Wild Fell

by Michael Rowe

  My father had always been my memory, the keeper of our family’s history, his own past, and even my past. The memories of any child, while vivid, are always subject to the subtle twist and eddy of time and emotional caprice. Which is in part to say, while I believe I remember everything about my childhood, I can only remember from the inside out. The actual events may have been something other than what I remember.

  My name is Jameson Browning. In the summer of 1971, when I was nine I went to Camp Manitou, the summer camp deep in rural eastern Ontario where edges of towns yielded to woods and marshes and rolling farmland hills.

  I hadn’t wanted to go at all. I deeply distrusted boys of my own age, all of whom had proven themselves to be coarse and rough and prone to noise and force. It would be tempting for anyone reading this to imagine a socially isolated, lonely boy with no friends—a loner not so much by choice, but by ostracism or social ineptitude. But the conjured image would be an inaccurate one. I wasn’t a lonely boy at all, not by any stretch, though I did indeed love to be alone.

  I loved to read. I loved to be outside by myself, especially in the greenbelt near our house, whose trees, in places, were almost dense enough to be considered a small forest and which had a stream running through it.

  I had friends, two little girls. One was real, and lived three doors down in a house that looked very much like mine, indeed like everyone else’s in our mid-century neighbourhood of elm-shaded, sidewalked streets and neatly tended lawns. The house in Ottawa in which I grew up was a classic 1960s-era suburban one on a tree-lined street, with four floors and a long, low roofline. On the top floor of the house were my parents’ bedroom and bathroom, and my father’s study. On the main floor were a spacious living room, the dining room, and the kitchen. One floor below that were my bedroom and a guest bedroom I can only ever recall my grandmother using, once, on a visit before she died in 1969. My bathroom, with the cowboys-and-Indians wallpaper, was a short flight of stairs down in the basement, next to the recreation room and the laundry room.

  The other girl lived in the wood-framed full-length mirror bolted to the wall in my bedroom. The place she dwelt was indistinctly bordered by my imagination and by the infinite possibilities of the worlds-upon-worlds inside the reflected glass.

  The real girl’s name was Hank Brevard—well, her actual name was Lucinda, and she was a tomboy who was as much of a loner as I was. Her father was away a great deal on business and her mother didn’t seem to like her very much, and was always at her to “act more ladylike.” Hank had short black hair she’d chopped herself, which had earned her a two-week grounding, during which time she’d not been allowed to spend time with me—which she’d found ways to do anyway, sneaking out of her bedroom window while her mother was watching television.

  “She’s afraid I’ll just cut it again if she makes me grow it long,” Hank said with satisfaction when her hair started to grow back, ragged as a chrysanthemum. “She’s letting me keep it short as long as I promise to let her take me to her hairdresser when it needs trimming.”

  Hank could cycle faster than any boy I knew, and she liked to catch tadpoles in the spring with me in the creek. When she’d asked me to call her by a boy’s name, I readily agreed. It seemed a very small concession for friendship, especially in light of the fact that she looked like a “Hank” and not remotely like a “Lucinda,” and we quickly became inseparable. We spent hours together building tree forts. In the spring, we caught tadpoles. In the fall, we threw ourselves into piles of leaves. In the winter, we tracked small animals by their prints in the snow, or pretended to be Arctic explorers.

  We had no secrets from each other, except for the one I kept: I never told Hank about Amanda, the little girl who lived in my mirror, the little girl who had my face and spoke in my voice, but who was someone else entirely.

  When I was seven years old, I’d begun speaking to my reflection in the mirror the way some children made up imaginary playmates. I named my reflection Mirror Pal and began to think of it as a separate entity.

  I told Mirror Pal about my days at school, my teachers, the games I played at recess. When my mother was angry with me—and she was angry with me a lot—I told Mirror Pal about that, too. I spoke back to myself, pretending that my own voice was Mirror Pal’s voice, giving the response I wanted and needed at any given time. For instance, if I brought home a drawing with a gold star on it and my parents told me how good it was, Mirror Pal rejoiced with me. If I was sad, Mirror Pal was always sympathetic and agreeable that I was the aggrieved party, no matter the circumstances.

  It was a lighthearted game of imagination and mental magic of the most innocent and childlike sort. At least until Amanda appeared a year later, when Terry Dodds stole my new red bike and had the accident.

  I had learned to ride a bike the previous year on a battered and rust-veined green Roadmaster cruiser of my father’s that had been stored in my grandparents’ garage at the time of my grandmother’s death. In addition to its sentimental value, my father thought it was the perfect bike to teach me to ride. Learning to ride a bike is usually a painful process for any child, but my sense of balance was remarkably bad. In the beginning, my father held the bike as I pedalled, keeping me steady, running beside me as I wobbled along the sidewalks of our neighbourhood.

  The first time he let go of the seat, I crashed badly, skinning both knees. I burst into tears. The pain from my kneecaps was like fire. They were bloody and there were tiny bits of dirt and concrete dust in them. My father held me and let me cry against his shirt. Then, gently, he insisted I get back up on the bike.

  “It’s important, Jamie. You need to get back up now. I’ll clean off your cuts and put some Bactine on them when we get home, but right now you need to climb back up and pedal.”

  I sniffled. “Why? I don’t want to. It hurts, Daddy. My knees sting. Look,” I added with dramatic flourish. “They’re bleeding.”

  “Because you need to show the bike that it didn’t win, Jamie. That’s why.” His face was grave, that deeply serious expression he always had when he was imparting something vitally important. He rubbed the bridge of his nose where the horn-rimmed glasses he wore always left a red mark. “If we go home now, it will have beaten you. You need to get back up on the seat. You don’t need to go far, but you need to make sure that the last thing you remember about today isn’t that you fell down, it’s that you got back up again. That’s what we do when bad things happen to us.”

  I stuck out my bottom lip. “I don’t want to.”

  Without replying, he lifted me up and put me solidly back on the seat and told me to pedal. Which, of course I did, hating it, but with him walking slowly behind me, holding onto the seat with one hand so I didn’t fall, and steadying me with the other. The sidewalk ahead swam in my vision like I was underwater, but as the tears dried, the path in front of me cleared as sure as the pressure of my father’s hand on the small of my back. This became our routine over that week, every evening after dinner. In short order, I graduated to him running behind me holding lightly onto the end of the seat.

  Every night, I told Mirror Pal about my progress. Mirror Pal confessed that he wasn’t sure I would ever learn to ride a bike, and agreed with me that it seemed like a stupid skill to need to master. He also agreed with me, though, that attaining this skill was necessary so I could ride with Hank anytime I wanted, even if the process would probably kill me.

  Then, one day, I had pedalled down the half-length of our street before I realized that he was no longer holding on at all. I looked backwards without falling over and saw that my father was clapping, and doing a little dance because that barrier was down, never to rise again, and the bike hadn’t won.

  My parents presented me with a brand new Schwinn for my eighth birthday. It was gleaming ruby red and chrome silver. It had a metallic gold banana seat and hi-rise bars, just like the ones the big kids rode as they swept by the front of our house on their way to s
chool like alien gods of coolness from some other planet.

  And now, I had one. I was going to be cool, too, just like the big kids. My joy knew no bounds.

  Hank (who had learned to ride a bike at five) and I spent the next week exploring the length and breadth of our neighbourhood, which looked somehow completely different from this new vantage point of two-wheeler independence. We barrelled down the greenbelt hills and along the wooded paths by the creek. I’d been forbidden to cross Dearborn Road because of the traffic, so Hank showed me a way to approach the greenbelt from the rear, via the safe streets I was allowed on. We were the same age, but sometimes it was like Hank was older. She was already more like a boy than I could ever imagine being. If that made me the girl in our friendship, it wouldn’t have bothered either of us—if we’d thought of it that way, which we never did.

  Two weeks after my birthday, Hank and I decided to have an adventure.

  We rode our bikes as far as we could before stopping. We may have gone as far as three or four miles out of the neighbourhood but it’s hard to tell. It certainly seemed like that, or even farther. I had a very clear sense of being way outside the bounds of what my parents would have thought of as an acceptable distance at that age. Still, it was exhilarating. We’d packed a lunch we’d made ourselves, in secret: peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, cheese, cookies, and some candy. No fruits or vegetables—and not by accident, either. It was our adventure and it was, in every sense, outside the bounds of adult authority.

  We stopped for lunch in a field and ate under the branches of an ancient oak tree. In the near distance, we saw the edge of one of the new subdivisions that were cropping up all over the city. They were different in every way from our neighbourhood, which was old and established. I imagined that the people living there must be just as different.

  I was lying on the ground with my eyes closed, enjoying the sun on my face, well satiated after stuffing our faces with sandwiches and the cookies, when Hank said, “Look, here come some big kids. They don’t look like nice big kids, either.”

  Three older boys, larger by far than Hank and me, were making their way across the field toward us. Rather than walk, they lumbered. They reminded me of a pack of cartoon jackals.

  “Hey kid, nice bike,” the largest one said. “It’s too big for you. I want it. Give it to me.”

  “You can’t have it, it’s mine. I got it for my birthday. My mom and dad bought it for me.” This was greeted with coarse guffaws from the three boys. Again I thought of cartoon predators.

  The one who addressed me first—the one I would later learn was Terry Dodds—mimicked me. “‘You can’t have it, I got it for my birthday!’ Waaah, waaah, waaah, baby. What are you going to do if I just . . . take it?” He reached down and picked up my Schwinn as though it were a plastic model. “Huh? How ya gonna stop me?”

  Hank shouted, “Leave him alone! It’s his bike! Why don’t you pick on someone your own size, you . . . you asshole?” There was a moment of stunned silence at the use of this word by an eight-year-old girl, but they laughed again.

  Terry jeered at Hank. “Are you a boy or a girl? You look like a boy. If you’re a boy, let’s fight. If you’re a girl, then your pal is even more of a sissy for letting a girl fight for him.” He turned back to me. “Huh, kid? Are you a sissy? You gonna let this little girl do all your fighting for you, or are you going to come and be a man and take this bike away from me? Because otherwise, I’m gonna take it. And if it’s too small for me, I’m gonna give it to my kid brother. He needs a bike. That okay with you, kid?” he taunted me. “Huh?” Terry grinned at his friends. “I guess it’s all right with him. He didn’t say I couldn’t, did he?”

  “Nope,” they chorused. “He didn’t say you couldn’t.”

  “Yes I did! I did say you couldn’t. It’s my bike!”

  “Too late,” Terry taunted. He climbed on the bike, which was ridiculously small for him—and which made him look even more like some sort of monster astride it—then did a quick, jerky circle on it. “Yep, this’ll be okay. See you later, kid. Come on guys, let’s get out of here.”

  Hank, who had been standing next to me, fists flexed at her side, abruptly jumped on Terry’s back and began to punch him. She even managed to land a few major blows, blows that made him cry out in pain. He shoved her to the ground. She jumped up and went for him again, shouting a strangled war cry that she had probably picked up from a Saturday afternoon adventure film on television. He shoved her down on the ground again, and this time he put his finger in Hank’s face and wagged it.

  “Stay down, you little bitch,” he said. “If you come at me again, I’m going to put you and your little buddy in the hospital. Got it?”

  “Why don’t you pick on someone your own size?” she said again, but both of us heard the note of defeat in her voice under the shrillness, as did Terry. “He’s just a little kid. Give him back his bike!”

  “He doesn’t have a bike,” Terry said. “I have a bike. It’s my bike now. Come on, guys, let’s get home and give this bike to my brother.” And with that, he pedalled off across the field toward the new subdivision, with his two friends half-walking, half-running to keep up with him.

  I burst into tears. I not only felt the loss of my bike, but I felt the guilt of disappointing my father after all those hours of practice and all his patience. The bike had been a gift of love, the consummation of those painful hours of skin scraped against asphalt, banged-up limbs, and blood, and my father’s loving attention to helping me learn.

  Hank hugged me. “Come on, get on the back. I’ll double-ride you home,” she said. “Let’s go tell your parents.”

  I tasted the snot running down my upper lip, mixing with the tears. “They’re going to be so mad. . . . I’m not supposed to be this far from home.”

  “Don’t cry, Jamie,” Hank said. “Let’s get home and tell your parents. “We’ll get your bike back, I promise. I don’t know how, but we will.”

  When we eventually made it home as dusk descended—a rickety, long, difficult ride with me on the back and Hank pumping heroically over the rutted sidewalks and stopping at crosswalks so both of us could dismount and walk safely across the street—my parents were furious. My mother in particular was enraged that we’d ventured so far out of Buena Vista, our neighbourhood, and managed to lose an expensive new bike in the process.

  “It wasn’t a toy, Jamie.” After everything that had happened that afternoon, her voice seemed unbearably harsh in my ears. I had seen my mother angry before, but this seemed to be a level of developing anger that was new and a bit frightening. “It was a very expensive bicycle and now it’s gone. You lost it. You should have been more responsible instead of being such a damn dreamer all the time. I’m very, very disappointed in you.” My mother had wanted my father to spank me, but he’d refused.

  “He didn’t lose it, Alice. It’s not lost. It was stolen. Another kid stole Jamie’s bike.”

  “If he’d stayed in our neighbourhood,” my mother said, “this would never have happened. This is his fault and I want him to take responsibility for it. If you won’t spank him, I will.”

  My father held up his hand. He, too, was furious, but his anger was directed differently: he seemed mostly angry that an older kid had bullied me into giving up my new bike. “Alice, please,” he snapped. “One thing at a time. I want to know how this happened. We can discuss the rest later, but right now I want to understand how this took place. I want to know who this kid was, and where this happened.” He turned to me and said, “Jamie, can you tell us again how this kid came to take your bike?”

  I told the story again, feeling calmer under my father’s steady questioning. He asked me if I could remember the neighbourhood where it took place. I told him no, but that Hank would probably know how to get back to the field. The boys likely lived in the subdivision across from the field, since that was the direction from which they had come.
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br />   My father looked glum. “Well, Jamie, let’s call Hank’s parents and see if she can go for a ride with us tomorrow and see if we can find out who this kid is. We can drive around the neighbourhood and you can see if you recognize him. But I have to admit, it’s going to be a bit of a long shot. Your mother is right—this was very irresponsible of you. I hope we can get your bike back, but don’t get your hopes up. In the meantime, I’ll go call the police and see what the procedure is to file a report.”

  “I’m sorry, Daddy. Really, I am.”

  “I know, Jamie,” my father said. “But it doesn’t really help matters. It doesn’t really change things. You should have been more responsible. I think you should go downstairs and get ready for bed. I’ll be down in a little while to tuck you in.”

  In my room, sobbing and in disgrace, I told Mirror Pal about what had happened.

  As always, I did both of the voices, mine and Mirror Pal’s, and they both sounded like me. Both voices bore the imprimatur of my grief: one bore it plaintively; the other bore it with justifiably loyal outrage.

  A casual adult observer who happened to walk in on me would likely have seen an eight-year-old boy, his face red and puffy and streaked with tears, sitting on the edge of his bed talking to himself in the mirror, working himself into a state of near-hysteria, arms flailing and pointing, punctuating the air with angles and jabs. I have a memory of actually slapping the wall beside the mirror and imagining I heard two slaps.

  But of course, I could only have heard one slap. I was entirely alone in my bedroom. The only illumination inside the room came from my bedside lamp, a green-glassed brass ship’s lantern with a hand-painted shade featuring a rendering of a sailboat at full mast, hard against the wind.