassed, the way he always did when he made normal conversation but seemed to think he’d just revealed something daringly personal.

  “This is just street hockey,” I said.

  “What’s the diff, come on,” said Eleanor in her bossy way, and marched ahead toward Uncle Jack’s.

  Neither one of us seemed to have a response to this so we just trailed behind her.

  “Eleanor,” I said to her back. “Do you think your mom would give me her recipe for red Jell-O pistachio salad? I’m writing a youth cookbook.”

  “No,” said Eleanor. “She would like to but that recipe has been in our family for six hundred years. We are sworn never to give it to anyone.”

  “Has Jell-O been around for six hundred years?” whispered Ked as we continued to plod along after Eleanor.

  “Of course not,” I said. “Oh well, even if she gave it to me, she’d probably insist on half the profits from the book or something. I want to write and publish a cookbook for real. We have a lady in town who makes money writing cat books.”

  “There’s a lot of money in cats,” said Ked.

  “Oh, I know,” I said. “Our bookstore/gift shop carries cat pillowcases and pot holders and stuff. You know, if you wanted to edit the cookbook and help collect recipes, I’d share the money with you. I’d rather do it with someone than alone. But not Eleanor.” I whispered this last.

  “I don’t know how to cook,” said Ked.

  “Well, I can teach you,” I said. “Miss Bowzer taught me. I know how to chop like a real chef. I can show you if you want. Then we can try out recipes together.” Finally, I thought, someone my age I can chop with.

  “Hurry up!” barked Eleanor, who had reached Uncle Jack’s and was heading inside.

  We followed Eleanor. There was a game already in play and Ked didn’t even go into the gym but hovered in the doorway with me. Eleanor, confronted with so much running testosterone, lost her bos
siness and just sat on a side bench mooning over Spinky. As though drawn by her magnetic, if psychotic, gaze, Spinky, who was standing on the sidelines, came over and sat beside her.

  “What’s that foster kid doing here?” Spinky asked. Clearly the news had made the rounds of the boys.

  “He’s a foster kid?” asked Eleanor, giving Ked a surreptitious look.

  Both Ked and I acted like we hadn’t heard.

  Then she said, “Gross.”

  “Let’s go,” I said, and walked out, pulling Ked with me. “Spinky’s really an idiot.”

  Ked didn’t say anything.

  “Eleanor, too,” I said when we had gone down the road a bit. “Mostly you’ll find Coal Harbor full of nice people.”

  Ked still didn’t say anything, but what could he say?

  “But there’s still, you know, your usual idiot percentage. Kids used to throw stones at me when my parents went missing. They don’t do that anymore. If people throw stones at you, they’ll have to deal with me.”

  Ked laughed. When I looked surprised he said quickly, “No offense, you just don’t look like much of a threat.”

  It is true that I am of a small, delicate frame, but I am very wiry. “You’d be surprised,” I said with dignity. I remembered how when the kids threw stones at me, Miss Bowzer suggested getting Uncle Jack to kick the crap out of them and although one believes violence solves nothing, it was nevertheless comforting to know that some grown-up was willing to step in and make such a politically incorrect suggestion. This was when I first knew I liked Miss Bowzer. I was a little alarmed to find myself making such rash offers of protection, but it is very hard not to pass on the things that people have done for you that have been helpful.

  “I don’t want to make waves. I can just avoid them,” said Ked.

  We walked a bit in silence. We were heading toward town but I didn’t know where we were going. I wished I could take him someplace peaceful and then I thought of Jackson Road and the viscosity of its stillness. I know some people are unaffected by it but I didn’t think Ked would be. I once biked there with Eleanor but I would not do that again. All she did was chatter relentlessly about Spinky. She managed to dilute the viscosity of Jackson Road with her incessant noise so that by the time we reached its end it was as thin and watery as everywhere else.