Eye Lake

by Tristan Hughes

  Bobby and me followed the shore for a while, looking out at the new forest of dead trees that’d grown out of the lake. The river was clear in sight now, meandering its way between them. There were rocks and stumps and other things – things you couldn’t tell what they were – strewn across the lake’s muddy bed. The sun was creeping over the trees and shining down on them, and in the light they didn’t seem so bad.

  After a while we cut into the woods and followed Franklin’s Trail the rest of the way back to the Poplars. As we were walking Bobby said, ‘We can’t stay at the Poplars anymore, me and Mom.’

  ‘That’s what I heard,’ I said.

  ‘Billy wants me to live with him but I don’t want to.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘That’s why I was hiding.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Mom doesn’t know where else we can go.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about that,’ I said. ‘I’ve got a plan about it.’

  ‘What plan?’

  ‘I’ve got a place, Bobby. Number one O’Callaghan Street. It’s where Clarence lived. Buddy says it’s not fit to live in but I reckon with a bit of work it’d be fine.’

  ‘And can me and Mom live there?’

  ‘I’d like you both to live there,’ I said. ‘If you want to.’

  Under the Helsinki Sky

  It wasn’t as hard as I thought – fixing up number one O’Callaghan Street. Sarah and Bobby gave me a hand. While I put in the new boards in the porch Bobby held the nails for me and Sarah started painting the walls, wearing her red duck hat. Buddy seemed pretty pleased with the whole thing. He stopped mentioning that I might want to pull the place down; instead he spent a lot of time sitting out in his garden, coming over to the fence every half-hour or so to give me advice. ‘You might want to think about using white paint for those window frames,’ he might say; or, ‘Why not plant some roses along the fence here, Eli? They’d go well with the lilies on this side.’ He was happy to have Bobby there too, you could tell. He bought him a bunch of candy, just like he was king of Big Rock Candy Mountain again.

  Billy, meantime, had gone up north for the summer to fly for an outfitters’ near Lake St. Joseph. He’d kind of lost interest in Bobby when he found out he got the job – which was just like Billy: he always preferred new things.

  I fixed up the inside as well as the outside. A lot of stuff I hadn’t touched or moved for years, but now I went through it all and made a big pile out in the garden. I was planning to take it to Gracie and Mr. Haney at the museum to see if they thought any of it was historical and worth keeping. I kept all of Virgil’s books, though, and his and Dad’s record collection – even though I didn’t have anything to play them on. Dad and Virgil’s record player had definitely become historical, meaning it didn’t work no more.

  And I kept the Helsinki picture too. I took it off the wall and brought it down into the basement. I’d put Clarence safely in his trunk by then, together with his other things. I figured there wasn’t any need to let Officer Red or anybody else know about him. Let him lie still now, I thought. Let him lie still and quiet. There were no more circles he needed to spin in, no more endlessly looping rivers. I put the Helsinki picture on top of him – so he’d always have something to look at, so the sky above him would always be blue and full of light – and then closed the trunk.

  There was just one more thing I needed to do.

  Buddy let me use his truck to take the pile of stuff to the museum, and on my way I stopped at the police station. Officer Red was outside polishing his car. It gets a lot of dust on it when he’s out driving about looking for crimes.

  ‘Hey there, Eli,’ he said. ‘And to what do I owe the pleasure … ?’

  ‘I guess I just wanted a word,’ I said.

  Afterwards I went straight on to the museum. I parked up beside Clarence’s canoe, and when I got out I found Mr. Haney wobbling about on a ladder propped by the front door.

  ‘I don’t know what’s with this sign,’ he said. ‘It won’t stay put for love nor money.’

  IAL, it said. 01.

  ‘What’ve you got in the truck there, Eli?’

  ‘It’s from my house,’ I said. ‘I’m fixing it up. I thought you might want some of the stuff for the museum.’

  ‘That’s very thoughtful of you, Eli,’ Mr. Haney said, climbing down from the ladder.

  ‘Is Gracie in?’ I asked him.

  Mr. Haney came with me to the door. When he opened it, I could see Gracie was in her office from the big clouds of smoke behind the glass.

  ‘Eli has brought us some potential artifacts for the museum,’ Mr. Haney said. ‘I think they could prove a real treasure trove.’

  ‘You been clearing the junk out of your basement then, Eli?’ Gracie asked.

  ‘Kind of,’ I said.

  I shuffled my way closer to her. It seemed like a long way. I opened my mouth to speak but the first two times nothing came out.

  ‘Are you okay, Eli?’ Gracie asked.

  I opened my mouth a third time.

  ‘I got something I got to tell you,’ I said.

  Everything All at Once

  From the windows of the plane you could see everywhere spread out below. There was Eye Lake, muddy brown and flecked silver with pools and puddles; and Red Rock Lake, glinting and glistening and full of water. You could see the line of Main Street and O’Callaghan Street and the whocanle town, stained a faint red by the dust. And you could see the Crooked River – meandering its way through them, joining them up like dots on a zigzagging puzzle. And surrounding everything, stretching away as far as you could see in every direction, the ragged pattern of forests and creeks and lakes, like a huge piece of torn green cloth floating on blue.

  I’d never seen it from above like this. I’d never been in a plane before. I liked the way you didn’t have to look backwards or forwards to look at it. From up here you could see everything all at once.

  The plane’s engines hummed and puttered. We rose up and up and then began to dip down. We weren’t going far. Only as far as Bad Vermilion.

  ‘Are you sure you’ll be able to remember this place?’ Officer Red hollered from the other end of the plane.

  ‘I’ll remember it,’ I said.

  Gracie was sitting on the seat opposite mine. She was staring out the window behind my head. Her eyes were black like the owl’s. She hadn’t said a word to me since the museum the day before. As the plane dipped further down I said, ‘I’m sorry, Gracie.’

  She didn’t say nothing.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t want to talk about this, Eli,’ she suddenly said, still staring out the window behind my head. ‘I don’t want to talk about it, not now.’

  The plane started to bank and through the window I could see the corner of Bad Vermilion Lake coming into view.

  ‘I just want to find him,’ Gracie said. ‘And then it’ll be over.’

  Acknowledgements

  This book was nurtured and written in many different houses and homes. I would like to offer my thanks and gratitude to all those who provided them: to Beatrice von Rezzori and everyone at the Santa Maddalena Foundation; to the Translators’ House Wales and Halma Network for residencies in Minsk and Rhodes; to Igor and Volja at the Logvinov Publishing House in Minsk; and to the International Writers’ and Translators’ Centre of Rhodes. I would like to thank Jordi Punti, for the conversations at Santa Maddalena during which this novel first came to life for me; and Sam Humphreys and Veronique Baxter for their help and encouragement. I’d also like to thank Alana Wilcox and Evan Munday for their help with the Canadian edition. And finally Lisa Solomon, for her generosity and support and so much more. Diolch o galon.

  About the Author

  Tristan Hughes was born in Atikokan, Ontario, a
nd brought up around Llangoes, Ynys Mon, in Wales, where he currently lives. Hughes is the author of three previous books, The Tower, Send My Cold Bones Home and, most recently, Revenant. He was the winner of the 2002 Rhys Davies Short Story Award.

  Typeset in Bell MT, Linotype Didot and Trade Gothic

  Printed and bound at the Coach House on bpNichol Lane, 2011

  Acquired for the press, copyedited and designed by Alana Wilcox

  Cover by Ingrid Paulson

  Cover photograph of Tom Rawn from the Atikokan Progress, courtesy of Atikokan Centennial Museum

  Cover photograph of Eye Lake by Lisa Solomon

  eBook development by WildElement www.WildElement.ca

  Coach House Books

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  Toronto, Ontario M5S 3J4

  416 979 2217

  800 367 6360

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