Eye Lake

by Tristan Hughes

  He clicked the button once and Clarence said, ‘That’ll do, that’ll have to do.’

  ‘The funny thing was,’ Jim told Virgil, ‘he didn’t look all that pleased to have finished it, and he didn’t act it neither. I mean you’d think after fifteen years working on it he’d be over the moon! But no. He looked and acted like a man who’d woken up one morning to find one of his legs missing and his dog dead and his wife gone and his house blown down. And the other funny thing was that it wasn’t even till the next week that they announced the plans for the diversion and all the trucks and diggers and workers arrived.

  ‘It all happened quickly after that,’ Jim told Virgil. ‘Through the rest of June and July and August it was like a war zone – with the trucks and diggers churning their way into the bush and the blasting of the rock cuts as they prepared the new course for the river. You could hear the dynamite explosions in town. Once, twice, sometimes three times a day. Like a war zone. And of course they were working so fast because the real war was coming – it was already well started – and they needed that iron in a hurry.

  ‘As for Clarence, he carried on as if nothing was happening. Every morning, first thing, he’d walk out the front door of his hotel – a door that creaked on its hinges now and shed flakes of blistered paint every time it slammed shut – and down to his rowboat on the bank of the river. He’d taken to wearing his Sunday suit – the one he wore to the post office – every day by then, and it was starting to get frayed around the cuffs and collars. And dusty too, Jim said, real dusty, like everything else in town was getting as the trucks and diggers and men rumbled through it onto the new road into the bush. And there’d be Clarence, paddling past them up the river in his boat, dressed in his suit like he was off to a picnic with the queen. Every day it was the same. Like clockwork. And at sunset, just as the men and trucks were returning from the bush, you’d see him paddling back.

  ‘That went on for the whole summer,’ Jim said. ‘Through June and July and August. And by then the hotel was in a really bad way. There were more leaks in it than a sieve and tears in the window screens and the paint hanging on for dear life. You’d see the people who still stayed there – and there weren’t many by then – come out in the mornings itching themselves and cursing. It was falling apart around him, and it was like your father couldn’t even see it anymore, Virgil, like it was invisible to him. And the worst part was there was more business in Crooked River that summer than there’d ever been, what with all the men who’d come to work on the diversion. It was like a little gold rush. People were renting their places out and sleeping in tents in their gardens. Schieder’s son turned his house into a new hotel. It was a bonanza. And Clarence carried on through it as if none of it was happening, paddling up the river in the morning and back in the evening, with his suit slowly fraying and wearing and filling full of holes.

  ‘I guess everyone was so busy making money off the diversion they didn’t ask themselves too many questions about what he was up to out there. The castle was finished. There was nothing left to build. But I went out there a few times, pretending to fish but just curious really, wanting to see what on earth he could be doing. And the truth is, Virgil, he was doing nothing, nothing at all – at least none of the times I went to see. He’d be standing there in the doorway of his castle, watching the river. It was like he was waiting.

  ‘By August they’d started work on the dam. Clarence couldn’t use his boat to reach the castle then; he had to trek out there through the bush. His suit took a real beating from those treks. After a week or two it was barely a set of rags and he began looking as if he were a hobo who’d just jumped off one of the trains. But still he carried on, like clockwork – heading out at first light, coming back at sunset. By the second week of September they’d finished the dam and the water started rising.

  ‘At first you would have thought it was only a spring flood. The river swelled and burst its banks and shallow puddles spread out onto the ground surrounding it. It looked no more than what the melt water might do after a hard winter. I went out there a lot then, to see what was going to happen. Quite a few from town did. We were curious. We’d never seen something like that happen before.

  ‘After a few days it wasn’t like any spring flood no more. All the lowest, swampiest ground was gone under – all you could see was the brown tops of the cattails bobbing about above it like fishing floats; the spruce and tamaracks were under up to their first branches, as if they’d grown without trunks. Then it started creeping up and up onto the higher ground around the swamps. Boulders and outcrops of rock disappeared. Poplar and birch saplings vanished. The pines began to shrink until they started looking like a bunch of Christmas trees planted in water. It happened quick, quicker than you’d think. You’d walk out there one day and then the next you’d get kind of lost because the ground where you’d stood before was gone. It was like someone had taken a big eraser and started rubbing the whole place out and then drawing in a new one. Stands of the tallest poplars and white pines were suddenly poking out of widening bays and growing fingers, ridges had become reefs and points and headlands, hills were islands, the swamps were already the rippling surface of a lake.

  ‘From the doorway of his castle, Clarence watched. I passed by there most days during the flooding, and I’d always stop for a few minutes to look. He must have known I was there, but he never acknowledged me and he didn’t much look like he wanted company – or not mine or anyone’s from town, at least. He watched the river as it came up over its banks and then began creeping up his new lawn, inch by inch, foot by foot, covering the green of the grass and the colours of the flowers he’d planted, until it was right at his feet almost, flowing through the door. And then, finally, he stopped going there.

  ‘He never saw it. He never saw his castle go under. I went down there every day myself, because it was really something, that castle, Virgil, it was, and I figured I wouldn’t be seeing it again. The water went through the door and rose up to the first set of windows, then the second, then the third, until it was only the top of the tower left. It had one window, that tower, and I watched it go through it. The next day when I came back to look the whole thing was gone. The water lapped the shore where I was standing and you could see the ripple of the current where the river used to be and the second island and the far, new shore on the other side. But that was all. It was like it’d never been there.

  ‘The day after, late in the morning, they blew the rock face on the opposite shore and let the river flow into the new course they’d dug for it. Everybody in town went out to watch that last explosion. It was a real occasion. They lined up on a hill looking down on the rock face, and Buddy, surrounded by the engineers and the workers, got ready to push the trigger to ignite the final charge. There was one big boom and for a few moments the air was full of dust. And then you could hear it, and then you could see it too: the water gushing through the jagged gap in the rock into its new course. It went quick and wild at first, surging into the empty channel, pushing chunks of shattered rock and tree trunks in front of it, before gradually it slowed and quietened down and settled into its new path. After nothing more than a few minutes it was trickling along as peaceful as you like. The floodwaters held steady at the level they’d already reached and the lake, the new lake, glistened and twinkled in the fall sun. If you couldn’t have seen the tops of the trees sticking out of the surface and smelled the dynamite fumes hanging in the air, it would’ve seemed like they’d always been there – just another lake and river, hidden out there in the bush.

  ‘Everybody from town came to see it, except for Clarence. He hadn’t come out of his hotel since the day the water reached the door of his castle; he’d not even come out on post day, which was the first time he’d missed it in fifteen years. He didn’t come out until the afternoon.

  ‘Buddy had arranged a big celebration party in his garden for after the explosion. All the engine
ers were there, and the workmen, and a bunch of people from town. The liquor was flowing freely and everyone was in just about the highest spirits you could imagine. There was a smile on every face. It was pretty much the biggest day in the whole history of Crooked River.

  ‘And then a few hours into the party Clarence appeared next door on the steps of the hotel and there was no smile on his face; it was looking about as hard and jagged as the rock cuts the river had just flowed into. His suit was gone and he was wearing normal clothes, a red check shirt and a pair of jeans. Every step creaked as he walked down them. As soon as they saw him most people’s voices dropped a notch or two, till it was almost quiet in the garden. Buddy walked over to the fence, swaying a little with the liquor.

  ‘“Clarence,” he said. “Good to see you. Please, come on over. I’ll get you a drink. Anything you want. We got plenty.”

  ‘Your dad’s face never shifted an inch, Virgil. It was like he didn’t even see Buddy, like he didn’t see anybody. It seemed an age before he spoke and when he did his lips barely moved.

  ‘“That’s most considerate of you,” he said. “Thank you for the invitation. But I regret I’ll have to pass on it.” His voice was as cold and bleak as January; you could tell each one of those words was costing him dear. He had the same look as when he’d made that noise like the mother bear and I kind of half expected him to make it again.

  ‘“We’ve got plenty,” Buddy said, not so cheery and sure of himself this time.

  ‘“I’m afraid I have some business to attend to.”

  ‘With that he strode on out onto the sidewalk and past everybody in Buddy’s garden and headed over to the train stop. The party came back to life then. After a few minutes it was like everyone had forgotten the whole thing.

  ‘And I guess in the excitement of the diversion, and everything that was promised to come after it – all the ore and the money and the mine – they had half forgotten. I don’t think they even stopped that day to think how his castle had gone under. Their minds were on bigger things. I was the only one who’d seen it disappear.’

  ‘And so the party went on, all through that afternoon and a long ways into the night. And I don’t reckon anyone but me even noticed the five o’clock train to Thunder Bay slowing down as it went through and Clarence climbing up into the caboose. He was gone for two days. That was how long it took him to attend to his business – and it was quite a piece of business too.’

  ‘What was it?’ Virgil asked.

  ‘It was an ad, Virgil. For a wife. It wasn’t so uncommon in those days. There weren’t too many spare women in these parts. And there were lots of Finns just come to Thunder Bay then who must’ve been looking for wives from their old country. I guess Clarence must’ve sent his ad out with theirs. He was fifty-five years old, Virgil. He’d waited a long time.’

  ‘The very next summer your mother got off the train in Crooked River.’

  And so, in the end, all Clarence had left of his castle was the picture Jim took, the one sitting in the trunk in the basement. If you look at it closely then you can tell it was taken early in the summer. Even though it’s black and white there are signs. To the left of Clarence and the castle is a tall poplar, with its flickering leaves fresh out; later on in the summer they droop and wither some. And below his feet there’s the grass he’d seeded, just coming through. And if you look real close then you can see the river too, glinting in the black and white as it curves around from the right through the trees, before it disappears off the edge of the picture.

  Fallout

  On the morning of the fourth day after George went missing Virgil led me into the living room, away from the men in the kitchen, and said, ‘I’m going to be straight with you, Eli. Things aren’t looking too good. We haven’t found George and time’s against us now. I’m going to ask you again – and think as hard as you can – is there anything George said to you, about plans he had or things that were happening – anything at all? It might not seem like it was important but you never know. It might give us a clue. I’m not going to lie to you. This is a bad situation, Eli. This is a really bad situation.’

  I looked down at the floor and said nothing. My head felt like there was an iron band tightening around it and my stomach felt like it was going to fall out of me onto the floor.

  ‘I know he’s your friend and you’re upset but you have to think, Eli. Anything. Anything at all.’

  I kept staring at the floor. My tongue felt like it was too big for my mouth. I wanted to tell him everything. But I couldn’t. George had made me promise.

  ‘That’s okay,’ he said, ruffling the hair on my head. ‘I know you’ve tried. And we’re going to keep trying too. We’re going to do everything we can.’

  The week before, George and me had been fishing with bobbers by the railroad bridge. I’d caught a slube and was trying to get my hook out of its mouth without cutting my fingers on its teeth. George wasn’t even looking at his bobber. He was telling me about how Eskimos ate raw whale blubber and liked the livers most. He picked a stick up from the bank and threw it into the river like a spear.

  ‘George McKenzie had mastered the art of polar hunting,’ he said. ‘It was vital for the success of his expedition that he learned how to survive on the land.’

  ‘You’re going to scare the fish,’ I said.

  ‘Eli O’Callaghan was slow to learn the necessities of polar survival. I explained to him the art of harpooning.’

  He threw another stick into the river. He was wearing the fur hat he’d worn all winter, with big flaps that hung down over his ears. The snow and ice had melted a while back, so it was too warm for it now and I could see beads of sweat dripping down the back of his neck.

  ‘You’re not going to catch nothing if you keep throwing those sticks.’

  ‘It was vital for his men to learn how to adapt to this wilder- ness … ’

  ‘You’ll have to wear a normal hat when you come back to school,’ I told him.

  ‘I’m not coming back,’ he said. ‘My dad doesn’t want me to. He says it’s not safe for me in Crooked River anymore.’

  ‘Your mom told my nana your allergies were gone.’

  ‘It’s not my allergies,’ he said. ‘It’s the situation, Eli. It’s bad. It’s not safe. It’s imminent. Nobody understands the situation properly, not even my mom.’

  ‘You mean the end of the world.’

  ‘The conflict is inevitable. The question isn’t if, it’s when. Those who don’t understand that are living in a fool’s paradise, and for those who aren’t prepared … ’

  ‘If you’re not coming back to school then where are you going to be?’

  ‘I’m going to stay in the underground place, the shelter. I’m going to survive in the bush. I know all about it – Dad and me have been practising the necessary skills.’

  George made it sound just like he was going off on another of his trips.

  ‘You have to promise not to tell anybody, Eli.’

  ‘I already promised.’

  ‘Maybe it’d be okay for you to come and visit. I’ll ask Dad.’

  And then I felt mad again, like before, thinking about the end of the world and Nana and Dad and Virgil.

  ‘I don’t want to come,’ I said. ‘I think it’s dumb. I don’t think there’s going to be any end of the world.’

  ‘I don’t expect you to understand all these things,’ George said.

  ‘I think I understand just fine. I reckon your dad’s nuts, like Billy said.’

  George had picked up another stick to throw in the river, but instead of throwing it he hit me in the face with it. My cheek was stinging. Before I even knew what I was doing I had the slube by the tail, raised it high, and whacked him on the side of the head with it. His hat flew off onto the ground. There was a patch of slime sticking to his ha
ir and oozing down the side of his face.

  ‘I don’t want you there anyway,’ he shouted, with the slime beginning to drip over his top lip. ‘I don’t want you to visit – ever. And then you’ll all be sorry. Just like Dad says. The whole lot of you’ll be sorry. This whole stupid town!’

  After Virgil went back into the kitchen to talk to the rest of the men I sat there thinking for a long time. They weren’t ever going to find him. I’d seen their maps and they were looking in the wrong places. Then I started thinking how Mr. McKenzie was right there across the street, behind his fence. He knew where George was. He’d taken him there. So why wasn’t he there with him? If he reckoned it was the end of the world why wasn’t he there in his underground place too?

  On the day George went missing they’d gone straight over to see him, Virgil and the search party and Sergeant Hughie. They’d asked him a bunch of questions. Then they’d offered to let him join the search party. When Virgil came back he told Nana that Mr. McKenzie had had some kind of nervous breakdown and wasn’t much help. He told Dad that Mr. McKenzie was a useless fucking lunatic and wasn’t fit to be a father.

  On the evening of the second day, while I was lying in the porch and the men were in the kitchen looking over their maps and making plans for the next day, I’d seen Mr. McKenzie slip out from behind his fence and sneak down to the river. But he must’ve come back by the following morning because I saw Sergeant Hughie going over there to talk to him some more. Later that same morning Gracie had come by to see Nana. She sat on the couch in the porch and her chest started heaving like she couldn’t breathe.

  ‘Oh God,’ she kept saying, gulping for breath.

  When I walked through the porch and she saw me the gulping got worse.

  ‘Oh God,’ she said. ‘Oh God.’

  And I’d wanted to run over and tell her – that George was okay, that he was living out at the underground place. My head was hurting with wanting to tell her. But I’d promised George.