One Year in Coal Harbor

by Polly Horvath

  Evie had dressed for the occasion in her highest red heels so it took us a long time to make our way down the graveled forest road that went from the trailer park to the dock. Halfway down the road we heard barking from within the trees and a second later a fierce snarling dog leapt out at us.

  “Oh my goodness!” shrieked Evie, immediately lunging for Ked and trying to throw her little body in front of his huge one.

  Ked looked down at Evie in his sleepy way and smiled.

  “Whose dog could that be, Primrose?” asked Bert.

  “I’ve never seen it before,” I said.

  “It looks hungry,” said Ked, gently moving back in front of Evie.

  “It looks like it hasn’t been fed in a while,” said Evie, pushing her way back in front of Ked.

  “It’s got burrs all over it,” said Ked. “Maybe it’s feral.”

  He moved back in front of Evie, which put him just a couple of feet from the dog.

  “You stay away from it, Ked,” said Evie. “You never know about stray dogs. It could have rabies.”

  But the ferocious dog just started whining in a sad, plaintive way and before Ked thought or any of us could stop him, he had knelt down to give it a piece of mini marshmallow muffin and the ferocious dog made a sad little cry and put its head on Ked’s knee. Despite the fact that the dog was mud and burr covered, Ked picked it up like a baby and held it and fed it the rest of the muffin.

  “We can’t just leave him here, can we?” said Ked when it was determined the dog was a him. “He’s so thin. You can see his ribs.”

  “I guess we can’t leave it, can we, Bert?” said Evie.

  “It don’t look too terribly feral.”

  “Well, it looks a little feral,” said Evie.

  “But it don’t act feral.”

  “It isn’t feral at heart.”

  “Only in appearance.”

  “But good gracious, we got to get to the docks. You can’t keep Primrose’s dad waiting. Bring it along, Ked. Bert and I will take care of it while you fish.”

  Ked carried the dog because he had no collar or leash, and we hurried down to the docks. When we got there, Ked handed him to Bert. The dog looked a little frantic to see Ked going off toward my dad’s boat and for a second Ked looked at him with worried eyes but Bert said, “Come on, Evie, let’s go get it something to eat.”

  “And drink.”

  “And a leash and collar.”

  “We should go to the SPCA with it.”

  “Just in case someone is missing it.”

  “He appears to like mini marshmallows.”

  “Well, who doesn’t?”

  I ran up to see if I could engineer some conversation between my dad and Ked, sort of get the ball rolling because they are both so shy, but I needn’t have worried. There was clearly a kind of kinship in their love of boats and the ocean. My dad had gotten started teaching Ked how to lift anchor and they both looked at me like I was a mosquito, so I dashed back to shore.

  I wasn’t used to getting up at four a.m. so I went back home to sleep for another three hours and by the time I returned to Bert and Evie’s, Evie had gotten most of the burrs out of the dog’s hair and had brushed it. She told me she had been feeding him little bits of hamburger all morning.

  “It don’t seem right just calling him Dog the way we been doing, though,” said Evie.

  “He might already have a name,” said Bert.

  “So we don’t want to confuse him with a new name.”

  “But Dog don’t seem friendly.”

  “How about Pooch?” asked Bert.

  “That’s not much friendlier. That’s not so far from Dog,” said Evie.

  “But a little bit.”

  “Well, a little bit, Bert.”

  We took the dog over to the SPCA, where he barked and snarled at everyone. And the woman behind the desk didn’t seem too eager to take him from us so Bert said, Well, if no one was looking for him, he guessed he’d just take him home until the owner showed up.

  “Thank you,” said the woman behind the desk, looking at Pooch with distaste, which made me want to bring Pooch home and make a nest for him away from these people who only liked beautiful well-behaved dogs. “As you can see, we’re full up right now. We’ll call you if we hear anything.”

  Evie tacked up a Polaroid of Pooch on the SPCA bulletin board and we headed to town to buy him the essentials.

  “He’s not the world’s friendliest dog,” said Evie as he snapped and snarled at everyone we met.

  “He’s no looker,” said Bert.

  “Even with the burrs out.”

  “Ked likes him.”

  “You can tell.”

  “Why don’t you adopt him?” I asked suddenly.

  “We’re going to,” said Bert.

  “If no one claims him, of course,” said Evie.

  “No, I meant Ked,” I said.

  “Primrose, honey, you keep asking but we don’t get that choice. He’s not ours to do with what we like. Now, we don’t know particulars, but we do know that others have got prior claim.”

  “Can’t you even ask?” I said. “Don’t you want him?”

  “Of course we want him,” said Evie.

  “We want every one of those kids that shows up on our door.”

  “We want Ked even more.”

  “We want him special.”

  “Well, that’s what I mean,” I said. “He’s wanted here. He should be able to stay where he is wanted.”

  “It don’t work like that, honey,” said Evie. “But I’ll tell you what, if we ever got the option, we’d keep him. Like if he was offered to us.”

  “Of course we would,” said Bert.

  “Did I tell you, Primrose, that I got a recipe for baked potatoes with marshmallows? You know that people think they’re just good with sweet potatoes but I figured a potato is a potato and I started to experiment.”

  “Evie’s experimental recipes are the best. I keep telling her she should write a book,” said Bert.

  “I should, Bert, except I’d rather give the recipes to Ked and Primrose to use in their book. Now, come in the kitchen, Primrose, and stay for lunch and I’ll show you.”

  But because Pooch seemed to demand many walks to keep him from ruining the trailer, we ended up not making the mini marshmallow baked potatoes until later that afternoon. They were ready for my dad and Ked when they got back from fishing. They both came into the trailer with bright eyes and red cheeks and I think anything would have tasted good to them after all that hard labor and sea air, but even so, potatoes with mini marshmallows tasted better than you might think. Evie didn’t want to give me the recipe yet because she said she was still honing it, so I took her recipe for penuche instead.

  Penuche with Mini Marshmallows

  Combine two and a quarter cups of brown sugar with three quarters of a cup of milk and a pinch of salt in a saucepan. Stir over medium heat until it dissolves and then cook until it comes to the soft ball stage. You do this by dropping a bit in a glass of cold water and seeing if you can form a soft ball with it. It’s a lot of fun to do but don’t get so carried away that you use up half your mixture this way. You may think this sounds daft but it’s kind of mesmerizing. Take it off the heat and add two and a half tablespoons of butter. Let it cool down. Stir in a teaspoon of vanilla. Stir it until it is thick and creamy and then add one cup of mini marshmallows and pour it into a buttered 9×5-inch pan. Let it cool even more and cut into pieces.

  Vegetarian War Orphan Chili

  Chop two onions and fry in some olive oil. Add a smattering of bay leaves, oregano, cumin, allspice, cinnamon, and cloves and a chunk of unsweetened chocolate. Chop up two stalks of celery, two green peppers, two jalapeños and two cloves of garlic and add them. Then add two cans of chopped green chilies, two packages of soy burger, three cans of tomatoes, one can of kidney beans, one can of black beans and one can of corn. Let it cook for a while. That’s it.

  What Happened to Kedr />
  I SUFFERED A WHOLE week with Miss Lark before I decided that she was the person least fit to teach in the entire universe. She didn’t even make a pretense of wanting us to learn. She shoveled assignments at us and then sat at her desk and worked on her latest manuscript. If you needed help she told you to go away and stop bothering her, she had cat poems to write. When she finished one she would try it out on us. Today’s read,

  The cat is our friend

  Of this I am sure

  They never have to teach

  Or other things endure

  Their lives are quite cushy

  Of that I can dream

  My pussies, you live with

  Your rear ends in cream

  Then she got mad when people snickered. But she kept reading us her poems anyway. She and Eleanor simply loved each other. By the end of the week I wanted to die.

  I ran home after school Friday to get my bike and was surprised to see our car in the driveway. At first I was thrilled because I wanted to recite Miss Lark’s latest poem to my mother but I didn’t get the chance because the first thing she said to me was

  “I was fired.”

  “Oh no. What did you do?” I asked.

  “Well, I was laid off is maybe more accurate,” she said. “Miss Clarice just said that things had changed and my services were no longer needed as of today. And it’s my opinion that she’s getting married. She had a big diamond ring on her finger.”

  “Who would want to marry her?” I asked.

  “Clearly no one from around here. But I figure that diamond ring didn’t just grow there. I thought it might be someone staying at the B and B, as obviously this all came up quite suddenly. There are two men who arrived this week that I think are possible candidates, even though they’re both over sixty. Anyhow I asked if she had hired anyone else to replace me and she got very snippy and said no, she didn’t think she would be needing anyone.”

  “Gosh,” I said. “Maybe she is selling the B and B the way Uncle Jack predicted. But doesn’t she have to give you two weeks’ notice or something?”

  “It’s the other way around, Primrose. A little warning might have been nice. Not that it would make any difference. There aren’t any other jobs in Coal Harbor that I know of anyway.”

  “What will you do?”

  “I dunno. Think of something else.” She sighed.

  I felt bad leaving her like that but I’d promised Ked I would bring Mallomar over. Mallomar is a very discerning dog and I knew she wouldn’t think much of this snapping, snarling playmate, and she didn’t, but Ked kept insisting that his dog just needed socializing, so we took them to the beach, where Ked’s dog got away and almost got hit by a car.

  “He needs a name so you can call him back when he takes off like that. Otherwise, next time he might not be so lucky,” I said.

  But nothing we could think of seemed right.

  Then I remembered to tell Ked about Miss Lark and her latest poem.

  “She keeps reading them to us, even though kids snicker,” I said. “And today Rachel came in from recess with her knee all bloody and was crying and Miss Lark didn’t even ask her what happened. She barely looked up from her manuscript, just said, ‘You know how to find the nurse’s office.’ She didn’t even care.”

  “Well, I guess that’s one way to avoid a nervous breakdown,” said Ked.

  The next day Ked and I biked out to the end of Jackson Road to see if there was any logging activity yet. I always expected someday to be shocked to find trees falling. We were shocked, all right, but not by logging trucks. Instead right in front of the B and B property there was a huge FOR SALE sign.

  “She’s getting married and MOVING!” I said. “Miss Bowzer’s dream can come true. No, wait, this is terrible. Uncle Jack is out of town. He has to buy the B and B before Dan Sneild does.”

  “I thought you’d decided your uncle doesn’t love Miss Bowzer after all,” said Ked.

  “Well, she can’t marry Dan Sneild. This is all wrong. Come on, let’s go to The Girl on the Red Swing and see if Miss Bowzer knows about the B and B.”

  So we biked back to town and burst into the kitchen, where Miss Bowzer was making soup with her ragged little array of sous-chefs.

  “I don’t have room for anyone else in this kitchen, Primrose, sorry,” she said while busily dodging people to do her usual six hundred things at once. “Here, have one of Verna’s party cookies. She taught me how to make them this afternoon.”

  One of the vegetarian war orphans was now teaching Miss Bowzer things? I didn’t like this. I didn’t like this at all. But it was such a good cookie that I got the recipe from Verna before continuing.

  When I was done adding it to my notebook, I said, “I’m not here to help, Miss Bowzer. I’m here with news. The B and B is for sale!”

  “Huh,” she said. “Big news.”

  I didn’t know what to say to this. But I didn’t have to say anything because just then one of the vegetarian war orphans was coming across the kitchen with a huge industrial soup pot full of cut-up vegetables, didn’t see me, tripped over my foot, and spilled the whole mess on the floor.

  “Primrose, REALLY,” snapped Miss Bowzer, as if it were my fault. “You and Ked are two bodies too many! Out! Out! Out!”

  I had never been thrown out of Miss Bowzer’s kitchen before. But Ked grabbed me and yanked me right out the door.

  “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get Mallomar and Ruffian. They haven’t had their playtime yet.”

  The day before, my dad had run into us on the beach with the dogs and had bent to pat Ked’s dog, saying, “Who’s this little ruffian?” And Ked had decided on the spot that Ruffian was the perfect name. Of course these days everything my dad did was perfect as far as Ked was concerned. Talk about hero worship.

  We got our dogs and met back on the beach, where Ruffian tried to slip his collar and kill Mallomar. I must say, Mallomar and I were extremely forbearing.

  “Dan Sneild is going to buy the B and B and swoop up Miss Bowzer,” I said in despair as we pulled Ruffian off Mallomar’s throat.

  “We don’t really know what’s going to happen,” said Ked. “She doesn’t seem that interested in the B and B anymore.”

  “We may not know what’s going to happen, but we can guess,” I said, refusing to be consoled. “I don’t know how things could get worse.”

  But they did.

  The next day I suffered through another day of cat poems. Miss Lark ended with

  Pussy pussy on the hill

  Why so quiet, why so still?

  Why no movement for so long?

  Was it something I did wrong?

  Are you just a peaceful cat?

  Meditating this and that?

  On your tranquil grassy bed

  Oh, my goodness, you are dead!

  Eleanor cried at the end of this one and Miss Lark gave her extra credit for it.

  I was relating all this despairingly to Ked after school as we walked our bikes into town, but when we got there we could tell something was up. The one road leading into Coal Harbor from the east part of Vancouver Island was clogged with protesters and banners and people chanting and singing. All down the road were logging trucks, piled up and unable to get by.

  “I guess they’ve started,” said Ked.

  “I thought Dan Sneild said he would give everyone fair warning before they started logging.”

  “Well, of course that’s what he said,” said Ked.

  We got our bikes and headed out to Jackson Road. When we got as far as the B and B we could see more commotion there. Some of the loggers had apparently slipped in and started work before the protesters had had time to assemble. There was a stripe taken out of the mountain already. It was gray, ugly, stark.

  A lot of townspeople were coming down the road to view the stripe. And there was the kind of grim quiet you get at a funeral.

  It was silent on Jackson Road but it was no longer still. It turned out it wasn’t the removal
of the trees but the stillness I minded most. And it made me realize that stillness isn’t because nothing is there. It is because so much is.

  The next day the vegetarian war orphans posted a sign-up sheet at town hall for people volunteering to be arrested. They said it was important to have a steady flow of new people getting hauled off to jail. I still hadn’t made my decision but I didn’t seem to need to yet, as the first sign-up sheet for volunteers was full.

  Some people were worried about who was going to run the town if everyone was sitting in jail, but it actually worked out pretty well. Nobody stayed in jail long. Everyone was getting bailed out. As time went by we got used to people going to jail and other people covering for them in their jobs. A lot of it happened while we were in school, but it was always interesting to see who was missing each day. My principal went to jail. Evie went to jail one day and Bert another. My mom went to jail. My dad was waiting for a day when it was too rough to go out in his boat. It got to be sort of routine. People would meet up and say, Yeah, I got some groceries, went to jail, picked up the kids at school … But, of course, as much as we made light of it, it was serious because everyone would now have this on their record.

  The protest annoyed the loggers and slowed down the logging but even so, the trees kept coming down and the scar grew larger and sadder-looking.

  Ked and I went to the protest every day to watch but hadn’t seen the arrests yet because they happened mornings when we were in school. Ked didn’t seem to care about this so much but I secretly wanted to see them before I made up my mind about whether or not I would let myself get arrested. The only day we could do this was Saturday.

  “I don’t want to miss a day of fishing,” said Ked. He was going out every Saturday now because my dad said he was a huge help and a fast learner.